Here is my well thumbed copy of Reboot (the book) on my startup bookshelf along with other well thumbed titles. And for those of my friends who have difficulty reading anything other than IBM manuals on Strategy in Bulgaria and Dubai (yes that means you Adnan), this edition also has lots of pretty pictures, at…
Category: Startup
My crazy ride to see my word in print
For more than a decade of my life I was a professional student (which means that I worked, took exams on the side for a professional designation and waited for a very long time to add three letters against my name). A chapter that started in the monsoons of ’89 in Bombay finally closed itself…
An abridged history of the technology industry in Pakistan, three
When the time came for us to graduate things had started to get exciting. GUI tools were getting more impressive. Borland was getting the whacking of a life time at the hands of Microsoft in everything other than development environments and was returning the favor in IDE’s (Integrated Development Environments). The era of Word Star…
Stop press
2nd Edition of the blue screen of death has now gone to the press. Expected release date, somewhere in the next 8 weeks. You are looking at the million dollars, 4 color, fully automated Mitsubishi printing work horse in Singapore that will be responsible for bringing this fine piece of scholarship out in the form…
Myths about Pakistan – a rant, or a middle class rejoinder – one
The inspiration for this post came from the responses to tech Lahore Post Modern Pakistan post. Not the post but the cynics who turned out in large numbers to remind us how bad things are today and how much worse they have become over the years. I am obviously not as educated or as well…
Funding for dummies…four
And finally no financing deal ever goes through without relationships and credibility. Relationships open the door and get you time; credibility gets you to the term sheet. The sooner you build up your stock of these two elements the faster you can get to capital – debt or equity.
Funding for dummies…three
We met Wilson Tan on a trade trip across China. In just over a week, thirty technology companies from the Asia Pacific region covered 3 cities and one hundred Chinese partners, trying to understand the opportunity that was China. Wilson was the President of the organizing body, (the outgoing President of Mercury interactive and on…
Funding for dummies…two
It’s not that money is not available. Or that you can’t raise it. Or that it’s a fairytale that come true for only a select few. Truth is a lot less absolute; there is no black and white, only shades of grey. Let’s take a look at how and why a 37 year old, father…
Funding for dummies…one
You dream, you write, you pitch. If you put your heart in it and have an idea with merit you collect, build, sell, retire and live happily ever after. You never have to ask, borrow or steal another dime since the millions of dollars you have put aside as a result of your efforts are…
Things to do in a down market when you are not dead…
We were lucky that the downturn hit us early. In July 2008 we lost two of our largest clients; within a week of each other and on a week’s notice… It made for interesting internal conversations and a scramble to conserve cash. We were luckier still that between attrition (top heavy), expense management (read: extended…