A reflective episode of FS weekly as we begin 2026. A very Happy New Year to you all!
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.
The end of the year affords us such unique opportunities to look back and reflect on our hindsight. So it is useful to sit down at the end of a year and consult our ledger.
In that spirit, here is a list of interviews, you, our readers, liked the most. Some of these interviews were published in 2025, and some come from our archives of past interviews. Interviews are listed in no particular chronological order. Enjoy!
These are some of our most popular articles that received the most attention from you—our readers—throughout 2025. While a good number of these articles were published in 2025, a significant percentage also come from our archive of past years.
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.
A decade ago, if you wanted gym clothes in Dhaka, you would have to spend hours hunting for clothes in shops opposite Dhaka College or some markets in Mirpur. Choice was scarce. Quality often fell short.
Today, you can order almost all kinds of sportswear online with a few taps on your phone. This shift is part of a broader transformation beginning to take shape across Bangladesh: an emerging domestic activewear market that barely existed just ten years ago.
Walk through Dhaka's shopping landscape today, and you'll encounter dedicated activewear stores, online brands selling moisture-wicking shirts and compression leggings, and a growing consumer base that views specialized exercise clothing not as a luxury but as a necessity.
This isn't yet mainstream, but the signals are unmistakable. International players are taking notice. Nike, Adidas, Puma, and Under Armour have begun establishing retail presences, testing a market they believe has significant potential.
Even established local footwear brands like Apex and BATA are starting to sell running shoes, responding to early demand for specialized athletic footwear.
