Ali Elfakharany on Twitter

I really could make a career out of sports analytics. Nothing more fascinating for me. Working on an interesting piece for @King_Fut !

4 years, 2 jobs, and countless hours later I’ve finally decided to dedicate my time to building a company that changes the way business is done in the sports space.

So we are very proud to announce after 18 months of working informally as hobbyists, we’ve finally launched ArqamFC.

ArqamFC is a data analytics firm focused on bringing the first layer of intelligence to football in emerging markets. We collect, analyze and present data to fans, clubs, players and agencies.

The central thesis is simple. Football is one of the biggest yet most inefficient markets in the world. From the way we talk about it as fans, to the way decisions are made, football is still in the stone ages when it comes to analysis. We are still stuck in this paradigm where most analysis is done through watching, and video cameras are the biggest tech revolution the sport has seen.

The problem with using our eyes to tell us what happened is twofold:

1. It doesn’t scale
2. It’s full of all sorts of cognitive biases

We’ve been around for 18 months now, worked with coaches, created content, and generally done whatever we thought would be the best use of our time. We have been held back due to a lack of data however, which is why in January we decided to launch our own data collection center. As a result, we’re finally at the point where we can do whatever we want.

So what do we want to build?

Well, first and foremost we’re a content company. And whether our content drives more fan arguments, or results in a team making a $10mn decision, it’s still at the core of what we do.

Now in order to become the best version of ourselves, there’s going to be a lot of technology that needs to be built:

1. Data collection technology
2. Data analysis tools
3. Data visualization tools
4. Distribution/user experience tools

With these tools and content, we hope to empower all the relevant stakeholders.

Fans who want to make more intelligent arguments

Coaches who want to prepare better for big games

Agents who want to discover young new talent

Players who want to improve their game

Mostly though, I’m excited to build products and find new and different ways to monetize them. And I truly believe what we’re doing can be transformational for specifically the lower/middle echelons of football, where mistakes can’t be wiped away with huge bankrolls and competitive edges are smaller.

So please check out the website, give us comments. We’re hiring a lead engineer, so recommend all the rockstar techies you know. I appreciate all the support in advance :)

One last paragraph for quick acknowledgements.

My partners, Hesham and Ossama have been invaluable as always in getting us to this point.

The team over at BECO Capital, who have given me an invaluable working experience over my last year.

The good people of Footy Analytics twitter, who provided the platform for me to learn about this cool space. (Specific shout out to Ravi Ramineni and Micheal Caley, who answered the DMs of a 19-year old kid in college trying to learn with much patience).

And my family, blood and chosen, who have helped make my decision to become self/unemployed manageable!

Launching ArqamFC was originally published in ArqamFC on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

I say this only as a preface to my next statement:

Egyptian banks are uniquely positioned to be the most disrupted financial ecosystem in the region.

Why?

Despite the fact that the financial sector is structurally sound & competitive, the banking infrastructure just isn’t that large. By most estimates, 90% of Egyptians are still unbanked.

This Sunday (Dec 11th), I will be on a panel at RiseUp where the discussion will be centered on Banking & Fintech, where one of the many talking points will be about evolution vs. revolution of fintech companies, and how banks have started embracing partnerships with fintech startups more and more.

But they key tension driving these discussions in other markets (both developed and developing) is this:

Startups need distribution. Banks need innovation.

For fintech startups, their number one challenge is the being able to recoup the CAC (cost of acquiring customers) at a scale that will make them profitable (especially with low margins that exist in the space).

For legacy financial institutions, the issue is keeping up with a user base and technology infrastructure that is constantly evolving. Over the past 10 years, banks have suddenly had to deal with the fact that smartphones have beat them to global distribution, as well as the fact that connectivity costs have gone to zero (making it impossible for them to charge almost anything for payments). If sending a tweet is free, it seems impossible to think of a future in which paying a friend over a messaging platform isn’t.

So startups have the user experience but no scale. Some of them try to throw money at the problem and achieve scale. Some go to retailers and try to leverage their scale. But significant portions have started partnering with banks that they otherwise would compete with.

So why is this relevant to Egyptian banks? Because they don’t have scale to offer to fintech startups. Not real scale anyways. The biggest bank in Egypt (CIB) serves 700K customers according to their website.

As a result, the only leverage these legacy institutions have right now to get startups to partner with them are regulatory + branding. And while these two are not insignificant factors, more and more they are becoming less relevant. Just last Friday in the US, it was announced that fintech startups would get a license to bank.

