Previous Letters: 2024
A year, seen from a particular perspective, is a long time and comes with immense opportunities to learn about ourselves and do important work. In my case, I have never been able to benefit from the time I receive fully. That remains true for 2025. I squandered much of it, doing trivial and nontrivial things. This reflection allows me to see some of the ways I used my allocation of time. The biggest lesson, to that end, is to be more conscious about how I spend my days. As Annie Dillard wrote, "how we spend our days is how we spend our lives". We must be conscious about how we spend our days. After all, the most valuable resource we have is our time.
I started writing Future Startup in 2011. I was an undergrad student at Dhaka University, pursuing a BBA degree in marketing and staying at Surjasen Hall. I didn’t have a computer. In fact, when I entered Dhaka University, I didn't have a phone. This was the early days of mobile penetration in Bangladesh. I don’t think phones were a common thing, particularly in rural areas where I came from. Later, Zia bhai, who was studying Public Administration at the time, gave me a feature phone he was using. Zia bhai was a tremendous help to me in those days. It was a new black Motorola phone with a minor screen problem, where you couldn’t always see the numbers on the screen. But it worked perfectly. I used that phone for several years.
Anyways, Future Startup was an online publication. It originally started as a blog on now-defunct blogger.com. Initially, it was called ‘writing for good’, hosted on a blogger.com subdomain. Now, writing an online blog without a computer is a pesky problem. But a few things were going for me. In those days, coming from a highly impoverished background, my sense of challenges and constraints was rather compromised. I failed to grasp the fact that not having a computer of your own is a serious limitation if you want to publish things online. This lack of a sense of constraint was a blessing. Moreover, I was highly motivated after getting into Dhaka University. It was an event beyond my expectations. I was one of the first two students from my entire village to attend DU at that time. I felt invincible. It helped me be a bit ambitious, thinking I was above average.
I figured out a few shortcuts. I took full advantage of the computer lab of our Marketing Department. I would write things down and save them on the computer or email them to myself for later use. I would often go during the off time, mostly in the afternoon, when regular lab classes ended. There were several challenges with this. Availability was limited. I had to finish the task in one sitting because I couldn’t expect to get the same computer to use the next time. Despite these limitations, this was a life-changing opportunity for me. In fact, before starting Future Startup, I typed my first write-up in the lab and sent it to the Daily Star’s then campus magazine, which they published.
However, although the lab was a life-changing opportunity for me, it was terribly managed. Computers were full of various viruses, and often didn't work or were terribly slow. Most days, I had to return without doing any work. I now feel that it was such a great initiative, but poorly managed. Public services in this country are a sad story. Maybe it is the same in many parts of the world. But I feel it is more so in this country. A little care from the administration and a little more intentional approach could have been tremendously beneficial for so many more students.
Anyway, back to my story. So I didn't have a computer but wanted to build an online publication. While my department's computer lab was useful, it didn't serve the purpose. The access was limited. Most days, I didn't get a chance either because it was occupied, or the computer was not working, or the lab assistant was in a bad mood and didn't allow me to use it in the afternoon. Moreover, I had classes and tuition. When I was finally free in the evening, the lab had closed. I needed something more predictable where I could work daily.
My friend Julfiker, who is now a prominent researcher and works for an influential government-run research organization, had a desktop. His hall was Mohsin Hall. A short walk from Surjasen Hall. I figured out a solution. I would call him up every night after Isha prayer, asking when he would be done working on his computer so that I could come and do some work. Often, I would go to his room between Isha prayer and 10 PM and work until 12 am until his roommates were preparing to go to sleep. I did this for many months. He was extremely generous. His roommates were also very tolerant, even when I was a daily nuisance. There were nights when Julfiker would go to sleep while I was still working on the computer. I would finish my work late at night, shut down the computer, and leave the room. Sometimes I would wake Julfiker to close the door behind me when I left.
Similarly, I took help from several of my other friends: Momin, who lived in Surjasen and was a student of Social Work. We met through the Surjasen Debating Club, usually known as SSBD. He had a laptop, and he allowed me to use it once in a while. My friend Ashik, who is now doing his PhD in the States, also allowed me to use his computer a few times. But I used Julfiker's computer almost daily, as if I owned it in part. Many days, I used his computer longer than he did.
