Portugal-based 3D printing construction startup Havelar built Portugal's first printed home.
COBOD International and Havelar
Startup Havelar built Portugal's first 3D printed home using COBOD's popular printing system.
The walls of the two-bedroom, 861-square-foot home were printed in 18 hours.
The Portugal-based startup says it can build faster and cheaper than conventional construction.
If companies like Portugal-based Havelar have their way, the future of affordable housing will look like perfectly stacked strands of spaghetti (as in, they'd be 3D printed).
Printing-construction startup Havelar says it can build a new home in less than two months while pricing it significantly below market, all with the help of a robotic construction printer.
It may sound like an impossible claim, but its latest project — and Portugal's first 3D printed home — has made its case.
Havelar completed an 861-square-foot, two-bedroom home in Porto, Portugal, in late April.
According to data from Idealista, the median price of a home in Porto, Portugal, is 3,392 euros per square meter.
COBOD International and Havelar
Following the success of its project, the startup is now touting its ability to build houses for 1,500 euros per square meter, or about $150 per square foot.
That prices its new dwelling at about $130,000 — half the median cost of similarly sized homes in Porto, according to data from Spanish real estate company Idealista.
Like Havelar, proponents of printer-built homes have been making lofty promises about the futuristic tech.
Havelar was able to achieve its low cost by printing efficiently and quickly, according to COBOD.
COBOD International and Havelar
Giant automated printers are increasingly being lauded as a way to build high-qualitynatural disaster-resistant homesfaster and cheaper while reducing waste and labor.
Printers have limitations, too: Most can only build walls, while the rest of the home has to be completed conventionally.
Philip Lund-Nielsen, cofounder of COBOD, told Business Insider in late 2023 that the company has sold over 70 of its "BOD2" construction printer systems to companies worldwide.
COBOD International and Havelar
But printing can significantly slash build time — so much so that the walls of Havelar's home were printed in 18 hours, according to COBOD, the 3D printer's manufacturer.
Despite how it sounds, a printer-built home doesn’t have to look unrecognizably futuristic.
The layered walls are a visual signature of construction 3D printers.
COBOD International and Havelar
Save for the layered-looking walls, a signature of 3D printers, Havelar's build looks like any new two-bedroom house.
It wouldn’t be a modern home without an open-concept kitchen and dining room.
The two-bedroom home has a dining room and kitchen.
COBOD International and Havelar
Like Texas-based Icon's first luxury printed home, the contrasting colors and textures of the wood finishes and the printer's cement mix create a contemporary and trendy feel.
But don’t start pulling out money for the downpayment.
Rodrigo Vilas-Boas, a cofounder of Havelar, said the company wants to "team up with partners who see themselves in building sustainable and accessible communities," according to COBOD's news release.
COBOD International and Havelar
Plans to sell the home are "currently unclear," a spokesperson for COBOD told Business Insider. Havelar did not respond to a request for comment from BI.
If you want to move into an affordable printed home, it might be best to wait for Havelar’s next projects.
This is a model home at Icon and Lennar's 100-home community in Texas. When complete, it will be the world's largest neighborhood of printed houses.
Icon
Otherwise, be prepared to pay more in the US.
Rodrigo Vilas-Boas, cofounder of Havelar, said in COBOD's news release that its construction methods would allow first-time homebuyers to acquire their dream home in a good neighborhood for €150,000, about $162,000.
That's a steep price difference from Lennar and Icon's upcoming community of 100 3D printed homes near Austin, where the first six units were priced between $476,000 and $566,000.
Even steeper, homes at Icon's development in Marfa, Texas, a seven-hour drive east, start "in the upper $900,000s," according to its website.
Jake Ellowitz is the chief technology officer and cofounder of Termina.
Termina; Nick Little for BI
Business Insider's Seed 100 and Seed 40 lists are created based on data from Termina.
Termina began with data on over 1,800 investors, analyzing 25 success attributes, such as exits.
The analysis identifies skilled investors with a high likelihood of continued success.
The Seed 100 and Seed 40 lists are derived from a statistical analysis of investor track records. We've been working with Business Insider to publish these lists for the past four years, but this is the first year we're doing so under the Termina brand. Incubated by Tribe Capital, Termina is an AI-software platform that powers quantitative due diligence for leading investors around the world.