So yes, banks and fintech will partner and not compete when necessary. And the banks in Egypt seem like they recognize the challenge they face (both Barclays and CIB have been involved in the Fintech startup scene). But despite the fact that they’ve gotten a head start, Egyptian banks are at serious risk of being replaced due to their lack of scale. And that’s probably why they’re getting a head start at attempting to capture some of the innovation startups are creating. And while it’s great to see them move quickly and understand the changing ecosystem (because as shown by chart below, not all banks know what business they’re in!), fear of missing out is the biggest driving factor for these banks, as it should be.

The more nuanced conversations about have revolved around a couple of key factors:

• Cord cutting
• Competitiveness of the leagues
• Quality of play
• Over-saturation
• The rise of e-sports

And while some of the wider points made above stand, especially for specific sports (see: Mark Cuban’s “hogs get slaughtered” comment about NFL), I think there may be an underlying issue that’s being missed here: TV as our user experience + distribution medium.

I may be biased due to a) being a techie working in VC and b) founding a startup in this very space, but I believe the most pressing issue for TV ratings is the TV itself as a medium, and networks approach to just being a distributor.

To set the scene a little consider this:

The only group that is watching more TV is above 50 in age. Otherwise, TV usage is down across all ages, and above 40% decreases in the cohort of people under 24.

The ironic thing is, sports have largely escaped the disruption that has faced other entertainment verticals such as music and TV due to one important factor: urgency. Most sports fans have continued watching TV due to the fact that they need to consumer their sports live, a beautiful little feature that has allowed TV ratings to continue to skyrocket over the past couple of years despite the above chart.

But why has this finally hit live sports now? I think the answer lies in the evolution of the “second screen” experience, and how football games 90 minutes + studio are becoming unbundled.

20 years ago, on a Saturday/Sunday your average football fan would open up the TV in order to watch his sport of choice.

The experience entailed the following:

• Pre-match studio preview (typically from famous ex-pros)
• The actual broadcast w/ live color commentating
• Half-time analysis from the studio & highlights
• Post-match analysis with soundbites from players and managers

Fast forward 20 years and the TV experience has largely stayed the same, adding on a couple of nifty infographics and video tools for the ex-pro analysts to play with.

The overall experience however has shifted massively, as fans now have another screen in their pockets that they’re typically glued to during football fans, and they have services that have attacked each of the above bullet points.

• Pre-match infographics now from whoscored/squawka
• Commentary is now via twitter
• Highlights are via giphy/twitter
• Infographics/stats are from Statszone
• Post-match tactical analysis from Youtube channels like BBallbreakdown or websites like Spielverlagerung.com or even classic like Barnwell/Lowe

At first, these services were called second screen services because they were believed to be complementary to TV viewing. But as mobile internet usage has just passed desktop for the first time ever, it’s time to start wandering if the second screen has started unbundling the first.

The TV experience has remained stagnant, as shown above, because TV networks thought they were in the business of distribution, not content creation. They’ve saddled us with the same riddled cliches, the same old faces, and poor/inaccurate commentary. I still can’t choose camera angles for the games, I can’t choose different commentary, I can’t incorporate stats/infographics on 1 screen with video.

With all the cool things I can do on my mobile, combined with the fact that the only reason I own a TV is to watch my live sports (as a 22 year old I fall on that purple line with the steepest decline in TV consumption) and you have a real problem on the networks hands.

It’s fair to say that if Twitter had rights to the sports I loved I would 100% watch it on Twitter due to the ability to have my curated commentary instead of the networks. And the success of the NFL’s twitter deal does drive home my point that the delivery mechanism (TV) is failing networks.

Lastly, I do believe it is also relevant to talk about the actual leagues themselves and how they need to adjust to this new reality. Over saturation is a real thing, and for someone that follows 3 sports across 4 countries and 3 continents, I can tell you right now: there’s no time in the schedule to keep u with all the quality football/NBA/NFL happening at the same time.