A year or two into this, my friend Zakaria, who is now doing his PhD in the States, loaned me an IBM Thinkpad. This was completely unexpected. He was buying a new laptop and asked me to use his old Thinkpad. Before this, I used his laptop from time to time. He saw I was struggling. This changed my work and productivity, and in some ways, changed my life. It was strange as well. Because Jack, we nicknamed him Jack, gave it to me like, "go, use this as long as you need it”, and I used it as if it were my own computer. I used that computer for more than a year, I guess, until I managed to earn and buy my own computer. Jack was incredibly kind.
I have a deep sense of indebtedness and gratitude for all the generosity they showed me. I'm eternally grateful.
Later, when we needed to develop a website, I went to Nezam bhai. He lived in Shahbag at the time, working at Financial Express. He was the one who inspired me to write and read. One of my intellectual influences in those early days. He ran a very popular blog at the time called Youthinker. Although he studied marketing, he self-taught programming. He would later leave his journalism job, join a bank, and then leave the bank to become a full-time programmer. He was and has been a mentor and elder brother to me. When we decided to create a website for Future Startup, I went to him one night to buy a domain and build a website. I gave Nezam bhai a tiny amount of money, just enough to pay for the domain, and he made us a website for free.
After graduation, everyone got busy with their stuff. At one point, FS was in a shape where I didn't think it would survive. I received incredibly generous support from a number of people throughout that difficult period. That's a story for another day.
As I sit down to write this annual letter for 2025, my second annual letter ever, I am thinking how far I have come from those days and how incredibly lucky I have been, and how many people have played tremendously important roles in how things have turned out in my life. I feel a tremendous sense of gratitude.
FS remains a tiny operation. And I feel we are just getting started in many ways. I feel we have a huge opportunity to change Bangladesh through entrepreneurship and innovation. If we do a good job, our work can meaningfully help transform Bangladesh's economy. I don't think it would have been possible for me to aspire to this vision without the generosity of these people. It is incredible to think how much other people shape our lives and work.
Anyways, on to this year's letter.
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I started 2025 on a positive note. In 2024, we started a slow journey to turn FS into a proper business with consistent revenue. We implemented a WBR format for the first time. It produced excellent results in our own measure. We ended 2024 as one of the most consistent years in revenue and user growth. The numbers were not big; we didn’t meet our revenue or publishing goal most months, and that was not the point either. We wanted a better view of our work. WBR allowed us to see our failings and measure the result. It provided a clearer picture of how we were doing as a business and helped us to realize how much better we could have done.
Life in general has a noise problem. In the midst of all the happenings, we often forget to take a step back and reflect on the result of all our moving around. Sitting down with a weekly review and planning document with your team or alone in a quiet corner of your workstation allows us to objectively look into the meaning of all our busyness and relentless movements. To that end, 2024 was the beginning of a new journey for me as a solopreneur and also for FS, on our journey of trying to figure out our eventual potential.
We started 2025 with a sense of preparedness and clarity. We ran WBR for a full year for the first time, which gave very useful insights and understanding about our work. However, I’m not entirely satisfied with the outcome. While we did quite well and maintained the growth trajectory we set in 2024, we didn’t accomplish nearly as much as we could have. Part of the reason I suspect was my weak agency muscle. I still have a lot growing up to do. I assume this is simply because learning takes time. I had a good sense of our mistakes and limitations and our opportunities from 2024, but merely knowing something is not enough to fully execute the knowledge.
While I felt some frustration as I was reviewing the year, I now have better hindsight to see things clearly. I think it will take me a few more years before we build our muscle to consistently reach our goal. These two years were mostly about growing awareness to understand my own agency and also bringing clarity to my actions in relation to Future Startup. We have a better view of the business. But translating that insight into action is its own task.
Anyways, we continued doing the WBR throughout the year 2025. Objectively, 2025 was a relatively better year for FS. We grew both our revenue and users. Our publishing came to a relatively regular cadence. We put together a better rhythm to our business development work.
We began a few interesting projects in 2025. We started publishing long-form profiles on businesses under our business deep dive segment, and published some very fascinating profiles on some fascinating companies. Future Research experienced some growth, where we published several new white papers.