Our methodology is the same as it was in past years. It analyzes each investor's performance in 25 areas using Crunchbase and PitchBook data. Since one of our goals is to analyze investor's potential success rather than focus solely on past achievements, we only assess investors who have made a minimum of five investments between 2009 and 2024. Our list includes solo venture capitalists and angel investors who are assessed based on their investments in US companies.
To be named to the list, seed investors must have:
Investments that performed well, including successful IPOs or acquisitions (exits that were meaningfully above "liquidation preference" or showed increased company value rather than simply raising capital).
Show intermediate signs of future success with seed investments that consistently receive follow-on investment.
Be active in the seed-investing ecosystem, with moderate-to-high levels of activity over the past two years.
Though each criterion is weighted equally, exits (IPOs or acquisitions) statistically have the most influence in differentiating investors.
Over 1,800 investors met the above criteria, an 18% increase from last year. The seed-investor ecosystem grows every year, making the list more competitive. We're also delighted that there were 187 female candidates with sufficient data, a significant increase that allowed us to release an expanded Seed 40 list this year. Ten percent of all seed investors in scope were women, up from 8% when the first Seed 100 was released in 2021.
The final rankings had 35 new investors, 21 who improved their rank, and 39 with the same or lower rank as last year.
AI is storming seed investing and beyond
One reason we look at seed-stage investments is because they tend to be leading indicators of innovation in the coming years. OpenAI released their GPT-4 model just over a year ago. The model reached an inflection point of capability that has ignited the imagination of entrepreneurs and investors worldwide. The result in just one year is the largest-ever rebalancing of how investors allocate seed capital across sectors. In our analysis, AI tech receives over 16% of all seed-investing capital, with a significant jump in the 12 months following GPT-4's release.
In the chart below, we show five seed-investment categories to contextualize the growth of AI investment. This is not an exhaustive view of seed-investment sectors. In this view, though there has been a steady expansion of AI investing at the seed stage, the jump last year clearly stands out.
Source: Crunchbase and Termina analysis. The presented categories are not mutually exclusive or collectively exhaustive. Figures presented are the rolling annual fraction of total seed investment in the USA and Canada.
Termina
We believe AI will allow more seed-stage companies to bring products to market with less capital, similar to how cloud computing accelerated processes and reduced the capital required to launch products. If true, this will make seed-stage investing even more critical as AI begins to form the infrastructure that launches new tech products and services.
Jake Ellowitz is the chief technology officer and cofounder of Termina.
People tend to accumulate things like mugs, spices, and bags in their kitchens.
Justin Lambert/Getty Images
I help my clients get rid of things they don't need or use anymore.
Kitchens can be a big source of stress and clutter.
People can collect things like mugs and spices that they don't use for years.
As aprofessional declutterer, I work with clients, helping them get rid of things they don't want, need, or have too many of.
Kitchens are generally the heart of the home and are thus liable tocollect clutterat a supersonic rate. These five tips will give you back a little space and increase your serenity with a modicum of effort.
Start with the spice cabinet
Take a survey of yourspice cabinet. In 10 minutes or less, you'll discover that a significant proportion of your spices have turned to unappealing, flavorless dust. It turns out that most spices have a shorter shelf life than you'd imagine: Ground spices are good for about a year once opened, while whole spices (unground nutmeg, cardamom, etc.) are only good for one to three years.
Open up those jars and dump whatever doesn't have a rich, inviting odor. As a future tip, if you're buying a spice for a particular recipe, buy a tiny amount in thebulk section. No need to keep a whole jar on hand when you may never use it again. (This is how I came to own a whole lot of star anise for a ridiculously long time.)
Mugs are so easy to collect
Let's get real with thecoffee mugs. Chances are you'd have to host a royal wedding in order to use them all at once. Where do they come from? They're gifts, promotional swag, or impulse purchases; in short, unintentional.
Coffee cups multiply like ceramic rabbits, and I'll bet you end up using the same one every morning. Ten minutes of being honest with yourself about what you will and will not use can lead to a lot of extra cabinet space.
You may get stuck, as in you just can't decide whether to keep that IBM mug because isn't it so outdated it's kind of cool? Try this: ask yourself if you'd spend $20 to replace it if it got lost or broken. No? You probably don't like it that much after all.
The cupboard under the sink is always cluttered
If you, like most of us, stuff the cupboard under the sink with spray bottles, rags, sponges, and all manner ofcleaning supplies, it's time to take stock of your collection. Pull them all out, see what's useful and what isn't, and ditch the things you're unlikely to use.
