Planning for the years ahead is not about forecasting numbers — it’s about designing for resilience. That was the mood on stage from banking, venture capital, and real estate leaders at the EnterpriseAM Egypt 2025 Forum panel titled Built to last: Or, how I learned to stop worrying and plan for 2026 and beyond, where HSBC Egypt CEO Todd Wilcox, Algebra Ventures’ General Partner Laila Hassan, and Arkan Palm’s Director Ahmed Badreldin broke down what uncertainty really means for next year, how they are budgeting around it, and where the next up-cycle begins.

Uncertainty in 2026 won’t come from the usual suspects: FX, inflation, and interest rates are now the predictable part of the story, Todd Wilcox argues, noting that he is penciling in an EGP 48-50 to the USD, inflation eating toward 10% by end-2026, and interest rates around 18%. “It’s not what we know that worries me, it’s the shocks we can’t predict,” he said. His lessons from five years in Egypt is to build buffers, assume volatility, and design plans that can hold steady through external surprises.

For VCs, the uncertainty has a different shape. “Our biggest unknown is AI,” Laila Hassan said. The 2026 pipeline looks strong, fueled by the speed and quality of new AI-driven products and a renewed interest from foreign investors. But AI also cuts both ways on “which companies will win, and which will be left behind,” she said.

Putting the uncertainty in more traditional terms, Ahmed Badreldin argues that “costs were the number-one concern for years, now that costs are finally under control, the uncertainty is on the top line.” The real estate industry has been distorted by speculative demand and currency-driven distortions. “The smoke is clearing, you can now differentiate what was built for the market versus what was built for speculation,” he said.

How to survive 2026 to capitalize on 2027: Building for genuine end-user demand — not for buyers chasing a quick hedge — is becoming the only defensible strategy, Badreldin argued, noting that Arkan Palm refused to design for speculative buyers and will double down on people who will live and work in their developments years from now — a strategy that cushions volatility and positions the balance sheet for the next cycle. “Real demand is what matters,” he said.

VC’s adaptation looks different: Algebra is leaning more into roll-ups and bolt-ons — not as a pivot, but as a logical response to commoditizing production and shrinking margins. During macro turbulence, a single-product startup can protect margins for a while, but as products commoditize, the ability to offer a full value chain matters. “It’s not necessarily a change in strategy as much as wanting to make sure that in our part of the world, especially in Egypt, that more companies are built to last,” Hassan said.

Where’s the opportunity in 2026 from a banker’s vantage point? Wilcox pointed to the demand he’s seeing firsthand from Chinese, Turkish, and British corporates looking at Egypt as their next manufacturing and export base, citing low entry cost, ready infrastructure, and strategic location. One Chinese textile giant he met in Ningbo — a supplier to Nike and Adidas — is now evaluating Egypt for its first expansion outside of China. “These are the long-term investments that move the needle,” he said.

The panel then turned its attention to people, specifically to the 2026 salary budget that every company has been quietly modeling right now. After years of wage inflation running hot, next year could be the year it cools. Badreldin broke it into two battles, inflation adjustments, and the fight against brain drain, the first is now more manageable, the second is not. From an inflation perspective, the average raise component is definitely much less than previous years — low double-digit increases, some 12%.

Top talent will leave if it’s just money: Retention in 2026 will rely less on salary and more on engagement, giving high performers exposure to marketing, planning, sales, and other functions so they feel ownership across the business. “If it’s just money, you can’t compete,” he added. Hassan echoed the trend from the VC side. “It’s not just the money, it’s vision, ownership and believing in the founders,” she said.

The panel agreed that there’s a reverse brain drain trend: Wilcox noted a clear slowdown in out-migration over the past 18 months.

What’s pulling them back? Culture, stability, and the desire to raise families here. “Qaulity of life matters,” he said. Hassan agreed, noting that even one of her founders moved from San Francisco back to Cairo at the peak of FX turbulence.

On the hiring front, flexibility and adaptation is the name of the game: In real estate, Badreldin said managers need to operate in a fast-shifting environment where product cycles and external shocks both move quickly. “You want, as a business, as a product, to be able to be flexible and adapt to change, so does your team,” he said. On the VC front, founders need grit and adaptability — and increasingly, AI-native thinking rather than simply AI-enabled workflows, Hassan noted.

A reminder that even in an AI-heavy future, human connection still drives businesses: Wilcox offered a different angle, illustrating it with an unexpected story from Hong Kong, where he found himself in a “Pop Mart” store buying the last two Labubu toys after seeing taxi drivers obsessed with the character. The lesson here wasn’t about toys, it was about client experience. “AI will eventually take our transaction monitoring and our credit assessment, but we still have clients, and what you sell is the client experience,” he said, noting that “we need to hire for the connection.”

However, we can’t overlook how AI is changing the game: Hassan noted that AI is now a core part of underwriting investments — impacting investment decisions significantly. Companies that looked investable in January “are uninvestable today,” because “it’s really quite adaptive and fast” landscape. The key question is no longer “are you using AI” but “what’s your moat” — your proprietary data, network, or technology that makes the AI smarter. She cited DeepEcho, a prenatal ultrasound diagnostic startup in Algebra’s portfolio that won FDA approval by accessing a massive dataset of scans from around the world.

Is there a sector Algebra is avoiding? “Not off limits,” Hassan said, “but they need to answer how being AI-native helps them win.”

Institutionalization — and the pain that comes with it — came through in Badreldin’s remarks about Arkan Palm’s growth from 30 to 800 employees. The shift from a founder-driven, fast-paced culture to an institution with structures and policies was “one of the hardest things in the life cycle of the business, and getting the business to last,” he said. The first step, he explained, was acceptance — understanding that agility would be slow, decisions would be shared, and outcomes wouldn’t always align with a founder’s instincts.

“Once you accept that, you start institutionalizing the entrepreneurial DNA,” he said. His analogy was interesting: a small speedboat can turn fast, but a cruise ship takes miles and a large crew to move, so the goal is to keep both. “The key with that is to make sure that this big cruise ship is there with all its weight and all these procedures, and has satellite businesses or satellite subsidiaries that maintain this entrepreneurial DNA, and can be the speed boat that goes off the cruise ship and get to the destination quickly, while using some of the resources of the big ship without putting the big ship at risk,” he remarked.

The panel wrapped with the 2026 USD outlook. Wilcox sees EGP 48.5, Badreldin is closer to 55, and Hassan puts it at roughly 48.

Then came the final question: What’s the one thing that keeps you up at night when you think about 2026?

For Wilcox, it’s external shocks. Egypt is moving in the right direction, he said, but the real risks are the ones we can’t control — a swing in the US, or something totally unexpected.

Hassan’s concern is the liquidity gap in venture capital. Unless the ecosystem starts delivering more exits and consolidation, LP interest will dry up, she said. Her focus for 2026 is building real cross-market bridges — pointing to Nigeria as a market with similar dynamics where the right partnerships can actually deliver scale.

And for Badreldin, it’s the fear of old policy mistakes coming back. If the currency next year looks the same as it does today, he said, “we haven’t learned from our mistakes.” Letting the system adjust on its own, avoiding balance-of-payments distortions, and sticking with structural reform, he argued, will decide whether Egypt enters the next cycle stronger — or ends up stuck in déjà vu.

Tap or click here to read the panel’s full transcript.