Startup Insiders – through the pictures
PASHA and Green and White, started the new year with a bang. Even though the party didn’t get going till about 6:15 pm on the 17th, it was the place to be yesterday in Karachi. If you have been dying to scratch the itch of working for yourself, yesterday was the day you would have found an 80 strong support group of mentors, fellow dreamers and at least one fluent French speaking CEO.
Here is the story as told by the unofficial PASHA camera of what really happened behind the innocuous looking sign posted outside PixSense dining area.
And if you don’t want to read the entire post the Startup Insider Panelists bringing smiles and being the focus of 80 people attention in the room, is what you missed.
5:55 pm – The Pitch
Osama Hashmi of Green and White/CDF SNIP closing in on the kill with Faisal Khan. If you think the picture is interesting, wait till you hear the audio. We are right now negotiating with both Faisal and Osama on the exactly the right price to be paid by both parties for us to conveniently misplace the audio files.
6:08 pm – The room begins to fill up
We had enough to get started at about 6:10, but we were really greedy. Original expectations were about 15-20 people in total and we had crossed over 20 by 6:08 pm
6:15 – standing room only
Come 6:15 and we had a standing room only session. Chairs were now going for a premium. Jehan started off with a quick thank you to Adnan Agboatwalla of Pix Sense and Osama and we were off.
The Panel
Azhar Rizvi and Dr. Zaheer of Tech Angel Network and MIT CEF, the team behind the BAP.
Faisal Khan, Net axis, blogger, CEO Forum, the know your customer’s pain and walk his walk and talk his talk CEO.
Faisal Qureshi (Dawn News, Kolachi Advance Technologies, Naukri Junction, Loose Ends, MENSA) – you need to look, dress and behave like a million dollars.
Osama Hashmi – I haven’t slept for 3 years
and Adnan of PixSense – Our host for the evening, the reality check and I have a startup and two kids, I don’t do sleep guy
Asif Qayyum of Si3, ECAccess – if I can do it from my bedroom in Karachi, so can you
Noman Shaikh of CreditChex – I don’t belong here since I have sold out but there is still hope for you…
6:45 pm – Over flow and rapt attention
The first question – What do I need to startup – Money, Idea, Team…
The last question – why do you do what you do?
In between is another post…
Later…
Cool post.
[...] Update 2: Jawwad (Alchemya) has a must-read writeup of the event here. [...]
A wonderful initiative.
To a large extent, a weakness in our culture is the lack of guidance we deliver (outside the family, of course).
Whether it is for business, or for building bridges within our communities, guidance and mentoring are terrifically useful, if not essential (we humans are lucky enough to generate those ‘loner’ individuals too, every now and then).
I hope that this will open up avenues for one-on-one mentoring in the future.
Closer ties between existing achievers and potential newbies can bring about synergies in sparking investments, which will naturally tend to get more focused towards ventures that are likely to succeed, which in turn will channel more funding. Win-win!
Great post Jawwad. I love the photos and the comments. The event was wonderful – I am still on a high.
[...] Here are links to Jawwad and Jehan’s blog posts on the session. Great job guys. Lets keep having these sessions. [...]
Yes, of course it was a great event, these kind of event must happen in frequent manner.
One thing that I would like to contribute for next meet-up is, we let people coming in and present themselves one by one if possible and then we discuss about the different aspects of their idea and its feasibility in positive dimension, and letting him know how can we help them..
If person X says he has a idea, but he needs team, may be when he will present his idea, he get some people in hall to join him or help him in any possible manners.
Again I will say it was a GREAT Event…! I am watching out for some more talks may be focused now specifically on some thing such as “Importance of Research”, “How to build your ideal team”, “How and When to say NO”, “How to market your idea, prototype or product” e.t.c, These are all entrepreneurial sessions that can help a lot to people who are interested more in specific kind of problem they actually find themselves involved in.
Cheers!
Simply Great Event!! Thanks to PASHA and Green and White for that… We should try to have these kind of sessions in frequent manner.
Two things I would like especially to contribute here…
1- We can have kind of sessions in which focus are people more than mentors, and in this session people are just expressing their idea (whoever is unafraid of Idea Theft bug 2.0) and then express his three top priority requirements and reason why they are important a lot for his idea…
For example: Person X says I have an Idea: Y and thats what I think about it, thats how I think it can work or thats what I actually want to do with it in first step, next he can express three things he worries most about starting up is: 1. Team, 2. Market Research, 3. Production, so people who are really interested in his idea, or the passion of guy in what he’s talking about, can help him in whatever out of those three they can help in.
2. We try to arrange Entrepreneurial sessions to assist people in more specific area they find themselves stuck in, such as we can have sessions completely focused on “How to perform Market Research?”, “How to build your Team?”, “How to face potential Risks?” or “How to Pitch?” etc.
I personally believe that after what we have as a Start-up insiders first meet up, more of kind of introductory and generic, now going ahead with these kind of specific sessions will help people a lot to be focused on specific problems and their possible solutions or ways to tackle problem in smart way, discussing different aspects angles of somewhat similar problem. etc.
Great initiative! I will say again…, I would love to help you guys in this, in as possible manner as I can.. Just count me in!
Cheers!
Ali Sohani
Sweet! Good to know these initiatives are going in Pakistan.
Keep up the good work.
Mudassir Azeemi
San Francisco, CA
Great post Jawwad. Just two minor corrections, my company is called ‘Net Access’ and Asif Qayyum’s company was/is called ECXS (not its Si3 EXCS).
I throughly enjoyed it – it was a great get together and I think we all need to take Adnan out on lunch for hosting us.
Jawwab Sb,
thanks for sharing this pieace
[...] Jawwad Farid, of Alchemya [...]
[...] Jawwad Ahmed Farid’s blog Desi Back to Desh [...]
Programmers + Entrepreneurs in Karachi requiring:
• Chai & Paratha (desi equivalent of coffee and pizza)
• Office space, chairs, bandwidth – essentially a garage
• Access to some great ideas and experience of 2 successful PK start-ups (I worked at both as an employee)
• Tons of whiteboard space, live Chundrigar road view (and associated traffic)
Please contact me via email: farzal@ and then yahoo.com
[...] Jawwad (Alchemya) has a must-read writeup of the event here. [...]
Good stuff. Keep this going!
[...] Desi in Desh [...]
[...] Startup Insiders – Through the pictures [...]
[...] Startup Insiders – Through the pictures [...]