The issue for leagues is with the abundance of sports (and the rise of e-sports) available, it is difficult to buy 90 minutes (or in the NFL’s case 3 hours) of anyone’s undivided attention. I would wager heavily that engagement while watching sports have fallen drastically, and this tweet by Mathew Ball seems to confirm it:

Matthew Ball on Twitter

5/ In addition, total sports views aren't down. Avg. time spent is. That's arguably wors. And explains why the NFL is cracking down on GIFs

Specifically for football (the real kind), 90 minute matches often have around 40–50 minutes of real action. NFL games are more commercials than plays and anyone who has watched the last 4 minutes of an NBA game knows it’s closer to half an hour. Why is this a problem? Because often times watching GIFs on twitter is more than enough to see all the relevant pieces of action from any one sporting event. It’s why the NFL is cracking down on GIFs, and it’s why I love NFL gamepass so much (for the no timeouts, no commercials options).

The first loser from this are local lower quality leagues (like the Egyptian one), where the average fan will choose Arsenal vs. United 99 times out of a 100 to a top of the league clash that isn’t the Cairo Derby. I tweeted about this a week ago, but some innovation is needed on both the product itself, as well as distribution in order for lower leagues to stay competitive.

Ali Elfakharany on Twitter

2/ Meaning, due to ease of watching highlights/mini-matches online, the lower quality games lose fans that are watching entire games + live

Ali Elfakharany on Twitter

3/ I've seen this happen first-hand with the Egyptian Premier League where a lot of fans now only watch mini-matches.

Ali Elfakharany on Twitter

6/ Football (like the NBA & other leagues) needs to start optimizing their product for digital mediums. Lower leagues need to innovate on >

Ali Elfakharany on Twitter

7/ things such as rulebook as well in order to try to make their product watchable vs. the top leagues.

The NBA has done the best job embracing the smartphone as the center of the new universe, and I don’t think it’s a surprise that they’ve had the least problem with TV ratings for now (although it doesn’t hurt to have an influx of generational talent, Whaddup KAT) as well as the GOAT vs. the GOAT team in last year’s finals.

But they have embraced Vine (R.I.P), league pass just launched mobile-friendly view, highlights are free on Youtube, and the official site has a couple of cool content creation tools for stats, etc.

With networks locked into some of their core sports contracts for long time periods, the question remains: will they able to adjust and innovate to the new-age of consumer, or will the second screen overtake the first?

Edit: The elephant in the room for networks is that the big tech companies will come for these contracts, and will build immersive experiences around sports, which makes their position even more precarious

“With probable austerity measures looming and expectations sky-high, the army need a different approach to managing the country. Egypt has proven that the economic situation is not sustainable. Best-Case scenario: The Army slowly reforms the giant public sector and adopts more business friendly free-market policies.”

Fast-forward 30 months and a lot has changed. I moved back to Egypt, worked for a few months and have since moved away again. El-Zamalek SC actually won a league title, giving all of us (even the haters!) hope that some things could change. Yet, the overwhelming emotion that comes to mind when thinking of these past 30 months is still frustration; frustration at the tremendous opportunity the country has missed to make real progress.

On the eve of the news (finally) of Egypt’s impending devaluation my mind went to a conversation I had with my best friend a week before the election while I was considering if/who to vote for in Egypt’s 2014 election.

The context for this conversation is one of my disbelief that he intends on voting for ElSisi, despite our relatively similar world-views.

Me: Why would you vote for someone who you know is winning? Wouldn’t your vote be better off going to an opposing party in order to create at least a semblance of opposition pressure?

R: I want ElSisi to have more political capital, not less. I think it would be a positive for the country if he were to win in a landslide as it would give him enough political capital to face all the tough decisions he will have to make (on both a security front and economic front)

I remember thinking to myself: that really is the best argument I’d heard all year about electing this guy. There is a chance he turns into a transitional leader, and there was no mistaking that he will have to make some decisions that will affect his popularity negatively. I disagreed in principle (for many reasons), but it actually made sense and gave me a semblance of hope.

Fast forward 2 years and here we are, living in a country where the parallel market trades at a 47% premium to the bank rate, inflation is running around 15%, and airlines are closing their domestic offices due to not being able to get dollars from the Central Bank (to name a few examples).

The issue of the devaluation is a perfect analogy for all of Egypt’s woes; it’s not only is crucial to the economic wellbeing of the country, but it is also at the heart of the single biggest obstacle our leadership faced in starting this transitional phase: the role of the army in the economy.

Why is the role of the army inherently tied to the devaluation?

Because the army in Egypt is basically an economic corporation involved in everything from making TVs to pasta. And as a result, they have leveraged the FX shortage into a sort of protectionist policy against foreign corporations to make them more money.

