I am not a troublemaker – seriously I am not! However, there are certain things that one has to take a stand on, especially when they are likely to affect not only businesses but also each and every individual who uses an electronic device – whether it be a computer, a mobile phone or a digital camera. I am speaking of the “Prevention of Electronic Crime Ordinance 2009 (PECO 2009)”.

Yes I know we raised a hue and cry over it in 2007 when it was first promulgated by the then President Parvez Musharraf. There was a lot of advocacy done using Youtube, television channels, newspapers and magazines, blogs and meetups. A few minor changes were made to appease us. Then the Ordinance lapsed.

A few months ago the current government reactivated the Ordinance. We raised our voices again and there were assurances that the Ordinance would not be used to suppress freedom of speech or expression.

Now we hear that the Ordinance has been sent to the floor of the National Assembly and there is every possibility of it becoming law. So you can imagine why P@SHA, ISPAK, civil society and business organizations as well as legal experts have joined hands to ask that the Ordinance be repealed and focus group sessions started to determine what kind of Cyber Crime Act is needed for the benefit of the country and its people.

P@SHA organized a Press Conference a few days ago. Here is a video of that conference. Barrister Zahid Jamil who has been a part of this advocacy since its early days, Sabeen Mahmud of T2F (representing civil society) and Nadeem Farooqui GM Legal of Cybernet (representing ISPAK) were present at the Press Conference.

Attached is a video of the conference which is mainly in Urdu.

Links to presentations and videos of the advocacy campaign that started in 2007 will be put up this afternoon. If you have any links of clippings or videos, please send them to us so they can all be available in one place.

The good news is that PM Yousuf Raza Geelani expressed reservations regarding the Ordinance in Parliament a couple of days ago. He has said that it will be sent back to the Committee for assessment and for public feedback. That is a very important first step.

If you are a participant in the MITEFP Business Acceleration Plan Competition on November 13, or are heading for the Asia Pacific ICT Awards (APICTA) in Australia from Dec 14 – 18, or are you participating in any other competition where you are expected to present your company or your product to a panel of judges, then these tips from Jawwad Ahmed Farid will be extremely helpful.

Jawwad Farid’s Presentation Cheat Sheet Part 1

Jawwad Farid’s Presentation Cheat Sheet Part 2

Jawwad Farid’s Presentation Cheat Sheet Part 3

Jawwad has been a judge for several years at both the P@SHA ICT Awards and the Asia Pacific ICT Awards (APICTA) so these ‘cheat sheets’ are a combination of the experience he has had during the past 5 years. If you pay attention to his suggestions, it may help you give it your best shot. Good luck!

I promised some of your young aspiring entrepreneurs that I would tape some of the proceedings at TiEcon 2009. So here are a couple of videos. The official ones will be put up by TiE at some stage. But in the meantime, here are the ones I took with my flip.

Jawwad Ahmed Farid talks about Rebooting at TiEcon 2009

Dr. Umar Saif tells his story at TiEcon 2009

The final speaker for the evening was Asad Umar, CEO of Engro Chemicals. He decided to switch the delivery of his presentation. He said he would speak for 10 minutes and leave 20 minutes for Q&A.

He highlighted a few points in his talk:

1. The conventional thought that you should first join a large corporate, get some experience and then start your own business, was a myth. He said there was no way that join a thousand people organisation would teach you how to run your own business.

2. When you are making some critical assumptions on which the success of your business is dependent, even if you have made one assumption incorrectly, the whole building can crumble and you are left with a failure staring you in the face. A strong combination of passion and intellect is needed. The mind needs to guide the heart. You must challenge any numbers, anything that looks too good to be true.

3. A lot of people go to bookshops to buy self-help books to learn how to be an entrepreneur, how to be a good leader, etc etc. No matter how good he is, reading Jack Welch will not inspire you to be an entrepreneur. If you want inspiration you have to refer to literature, history, war, sports, poetry, maybe religion. It is different for different people. However it will not come from management courses or business school.

Asad Umar ended his talk with one of his favourite verses which translates into “There are only two destinations for freedom-loving people (before George Bush made ‘freedom-loving’ a dirty word). Either the throne or the gallows.” That’s the spirit with which you have to have to approach entrepreneurship. No half measures will work. Keep your feet on the ground and keep reaching for the stars, he said.

What an end to a brilliant day! Way to go Asad Umar. Inspiring indeed.

