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…
Tag: small business
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…
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…
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…
Startup Guide: The startup crash course in 7 posts or less
For the last four weeks I had been thinking about putting together a basic reading guide for mentees that would help them move forward and remove me as a bottleneck. A collection of short to the point posts that introduce them to a basic framework that many of us take for granted and most of…
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…
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…
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…
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…
The next generation of technology entrepreneurs…
In 1989 I was one of the fortunate few who found the then mostly unknown BCCI FAST ICS (now National University of Emerging and Computing Sciences), tucked away in a shady street between an Allied Bank branch and a commercial office complex. An unassuming collection of two thousand square yard bunglows, the foundation funded school…