One Lebanese founder's vision for AI opportunity

Growing up in Beirut, Rayan Dabbagh excelled in math and physics, but wasn’t sure what his career path would be. At 17, he moved to the United States to study at Georgia Tech. Despite having “never written a line of code” prior to entering the school, he quickly fell in love with his computer science class. Only two years later, he secured a position as a software engineer at Amazon Web Services (AWS) in cloud computing. It seemed he had found a stable path to success.

Now, at 23, Dabbagh has left his job at AWS to co-found Bounty, a digital marketplace where AI agents complete client-posted tasks, rather than traditional platforms that rely on human freelancers. In February, Bounty raised $1 million from Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), the Silicon Valley venture capital firm behind investments in companies including OpenAI, Meta, and Databricks. Dabbagh now works on growing his company full time.

Dabbagh sees his early successes as indicative of a broader shift; beyond building his own company, he sees AI as reshaping opportunities for young people, and Lebanon as needing to adapt to keep pace.

Rethinking the path to entrepreneurship

One significant difference between Lebanon and the United States, according to Dabbagh, is the culture around starting companies at a young age. He characterizes the US as ideal for building businesses in part because its environment encourages and invests in young founders. When he comes home to Lebanon, however, he notices a cultural divide: Lebanese tend to view age and experience as prerequisites for founding a company, whereas youth can be seen as a virtue in the United States.

In the rapidly changing world of technology, Dabbagh believes young founders often have to "learn on the job" and act quickly when they identify an innovative idea. "The willingness to take risks is way more normalized in the US," he explained. Learning to seize opportunities became one of the defining lessons of his time in the United States.

What Lebanon already gets right

Despite lacking a robust startup culture, Dabbagh believes Lebanon offers students an important advantage. Although the country's education system places less emphasis on coding than many American schools, he says its rigorous focus on mathematics gave him a strong foundation for a career in technology.

As AI models make coding increasingly accessible, Dabbagh argues that a deep understanding of STEM disciplines such as mathematics and physics is becoming even more valuable. He credits his Lebanese education with instilling those analytical skills.

Still, he believes institutions and students alike must adapt to the rapid advancement of AI, whether by integrating AI more effectively into school curricula or becoming more willing to embrace entrepreneurship and calculated risk-taking.

For Dabbagh, Lebanon's future in AI will depend less on producing the next generation of coders than on cultivating the mathematical foundations and entrepreneurial confidence needed to build innovative companies. As artificial intelligence reshapes the global economy, he argues, the greatest opportunities will belong to those who adapt the fastest.