Agora has been owned and operated by Alan Batie in Portland, Oregon in his spare time from 1985, when it started with a single line, a 6Mhz 286 and Xenix, continuing today as his full time business with 23 public lines and an 800Mhz Pentium III running FreeBSD.
While Agora is small relative to other ISP's, this allows for more personal and less formal interactions with customers, as well as more flexibility in meeting customer needs.