Keeping this stuff organized is simple and will make your life a whole lot easier. Spring for fancy organizers if you must, but any old container will do — shoe boxes, shipping cartons, random plastic bins. Put like with like and say goodbye to scrounging around at an awkward angle when it's time to do any cleaning.
Utensils
Spatulas, wooden spoons, ladles, serving utensils. We all own more than we'll likely use in the next decade. Hint: having five of something isn't five times better than having one.
Choose the ones you actually love to use. If you're convinced you need them all, try this: put half in a box and hide it away for a few months. Do you find you're searching the box for the utensils you need, or have you forgotten all about them? If it's the latter, these are extra.
Shopping bags
Paper, plastic, fabric — all the bags. These are super useful until they start to take over the entire kitchen. Happily, you can fill them with all the other stuff you're getting rid of. Keep what seems like a reasonable number, and rest assured that more will come into your life.
Decluttering isn't anyone's favorite job. But paring down in categories where you know you've got a lot of extra isn't hard once you get started. And the bonus is it will give you more storage space for a whole lot less than a kitchen renovation.
A UK college is running a crash course on all things Taylor Swift ahead of her UK tour.
The one-day course is aimed at parents and plus ones of Swifties.
The college says the course will provide "the full Love Story on all things Eras Tour."
A college in Scotland is running a crash course on all things Taylor Swift ahead of the pop star's UK leg of her Eras Tour.
The one-day course held by Glasgow Clyde College is aimed at parents and plus-ones of Swifties set to attend the singer's three-night stopover in Edinburgh.
The college says the course will provide "the full Love Story on all things Eras Tour to help them have the best night of their lives."
"From set lists and crowd chants to need-to-know information on each Era, the course, which is being delivered by a Taylor Swift expert, will give members of the public a whistle-stop lesson that'll leave them ready for the gig," the college says on its website.
The Eras Tour, which has already become the highest-grossing tour of all time, pays tribute to Swift's first 10 studio albums and the unique styles and staging that accompanied them.
Glasgow Clyde College assistant principal Robert Anderson told local media outlet The Scotsman: "Taylor mania doesn't seem to be slowing anytime soon, and we expect it'll reach its peak here in Scotland in June. We understand that not everyone will be up to speed on all things Taylor and might not get the full Eras experience," he said.
"That's why we created this masterclass - to prepare those who'll be heading along to the gig with their superfan kids, friends or partners to ensure they have just as memorable a time," he continued. "Taylor's gigs are known for being so well crafted, and unless you're a fan yourself, you might miss some of the iconic moments."
Taylor Swift performs during The Eras Tour in Melbourne.
Graham Denholm/TAS24/Getty Images for TAS Rights Management
The course is due to be held on May 7, one month before Swift kicks off her UK tour.
The tour has already boosted the US, Singaporean, and Australian economies, with eager fans spending big on things like travel, accommodation, and merchandise.
Taylor Swift performs during The Eras Tour in Sydney.
Don Arnold/TAS24/Getty Images
While the UK and the rest of Europe have yet to feel the full effect of Swift's presence, the price of hotels and short-term rental homes across Scotland have shot up as opportunistic hoteliers and rental hosts have sought to take advantage of increased demand for accommodation.
Marc Crothall, chief executive of the Scottish Tourism Alliance, told Business Insider that there would be a "ripple effect" from the shows that will be felt across Scotland.
"We're a small country. It's important that those who are coming from further afield, don't just go straight back to where they came from," he said, adding that they would hopefully go and visit some other parts of Scotland.
Mohammad Alnobani co-founded a tech startup in the West Bank in 2022.
Six months into the Israeli-Hamas war in nearby Gaza, Alnobani and his cofounder are relocating to escape the conflict.
Alnobani said he did not regret founding his company in his homeland and hopes to return someday.
This as-told-to essay is based on a transcribed conversation with Mohammad Alnobani, 34, who cofounded "The Middle Frame," a tech startup based in Ramallah, a city in the Palestinian Territories. The following has been edited for length and clarity.
At around 1 a.m. on October 7, I arrived in Amman, Jordan, on the way back to my home in Jerusalem from a trip to Belfast, where I attended the One Young World Summit.
I met my CTO at the airport; they were traveling to Ramallah, a Palestinian city in the West Bank. We'd decided to travel together to the borders, which opened at 8 a.m.
We got into a bus that was supposed to move between Jordan and Israel at around 8.30 a.m. Then, we were told they were closing the borders. We started checking the news. I read that Hamas got through a fence surrounding Gaza.