In other words, as a result of our insistence on sticking at a fixed exchange rate, foreign companies started leaving the country. Consequently, the army has stepped in to sell it’s own products as a replacement, and make more money. They claim that this is just a stop-gap to these shortages, but it is hard not to wonder if this devaluation would’ve happened much sooner if it wasn’t helping their bottom-line.

Regardless it begs the question, what was the point of winning the election in such landslide fashion, but squandering the political capital & popularity on issues like Tiran & Sanafir? As popularity starts to dwindle (and it will once the economic crunch hits and inflation climbs even higher), now would be a good time for our leadership to assess what I believe is a massively missed opportunity to use their popularity post-election to implement real change. And civilians such as myself and my friends should consider what we should’ve done differently to enforce change*

Despite my frustration with the opportunities being missed, I do want to close on a positive note. Egypt is the largest country in the MENA region, and subsequently one of it’s most important players. The recent IMF loan and devaluation, while inevitable, are net positives in the long-run and will hopefully start us on a long journey of economic rehabilitation.

It is much too early to tell just 2 years into this journey, but every month that passes the world is getting faster, stronger and creating new things, and we have to start now if we are to have any shot of becoming leaders again.

My only hope is that we start empowering entrepreneurs and SMEs to start innovating and competing, instead of crippling them with subsidies and hand-outs. 100s of Egyptians entrepreneurs a year come to us at BECO for funding and they are some of the most talented, unique, and hard-working people I’ve ever met. I’m definitely bullish on Egypt’s future, pending our ability to learn from our mistakes. Perhaps the coming economic hardship will be our cue to finally address the elephant in the room and start clearly defining the army’s role in Egyptian politics and economics, instead of perennially becoming the land of opportunity cost.

*(other than make a fortune off the parallel market spread in the hope it started hurting the country too much and they’d devalue, something unfortunately I wasn’t able to do!)

Ramadan Sobhi is the best signing in the EPL this year

I know that sounds crazy. But hear me out..

And no, it’s not because I’m Egyptian. Nor is it the fact that he has the best nickname ever (#Ramadona). Nor is it an opportunity for me to plug this awesome piece I wrote about him for Squawka:

Squawka Football on Twitter

3. Scouting report: Who is Premier League-linked wonderkid Ramadan Sobhi? By @EGYStats - http://sqwk.at/PrinceOfEgypt pic.twitter.com/xepa3pUvhL

It’s because his signing is exactly the type of signing a mid-table club like Stoke should be making.

1. It’s a move supported by scouts
2. And a move strongly supported by data
3. It embraces age curves
4. It embraces optionality

Scouts love Ramadan

Ramadan is Egypt’s most popular player despite only being 19. He plays for the local equivalent of Juventus (dominant), and is a starter on an attack that has scored >2 goals per game, and a team that scored 2.3 PPG. He’s been around for ages despite his young age, and he checks all the “eye test boxes”. He’s fast, physical, a good dribbler, good in the air, two-footed, the whole package. He’s also “shown up in big games”, assisting the equalizer for Egypt in a crucial AFCON qualifier vs. Nigeria, then scoring in the return leg to take the NT through.

Data loves Ramadan

As shown in that Squawka piece, Ramadan has strong, if not amazing numbers:

• Leads the league in touches for a winger
• 15% of Al-Ahly shots are either taken or created by him
• 4 goals, 6 assists, 2 penalties drawn in 22 games
• Most tackles and interceptions by an attacker
• 4.2 complete dribbles a game (1 in the box per game!)
• Most complete passes into the box

The only negative on Ramadan are poor shooting numbers for a league he should be dominating, as he only gets 1.2 shots away a game despite all the havoc he’s creating in the box.

He’s 19

Here’s the most important data point that proves Ramadan is a special talent: he’s getting minutes at 19. Really any negatives in the data can be wiped out with that simple fact.

This article by @Micheal Caley on age curves is fantastic, as is this one by @GoalImpact

It embraces optionality

This is perhaps the crux of the article, despite me putting it last. So for all of the above, Stoke City paid only £3.5m! In a window where the average EPL player is commanding fees of around 40m (sorry, Bolasie), this represents amazing value. And not value in the sense that Ramadan is better than a 3.5m player right now. But his upside is uncapped, something which can’t be said for 27-year old Bolasie.

So why is this the perfect move for Stoke?

