How hard is it to get US VC funding for a Pakistani Shop?

A question from the ages then. US VC Funding for startups is already hard enough as it is, but how hard is it for a Pakistan-only company to be able to do that?

Intel has a VC fund for “Middle East and Central Asia” totaling $50MM that they have been investing over the past year. Even though Pakistan was included on this, most of this money went to India.

Clearly we are making innovative products in this country, but why the difficulty raising VC funds. Is it because a lot of us never try? Is it an image problem that makes the investors uncomfortable?

When it has worked for people such as Pixsense, what has been the general approach and formula? If there standard requirement seems to be a US Presence, then are there any US based Incubation Centers for Pakistani Companies that local entrepreneurs can connect to?

I want comments from some people from the industry.

I pose this question to the following people:

• I ask this to Mr. Monis Rehman, CEO Naseeb Networks / Rozee, who I believe has a VC funded venture based out of Silicon Valley (but now mostly in Lahore)
• I ask this to Mr. Jawwad Farid, CEO Alchemy Associates, who is successfully managing a bootstrapped local startup on the verge of expanding overseas.
• I ask this to Mr. Faizan Buzdar, CEO iScrybe, who are ramping up for launch of their innovative product Scrybe

Please give me your insights through the comments.

Wateen making a lot more revenue than expected

Wateen is a relatively small mysterious operator in PK that has thrown a lot of hype and promise in the market to build up its brand and attract top HR. When was the last time a company promised to make a national fibre network, telecom hotels, WiMax, FTTH, Quad-play and more?!

Despite that, the company is still non-existent in the consumer market and I was just beginning to wonder about how their massive monthly burn is being met. Well here is an interesting piece of unconfirmed news that answers the question.

Wateen is rumored to be making 4 times the revenue that their own people had forecasted, and have already met their targets from the current strategy. This hads made them to step back and broaden their business strategy to cover a greater number of areas for the year.

Where is all this revenue coming from? Mostly from backbone network access. From what I wrote back in September about Telecom hotels by Wateen, I had mentioned that Wateen could be the alternative trunk carrier for telecos that do not want the hassle of PTCL.

From what I hear, Diallog, ARY Calling Card and a large number of WLL operators are using the Wateen fibre backbone to channel voice.

I just hope that revenue streak doesn’t make Wateen want to stop its agressive rollout plan with the complacency that they are already doing well enough with business as it is. That is one of the major reasons PTCL has been unable to deliver telecommunication freedom despite having a fantastic platform to do that on.

Time for some serious coffee

Sometimes you’re charging ahead so fast you dont realize where you haven’t been. I just took a look and realized I haven’t written since Apple’s release of the iPhone.

I also realized that a lot of the coffee sessions haven’t been deep enough.

So fire up the kettle and lets get into some interesting posts…

Do you feel like living “like a king in Asia”?

Alright some advertisements can actually stump me in how ridiculous they are.

Case in point: a Mysterious (IP Address based) ad campaign by a super-secret web development company that is offering to let you live like a king in Asia!

Check it out: http://207.218.248.46/

I hope its not a PK IP. I will admit its a novel approach, but kindof embarrasing. What do you think?

Am I drooling…

(…about the Apple iPhone?)

So I made bold statements yesterday that the Apple iPhone is just as revolutionary as the computer was some 30 odd years ago, while most tech journalists gave it an objective look with pros and cons.

So yes, I am drooling for about 30-35% of that statement. The rest of it though, is grounded in some analysis.

So here is why I (still) think the iPhone is going to permanently dent the world.

1- This is the first revision of their product line. Considering the high cost and risk of the consumer electornics industry, first revisions always have limited features and poor designs. The aim is to improve it over time. Take a look at MS Zune and XBox, TVs, Apple II (PC), Nokia 3300 series, and even Apple’s own iPod. They were all ugly and awkward and have taken years to evolve into beautiful design.

The iPhone’s first revision puts Apple in front of most of the cellphone pack, and gives them a chance to channel that revision into even more amazing design features over time.

2- The cellphone industry is one of the toughest to enter into today. When Apple introduced the iPod it was actually easy because the only next best thing were CD Players (anyone remember those things?) But the cellphone industry has been rife with mature designs and extensive feature sets. Take a look at Moto Razr , LG Chocolate and Nokia N-series, which are all fairly impressive products — as the package goes.

For Apple to make such an impressive entry into a crowded mature market is certainly remarkable.

3- Apple iPhone represents all of my product design perspectives. Their entire UI is built almost precisely as I’ve been advocating phone UIs– pure user-first design, not technology-first. It is a good lesson in usability studies and ease-of-use.