I was nervous as hell — whether you're pro-Palestine or pro-Israel, once you hear a major event is happening in the region, you know what's coming next is not going to be good.
We got off the bus and went back to Amman. We didn't know what to do.
I founded a tech startup in Ramallah in 2022
I was born in Saudi Arabia but grew up in Jordan. My mom is from Nablus, a city in the West Bank, and my dad grew up in Jerusalem. I moved to Jerusalem at 16 and went to university in Ramallah. After living in Qatar and London, I moved back to Jerusalem in 2019 and set up an advertising agency with my brother in 2020, which I was a part of until January 2022.
In February 2022, I set up "The Middle Frame," a stock image platform, with my business partner Raya, a photographer I met in Boston during an entrepreneurship fellowship in 2021.
Raya told me she wanted to build a platform for authentic stock images from the Middle East and North Africa.
I knew where Raya was coming from. Back when I worked in advertising, creatives always struggled to find images that accurately represented local cultures from Arab regions on international platforms like Shutterstock and Getty Images.
Over 1,800 contributors are signed up on our platform. Photographers upload their own images, which we moderate.
The Palestinian startup scene
Our business is based in Ramallah, where Raya lives. We're both familiar with the city; it's where I went to university, and half of my family lives there. It made sense cost-wise for us to work locally and set up our business there.
The Palestinian startup community is very small. I think a lot of people around the world don't know it exists. It's very easy to get into and it felt like a good environment to find our feet.
I knew there was almost no political and economic stability in the area, but as it was my home country, I felt like I had to try and do my part. If starting a company in Ramallah could benefit the community by creating jobs and further building on the small startup scene there, we wanted to try.
We wanted to onboard Palestinian team members to give them experience in a tech startup, but we had been struggling to recruit people due to the ongoing conflict.
Myself and Raya are the only two working full-time for "The Middle Frame," but we have a part-time CTO and web developer who are both Palestinian, as well as six part-timers in Egypt.
As a stock image platform, we wanted to provide local photographers with passive income from sharing their images.
We're targeting advertising agencies and media outlets that can download our images, but since the Palestinian population and market are small, we felt there was a limitation on our growth and scalability. Only a handful of companies and publications would be using the images.
Since the startup community is also small, there aren't as many opportunities to collaborate with other startups or gain knowledge from them. There's only one VC, and there aren't any mature startup accelerators.
We planned to expand into a bigger market eventually.
We were determined to keep working despite the uncertainties caused by the conflict
During the first week after the events of October 7, I was checking the news every day. Waking up was a struggle. People living in Europe and the US invited me to healing circles, but I wasn't ready to talk about the situation yet.
On October 9, I got on a call with Raya, who was with her family in Ramallah, and our CTO, who was with me in Jordan, to discuss the next steps. We had been running small testing advertising campaigns for "The Middle Frame" and were supposed to start larger campaigns in October, but we decided that, ethically speaking, it didn't feel right. We stopped our advertising efforts until February.
We took a screenshot of the call as a statement that we will keep working even in the toughest times. When "The Middle Frame" goes through a hard time in the future, we can look back at that screenshot.
Raya and I talked about the possibility of her moving to Jordan, but she said it wouldn't be easy — her kids and husband have their lives in Ramallah — and the conversation didn't go anywhere at the time.
We're thinking about the people dying and the struggles that our people are facing. Being in the media industry, we're documenting life in the region. It's not easy for us to ignore what's happening.
We know other startup cofounders from Gaza whose office buildings were bombed and who have officially stopped working. A cofounder who I met in Jordan just last year was killed — it was the toughest news I'd ever received in my life.
We're now planning to relocate to the UAE
During Israel's war on Gaza that followed the October 7 attack, the whole Palestinian economy faced the consequences. Middle Frame sales had halted completely in the area.
Due to the situation, I've been on the road travelling. Since October, I've been in Egypt, Dubai, Jerusalem and Ramallah. I was in Jordan until the end of January, and we initially decided to focus our efforts on the Jordanian market. I met with potential clients, like advertising and news agencies, and pitched to potential investors.
We don't know what the future holds. We took a risk by operating in Ramallah for nearly two years, but we knew we should acknowledge that there was no more room for growth and no longer risk our investors' money in a market filled with uncertainty.
Recently, Israeli settler attacks in the West Bank have been very frequent. In mid-April, I was returning from a wedding and got stuck in a village for hours because the settlers were blocking the road. That was the same night Iran fired on Israel; it really hit me that we can't stay here.