Dr Umar Saif, who prefers to be called a Researcher, but is better known to us as a serial entrepreneur and mentor of young companies, was in what he termed the graveyard shift. Well the hall of people were certainly not behaving as if they were part of such a shift and Umar wasn’t either.

He knows how to work a room that’s for sure. Umar told his story and shared experiences that kept everyone engaged.

He spoke about how he got to Cambridge and then to MIT and why he decided to move back to Pakistan to work here. He thought he could make a difference. He believed that in some small way he could bring about change. Once that was clear in his mind, he just had to come back. And he certainly has brought about change in the lives of many young people who look up to him as a mentor, as a teacher, as a co-conspirator and as a guide. Four Lahore-based startups later he is still going strong and wants to help set up many more in the Saif Center for Innovation that he has set up in Lahore.

Umar spoke about raising capital and how it is very important to recognize when to go for angel funding and when to look for VC funding. Many questions followed and he answered each of them as fully as possible  but finally he handed over to his colleague Adil Saleem the CTO of SeenReport, a company that Umar Saif helped to incubate.

Adil spoke about why he gave up a well-paid job to enter the crazy world of a startup and what that experience has been like so far. He also talked about when they knew that Seenreport would really take off – during the Lawyer’s movement when people put so many photos and videos and reports of protests and the marches that were taking place. Perhaps the timing was just right and the SeenReport team has not looked back since. The content on their site has been picked up by foreign news sites and they have signed up a few corporate customers. They have also raised VC funding and there is no way to go but forward. Good luck guys!

Sudhir Syal journeyed to the NASSCOM Product Conclave in Bangalore to corner Guy Kawasaki and, along with a group of entrepreneurs, asked him some burning questions about startups, venture funding, bootstrapping, meeting women and everything in between. I wish the video had been longer and the interview more in-depth but hey it gives us a glimpse of how the man thinks and responds. One day we will have him here in Pakistan and I promise you he will be amazed at the talent that exists here.

I loved the quick-fire round where Guy said he preferred Twitter to Facebook, Apple to Microsoft and Google to Yahoo. And my heart broke for the person who was crazy enough to give Guy an iPod as a gift with his pitch on it. Neither did Guy look at the pitch, nor did he use the iPod. He gave it to his son. As one of the guys said to him at the interview, Guy Kawasaki has made being a technology evangelist sexy.

The teabreak gave an opportunity for delegates to network with the speakers and organizers. By now there were 330 delegates. The vacant chairs had been placed on one side of the room so that the late entrants would not disrupt the proceedings. That worked well too.

Jawwad and I met Arbab, a young software engineer from Pindi who had flown in for the event. He told us about an exciting product that he and his friends have developed. It is being fine-tuned right now but is ready to fly. Will do a review on it as soon as it is up and running he is ready to talk openly about the product in depth together with its features. Real innovative work. It had my adrenalin pumping I can tell you.

The next speaker was Batool Hassan who is Business Development Manager at Acumen Fund. She talked about the kind of grassroot initiatives that are being funded by Acumen Fund and about the need for more entrepreneurs to look at the social sector as a business option. She explained that a social enterprise was not a charity. It had to be run on the same principles as any other businesss. It had to generate revenue to be self-sustaining and to be able to pump profits back into further ongoing activity. A great speaker who cleared the myth regarding social entrepreneurship by putting it in clear, concise and simple terms.

Things heated up before lunch when the new generation of entrepreneurs who use social networks and new, emerging techniques for generating business and getting customer feedback took on the big boys from the world of multinationals. Adil Moosajee of Ego and Shahjehan Chaudhry of Home Express were on one side of the debate whereas representatives from Reckitt Benkiser and Unilever were on the other side. The topic that was under discussion was: Conventional wisdom is becoming increasingly irrelevant. In the new, networked, interruption economy, is it necessary to follow traditional wisdom to create something awesome, disruptive, and world changing?

Personally I thought Adil and Sha put on a very convincing case for the motion but after a very intense debate ably refereed (hehe) by Hasan Rizwan, the audience voted in favour of Conventional wisdom. I guess there is a lot of unconditioning to be done and a lot of young minds to corrupt before we can expect a different kind of result. We are up for it, aren’t we Adil, Sha, Jawwad, Sabeen, anyone???

This was followed by lunch which in iteself was a delight. A menu chosen to suit many diverse requirements included various types of pastas, roast beef with an awesome gravy, roast chicken in mushroom sauce, a tikka type of concoction and, to be honest, I didn’t get to the other stuff because already I had people commenting on the amount of food I had on my plate. Dessert included apple pie with a vanilla sauce and ice-cream crunch.

