"I’d find myself praying in dressing rooms at H&M, in empty stairwells, or on the side of a highway," Dar said.
These experiences led him to start Musallah, a mobile app launching later this year on iOS that crowdsources prayer locations across the globe. Dar's app, which has the chance to be used by more than one billion Muslims worldwide, hasn't been met with millions in venture cash. He turned to Kickstarter, where it drew more than $14,000 in backing.
Such is the disconnect that many startup founders described to Mashable. Venture capitalists, normally eager to back apps with the potential to reach a billion users, are more standoffish when it comes to startups with Muslim founders, or one that are targeted at a Muslim audience. That forces founders like Dar to resort to meager Kickstarter campaigns to see their ideas through.
These challenges are a unique strain of the broader diversity issues being faced by Silicon Valley and startup markets around the U.S. Data shows that the startup market is primarily white men funding other white men.
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