We've been discussing whether we're willing to relocate. We know that the UAE and Saudi Arabia are bigger markets, and we think the UAE — where I believe there's a very diverse business market — would be the best place for us to go.
We're waiting on news from a local investor, but Raya, our CTO, and I hope to relocate at the end of this year. Luckily, Raya's husband is understanding and open to moving.
We hope to return in the future
If I had started "The Middle Frame" anywhere else, we might have been able to grow faster and raise more investments, but I don't regret what we did.
In the future, when our business is stable in a different market, we could maybe have a smaller operation in the Palestinian market.
The Palestinian startup ecosystem needs more examples of successful startups in the wider region to support the startups in Palestine and more investment bodies to support the early-stage startups.
Because the Palestinian startup community is so small, we've had to get on calls with investors and startup founders from other countries to get support and advice; it's pushed us to make connections internationally and it's made us more resilient.
However, taking a minute to zoom out and look at the big picture is important. Some days, you wake up to a news story that is painful to see and hear, making your day 10 times harder to work through.
Job seekers should negotiate offers as companies expect it and they are invested in the candidate.
Negotiating base pay is tough but other components like signing bonus, guaranteed bonus, and remote work can be negotiated.
Negotiations should make you feel a little uncomfortable, indicating you've pushed enough and can meet in the middle.
As a 40-plus-year veteran of the corporate world and the former VP of HR at Microsoft, I've seen a lot of people successfully negotiate their job offers.
Yet, many people are reluctant to negotiate. They feel like the offer is a "take it or leave it" proposition. They should think again. Even in a tight market, some negotiation is common and doesn't have to be adversarial.
As with many things in the working world, it helps to look from the other side of the table.
They want you
The most important thing to understand in the job hunt is that by the time you see an offer, they want you.
The hiring team has seen dozens or hundreds of résumés. They've interviewed several people, often through many hours each. They've discussed, even argued, over the last couple of candidates and decided on you.
They are now invested in you. Just as you're thinking how cool it would be to have the job, they are thinking how great it would be to have someone in the role. You should use that.
They expect it
When they present an offer, they don't expect you to just say, "Yep, sure," and sign it. Almost no one does that, especially not at more senior levels.
At the very least, people read it overnight and think about the offer. They discuss it with their families or their confidants. Make sure it's the right thing to do. Companies want you to do that, so you'll be all in when you do commit.
But almost everyone says, "This is great, but…," and so begins a bit of negotiation. They expect it.
In fact, the company has counted on it. They've made the offer a little slimmer than they expect to end up because they know there will be movement.
You're not insulting them by negotiating. It's what happens.
Your stock is highest before you join a company
The very best time to discuss your value to the company is at this very moment, before they actually know you.
Once you've been there, they have seen you in action. They will have performance information, peer feedback, and results. They know all your highs and your lows.
Now, all they have is anticipation, and this anticipation has been building ever since you nailed the interviews.
Your stock is never higher than this moment, so use it.
It's not all about base pay
When most people think about negotiating a job offer, they often think about base pay, or the salary or hourly rate. They think that's the place to negotiate.
While there might be a small bit of room to negotiate the pay, it helps to think from the other side of the table.
Salary is tough for the company to negotiate because base pay is forever. Pay is continuous for years on end, and it virtually never goes down, even if the business goes up or down.
Pay is also the basis for future raises. If they agree to some larger number today, that only compounds in the future.
That's why they have salary bands for almost every job, numbers they need to fall into, and numbers they use for many people. Setting you outside of that range creates a fairness problem.
You might have a little room to negotiate base pay. Especially at the senior-most jobs where the pay bands are quite wide.
But for most people, salary is not a great negotiating point. If you feel strongly, maybe push back a little, but the dealmaking will be hard.
10 things you should negotiate
Fortunately, there are many other places to negotiate. Here are some ideas, though some may or not apply to your situation.
1. Signing bonus
The standard go-to negotiating point is the signing bonus. "This change is tough on me or my family. Can you bridge the gap?" Maybe request 10% of your annual base as a one-time payment right away. Companies like these because they are one-time, not recurring, costs.
2. Guaranteed bonus
If the company uses bonuses, push for a guaranteed first bonus. A given amount is fixed right now, but payable at bonus time. Again, this is a one-time cost to the company.
3. Higher commissions
If you're in a commission-based role, negotiating that number is very akin to a salary number, and it's often hard to argue. But perhaps you can push for different cliffs (where the number changes) or bonuses.
