Before Yousef Al-Fassi ’17 walks a client through floor plans, budgets, or timelines, he knows he is asking for something more valuable than a contract: trust.
As founder of YAF Development, a Los Angeles-based luxury residential construction company, Al-Fassi builds custom homes and high-end remodels that often represent one of the largest financial and emotional investments a family will ever make. The work is technical, fast-moving, and exacting, but for Al-Fassi, it is also deeply personal.
“People aren’t just hiring us to build a home,” Al-Fassi said. “They’re trusting us with something they’ve dreamed about for years. That’s a responsibility I don’t take lightly.”
Every home Al-Fassi builds rests on years of preparation that began at Chapman, where he found the tools to turn entrepreneurial ambition into a career path.
A political science major with a minor in economics, Al-Fassi arrived at Chapman with an interest in real estate inspired in part by his father’s career as a developer, but no clear roadmap for turning that interest into a career. Drawn to Chapman’s small classes and close-knit community, Al-Fassi quickly found himself surrounded by classmates eager to test ideas and pursue ambitious goals. During his senior year, he joined fellow students in developing Filter, an app designed to help users discover restaurants, lounges, and events through interactive maps and social features. Although the startup never launched, the experience clarified something more important.
“Being around classmates who were all pursuing their goals made me realize I wanted to create things,” Al-Fassi said. “Whether it was an app — or now homes — I wanted to do it on my own terms.”
He also gravitated toward faculty who brought real-world experience into the classroom. Mark Skousen, Ph.D., Doti-Spogli Endowed Chair of Free Enterprise in the George L. Argyros College of Business and Economics, encouraged students to think beyond economic theory. Al-Fassi credits Skousen with emphasizing the importance of being fully invested in what you do and maintaining a personal code of ethics in business and life.
“I’ve always found those to be the most valuable professors to learn from,” Al-Fassi said. “They’re already running a business. They’re doing things with their lives that, as a young student, you aspire to.”
After graduating, Al-Fassi approached entrepreneurship with the same deliberate mindset he had developed at Chapman. He earned his real estate license and spent more than four years learning luxury residential construction from the ground up. He managed multimillion-dollar projects, built relationships with architects and subcontractors, earned his general contractor’s license, and founded YAF Development in 2023.
Al-Fassi traces that patience — the willingness to learn under someone else before striking out on his own — to a lesson he learned at Chapman.
“One of the greatest things that happened to me was seeing my time at Chapman through,” he said. “The act of finishing what you start is so important as an entrepreneur. It gave me the structure to know I needed to go learn from somebody and be okay with that. I knew where I was going, but I wasn’t there yet.”
Today, YAF Development specializes in luxury custom homes and large-scale remodels throughout Los Angeles, with Al-Fassi leading a team of about a dozen employees. Looking ahead, he hopes to expand into residential development, designing and building homes from the ground up.
For students hoping to start businesses of their own, his advice is simple: keep moving, keep learning, embrace failure, and don’t wait for perfection.
“The game of entrepreneurship is really a game of perseverance and consistency,” Al-Fassi said. “The ones that don’t make it are the ones that quit the game. If you don’t quit the game, then you never lost.”
