Waqas Ali Email Address

Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer

A NYC based brand that makes sneakers, masks, and friends unlike any other. Sometimes art & chai too.

Small things changed my life. I am fascinated by how tools and conversations can change people’s behaviors and ultimately their lives. Some of the life’s greatest lessons came packaged in deep personal experiences. Whilst born and raised in a small village in Pakistan, I was fortunate to have discovered Internet in 2007 for the first time. It instantly pushed me to write my first Wikipedia article – and seeing that article live changed me forever. I still recall those feelings. I started my first business (a digital media agency) while I was still at college in Lahore studying Physics and social sciences. I wanted more people to use Internet as a tool for their business communication. Later on I dropped out of college to work on this full-time. Things started changing really fast from there. Along with my co-founder Sidra Qasim, we started working on a new idea: helping craftsmen in our hometown make high-quality shoes and sell directly to the end customer. Soon the idea became a growing/struggling business and we shut down our first company to work on this full-time. We called it Hometown (later changed brand name into Markhor). Now at Markhor, we are selling our luxury men shoes in 35 countries (mainly in the US though) and changing the way consumers connect with their shoes and brands. Markhor is backed by our 500+ Kickstarter backers and got funded by Y Combinator in Summer 2015. Now I spend my time between San Francisco, Lahore and NYC. Our work at Markhor has been featured by Fast Company, WSJ, Business Insider, Medium, TechCrunch and Seth Godin’s blog. I don’t have any speciality but I’d love to connect and learn.