Firstly, they’re mired in mid-table with no real chance at relegation, which means the bottom of their range is not all that scary. Their upside however is capped due to being out-priced by the Europa League regulars. This is exactly the type of move they need to be making in order to try to move the needle. If he busts, it’s 3.5m pounds. If he succeeds, it’s an extreme young talent tied down for a couple of years with amazing resale value.

The funny thing is, because Africa is so under-scouted and data is much more difficult to come by, one could even make the case that the risk Ramadan turns out to be a bust is much smaller than your average 3.5m unknown. The only thing that is in play here is we’re not quite sure what a star in the Egyptian League translates to in EPL terms.

Wait a minute…

Now I know this is a small sample size, but Mo Salah was a 20 year old winger with similarly impressive numbers for a much worse Egyptian league side in 2012 when he was picked up by Basel a few years ago, and his ceiling has become a CL-side’s top goal-scorer. Ramadan is younger, has more impressive numbers, and was playing for a much better side. Even assuming that his ceiling is another Salah, that’s definitely a home-run for 3.5m.

I don’t have data on Elneny but again played on (the same) mid-table team (amazing how Moqawloon had 2 CL level players in Egypt and finished mid-table) and his ceiling is a semi-starter for a team that’s comfortable top ten in the world.

So obviously, despite sample size issues, we’ve proven that upside is definitely an above-average EPL player. For 3.5m and with Ramadan’s profile checking out as even better than Salah’s, it’s definitely a risk worth taking. It almost doesn’t matter whether he’s a bust or not at this point.

More mid-table clubs need to embrace this type of optionality. And while typically, I’d say relegation threatened clubs shouldn’t due to needing to limiting their downside being more important, one could argue that because Africa is such a wasteland in terms of scouting and data, we could be vastly overestimating the risk of these talents flaming out. A quick look at the players who have travelled from the Egyptian league specifically shows a pretty high success rate (Salah, Elneny, Elmohamaddy) with busts usually not fitting in off the pitch yet producing on it (Saleh Gomaa, Shikabala, etc).

I’ll leave you with this:

Arqam on Twitter

Ramadan Sobhi ladies and gentlemen. #AnkleBreaker #Tekkerspic.twitter.com/71GvzYppQR

Edit:

On a final and slightly less relevant note: the economic impact of diversifying your fanbase to include a huge Arabic-speaking market is also a plus I didn’t discuss here. Cairo is already in the top 5 cities that follow the club on Facebook

Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, his segment on journalism this week is one of the few instances where I believe not only did he miss the wider point, but he actually misdiagnosed the problem.

Skip to 14:45 and you see the exact quote that got me cringing:

“A big part of the blame for this industry’s (journalism) dire straights is us, and our unwillingness to pay for the work journalists produce.”

So a quick recap of all the assumptions built into this statement:

• Journalism is in dire straights
• Consumers (or the viewing public) are the biggest reason
• This is due to our unwillingness to pay for the work

The Internet vs. Journalism is the wrong paradigm, (or why distribution shouldn’t matter)

Growing up in a country with mild censorship and state control over TV, I’ve seen firsthand what it’s like to be fed misinformation. On the day of the biggest protest in modern Egyptian history, state TV was rerunning comedic plays from the 80s and 90s.

Thankfully, this was 2011 where (despite the state’s best efforts) I had access to Internet. As a result, I was able to get my information quicker and more accurate than any previous human being in my position would’ve gotten historically.

Now I do recognize that there is quite the tension between speed and accuracy. I can already hear my friends in the space complaining about “journalistic integrity” and how Twitter/FB isn’t “real news”. But while I do recognize this tension I think journalists approach (derision) is counterproductive for a couple of reasons.

Firstly, more time spent on journalism does equal more accurate. In fact, social media by design is often times more accurate due to the fact that it’s decentralized and pools together different sources of information. Moreover, when all is said and done, social media’s effect on news will probably be net positive on accuracy just as a result of sheer transparency.

Secondly, this gives higher quality journalism (which often does take longer), a natural way to differentiate itself from the noise on social media. In this day and age, having a 100% accuracy record is difficult, but it’s also a brand-builder.

Lastly, and most importantly, the internet has fundamentally broken what for decades used to be journalism real money-maker : distribution. All the talk of how journalism is dying at the hands of the Internet fails to mention one crucial thing: if decentralized distribution is what has killed journalism & quality content, perhaps the content wasn’t all that good to begin with.

