Reboot goes on sale online, gets featured at CIO, the Standard, Network World or the Ides of March

What a week it has been.

Last night was the first night in 7 days that I slept for 7 hours. My average naptime for the week was an astonishing 4 hours, excluding the time I spent power napping waiting for the red traffic light to change to green, on hold waiting for customers to [...]

March 13, 2010  Tags: , , , , , , , , ,   Posted in: Blue Screen, Columbia Business School, Desi Startup, Education, Failure, Pressing words, Startup, Startup Insiders, entrepreneurs, new ventures, small business  No Comments

Dubai Tech Nights – 9th February 2010

It ended up being an evening full of surprises.

When Adnan first checked with me about my availability on the 9th for Dubai Tech Nights I thought we were talking about a small gathering. So when I walked in at 5:45pm after following some really colorful directions to Room 212 at the RIT campus at [...]

February 10, 2010  Tags: , , , , ,   Posted in: Alchemy stuff, Startup, Startup Insiders, TIE, Training, new ventures, small business  No 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 [...]

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 [...]

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

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 [...]

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

Robert Ferrigno, Reboot and me…

My favorite hangout is a large format bookstore. Think anywhere in the world, think library stacks, think of Borders, think of me.

Three years ago on a business trip to Malaysia, a new fiction release caught my eye. It had an interesting cover, sort of a patchwork of the US flag and the Islamic [...]

October 27, 2009  Tags: , , , , , ,   Posted in: Alchemy stuff  No Comments

Glenn Hubbard, Reboot and me

I was a brash and ambitious desi with a business plan at Columbia. Glenn was part of the entrepreneurial faculty at the school. We met and exchanged notes on the sidelines of Amar Bhide’s chat about his upcoming book, “The origin and evolution of new businesses”. A few months later when I lost [...]

October 27, 2009  Tags: , , , , , ,   Posted in: Alchemy stuff  No Comments

Jehan and the TieCon Speaker’s interview series

Jehan goes on the road with her flip to capture the TieCon speakers before they put on their show in Karachi on 4th November.

Jawwad Ahmed Farid talks about his Entrepreneurial experience from Jehan Ara on Vimeo.

October 25, 2009  Tags: , , ,   Posted in: Alchemy stuff  One Comment

A review, a review, my kingdom for a review

Finally, courtesy of Salman Latif at the Book Review blog, a review of Reboot, Second edition.

‘Reboot – in search for the land of opportunity’ is not the sort of book you usually find on stores. Take a quick walk down the shelve-lanes of bookstores and you’d find hundreds of self-help books with success stories [...]

September 27, 2009  Tags: , , ,   Posted in: Blue Screen, Columbia Business School, Failure, Writing, entrepreneurs, new ventures, small business  One Comment

Reboot now available on Readers Club, Karachi

For those of you who were waiting to get a copy from your local friendly library, here is the link to the book on the Readers Club site in Karachi. The book is in stock now.

September 25, 2009  Tags: , , ,   Posted in: Blue Screen, Columbia Business School, Desi Back to Desh, Desi Startup, Writing, entrepreneurs  No Comments

Product placements

Imran Zia does a totally ingenious product placement for both Reboot and Tell My Story on the TMS Blog. Take the red pill and then press the red button to see the slideshow. The book has started popping up in all sort of interesting locations.

September 25, 2009  Tags: , ,   Posted in: Desi Startup, PASHA, PASHA ICT Awards, entrepreneurs  No Comments

The Society of Actuaries interview

Sam Philips interview for the Actuary was the first published review received by BSOD/Reboot. Though a little dated, it is still relevant. Sam also talks about the book in a sidebar

September 19, 2009  Tags: , , , , ,   Posted in: Blue Screen, Desi Back to Desh, Desi Startup, Education, Failure, entrepreneurs  No Comments

The original Blue Screen of Death Launch post

A walk down memory lane, old backup drives and fossilized emails produced this mail shot from early 2006. How’s that for perspective?

At the business school orientation for new arrivals, a fellow student asked me why I was at Columbia. My response drew a look of confusion – “I always wanted to write a [...]

September 19, 2009  Tags: , , , , , , , ,   Posted in: Alchemy stuff  No Comments