I’m Yassir HaouatiI’m Yassir HaouatiI’m Yassir Haouati

Before I had a title, before I had a company, before I had a clear mission, I had the instinct to understand how things worked and the urge to make something from that understanding. That instinct started at home, in Meknes, when I was introduced to algorithmic thinking, Visual Basic, Pascal, and the early languages of the web. I was 7 years old.

At that age, code felt almost magical. A few instructions could make a machine respond. A small piece of logic could become an output. A thought could become something visible.

That moment shaped me more than I understood at the time.

At 10 years old, I built the website of my primary school with Microsoft FrontPage. It was a simple project, but it was the first time building became connected to people. The work had a context. Someone could open it. Someone could use it. Someone could see the school through what I had made.

That experience stayed with me because it taught me that building becomes more meaningful when it serves something real.

From there, I kept going. I explored web structure with Macromedia Dreamweaver. I moved into backend development with PHP, phpMyAdmin, and SQL. I discovered WordPress CMS, SEO, organic traffic, social traffic, AdSense, and CPA monetization.

Those years taught me that the internet was far larger than websites. It was a system of attention, distribution, incentives, content, traffic, and money. A website could attract people. A system could monetize attention. A workflow could create value.

By 13 years old, I was already learning that software had two faces. One face was visible: the page, the interface, the thing people touched. The other face was invisible: the database, the logic, the structure, the backend, the rules that made everything move.

That invisible layer fascinated me. It still does. Most people experience the surface. Builders learn to see the system under it.

I moved from PHP into Laravel because I wanted structure. I started using Python because I wanted automation. I freelanced on web development and Python automation projects because I wanted to test what I knew in the real world.

Then came JavaScript stacks, REST APIs, MongoDB, Express, React, Node, Angular, Vue, and the wider full-stack world. At the same time, I explored e-commerce through Shopify and Liquid. I learned paid ads because traffic taught me how markets behave.

I built Android mobile games with Java, Android Studio, Google Play Console, and AdMob because I wanted to understand users, distribution, mobile products, and monetization from another angle.

Looking back, I can see the pattern clearly. I was moving across surfaces, but the deeper question was always the same: how do systems work, and how can they be engineered to create leverage?

That question followed me into my formal education.

In 2015 and 2016, I went through the highly competitive two-year preparatory program for French Graduate Engineering Schools, specializing in Mathematics and Physics. That period trained discipline, abstraction, and endurance.

It taught me to stay inside hard problems long enough to understand them. In 2016, I moved to Nancy, France, after being accepted at ENSEM Lorraine INP to study Digital Systems Engineering. In 2018, I moved to Barcelona, Spain, for the Master in Innovation and Research in Informatics at FIB UPC. In 2020, I graduated as a Digital Systems Engineer.

Those years gave structure to the builder I already was. They gave me a deeper relationship with systems, modeling, research, engineering logic, and technical discipline. They also gave me a wider view of how technology sits inside society, industry, infrastructure, and the future of work.

Then Spain changed my trajectory.

In 2020, I joined the EU Erasmus for Young Entrepreneurs program with CCI Paris in Barcelona. That period became the bridge between engineering and entrepreneurship. It was also where I co-founded Brickken.

That moment changed the game for me. Building software was one thing. Building a company was another. A company is a system with capital, people, incentives, timing, product, market, trust, execution, and pressure. Every decision has weight. Every delay has a cost. Every promise creates responsibility.

Brickken pulled me into a world where infrastructure was more than code. Real-world asset tokenization sits at the intersection of finance, regulation, technology, operations, capital markets, and trust.

It forced me to think beyond products. It forced me to think about institutions, investors, users, markets, jurisdictions, public listings, fundraising, governance, and long-term credibility.

In 2021, we closed our pre-seed. In 2022, we closed the Neotec Spanish Grant and the BKN token presale. In 2023, the token reached the public market. In 2025, Brickken closed its seed round. In 2026, it closed a Pre-Series A of 3M€ at a valuation of 38M€.

Those milestones matter, but the deeper lesson sits beneath the numbers. I learned how much coordination is required to move from an idea to a funded, operating, market-facing company. I learned how fragile growth becomes when systems lag behind ambition. I learned how easily execution breaks when decisions, workflows, data, and responsibility live in different places.

That is where the Operator side of me was forged.

An operator lives close to pressure. Fundraising pressure. Delivery pressure. Team pressure. Market pressure. Investor pressure. Customer pressure.

The operator learns that strategy means very little when execution has weak structure. The operator learns that speed depends on clarity. The operator learns that growth needs rhythm, ownership, visibility, and decision discipline. The operator learns that trust compounds through consistency.

The Engineer side was already there. It had been there since childhood.