But framing the debate as the Internet vs. Journalism (or Consumers vs. Journalism, which I’ll get to later) is just a paradigm that has been created by an industry that is struggling to adjust to the new norm due to years of no competitive pressure. The Internet is the best thing that has happened to journalism, as long as journalism allows it to be.

Newspapers didn’t know what business they were in..

For too long, journalism and content have been protected by the moats of distribution, not needing to innovate, not needing to open feedback loops with consumers. What we’re seeing is the natural confusion that had to happen when newspapers suddenly realized they’re no longer in the business of owning distribution. To make matters worse, they realized they’re no longer even in the business of selling words/writing. Nowadays, consumers dictate the form they want to receive their content in (whether that be text, pictures, interactive visualizations, or videos).

As a result, centuries old business with deeply ingrained ideas of what their business were are struggling. And that’s normal. It’s not a bad thing. But journalists (and the organizations they work for) need to start focusing on their core competencies and running themselves like a proper business (i.e with stakeholders in mind and tensions/competitors on all sides)

The customer is always right, (or why John Oliver was wrong)

Which leads us full circle to that quote by Oliver. Laying the blame at the customer in this scenario seems not only incorrect, but counter-productive. The responsibility here is on the business to provide a service that satisfies the customer. And while it may be true that we are unaccustomed to paying for content & entertainment due to growing up in the dawn of the Internet (and the age of piracy), I believe the blame lays much more with the old, creaky institute of journalism that it does with consumer behavior.

Despite the fact that I believe there is more quality content today than perhaps ever, the customer experience is still not optimized. There are several different ways news organizations can leverage the current ecosystem to become more sustainable:

• Advertising: is mostly outsourced by news organizations, leading to bad quality ads that are more in place in a 1970s newspaper than a 2016 smartphone screen
• Windowing: leverage scarcity of time into premiums (paying premiums for faster content, behind the scenes, etc.)
• Form: Innovation on content form needs to happen. Look at BleacherReport on Snapchat, amazing stuff
• Crowdfunding: for more investigative type journalism
• Unbundling: allowing people to pay for content/writers/topics they enjoy specifically. Content creators should be early adopter of digital payments just for this reason.

These are just some ideas, Marc Andreessen also has a couple here that are super interesting. His point on payments/bitcoin is a fascinating one, similar to the above point on unbundling.

And there is data to back up my claims: Millennials are far more likely to support content they like (first chart) and are far more frustrated about popup ads (bad quality advertising, second chart) than anything else. Moreover, 20% of millennials said they are “very likely” to pay $10/month to block ads, a clear sign that their pain point is not in unwillingness to pay (as Oliver claims) but in avoiding bad advertising that worsens their experience.

All data from this great article

Point being, the reason journalism has struggled recently is that the industry is at a point in it’s history where their biggest money-maker, distribution, suddenly vanished. And due to years and years of no competition, adjusting to the new world has not been easy on these organizations. But criticizing the consumer (and by extension the technology that decentralized distribution) not only misses the point, but encourages the kind of denial the news industry has been in for the last 10 years.

Journalism needs to evolve..

As funny as that clip Oliver showed about puppies and Iraq co-existing, it’s the owner actually had a better grasp of the space than Oliver did. Markets need to defined and split up better, and access to the Internet has increased total news consumers by quite a bit leading to space for both the cat videos and the Iraq coverage. Buzzfeed is a great example of this, with their long-form content actually having quite surprising depth.

Yes, we as consumers need to culturally accept free content and entertainment isn’t a right. But right now, innovative and quality content is growing as journalism figures out it’s place in the new world. Technology has finally created competition for publishers, a phenomenon they weren’t used to. The adjustment period has been rough, but a lot of very smart people seem to have started to figure it out. A quick look around the space of content in general (as well as journalism) shows this. Bill Simmons and Grantland (now the Ringer) is doing cool stuff with culture, and different forms (podcasts). Vice and their documentaries are also a great example of innovation in the space.

Another great example, ironically, is John Oliver’s show. Sadly, Oliver himself doesn’t seem to understand the biggest impediment to modern journalism, focusing instead on the sort of ideas that have led to the demise of innovation in the space.

Born and raised in Cairo. Currently in Dubai. Previously in Boston.

Technology, Data, Sports, Finance, Egypt, Entrepreneurship, Systems, and the MENA region as a whole are my areas of interest, in no particular order.