Contact - Ahmad Afzal

§ House rules

A gentle triage.

Please do write

01Specific disagreements with something on this site. Specific is the operative word.
02Speaking invitations that come with a room, a date, and a thing to wrestle with.
03Advisory enquiries, ideally via a warm intro — but cold ones read too, if they're short.
04Essay corrections. Typos, broken links, a factual error you can cite.
05Recommendations — books, papers, a thing you think he'd quietly love.
06A small story about something from a piece that changed how you did your Tuesday.

Please, for the love of God, no

—AI SDR pitches. Yes, we noticed it was an AI SDR.
—"Quick calls to pick his brain." His brain is not, despite appearances, a self-service bar.
—Generic newsletter pitches. He's on the list. He's on all the lists.
—"Partnership opportunities" that are, on inspection, only opportunities for you.
—Anything beginning "Dear {FirstName}".
—Rage-bait about whichever AI company is trending.²

Short emails travel further
than long ones.

§ Copy-paste

Three templates, freely given.

Speaking invite

For an event organiser.

Subject: [Event name] — [Date] — invitation

Hi Ahmad,

We'd like you to give a 30–40 min talk at
[event] on [date] in [city]. The audience
is [who]. The question we'd like you to
wrestle with on stage is [one sentence].

Honorarium: [number] or swap.
Travel: [covered / no].
Recording: [yes / no].

Best,
[Name]

— Short. Specific. He can say yes or no in under a minute.

Advisory

For a team considering engaging.

Subject: Advisory — [company], [stage]

Hi Ahmad,

We're [company], [one sentence]. We're
stuck on [one specific thing].

We'd value an hour of your time, paid, to
[specific outcome]. Warm intro from
[name] attached.

— [You]

— The "one specific thing" is the whole email. Fill that in and the rest writes itself.

Reader letter

For a specific paragraph.

Subject: Compassion, not empathy — §IV

Hi Ahmad,

You wrote: "[quote]."

In our team we've found [one sentence
of lived experience]. I'm not sure your
point holds when [specific case].

Happy to be wrong.

— [You]

— This is his favourite kind of email. He will reply to it before the SDR ones, every time.

§ FAQ

Six things that come up.

Common questions

Do you take cold emails?: Yes, with grace. The good ones are often cold. The bad ones are usually a template you've sent to 400 other people, and he can tell. Please, in that case, don't.
Are you on social media?: Vestigially. There's a dormant LinkedIn and an occasional Substack note. He is not, as a matter of policy, on any app with a like-count visible to him before noon.
Do you reply to everything?: Almost. The exceptions: form letters, AI SDRs, things addressed to "Sir/Madam." He reads everything; he replies to anything that clearly had a human writing it.
Is this site set up to track me?: No. No analytics. No pixels. No "legitimate interest." If you came here to click accept on something, you may pretend you did.³
What's the best day to email?: Tuesday. Always Tuesday. Monday is a mess. Friday is a mirage. Tuesday is when the world is briefly honest and he is, accordingly, at his desk.
Can you share your PGP key?: Of a sort. See below. It is genuine, slightly dusty, and has been rotated the correct number of times — which is to say, approximately once.

§ Keys

For the encryption-curious.

— The key above is decorative. For anything genuinely sensitive, ask in plain email first; he'll send you the real one in a reply.⁴

Say hello. Specifically.