Pakistan Startup Ecosystem

What’s wrong with the Pakistani startup ecosystem !

Normally I would avoid reacting in public to the negative criticism faced by the National Incubation Center, but recent posts have encouraged me to respond in an attempt to share the “other side of the story”. As the saying goes “every coin has two sides” so please allow me to present an alternate view where I not only try to validate the great work being done, but also invite all the naysayers to share their valuable suggestions on how we can genuinely improve the Pakistani startup ecosystem to support our local entrepreneurs.

For those of you who may not have been exposed to the respective articles and posts, I will summarise for your convenience. The posts started with stating that tax-payers’ money was being wasted by incompetent and inexperienced leadership for self-gain. Some naysayers went on to complain that the NICs are running without any strategy or criteria delivering only photo shoot opportunities and cosmetic results, while others complained about western incubation programmes and international best practices being irrelevant in the local Pakistani context. These blogs and posts include claims of fictitious investors, dodgy mentors and an overall lack of support from the key stakeholders and custodians of the Pakistani startup ecosystem. A few naysayers highlight the lack of any achievements and ask where are the unicorns of Pakistan. Lastly, NICs have even been compared to expensive co-working spaces, with inappropriate leadership comprising of “corporate managers” by one so-called startup insider.

The Silver Lining

Before we brush all the naysayers totally aside, maybe there is a silver lining to the dark clouds gathering around the Pakistani startup ecosystem. If these attacks make us review and critically look at the people involved in the startup ecosystem in an attempt to improve ourselves, then maybe some good will come out of the somewhat bad press we have experienced recently. While it could well be a personality trait or simply a negative mindset of seeing the glass as half empty or wanting to only see it as completely full of everything that’s bad. On my part, for every bad story we hear about local startups, I can share ten great stories that have also happened at the various NICs across Pakistan, but let’s take a positive approach and discuss further the charges framed at the incubators of Pakistan. To help bring the point home I have taken the liberty to underline and share web links to reference material and data sources, which I would encourage the reader to click for a more detailed reading.

I would like to start by acknowledging that constructive criticism should not only be welcomed, but is essential for the continuous progress, development and improvements within the NIC program. I will also admit that there is truth in some of the claims (albeit extremely exaggerated) and it is our collective responsibility to find the black sheep of our community and ensure they are exposed for who they really are. This will be to not only clear the majority of the good people working to support the ecosystem, but more importantly to protect our young founders from any potential abuse from such predators.

I have also noticed that there are some people who have tried to create or leverage their relationships with the NIC for self-projection and potentially inappropriate equity investments. On our part, we have parted ways with such persons, as we did not agree with them and subsequently you will not see them at the NIC, as they have fully understood that they are not welcome.

History: The Early Days of Pakistani Startup Ecosystem

But Do We Really Need Incubators?

Having said that some people are of the view that we don’t even need incubators. (BTW In case you’re wondering why I haven’t mentioned plan 9 in the above list, please stay tuned). Many naysayers are of the view that incubators do not add any value and go on to quote many famous examples of great companies such as Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Walt Disney, Google, NIKE, Virgin, Harley Davidson, all of whom have not gone through any incubation center. All of these great companies started in a garage or in the case of Facebook and Ali Baba in someone’s bedroom.

Well, having been there and done that! I can safely say that yes it can be done without an incubator, yes startups don’t always need an incubator to survive, just as most new born babies never go into the hospital incubator. However, what about a premature baby or ones with some weakness? For them, an incubator could be the difference between life and death. Similarly, for a new startup idea, chances are they do not have all the knowledge, resources and experiences required to develop into a successful business at this early idea stage.

The time required to develop and market the right product to the right customer through the right channel at the right price will cost a lot of money, time and resources. These resources are often scarce among young startup companies and this is where the incubators add value through a variety of interventions including mentoring by experienced entrepreneurs and domain experts. By going through the incubation curriculum such as process of product development utilising the latest human centric design techniques taught at the NIC, many founders often pivot their ideas and products (saving potential losses in time and resources). The lessons learnt at the NiC supports them to test market through idea validation processes ultimately resulting in better go-to-market strategies also developed in collaboration with experienced industry leaders available at the NIC.

This argument can be further expanded to the education system as a whole. We can also argue that the education system has failed us and therefore we should shut down all our schools and, in any case, if we can YouTube and Google everything then why have schools, colleges and universities?

