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 Trek: Pitching lessons

If possible always have multiple sales pitches for a meeting. A pitch could be for a product, a service, a referral or even information about the industry that isn’t widely available. For the US trip it was Alchemy Risk Manager, Outsourced research, two investment banking deal and selling Pakistan as an investment destination (product ideas [...]

April 30, 2010  Tags: , , , ,   Posted in: Alchemy stuff, Desi Startup, entrepreneurs  No Comments

Startup Guide: Darden Reboot Chat – transcript of the EVC, DSAS event

Thank you very much for showing up for my chat. My name is Jawwad Ahmed Farid and I am a failure. Before I became a member of Failure anonymous, I always wanted to be a winner. I wanted my own world record; see myself where you see Mr. Usain Bolt; ideally with a medal or [...]

April 26, 2010  Tags: , , , , , , , ,   Posted in: Alchemy stuff  5 Comments

Startup Mentor: Darden Reboot DSAS, EVC event

It takes a lot to fill up an empty room. Specially with smart people, who are paying good money to get a great education at a top ranked business school and have already had a roster of highly ranked speakers appear before them. But the Darden EVC and DSAS societies managed to do just that [...]

April 25, 2010  Tags: , , , , , , , ,   Posted in: Alchemy stuff  6 Comments

Startup Guide: CEO Club session at Columbia Business School

Thanks to Hasan, Carolyn, Ben and the CEO and SABA members for first arranging the session at Columbia Business at such short notice and then showing up in strenght at 8 am on a Monday morning. I was pleasantly surprised by the size and the enthusiasim of the audience. And as Hasan and Carolyn put [...]

April 20, 2010  Tags: , , , , , , , ,   Posted in: Alchemy stuff  One Comment

Mentoring assignment number three: Show up in strength at the startup insider session at T2F

If you are keen on meeting even more kick ass mentors, hear another round of uninspiring drivel from Jawwad Farid and Nauman Sheikh and corrupt even more young minds, bring at-least three friends to the SI session at T2F. Bonus points if all six of you manage to show up with 3 sidekicks each on [...]

April 13, 2010  Tags: , , , ,   Posted in: Alchemy stuff  No Comments

Startup Insiders: Back in Karachi: Business models that don’t work

Jehan is up-to no good again. As part of her desire to increase the number of non-conformist, flower bearing, independent, ultra cool apple product users, she wants as many young ones to work for themselves as possible (assuming that there is a connection, she thinks so). But rather than putting up unassailable success stories, this [...]

April 13, 2010  Tags: , , , ,   Posted in: Alchemy stuff  7 Comments

Mentoring fellow dreamers – a start up game plan for final year students

It is always flattering when people come to you for mentoring advice knowing that you are a total and complete failure. CIO Pakistan did that this Saturday afternoon when they brought 7 impressionable young men with them. Just to make it interesting and worthwhile I had Nauman Shaikh from Credit Chex also over for a [...]

April 10, 2010  Tags: , , , ,   Posted in: Alchemy stuff  4 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

Finding the voice of the customer

Startup Insights – Finding the voice of the customer I have been teaching entrepreneurship as a practitioner for 8 years and the format that I follow is very simple. Start with a group of students willing to express their ideas in less than one hundred words. Mix in between 18 to 36 hours of instruction. [...]

March 28, 2010  Tags: , , , , , ,   Posted in: Desi Startup, MIT BAP, PASHA ICT Awards, Sales guys, Startup, Startup Insiders, TIE, entrepreneurs, new ventures, small business  7 Comments

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

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

The second best job in the world, part two…

To the three batches (Division A, Division B, and EMBA Batch 13), who made me feel like a rock star two Thursdays in a row. Thank you. Keep them pictures coming J

December 20, 2009  Tags: , , , , , , , ,   Posted in: Columbia Business School, Education, Failure, Startup, Startup Insiders, Training, entrepreneurs, new ventures, 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

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 Crescent [...]

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