Well,
I am glad to fin you here. :)
There are many challenges that guys on this website are NOT aware of!
For example.. if I want to charge my users, it's very hard to do that, because PayPal is NOT available for Egyptians.
Also it's NOT easy to setup an international merchant account, to accept payments on the internet.
There are very critical challenges, which makes it much harder to make any success... not to mention that it's impossible indeed to get funding opportunity in Egypt, as you know... we don't have this culture here yet..
Just objectively, I think it's unrealistic for you to expect anyone to fund a five year old site that has only managed to attract a few thousand users, and apparently not enough paying users to cover its own server costs. The fact that you are not in the United States is probably not the reason for your lack of success to date.
That said, as an entrepreneur who is NOT in the United States, I agree that setting up payment systems is a real pain point. My suggestion is that you get a part-time job. It will cost you a few thousand a year to own an international business (register it anywhere) and you may end up paying prohibitively for the right to process credit cards (5%+ per transaction).
But it is possible. In the meantime, if you really want to slum it, there is nothing stopping you from putting up a payment screen and collecting credit card numbers, then getting your friend in the US to collect the cash for you while you build a compelling case for someone to lend you the money to do things more legitimately. I suspect that once you've started your own business and have a revenue stream, you won't want investment though.
You really won't find that culture anywhere but here, really. Even Europe doesn't fully have that yet.
Finding success while working in Egypt is really not impossible. It lends to just working differently. You probably can't grow a consumer website in Egypt; but SaaS (software as a service) doesn't necessarily have to be created from an American company.
Also, there's such a HUGE need for Arab consumer websites. Somehow, Masrawy, YallaKora, and yes even Maktoob just don't cut it for me. The level of quality is rather low, so that's a great in for someone like who seems knowledgeable and a HackerNews user. There's definite opportunity there.
As I said. Email me and we can talk more.
edit: I think someone mentioned this already but it's worth re-mentioning. In some aspects, living outside of America and a costly place like San Francisco, can be a great benefit. Simply put, if you and I both make $1000, your $1000 will go a much longer way in Egypt than mine will here in a big expensive American city.
For example.. if I want to charge my users, it's very hard to do that, because PayPal is NOT available for Egyptians. Also it's NOT easy to setup an international merchant account, to accept payments on the internet.
There are very critical challenges, which makes it much harder to make any success... not to mention that it's impossible indeed to get funding opportunity in Egypt, as you know... we don't have this culture here yet..