What’s Wrong with Corporate’s Promoting Incubators?

On a side note, I would like to share a personal story where during the early days of the NIC, I noticed a wheel chair bound lady attempting to reach our session hall located on the first floor. As she struggled up step by step, I had two feelings simultaneously — one of inspiration from the visitor, as she managed to surmount the formidable stairway and the second of shame for not thinking about our differently-abled community and how we should have catered to their special needs. Realising my mistake, I went to our partner Jazz and requested additional (non-governmental) funds to install a lift for special people. I am proud to say that the Jazz management agreed to spend an additional five million rupees from their own pocket just to meet this requirement and we now regularly host sessions where participants include over one dozen wheel chair bound entrepreneurs at a time (thank you Jazz).

It’s OK to Fail

The startup culture promotes experiential learning through practical experiences and one of the first lessons taught is that “it’s ok to fail”. In fact, if we learn to improve from our failures, then perhaps it’s good to fail. With this ethos, we learn to try new things, make a few mistakes, improve the idea or execution and ultimately improve to the next level. Therefore, at the NiC, we advocate a culture of “fail fast, fail often and fail forward”. I am the first one to admit that we probably made mistakes along the way while building Pakistan’s first NIC, but I also believe that this was the only way, given the limited knowledge and experiences available within Pakistan at that time. In my previous corporate roles and private businesses, this was an essential part and a “cost of doing business”.

Where are the NICs getting their Funding from?

The Journey of Making Pakistan’s First NIC

My own personal journey helping to setup and manage Pakistan’s first NIC meant having to jump through many hoops such as why do we need to do this, what’s in it for us, how can you work with the government etc. No body except our co-founder Zouhair originally believed in the vision and helped to deliver on the mission which was to create a platform to connect and empower young technology founders with industry experienced domain experts to promote a startup culture across Pakistan. Three years on and while we may be far from perfect, we have not only positively impacted the startup ecosystem by creating a world class incubation center and are acting as a benchmark for other NICs but also as a catalyst to create more high quality programmes which have been acknowledged not only by prestigious organisations like the World Bank, UNDP, TiE, OPEN and numerous embassies in Pakistan, but also by leading universities, incubation centers and market leaders from across the world including Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft, IBM and more.

The NIC is a melting pot of people with diversified backgrounds coming together from a variety of local and international experiences including government, academia, professionals, industry and domain experts from marketing and finance to HR and IT as well as fourth industrial revolution (4IR) technologies from all ages starting from eight years to eighty years old. Some of the speakers include successful serial entrepreneurs and investors such as Asher Aziz, Wahaj Siraj, Monis Rehman, Jehan Ara, Khurram Zafar, Zulfi bukhari, and my favourite James Caan to name a few (in case you don’t know any of them try Google).

The NIC also provides a much-needed safe and secure working environment for people in Pakistan including female entrepreneurs and marginalised people with special needs. These Pakistanis can work with respect and dignity with all the desired facilities. These facilities include a day care for infants and young children, wheel chair friendly buildings providing free co working facilities with high speed broadband internet services, power backup facility, customised curriculum and access to proven mentors, domain experts and investors all under the same roof (and perhaps I should mention this is all offered free of cost for twelve months and often without any demand for anything in return).

The Investment Landscape

The Birth of the Unicorn

The Final Message

I know each of the complainers, having interacted with them personally over the past three years and while I do not wish to embarrass them (too much), I would like them to think about the impact of their ill-founded comments on the ecosystem. I suggest that the so-called startup insiders pay their outstanding respects to the ecosystem prior to attempting to jump-start their outdated and disillusioned ideologies. I would also like to suggest that the most notable Doctor Shahib have the courtesy to visit at least one NIC in his life before reaching any conclusion based on his predetermined biases.

To close, I would like to remind myself (first) and others that we are not perfect and prone to making mistakes. No one person has a monopoly on all the good ideas and everyone has some value to add. We need to put our differences aside to team up and share our diversified experiences that will help us all to develop an all-inclusive ecosystem for maximum impact and growth for startups in Pakistan. On our part, we are determined to get there, with you or without you!

So next time you decide to belittle the real startup heroes of Pakistan, may I humbly request do your research!

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