The Engineer sees workflows. The Engineer sees architecture. The Engineer sees the hidden layer beneath the interface. The Engineer asks what inputs enter the system, what transformations happen, what outputs matter, what feedback loops improve the next cycle, and where automation can multiply human effort.

Over time, those two sides became one identity.

Operator-Engineer.

Operator because I have lived the pressure of building companies, raising capital, selling, delivering, coordinating teams, and making decisions under uncertainty.

Engineer because I think in systems, workflows, data, architecture, automation, interfaces, and infrastructure.

The edge is the combination.

That combination is the foundation of my mission today.

My mission is to build the infrastructure for a digital intelligence economy.

To me, the digital intelligence economy is the next stage of how people and organizations coordinate work, decisions, capital, and creativity. It is a world where software, AI, automation, decentralized finance, data systems, and human judgment come together inside operating systems that help people move with more clarity and capability.

This mission comes from my life, rather than from a trend. I grew up building software. I studied engineering. I helped build a company in tokenized finance. I started DeGNZ Labs in Meknes to build AI-native operating systems.

I now see the same problem everywhere: organizations have more tools than ever, more data than ever, and more ambition than ever, while many still struggle to coordinate work clearly.

The issue is rarely a lack of software. The issue is fragmented systems. Teams use one tool for leads, another for operations, another for reporting, another for communication, another for automation, another for decision-making. The result is friction. People lose time. Leaders lose visibility. Teams repeat work. Data becomes scattered. Decisions become slower. Growth becomes harder to manage.

I believe the next generation of companies will need more than digital tools. They will need digital intelligence infrastructure.

Systems that connect workflows, data, automation, interfaces, and decision logic. Systems that give people a clearer view of what is happening, what matters, what needs action, and where value is moving.

That is why I build.

I build because technology should expand human agency.

Agency means the ability to think clearly, choose direction, act with confidence, create value, and shape one’s environment. Good technology should make people more capable. It should give them better tools for judgment. It should create room for independence, creativity, and meaningful work.

AI and automation should strengthen human capability. They should help people spend less energy on noise and more energy on decisions, creation, relationships, and contribution.

I build because clarity matters.

Clarity is one of the most powerful forms of leverage. When a person sees clearly, they act differently. When a team sees clearly, coordination improves. When a company sees clearly, execution becomes sharper.

Clarity turns complexity into structure. It makes decisions easier to understand. It makes responsibility easier to assign. It makes progress easier to measure.

I build because leverage matters.

Leverage is the ability to make effort compound. A good system helps one person do the work of many. A good workflow reduces repeated effort. A good dashboard compresses scattered information into one decision surface. A good automation removes waste.

A good operating model turns individual effort into organizational rhythm. Leverage gives builders the ability to create more with the same time, capital, and attention.

I build because discipline matters.

Capital is scarce. Time is scarce. Attention is scarce. Energy is scarce. I have lived periods where every resource mattered, where delayed revenue increased pressure, where execution needed structure, where ambition had to meet reality.

Those experiences shaped my respect for discipline. Real builders need dreams, but they also need systems that protect focus, reduce waste, and turn pressure into durable execution.

I build because trust matters.

Trust is the invisible infrastructure behind every serious system. People need to understand how decisions are made. Investors need confidence. Customers need reliability. Teams need visibility. Markets need consistency.

Technology becomes valuable when people can rely on it. Infrastructure earns trust when it makes complexity more understandable, decisions more traceable, and outcomes more consistent.

I build because contribution matters.

The point of infrastructure is more than scale. The point is to help people create meaningful value. I want to build systems that help founders execute, teams coordinate, investors see clearly, operators make better decisions, and organizations move with more intelligence.

I want technology to help people become more capable, more independent, and more useful to the world around them.

My vision is a future where programmable infrastructure helps humans, companies, and capital operate with more agency, better judgment, and stronger coordination across the systems that shape work, finance, creativity, and progress.

That future will require new companies, new tools, new protocols, new operating models, and new ways of thinking. It will require people who can understand both the human side of operations and the technical side of systems.

It will require builders who can connect software with real business pressure, AI with human judgment, capital with trust, and automation with responsibility.

This is the work I choose.

I am still building. Still learning. Still refining the thesis. Still paying the cost of becoming the kind of builder I want to be. The path has been long already, and in many ways it still feels early.

But the pattern is clear.

I started with code because I wanted to understand how things worked. I built websites because I wanted ideas to become visible. I learned traffic because I wanted people to find what I built. I learned backend systems because I wanted the invisible layer to make the visible layer stronger.

I studied engineering because I wanted discipline. I became a founder because I wanted to build inside the real world. I became an operator because companies demand more than ideas. I became an Operator-Engineer because the future needs people who can turn pressure into systems.