FS Narrative Studio saw an excellent year. While we started the studio a few years back to help organizations take control of their narratives, we struggled with finding an effective GTM where we could position it separately from our editorial publishing. Running sponsored content is always risky when, as a publication, your most important asset is readers' trust. We kept the studio mostly private and limited to a select client base until mid-2025, when we finally figured out an approach to meaningfully distinguishing it from our editorial publishing. We have always published our partner content under a separate category with a clear disclaimer. Moreover, we make sure our partner stories are honest and authentic. We work with companies that we believe are doing good work and ensure partner stories are interesting and insightful for our readers while ensuring our partners get the benefit they aim for. In 2025, we started slowly opening up the studio, which helped us to meaningfully expand our client base. We hope to work with a significantly larger number of organizations in 2026. You can check out our media kit here.
Another significant development in 2025 was customer diversification. In 2024, we had a few large clients who contributed a significant percentage of our revenue. This year, however, no single client contributed more than 20% of our overall revenue. We had a long list of small clients.
Another good development is a growing cohort of repeat clients. A significant percentage of 2025 clients were partners who returned for a second or third time. This happened mostly with our narrative building service. We think we do a good job at narrative strategy development. Second, we have built a skill at building narrative in an impactful manner that benefits our clients.
These were some of the good things.
We also made mistakes, struggled, and lost opportunities.
Our development sector research work didn't see much traction in 2025. This was expected. The previous year, we got lucky to work on several such projects that came our way. We didn't really chase any of them. The mistake was that we didn't try to build something on that traction. We could have built some partnership or a small internal unit to intentionally pursue opportunities, which we did not. Consequently, our development sector research work pipeline died out. I don't have a clear understanding of what we might do to reverse this in 2026 and whether we would like to do it. However, I plan to have a series of conversations on this with a few people I respect in this space to get a sense of how to think about this sector.
While our business saw an upward trend, both our revenue and users grew, I struggled with bringing discipline to our operation. Business development saw the usual ebbs and flows. Some weeks we did very well in reaching out to potential customers and very poorly in an equal number of weeks, effectively killing our momentum every time we were near one.
Our publishing also suffered from a similar lack of discipline. For instance, while we published a slightly higher number of interviews in 2025 than in 2024, the overall number was nowhere near our original annual plan. The same was true for other categories, such as business deep dive, insights, book reviews, etc.
We continued our struggle with marketing and promotion. Initially, this was an outcome of a motivated reasoning that we don't take social media seriously. We are too serious a platform to pay attention to social media. However, it became a serious bottleneck when social media gained in importance over the years. We spent some time trying to justify our inability to leverage social media and the rise of video. Eventually, this became a real challenge for us. We felt it the most in 2025. But we didn't do much to overcome it because we were still in denial. I acknowledge now that this is a limitation we have to address. Video is going to be an important part of the media consumption future. Social media will remain critical. To that end, I have to figure out a way to overcome our limitations in video and social media.
Similarly, companies are often the reflection of their founders and leadership. Since I am an introvert and don't enjoy self-promotion, FS took on that same personality. We have been shy about promoting our work. Sharing it. Claiming our place. Instead, they prefer a quieter position. This is good in one sense—it allows you to do your work without many distractions. But it also limits your potential and upside. It limits the impact of your work. I have taken this as a key challenge to overcome in 2026. I have started working on a positioning strategy for FS that we plan to roll out in Q3 of 2026, Insha'Allah.
Finally, I again failed to build a team to turn FS into an institution. This is a challenge I'm trying to figure out. I understand some parts of this challenge—why I haven't been able to build a consistent team and the cost of it. While I think I developed a good understanding of some of these challenges in 2025, I have also decided to go slow on expanding the team because I feel there is an opportunity to build a meaningful operation with a smaller team. And I want to grow slowly while we build greater control mechanisms to preserve our culture and maintain the quality of work.
I have written about Dhaka's entrepreneurship scene a few weeks back. Instead of repeating myself, I thought I would borrow from that post here:
"The past roughly two and a half years have been remarkably quiet for Dhaka's startup ecosystem. Funding has become sporadic. New companies entering the scene have dwindled to a trickle. Ecosystem activities have dimmed considerably. If you were tracking the scene through press releases alone, you might conclude the party is over.
Many have reached exactly this conclusion. The cynics—and Dhaka has plenty—have announced the death of the startup dream with a mixture of vindication and relief. The startup scene was always a bubble, they say, selling air to gullible investors.
