He Was Four Weeks From Law School. He Chose Engineering Instead.
Nizar taught himself to code, skipped law school, and spent nine months building AI infrastructure nobody else had made available. That infrastructure became Keiki — a platform that lets any company launch an AI agent on iMessage, WhatsApp, or Slack in minutes.
This week
The most important act of a founder this decade will not be building. It will be deciding what not to build. Restraint is the unwritten chapter of every great company — and the next four years will reward it more than any cycle in memory.
The feed
Sara Blakely: The $5,000 Bet That Became a Billion-Dollar Brand $5,000 Bet
She had no MBA, no fashion training and no investors. She had a pair of scissors, a pair of pantyhose, and the stubbornness of a woman who had already spent seven years having her business card ripped up.
Whitney Wolfe Herd: Building Bumble After Tinder After Tinder
She helped build the app that made swiping a verb. Then she was pushed out. The company she built next worked because of what the first one taught her — not in spite of it.
Tony Tan Caktiong: How Jollibee Beat McDonald's in the Philippines Beat McDonald's
In 1981 the biggest restaurant brand on earth landed in Manila. A 28-year-old ice cream vendor refused to sell and bet everything on banana-ketchup spaghetti.
Ritesh Agarwal: The 17-Year-Old Who Checked Into Hundreds of Budget Hotels 17-Year-Old
Before OYO was a brand in thirty countries, it was one teenager with a backpack, a notebook, and a growing list of grievances about torn bedsheets.
Oprah Winfrey: The Media Founder Who Owned the Platform Owned the Platform
Everyone remembers the host. The more interesting story is the founder who refused to be an employee of her own hit show.
Founders desk
Plate 01Nizar Abi Zaher
Four weeks from law school, he chose engineering instead. Now he and co-founder Adam Wazzan are building the infrastructure that lets any company launch an AI agent on iMessage, WhatsApp, Slack, SMS, Telegram, or email in minutes.
Plate 02Logan Sullivan
Logan Sullivan started Junk Punks at 17. Today it runs company-owned and franchise markets across Florida and Wisconsin.
Plate 03Anastasiia Shumilo
Anastasiia Shumilo is a Ukrainian-born technology founder who started over in Canada and built her career in technology from the ground up. She founded Shumi Technologies, an international B2B softwar
Plate 04Cover · Issue 47Tony Loeb
The man who decided hospitality needed just ten minutes — co-founder of 10minutes.news, the quiet media engine now read by 220,000 hoteliers across Europe and North America.
By desk
Read with the people who build the next decade.
Wednesdays at 7am Pacific. One letter, four minutes, and the five stories that actually mattered — chosen by the desk, not by an algorithm.
- ✓ The week's five most important reads, briefly
- ✓ One short interview, often unpublished elsewhere
- ✓ A memo from the editor — three minutes, one idea
- ✓ No ads, no roundups, no growth tactics