The networking that ensued over lunch was also part of the deal and you could see people trying to sell concepts, create linkages and overall get to know each other.

To ensure that too much food didn’t put people to sleep, next came the Taal Karisma story followed by a musical performance. Talented young people creating music with a mix of instruments that is not conventional. Appreciation all round as some youngsters had actually had actually moved to the floor to be closer to the stage and the performance.

During lunch the room had been arranged to accommodate a dozen breakout sessions which included:

Bootstrapping with Sabeen Mahmud, Director, PeaceNiche
Branding with Adil Moosajee, Owner, Ego
Raising Capital with Ali Ansari, CEO, Dewan Drilling
Social Media with Rabia Garib, Editor, CIO Magazine
Pitching with Jehan Ara, President, PASHA & co-conspirator Jawwad A. Farid, Author, Reboot
Building Teams with Shireen Naqvi, Director, School of Leadership
Social Entrepreneurship with Haamid Jaffer, Director, Murshid Hospital
Technology with Ahmed Allauddin, CEO, Millenium Software
Public Relations with Salaina Haroon, Marketing Director, CIO Pakistan
Company Culture with Yusuf Jan, EVP, MIXIT Inc.
Creating an A-List team, Humaira Ahmad, Senior Consultant, Engage HR

All the sessions were interesting and many people whinged about not being able to attend more than one. Nonetheless, it was fun. We enjoyed running our pitching session. Somewhere in between, Imtiaz Noor joined Jawwad and me and added value to the discussions. We are evil so after providing some guidelines and providing examples, we ran it on a workshop style and had some of the kids pitch to us. This way we were able to provide them with feedback on the do’s and don’ts and how to make their pitches more effective. I think the kids enjoyed it as much as we did. The young man who made the best pitch got a copy of Reboot.

Looking around one could see that there was immense activity in each part of the room as the facilitators interacted with their groups. I heard balloons being burst and a lot of applause and cheers from different corners of the hall. Suffice to say fun was had by all and a lot of learning took place.

Here’s Jawwad Ahmed Farid signing copies of his book at TiEcon 2009 yesterday at the Sheraton Hotel in Karachi:

Really  couldn’t resist taking this photo of Ali Ansari (formerly heading TMT Ventures) and Owais Zaidi (formerly the CEO of 2BTechnologies which was one of the first companies funded by TMT) at TiEcon 2009 yesterday. Their conversation would certainly have been an interesting one to eavesdrop on if I had been the eavesdropping kind.;-)

First there were the stories from the trenches:

Adil Moosajee talked about the challenges and the excitement of setting up Ego. He was fun, he was honest and he shared the successes as well as the challenges. I doubt there was anyone in the room who didn’t like the guy who said that one of the reasons he was able to put in 24 hour days was because he had a cooperative wife who in their 8 years of marriage had only spent two years with him. Before you let your imagination carry you away, his wife Munira is overseas studying medicine.

The next story was that of Student Biryani – a brand most Karachiites know. Saleem Shahzad, the youngest son of the founder of Student Biryani Haji Muhammad Ali, related the story of how his father migrated to Karachi from UP India in the thirties, how we worked in restaurants from the age of 12 – cleaning, washing, waiting on tables before he took the entrepreneurial route. From what started as a modest little restaurant, emerged a chain of restaurants across the country with several franchises, and a plan to now take it outside the border of Pakistan into the Middle East, the US and the UK.

Sameera Raja of Canvas Gallery was next. Her story was so inspiring. She had been widowed when still in her twenties, was a single mother, struggled with cancer and yet was able to start and grow a business due to her sheer determination and her ability to manage time and schedules. If you ask her today, she will tell you what exhibitions are scheduled for December 2010. The woman is truly amazing and it was a pleasure listening to how she got to where she is. Adversity hasn’t managed to demotivate her or keep her from  pursuing her dream and her passion. Hard work and an interest in art have been responsible for the success she has achieved.

Last, but certainly not least, was our own Jawwad Ahmed Farid, author of Reboot and CEO of Alchemy Technologies. He looked slightly overdressed in his jeans and hawaiian shirt when compared with Adil’s gear.

Jawwad’s presentation was impressive and timed to the second. His story is interesting but his presentation style made it even more so. He had chosen some really great photographs and had obviously rehearsed many times to carry it off without a hitch. I was witness to one dry run the evening before when I dropped by his office on the way home.