Others believe this is merely a temporary setback tied to politics. Once a new government comes and certainty returns, funding will flow again, and everything will normalize.
Both readings are wrong.
What's happening in Dhaka is neither a uniquely Bangladeshi failure nor a temporary political hiccup. Reality is shaped by two forces: one global, one local.
The global force is the end of the Zero Interest Rate Policy (ZIRP) era and a new capital cycle. The local forces are structural—our political economy lacks vision, our policies consistently fail entrepreneurial spirits, we have no meaningful local VC ecosystem, our founders struggle with execution compared to peers, and Bangladesh's geographic position makes it hard for international investors to include us in their mandates.
These aren't temporary problems that resolve with government change. They require sustained effort to overcome.
What does this mean, and what can we do?
First, we need clarity about our challenges. This isn't a temporary downturn resolving with political stability or government change. While stability would help, core constraints are structural, requiring sustained, deliberate effort.
Second, we must reset expectations. The 2018-2021 funding environment was an anomaly driven by unprecedented global liquidity. It's not returning soon. The new normal is constrained capital—emphasis on revenue, profitability, capital efficiency, sustainable growth rather than growth-at-all-costs.
Third, systematically close capability gaps. Better training for founders on communication, strategic thinking, and execution. Through incubators, accelerators, and mentorship, providing hands-on guidance rather than performative pitch events. Greater exposure to world-class companies and operators. Founders need to see excellent operations through fellowships, exchanges, or bringing experienced operators as mentors. Honest feedback culture. Move beyond politeness toward frank conversations about what works and doesn't. Founders need people telling them the truth about pitches, products, and execution.
Fourth, policy reform. Starting and running companies must become simpler and cheaper. Incorporation should take days, not months. Licenses straightforward. Regulations must be clear and stable. Tax policies encouraging risk capital. This requires political will and administrative capacity, largely absent. But it's essential. Every day without reform, we fall further behind peers actively easing company creation and scaling.
Fifth, local capital formation. This requires successful exits demonstrating returns, regulatory incentives for angel investing, educating potential investors about the startup asset class, and patient capital willing to wait years. Government, business community, and successful founders all have roles.
Finally, cultural work—addressing cynicism, lack of vision, and reluctance to take risks and support those who do. Culture changes slowly, but it starts with individual choices. Every time we support rather than tear down, encourage rather than discourage, focus on possibilities rather than constraints, we move the needle.
None of these changes happens quickly. Some require years of sustained effort. Some depend on factors beyond ecosystem control. Building startup ecosystems takes decades, not years. Silicon Valley wasn't built overnight—it took generations of entrepreneurs, failures, successes, capital formation, and institutional development. Same for every successful ecosystem—Bangalore, Singapore, Beijing.
Dhaka's startup journey began earnestly only 10-15 years ago. We're still early. Current challenges—while real and significant—are part of maturation, not evidence of failure.
The question isn't whether Dhaka will have a thriving ecosystem. Eventually, it will. Bangladesh's fundamentals remain strong—young population, rising middle class, increasing internet and smartphone penetration, improving infrastructure. The opportunities are real and substantial.
The question is how long and what path we'll follow. Will we continue blaming external factors and waiting for conditions to improve, or work systematically on things within our control? Will we maintain discipline and patience for long-term building, or give up after each setback? Will we support the quiet builders, or stay distracted by performative startup theater?"
You can read a longer version of this rant here.
2025 has been educational for me in many ways. I jot down a few relevant reflections below.
I'm an introvert. I don't enjoy events and struggle when it comes to dealing with large gatherings of humans. Meetings drain me. Over the years, I designed a lifestyle with these limitations in mind. However, I also struggled with expanding my network, meeting new people, etc. It definitely limited my impact. In 2025, I reversed the script, and I found out that I enjoy meeting people. In many ways, meeting people was one of my most useful motivation hacks in 2025. From time to time, it is useful to do the opposite of what you think is ideal for you and break out of your own definitions of who you are. I have found out that going out into the world gives us a sense of what's out there and allows us to objectively look at the size of our own ambition and ability.
