Erfan Soliman

Most of my work has been around building products and communities for ambitious people trying to do better work. I'm Co-Founder and CPO of StudyStream, a YC-backed platform where remote workers and students focus together online in real time. We've served millions of people across 180+ countries; my work has focused on product strategy, video-based accountability, monetization, safety, and community at scale.

Before StudyStream, I spent years in academia at Oxford researching tissue and bioengineering. Alongside that, I built education projects through Oxford Global — academic programs and conferences with students, schools, and partners across several countries.

My engineering background at Harvard and Oxford left me with a useful (and sometimes obsessive) habit of treating problems as systems to model, stress-test, and improve.

What I write about

This blog is where I try to think in public. Most posts fall into a few overlapping buckets:

Building with AI

A new 2026 rabbit hole of mine is creating practical AI workflows: tools that save time, automate admin, draft useful outputs, and help small teams move faster. I've started building systems that turn in-meeting thoughts into blog posts and social content, agents that draft email replies while archiving inbox noise and managing calendar workflows, as well as lightweight operating systems for everyday work. The interesting challenge is designing AI with enough context, constraints, and judgment scaffolding to produce outputs good enough to use without edits.

Product strategy and internet businesses

I write about product decisions, monetization, user psychology, founder judgment, and the messy middle between "cool idea" and "this actually works." A lot of this comes from building StudyStream: social products, retention, conversion, trust, safety, and growth.

Global citizenship and tax-aware living

I've spent years thinking about what it means to build companies while living internationally — tax residency, company structure, banking, remote work, and the practical realities of being a globally mobile founder. I'm not interested in loophole-chasing for its own sake; I'm building a life and business structure that is robust, flexible, and practical.

YC, startups, and founder fit

Having gone through Y Combinator with StudyStream, I sometimes write about what YC is actually like, how to think about applying, what makes you a good fit, and how founders can sharpen their thinking before interviews or fundraising conversations.

How I think

I like problems where the answer isn't obvious from the outside: why a product isn't converting, how to untangle a messy workflow, or whether to build a feature, change pricing, hire, automate, apply to YC, move countries, or shut something down entirely. Often it's several of those at once.

My default mode is to break things down into incentives, bottlenecks, risks, and second-order effects. I care less about norms or conventions and more about getting to a useful answer.

Reach out

I'm always happy to hear from founders, operators, and globally mobile people working through interesting problems. Good reasons to get in touch:

• You're building a product and want sharper thinking on strategy, monetization, retention, or user behavior.
• You're exploring AI workflows and want help figuring out what's actually worth automating.
• You're applying to YC or preparing for an interview and want a founder's perspective.
• You're building a more flexible international life as a business owner without creating unnecessary legal, tax, or operational chaos.
• You've read something here and think we'd have an interesting conversation.

Most of what I write is me trying to make my own thinking clearer. If any of it is useful, or you're working on a problem where my experience might help, say hello, on X or LinkedIn.