4- I am not looking at iPhone as a product, I look at it as a platform. Think of all of the features of the iPhone as just a big technology demo (“Hey look at what we can do with these high-quality rendering — we can do a google maps with a richer UI than ajax”)…. this gives them an incredible base to build on top of. Specifically, they could create any wireless solution they could think of with the mix of widgets + EDGE + rich UI.

So, I expect not only consumer-side design to change, but I also expect the concept of software on phones to change permanently as the iPhone rolls out into mainstream consumer acceptance. This point then represents a time in history after which all the cellphone / software companies started doing things differently. It is a bend.

Did everyone forget about OSX Leapord?

I’ll admit that today’s Apple announcement was very revolutionary, but I was equally curious to see the release of OSX Leapord simultaneously with MS Vista. Apple had announced that they would be releasing that in Macworld 2007 — so what happened?

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The next killer technology is here.. and my world is bent

I was talkign to one of our people this morning that “every great product, or killer app, permanently bends the world of the customer. After looking at the product, that person can never go back to his previous state of status quo.“

Computers were that example. Look back in history on how the computer completely changed life on Earth, resulting in hundreds of millions of people buying them.

The internet was the other.

Today, we’re actually blessed to see the birth of a new technology that will pretty soon change the world.

Apple Inc. just announced the iPhone.

Because of being such a remarkable breakthrough, I would not be surprised if they see very similar trends in their sales as IBM did for PCs.

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Apple does the impossible again… can Pakistan?

What really fascinates me about Apple computers is their ability to consistently meet and surpass people’s expectations — for miles!

Think about this as a challenge — even before you ever announce a product, the entire world speculates that you’re making something. Your customers even come up wtih concept shots, guesses, speculations and ventures about what it is.

The hype curve goes to spectacular heights, because people are pretty much imagining the impossible.

And then you, the CEO of Apple, Inc, walk on stage, SURPASS those expectations, and get a standing ovation from those same people with impossibly high expectations of quality.

Unbelievable, and a moment that will probably go down in history, is MacWorld 2007 when Apple announces the iPhone, and completely changes the way people use their mobile phones.

I would not be surprised if EVERY SINGLE HUMAN BEING buys the iPhone. It is just beyond words of praise.

Check out the live keynote speech on www.engadget.com

What about Pakistan? Can we completely change the way people live (for the better)?

In a nutshell, NEVER. There is just one reason why too : We severely lack the belief to do that. The problem doesn’t lie with CEOs, its with the workforce.

You could hire engineers and try to sell them on a vision but they will doubt THEIR OWN SELVES, and then the company, and then the vision, and then the market.

You can hire marketing folk, but they will never really even care about promoting something new. They would be too wrapped up in the formalities of ‘business planning’ and ‘metric evalution’ and ‘Mr.blah’s theory of cognitive spaces..’ when all they need to think about it how to evangelize your vision.

We want to live in nicely wrapped cucoons that describe our comfort space. We want our social respect to be based on amiability and adaptability to the general mass, and changing the world requires the confidence to be leading examples of a certain vision, about moving away from the pack even if you are the only people doing it.

Can Pakistan change the world? Never. You can have visionary leaders and CEOs trying to, but they will never be able to setup a team to do that. All of the IT / engineering / marketing professionals lack the belief to try.

There, I said it.

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Squidoo still lives?! Interesting…

Linking to Seth Godin made me also look at the startup company he is a co-founder of — Squidoo, and it seems like it is still live despite all odds.

First, a little background for “us Web 0.1 Pakistanis”. Seth Godin is one of the leading Marketing Consultants and presenters in the world. His presentation style has great passion and simplicity. His marketing recommendations are following very closely by most of Silicon Valley.

Early in 2006 Seth announced he was putting all of his latest marketing theories to work in a company called Squidoo, and people took notice.

Despite the hype, however, they missed the hype curve , and got fairly poor reviews of the product.

About a month ago, the site had gone down as well, pretty much meaning the end of the idea.

Not so! Squidoo is live again and it seems to have a better interface for both the site and their lens

Q: Argh Osama you’ve had too much coffee — why should I care?

Well, I am only curious to see if the Squidoo model can work. I am curious because I am trying to study Network Effects in marketing.

The Consumer Hype Curve

Part of the challenge of marketers is to build hype among the customers for upcoming promotions.

What a lot of marketing people will not understand is that the customers build hype for themselves and you have very little control over it.

E.g. If Mobilink puts up a half-page ad in a newspaper that shows a film actor and says “On Jan 10, Mobilink will introduce a new ad on TV… see it” that is not going to help at all.

If GEO tv or DJuice spend three weeks paying for huge billboards with random hints such as “Aur” and “Save your thumbs…” that wont do much except confuse or annoy consumers.

Let’s keep the discussion of creating hype for another time. If you are curious about it you can read Seth Godin’s POV of it.

The questions is, what happens after you’ve created this hype? Click the link below for that discussion.