Hala Riad, lawyer, entrepreneur, and co-founder of Hekouky: Each week, My Morning Routine looks at how a successful member of the community starts their day — and then throws in a couple of random business questions just for fun. Speaking to us this week is Hala Riad (LinkedIn), lawyer, entrepreneur, and co-founder of Hekouky.

My name is Hala Riad, lawyer, entrepreneur and co-founder of Hekouky. I’m an avid tech and investment enthusiast with a particular interest in legal tech. On top of that, I’m a lawyer at Tarek Riad & Partners, my family’s law firm that was formerly known as Kosheri, Rashed & Riad Law Firm, and I will soon be a postgraduate student at Columbia and a future startup-friendly investor, slash investment manager.

A startup wasn’t always on the cards: When I was younger, I really wanted to work in something that provides access to justice to those in need. When we — my co-founders Mayy, Fatma, and I — started Hekouky, we were sharing posts online to help individuals. For example, what you need to register a trademark or how to start your own company — but also what can you do if you get assaulted and who to call. After spending time analyzing where the need is, we turned Hekouky into a digital platform where companies are incorporated and entrepreneurs can facilitate their legal and tax needs.

I read a book called The End of Lawyers by Cambridge professor Richard Susskind, which underlines that in the next 20 years, most — if not all — legal processes will be digitalized and we need to prepare for this. I wanted to be part of that future, so we decided to build technology that automates tax and legal processes to make things easier for young business people and entrepreneurs. Hekouky was able to incorporate companies, provide the contracts required to operate safely and the tax services needed to be in good standing.

I think that if you believe in justice, you believe in legal tech. Accessibility increases justice and creates a world where individual rights are preserved.

On being a woman startup founder: Globally, women-run startups receive less than 1% of all VC funding — the percentage is even less than that in the MENA region. As a woman founder, you know that you’re being underestimated — I’ve walked into meetings where people have assumed that I am Hala Riad’s secretary. But you can’t give yourself the luxury of focusing on that, you can only be laser focused and avoid looking left or right. I try to remind myself that I carry the strength of my grandmother with me — she was the first Egyptian woman to get a PhD from Yale Law School and to become a professor at Cairo University.

The startup community is the nicest place to exist because everyone is in such different sectors and wants to see others succeed. Every time I see the founder of a product I love, I tell them to call me when they need legal help. It’s a very open community.

Hekouky received tremendous support from accelerators and mentors: The company was incubated by Mint by EG Bank, who we’ve received ongoing support from until today. We also were part of the Google for Startups and Plug and Play accelerators. Google provided us with public policy, technological, and investment readiness support. I believe in the saying “ask for money, get advice, ask for advice, get money.”

We have now come to an agreement to wind down operations at Hekouky as it currently stands, a decision we came to as we didn’t see a clear path to profitability. Businesses zigzag and this experience has made me a much tougher business person and helped me gain a tremendous amount of experience.

Data is the name of the game: We’ve already seen the drive towards leveraging data to create cooler technology, for example with Elon Musk using data collected from Tesla to create self-driving cars and now he is looking to rival Chat GPT by using data collected from X. It’s no longer what your company can do, it’s about how the data you collect will create the products of the future.

Mornings are my spiritual sanctuary: As soon as I wake up, I’m stretching on the mat and doing my morning yoga. This is followed by five minutes of meditation, prayers, and a gratitude practice. I read EnterpriseAM over a mug of tea with milk. Tea is a must, I drink about six cups a day, probably because it reminds me of my grandmother.

My workday starts at 9am with an hour of responding to emails and I close my laptop at 8pm at the latest, with the final hour of the day dedicated to planning for the following day. Organization is the name of the game — I use Microsoft To Do for daily tasks, Google Calendar for scheduling and plan my quarters, months, weeks, and days down to a point — If it’s not on my Google Calendar, I’m not doing it.

I don’t want a work-life balance, I need work that gives me excitement. For me, burnout is a thing that happens when I feel my efforts are not being rewarded. I don’t think this means that entrepreneurs shouldn’t be kind to themselves or work themselves into the ground, but I also don’t believe in balance. I believe in a rich personal and professional life that looks different across stages of life.

A book I recommend is Daring Greatly by Brené Brown. I love the Theodore Roosevelt quote she mentions, “the credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly…who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly.” I promised myself long ago to live my life in the arena, and to dare greatly every single day in every aspect of my life.

The best piece of advice comes from my mom, who never allowed me to say I couldn’t do something unless I had empirical evidence to prove it. She never let me feel less than capable of doing something.

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