4. More remote work
If you like working remotely and can excel at it, try advocating for more remote work. Maybe fewer in-office days. This can be a fairness issue, but you'll never have more leverage than right now.
5. Better relocation
If relocation is part of the package, push there — maybe full coverage, not just a stipend. Maybe extended temporary housing. Some companies will even use a service to buy your current house.
6. Spousal benefits
It's not uncommon, especially with married couples, to ask for some kind of job assistance for their partner. Perhaps résumé assistance, job counseling, a headhunter, or some other benefit. It often helps to close the deal.
7. More paid time off (PTO)
If the company hasn't already jumped on the "unlimited PTO" train, and vacation is important to you, try asking for more there. There is an equity issue with your peers, but it's worth a shot.
8. Company equity
Stock or stock options are a very common negotiating point, especially with more senior people. There is a whole world of options (pun intended), but this is a frequent deal point.
9. Healthcare
Often, healthcare benefits are seen as a take-it-or-leave-it package. But if you have some extenuating circumstances, perhaps a family member with health challenges, see if there's room for more benefits. Companies, especially larger ones, often have some flexibility here.
10. Creative compensation
With senior roles, you can often get creative in the compensation. Perhaps agree to some incentive structure. If you're brought in to solve a specific problem, you have a specific bonus if you solve that problem by a specified date. The options here are endless; I've even seen this with mid-level roles.
There are so many options to negotiate; there's almost no excuse not to. And again, now — before you actually start the job — is the best time to do it.
It will hurt
If you're at all like me, negotiations are not fun. I'm more than a little conflict-averse, and negotiating feels like torture.
I try to remember something I once heard: if your counteroffer doesn't make you feel a little guilty — like you've gone a little too far — you haven't pushed enough.
Remember, they'll come back somewhere in the middle. Right where you're both happy.
So negotiate that job offer, and get what you deserve.
Chris Williamsis the former VP of HR at Microsoft. He's an executive-level advisor and consultant with more than 40 years of experience leading and building teams.
One factor that might avert a regional war is the dismal state of Iran's economy.
The country has borne the brunt of Western sanctions for decades, making it tough for Tehran to finance any war effort — and that could be a warning sign for Vladimir Putin as the war in Ukraine drags on.
In 2018, Donald Trump decided to pull out of a nuclear agreement between the US and Iran. The then-president said he would put "maximum economic pressure" on Iran, setting the stage for sanctions packages that have pummelled the Iranian economy.
Most countries that buy Iranian oil are banned from trading with the US. Iran is the world's seventh-largest oil producer, according to data from the US Energy Information Administration, so the restrictions have chipped away at a major engine for growth.
Iran's economy fell into a deep, two-year recession shortly after sanctions were reinstated, although economic growth has rebounded into positive territory since then. According to World Bank projections, Iran's economy is expected to have expanded by 4.2% last year.
Rising inflation and mounting debt
Despite that recent rise in GDP, other issues are plaguing Iran's economy.
Sanctions and a tumbling currency, the rial, have pushed inflation close to 50% at times in recent years, with food disproportionately affected. The cost of lentils has soared 130% since the start of this year, IranWire reported, while beans are up 30%, and red meat prices have jumped 25% over the same period, per Iran International.
Even before those increases about half the population consumed less than the recommended 2,100 calories a day last year, according to the Iranian parliament's research center, IranWire reported.
That cost-of-living crisis has also driven poverty rates higher. About 9.5 million Iranians fell into poverty in the 2010s, according to World Bank data, with over a quarter of citizens living on the equivalent of $6.85 a day or less back in 2017.
Stripped of key oil revenues, the government has resorted to borrowing, tripling its debt as a percentage of GDP ratio over the past 15 years. The higher deficit would make it much tougher to raise defense spending if tensions with Israel spiraled into a wider conflict.
Warning for Russia
Iran's struggles over the past decade could be a warning sign for Russia, sanctioned by the West since Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine in February 2022.
Russia's economy appears to have remained resilient, but forecasters warn that the outlook may worsen as the war with Ukraine drags on.
Moscow has struggled to contain a spike in basic foodstuffs this year, leading to Soviet-style queues at supermarkets. Think-tanks have warned that the Kremlin risks becoming reliant on China, North Korea, and even Iran for weapons because it's been cut off from foreign lenders.
If Iran's example is anything to go by, even tougher times may lie ahead.
