Archive for the ‘Desi Back to Desh’ Category

500,000 page-views, 4.5 years, three incarnations

I had been so busy with work, travel, travel, work and breaking the 3 dollar Adsense barrier that I completely missed a milestone I had been eagerly awaiting for the past few months. Somewhere in May, (don’t know when), the Desi Back to Desh blog crossed 500,000 page views. I was just checking my regular [...]

May 23, 2010  Tags: , , , , ,   Posted in: Desi Back to Desh, Desi Startup, Pressing words, Writing, entrepreneurs  No Comments

Startup Guide: Lessons from a failed startup

Looking through the wreckage of an old folder, found this post for the really early days of Reboot – the original list of lessons from a failed startup that became the book. Here is the list, with one new addition, five years later. 1) Technology is not a competitive advantage. Focus on the business problem [...]

April 7, 2010  Tags: , , , ,   Posted in: Columbia Business School, Desi Back to Desh, Desi Startup, Education, Failure, entrepreneurs  3 Comments

My love affair with Google, Google check out, Part I

It was the beginning of the year that would mark the turn of the century. I was a second year MBA student at Columbia, sharing a conference room with a first year who had just moved to New York from the valley. We shared a seat each at the Integrity Board Club and I don’t [...]

March 9, 2010  Tags: , ,   Posted in: Alchemy stuff, Columbia Business School, Desi Back to Desh, Desi Startup, entrepreneurs  One Comment

Memories, Cookaracha Guides or Venture number two…

Much before Reboot and the Blue Screen of Death, before the Alchemy discussion on our family dinner table and the wild dreamy bet that turned out to be Avicena, before blogging and before DesiBackToDesh, in a land far far away (then marked as Geocities in Jedi lore) there was once a venture named Cookaracha Guides. [...]

February 5, 2010  Tags: , , , , , , , ,   Posted in: Blue Screen, Columbia Business School, Desi Back to Desh, Desi Startup, Failure, Personal shit, Writing, entrepreneurs, new ventures, small business  2 Comments

Talent ,Technology, Management

Ages ago for an upcoming PASHA career expo I did a piece on hiring. A few months earlier I had done a presentation on knowledge workers at Zayed University Campus in Abu Dhabi. Today at the Nutshell forum I used ideas from both pieces to do a different take on talent management within the technology [...]

January 23, 2010  Tags: , , ,   Posted in: Desi Back to Desh, Desi Startup, I can't hack it, Karachi, PASHA, Pakistan, Startup, Startup Insiders, entrepreneurs, new ventures, small business  2 Comments

Dreamers in Dubai

Kumar, the soft spoken driver from Kerala, has been picking me up from home and dropping me back for the last seven days. On Wednesday night he finally asked if I was working the hours I was working by choice. Starting the day at 8 am and landing on Villa 16, Cluster 35 at 11pm [...]

December 12, 2009  Tags: , , , , , ,   Posted in: Alchemy stuff, Desi Back to Desh, Desi Startup, Education, Failure, Startup, entrepreneurs, small business  No Comments

The Reboot presentation at TIECON, Karachi – Revisited

The TIECON 2009, Karachi, 4th November 2009, Reboot presentation was the first time I was able to shrink the story in under 20 minutes. Spent three days putting the presentation together but it will be a while before I am able to get to an editor that will run the presentation and the video coverage [...]

November 27, 2009  Tags: , , , , , , ,   Posted in: Columbia Business School, Desi Back to Desh, Desi Startup, Education, Failure, Pakistan, Startup, TIE, computer science, entrepreneurs, new ventures, small business  No Comments

Telecompk on Reboot

Babar Bhatti covers Reboot on the Telecompk blog.

November 24, 2009  Tags: ,   Posted in: Blue Screen, Columbia Business School, Desi Back to Desh, Desi Startup, Failure, PASHA, Pakistan, Startup, Writing, entrepreneurs, new ventures, small business  No Comments

MIT CEF BAP 2009 – Finals (unofficial, unsanctioned, undercover coverage)

I have been spoilt rotten. After blogging about the PASHA SI session as well as the Tech Crunch Awards live, I expect events to be blogged about instantenously. My pictures, my videos, my time. Which is why when I decided to gate crash the MIT CEF BAP party, I brought my own camera. Though by [...]

November 14, 2009  Tags: , , ,   Posted in: Alchemy stuff, Desi Back to Desh, Desi Startup, Karachi, Ken Morse, MIT BAP, entrepreneurs  3 Comments

The many faces of Alchemy

I did this slide deck a year and a handful of months ago. We were riding high and the cycle had hit but hadn’t really hit us. When I started working on the deck the objective was to showcase all the interesting things we had done together as a team. It still bring backs great [...]

November 7, 2009  Tags: , , , ,   Posted in: Alchemy stuff, Columbia Business School, Desi Back to Desh, Desi Startup, Karachi, Startup, entrepreneurs  No Comments

Adil Moosajee on Failure

There is something that Adil said during our Q&A session about failure that is still resonating with me. The question dealt with retaining a positive outlook after failing and Adil jumped in with a great analogy. “Have you ever cooked a new dish?”, he asked the audience. “Yes”, they said. “There must have been instances [...]

November 6, 2009  Tags: , ,   Posted in: Desi Back to Desh, Desi Startup, Failure, Pakistan, TIE, entrepreneurs  8 Comments

Reboot presentation @ TIECON

Here is the slide share version of the Reboot presentation I made yesterday at the TIECON 2009 event in Karachi. Had a lot of fun putting this together. Alchemy Reboot @ TIE CON Karachi View more presentations from jafcbs.

November 5, 2009  Tags: , , ,   Posted in: Blue Screen, Columbia Business School, Desi Back to Desh, Desi Startup, Failure, Karachi, Pakistan, Startup, TIE, entrepreneurs  3 Comments

Heal Thyself or TIECON 2009, Karachi

The best of friends are the conspring kind. When Sabeen and Jehan conspired together to get me to speak at TIECON 2009 in Karachi, the original plan was to do my presentation, stay for the post presentation Q&A and then head out. I even parked in Sheraton’s outdoor parking to ensure that I wouldn’t have [...]

November 5, 2009  Tags: ,   Posted in: Desi Back to Desh, Desi Startup, Failure, Karachi, PASHA, Pakistan, Startup, TIE, entrepreneurs  7 Comments

Steve Jobs in Karachi or why I feel old or welcome to the future

Yesterday for the first time in many years I actually felt old and irrelevant. As part of the pre-PASHA Award event we took a sneak peak at the 10 odd companies that were competing at the PASHA TECH CRUNCH GONG show on 14th October. Two of participants were very good. The first pitched their idea [...]

October 14, 2009  Tags: , , , ,   Posted in: Desi Back to Desh, Desi Startup, Karachi, PASHA, PASHA ICT Awards, Pakistan, Startup Insiders, entrepreneurs, small business  One Comment

Springfield/Vimble/Umair Khan Jadoon

How to break into social media when you are underpaid, under appreciated over worked blogger. The return of Lassi as a key presentation theme

October 14, 2009  Tags: , , ,   Posted in: Desi Back to Desh, Desi Startup, Failure, PASHA, PASHA ICT Awards, Pakistan, entrepreneurs  No Comments