Of Rational Exuberance & Pak Entrepreneurs
I’m sitting in San Jose airport as I write this. I was really living it this time around. My friend, Rehan Akbar, was kind enough to let me crash at his Stanford apartment, and Hertz upgraded me to Buick Enclave 2008, which by the way, is a monster. I almost said to myself, screw the gas, screw the environment and all that green stuff, I’m going to buy this baby. And then I thought of my poor little ‘96 Saturn.
Its been a great trip. I flew in here at the advice of Umair Khan who suggested that the annual OPEN event, themed “Rational Exuberance“, would be a great place to see what Pak entrepreneurs are up to, and I wasn’t disappointed. I got introduced to some very interesting people and realized one thing: Pakistani entrepreneurs need to come out more.
I mean, I’ve written about Folio3 before, but I got to meet the CEO, Adnan Lawai, this time. They are overflowing with business and are expanding globally. They already have an office in Romania, and are planning other locations soon. Following after Techlogix and Netsol, they are setting the trend of global expansion for Pakistani tech companies. Then there are other companies like Zenprise and DiagnosisOne, which are doing cutting edge work in their niches. In the next few weeks, I’ll be speaking with some of these CEOs and will be posting their interviews here.
If you are a Pakistan entrepreneur looking to start up, there is an entire community to support you. It has founders and CEOs of publicly traded companies, senior executives in companies like Yahoo, SAP and Sun, professors in top schools like Berkley, and of course, angels and top-tier VCs. And you know what?
They want to see you succeed.
-Adnan
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19. June 2007 at 23:56
eeeeee……you drive a saturn? man that’s one ugly car!! saturns have always been ugly! even the name’s ugly! i mean, who names a car ’saturn’!??
For any consolation, i hope you own the SC2 Coupe!
Frankly, there are better (and cheaper, greener, meaner) alternatives to a Buick Enclave!
If you want meaaaan, go for H2.
if you like beauty with power, try out the Infinity FX45 or the QX56 (sweeeet)!!!
read here:
http://farrukhdox.blogspot.com/2006/01/top-suvs-in-uae-part-1.html
http://farrukhdox.blogspot.com/2006/01/top-suvs-in-uae-part-2.html
24. June 2007 at 04:09
A pretty big omission from your list is PixSense, which has raised close to $7 Million in venture funding (search blogs).
The technology team 45 in Karachi is growing by 1 new person every week for the last 4-5 months.
Overall strength is 60 across 5 countries.
At present this is probably bigger than any of the companies listed in your blog.
Please read more about them on pixsense.com
24. June 2007 at 09:57
Farzal, Thanks for brining PixSense to my attention. I saw them at OPEN but didn’t get the chance to speak with anyone from the company. Those numbers are impressive, I’ll look them up.
25. June 2007 at 23:35
Yes definitely PixSense is growing at a tremendously impressive pace – talk to Faraz Hoodbhoy who is based in the Valley or to Adnan Agboatwalla who is based in Karachi. They exude confidence and professionalism.
Add to these companies like Mixit Technologies, Alchemy Technologies that are growing faster than even they had imagined. And don’t forget Etilize – a content management firm with 300 people and 200 clients in the US. And who can ignore Five River Technologies who are in the blade computing space?
27. June 2007 at 07:08
Jehan, its good to see Pakistani companies doing so well. Looking forward to writing about them.
27. June 2007 at 16:23
All these good things aside, lets not forget something – Angels dont exist in Pakistan and VCs do not want to invest in very early stage companies from the region.
There may be a great support network in the valley within Pakistani Entrepreneurs but how can you guys channelize this for providing angel support to PK startups?
28. June 2007 at 03:49
Angels do exist in Pakistan
but they aren’t ready to come out of clouds yet. It’s the responsibility of IT veterans to join forces and help those who are trying to walk.
I am all for a Pakistani community of angel investors consisting of expats as well as local hotshots.
28. June 2007 at 09:49
Osama, An angel is just a rich guy with enough cash to spare. There are enough of those in Pakistan. Investment in Lootmaar has been done by an angel, so they certainly exist.
What we lack is an angel network, where anyone with a great idea can go and pitch. Lets each earn enough cash and set it up.
Some US-based Pakistani angels whom I’ve spoken with are bullish on the Pakistan market, so given the right opportunity, I think they would consider investing. The question of how to get access to them is an open one, but I’d say that if you have something radically cool, they’ll find you.