Modern life is all-consuming. It doesn't allow much space for reflection and review, which limits the upsides of our actions. We are always doing something, but always in the dark about the impact of our actions. In many instances, we are spending our time doing things that are better left undone. I have found that creating space for quiet and reflection can be extremely beneficial for improving the quality of our actions. Creating space, such as taking short breaks during work hours and relatively longer breaks of silence and isolation at the end of each week, month, and quarter, allows us to see things in hindsight and evaluate things better. I tried this and found it extremely beneficial. But it is hard to do. It is hard to unplug. Moreover, it is uncomfortable to spend time alone with yourself. Our own company brings out unpleasant feelings and thoughts. But when we finally manage to establish a regular alone-time appointment with ourselves, it changes our ability to see reality with greater clarity and makes us far more effective in dealing with the world.
In business and life, sales is the most important skill. We are constantly selling things, ideas, and ourselves. And selling is not easy. School doesn't teach us the skill. I have always struggled with sales. It makes me nervous. I doubt myself and the things I'm trying to sell. Our growth at FS suffered due to my lack of sales skills. I tried to learn a bit about sales in 2025, and it helped tremendously. The first thing about sales is that you have to be willing to do it and be okay with rejection. The point is acceptance and being deeply okay. Second, the key to sales is follow-up. Several studies suggest that most sales conversations take at least five follow-ups before closing. Now, following up is not an easy thing. It takes a tremendous amount of mental strength and discipline. So most people avoid it. But often it is a harmless thing. People don't follow up because we worry about what the other person might think. That is seldom a legitimate concern because the other person is not actually thinking about you. He has his own priorities. So when you are trying to close a deal, follow up until there is a clear yes or no. Sure, understand the context before spending time and resources on something.
My final lesson is that, in the early years of building a business, it is a self versus self struggle. Life is most often a struggle within ourselves. The most difficult obstacle we have to overcome is the self. I have written elsewhere that the most useful founder skill is self-knowledge. I have tried to deepen my self-knowledge in 2025, and it has benefited me tremendously. While I'm nowhere near understanding myself better, the work helped me tremendously in 2025. I'll continue doing the work in 2026.
These are just some of the lessons and reflections.
A year, seen from a particular perspective, is a long time and comes with immense opportunities to learn about ourselves and do important work. In my case, I have never been able to benefit from the time I receive fully. That remains true for 2025. I squandered much of it, doing trivial and nontrivial things with little benefit. This reflection allows me to see some of the ways I did it. The biggest lesson, to that end, for me is to be more conscious about how I spend my days. As Annie Dillard wrote, how we spend our days is how we spend our lives. We must be conscious about how we spend our days. After all, the most valuable resource we have is our time.
My goal for 2026 is to build on what I've learned over the past two years. Discipline and consistency remain two major challenges for me, and by extension, that for FS. I aim to attempt to reach my ideal state of discipline this year. I don't hope I will be able to achieve full discipline. But I believe it is possible to move closer to it. I think if I can bring discipline to how I run FS, it will dramatically transform our impact and business.
One change I'm making, something that I learned last year, is setting goals for a longer time horizon: three years.
Over the next three years, we aim to become a default business knowledge platform in Bangladesh. The goal is to transform the economy and service landscape in Bangladesh by enabling a vibrant entrepreneurial culture.
On a more practical end, we aim to continue publishing substantial stories and interviews every week. We started publishing white papers on different industries and fields in 2024. We want to increase the number of papers we publish in 2026. If possible, publish something meaningful every month.
We didn't do much in terms of learning: workshops and courses last year. That will change in 2026. Expect regular workshops and courses throughout the year.
Similarly, we aim to bring back FS Talk and become serious about events.
We're working on a second book after a long time and have put together a plan to publish a few books every year.
On the user and revenue side, we plan to double down our efforts to grow users across web, social, and YouTube, and grow our revenue by a few times.
Similarly, we have always wanted to launch a subscription business, and we want to do a test launch of that this year.
Finally, we did a poor job at monetizing our newsletter and advertising options. We plan to explore these opportunities with more rigor this year.
I understand that plans are contingent on many things. We are undergoing a political transition. A lot will depend on the upcoming national election and the overall state of the world, which is increasingly becoming unstable. With all the contingencies, I have come to realize that there are always opportunities to apply our agency in one way or another to make things better. It took me a long time to learn this lesson. This year, I plan to internalize it by putting some of it to work.
At the end of the day, our job on this earth is to keep planting seeds while we are alive. The rest depends on the Almighty.
Happy making!
