Home

Writers

Hani at the Agora

This is where i say some potentially interesting stuff about startups, business, society, culture and any other topic that get me thinking... 

Hani at the Agora's Newsletter

Subscribe to Newsletter

An open-source, ultra-minimal community for writers to share their thoughts, stories, and ideas without ads or paywalls.

Bublr

Guest Book

Hanihafez72

Leave your e-mail to get notified when i post!

So initially I had this idea when I was talking to a friend of mine who’s quite big in the content creation and user engagement space, making daily reels (yes, nobody makes long-format videos anymore… what a shame…), posting on LinkedIn (ah yes, that place), and a bunch more regularly. He, along with another friend of mine, pushed me to start doing similar stuff because apparently “I have a lot to say.” I don’t really think I do; I just mostly like to think about stuff I see, hear, experience, and whatnot. And there was no way I’d hold a camera to my face and make videos or start yet another podcast.Yes, there are too many podcasts out there; we need to reel it in a little… ironic coming from someone who’s decided to start a blog, but life is full of contradictions, what can I say.Anyways, so I landed on this idea and I thought, why not? I love chatting and thinking of interesting topics and seeing how people look at the world differently, so why not keep a log or something of these thoughts, maybe even get your opinions on them too? Kind of like what Paul Graham does with his essays, just nowhere near as good.What are these areas of interest? Mostly business and economics, specifically startups since that’s kind of where I’ve been mostly focused for the past while, society and culture, and really anything else that triggers a question mark or insight I get. So that’s what we’re doing here.What about the name? Hani at the Agora. Well, I read parts of The Republic by Plato, and one thing I found absolutely hilarious was this guy named Socrates, who would basically go about and harass people in the market in ancient Greece, asking them questions he had no answer to and really messing with their minds. Eventually it got him killed, which I hope this blog doesn’t do to me anytime soon, but the imagery of this guy in the streets going about his mission is an image I wanted to replicate, just a little less “harassy”…And since we refer to business spaces as markets, whether financial, durable, or similar, I thought it would also be a clever twist on words… The jury’s still out on that one…Currently, I’m living in Cairo, Egypt (Om El Donya), so use that as context when I say “here” or any mention of me being somewhere right now.Anyways, I think that’s all for the intro. I’ll try to make this a regular thing, alongside learning guitar right now, which is going horrifically. I can play 505 by Arctic Monkeys and Horse with No Name by America (the band, not the country), though don’t ask me to play either if you see me with my guitar because it won’t be nice.Also, I love this platform. It’s open source (let’s goooo) and has no vanity features or weird subscriptions or forces users to have an account to read your blog (I’m looking at you, Overstack and Medium). I’ll be writing mostly in English, though I know Arabic would probably appeal to a wider audience around me. I’d probably make a fool out of myself trying, which will happen at some point regardless, just trying to delay it. And no brain rot or scrolling or weird music to keep you engaged. I’m keeping it very raw for the ones who care.See you soon!Hani