The youngsters couldn’t get enough of him. He was surrounded during the teabreak and I caught him ensconed with many a youngster at several times during the day. Isn’t it wonderful when seasoned entrepreneurs make themselves available to young people so that they can pick their brains. Way to go Jawwad. I hope you’ll always be this accessible. Do go and read Jawwad’s post on his TiEcon 2009 experience.

I never thought a non-P@SHA event would energize me as much as TiEcon 2009 did yesterday (and no it is not because I am on the TiE Karachi Governing Council). Sabeen Mahmud, the President of the TiE Karachi Chapter, and I weren’t really too hyped up about the event because there were too many other things that were preying on our minds – topmost being the fact that Zak is in hospital after a severe heart attack followed by a 4-hour bypass. When a friend who means so much is ill, everything else takes a back seat.

However, it was a responsibility that we had taken on and there was no way that we were going to let down so many people who had worked hard to put the event together and the many more who had registered to be there. So we dragged ourselves to the Sheraton Hotel in Karachi yesterday. We were there at 8 a.m. although the event was not supposed to start until 9 a.m.

The Torque team were taking care of everything so there wasn’t really much for us to do at that stage. As Sabeen said, things were probably under control and if they weren’t, it was really too late to worry about it. So we went downstairs to the coffee shop to get our caffeine ‘fix’. We were soon joined by Adil Moosajee in his Mr. Happy t-shirt, shorts and flip flops. He was one of the speakers for the day. Adil is a nice sort and easy and fun to hang out with. So we chilled, talked about his presentation which he was only just putting together .

The event started at 9.15 am. By this time there were already 200 attendees with more slowly trickling in. The stage was in the centre with several tiers of seats all around – a formula that had worked the previous year and so why knock it?

The proceedings started with Sabeen giving a little introduction about TiE and the program for the day. And then we were on!

Whereas I am a strong proponent of businesses purchasing whatever they consider best for their needs, it confuses me when local financial institutions purchase software that is much more expensive simply because it has the “foreign” tag – especially when several local tried-and-tested solutions are available.

This website of JS Global irritates the hell out of me and, as a blogger, I don’t have to wait for a mainstream newspaper or television station to pick up this story and talk about it. JS Global proudly advertise:

Aren’t they aware that in this city, on Tariq Road in Karachi, there is a company with 100 bright talented individuals who have written every line of code for a FIX engine, FIX platform, Order Routing and Management System, etc.

And are they not aware that this solution is running not only on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, the Philadelphia and Chicago Stock Exchanges and many other stock exchanges in the US, but also in 200 brokerage houses in the US of A.

If this locally made solution is good enough for the big boys in the US, why do businesses in Pakistan have to bother to look outside to purchase software that is not only more expensive but would require support from a distance should a problem arise?

Sure, it is their prerogative to buy what they choose to but I really fail to understand the logic behind these kind of business decisions, and I had to vent to get it out of my system.

Sometimes all it takes to bring a smile to your face is a sight like this – a little boy totally focused on driving his little toy car. When he saw me, he said “Aunty aap nay meri gari daykhi? (Aunty have you seen my car?) I just had to capture the moment and share it.

Dr. Umar Saif is Associate Professor at LUMS and is a serial entrepreneur and Researcher. He is behind initiatives like:

Chopaal
SeeNReport
Findalong.com

I caught up with him to talk about the Saif Center for Innovation that he has set up in Lahore, what kind of people and companies he is looking to attract to the center and his overall views regarding startups in Pakistan.

Umar has great faith in the talent of the youth of this country and he has been working with some of the brightest young people on the initiatives he has co-founded and mentored.

Umar is one of the key speakers at the TieCon event in Karachi on November 4. He will be talking about Incubating Ideas and Pitching to VCs – something that he himself has personally done successfully.

This is just a teaser to wet your appetite for the conference on the 4th of November. This is what Umar had to say about startups and innovation in Pakistan:

Yusuf Jan is the Founder of Mixit Technologies and the newly elected Chairman of P@SHA.

Mixit is a Wall Street based company with its nerve center in Karachi. Every single line of code is written by the young developers based in the Karachi development office. It has developed a culture of growth and innovation where young people have created intellectual property that is being licensed by stock exchanges and hundreds of brokerage houses in the US.

To understand a little bit about the culture of the organization and the kind of people who work there, I had a chat with Yusuf Jan.

Yusuf is one of the panelists at the Birds of a Feather session at TiEcon 2009. Do catch up with him there.