 My name is Jonathan Margolis. I am the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Science, Space and Health in the United States Department of State. On behalf of the Department of State, it's my pleasure to welcome you to the GIST TechConnect Pakistan event. I want to start by thanking CRDF global colleagues for their hard work in putting this event together and for their efforts to build entrepreneurship ecosystems around the world. As well as the MIT Enterprise Forum and our department colleagues in Washington and Pakistan. I'd also like to thank the Indus Entrepreneurs Higher Education Commission of Pakistan, NUST, Comstats, ICRA University, Punjab, IT Board, Open, and NED University in Karachi for their support in making this event a reality. We are happy to feature this program during Innovation and Entrepreneurship Month at the Department of State. As President Obama has said, technology innovation and entrepreneurship are vital to the United States and the global economy. Pakistan is an important partner in our activities and has great promise to develop a strong knowledge-based economy. In November 2011, the State Department began a series of video conferences to link successful diaspora entrepreneurs with their counterparts in Pakistan to discuss ways to overcome challenges they may face. We then helped to finance and coordinate the first-ever Young Entrepreneurs Conference alongside the Islamabad Chamber of Commerce's Youth Entrepreneurs Chapter. And most recently, the Department of State hosted 30 entrepreneurs from the Pakistan 100, the fastest growing companies in Pakistan as ranked by Harvard University and the All World Network. The Department of State launched GIST a little over a year ago and we are very pleased with the results. Globally, GIST has connected one million youth with entrepreneurship and innovation tools and resources. With over 13,000 entrepreneurs as part of the GIST community, Pakistan has been one of the strongest countries in this initiative and we are excited to launch our GIST Tech Connect series today with you. We are committed to identifying and supporting young entrepreneurs like all of you to create a successful startup company through skills development, networking and financial advice. The GIST network extends through Asia, the Middle East and Africa. We work with U.S. and local experts to ensure that high potential startups have the support that they need and that the best, most market-driven products make their way to the marketplace. Today, we have a fabulous panel of entrepreneurs and venture capitalists. I want to thank Jeff Hoffman, Matt Cooper and Faisal Sohail for their time and for sharing their expertise with everyone. You are great role models and mentors for the audience watching today across Pakistan and the world. And now, I'm pleased to introduce Kathy Campbell, the CEO of CRDF Global, to introduce our moderator. Hello, my name is Kathy Campbell and I am CEO of CRDF Global, an organization that has been proudly supporting technology entrepreneurs in more than 40 countries. Today, I am pleased to announce a pilot project called Tech Connect that is being implemented under the global innovation through science and technology or GIST initiative. Tech Connect allows us to use technology to connect hundreds of people around the world. Today, we connect people who speak the same language, people who believe in the power of entrepreneurs, the power of you, young and dynamic people to change your communities, your countries, your regions. It is no accident that Pakistan was chosen as the first country for this pilot project. Pakistan's entrepreneurs have been very active in the GIST initiative this past year. Together with our local partner, MIT Enterprise Forum Pakistan, we have been impressed with the entrepreneurial spirit, drive and energy of Pakistan's young population. We are often asked whether entrepreneurs are born or taught. Our answer is that it is not one or the other and this is why we value GIST. Through GIST, we identify people who care and are passionate about what they do. We coach them, match them with mentors and provide funding and access to more resources to allow them to succeed faster. We are very fortunate to have with us today forward-thinking mentors who will share their insights and advice with you. Becoming a successful entrepreneur is hard work, but it also is very rewarding. If you have an idea, act on it. Pursue your dreams, believe in yourselves. Do not let anyone discourage you and think big. There is nothing you cannot do. Today, we are excited to have with us three entrepreneurship experts to connect with young entrepreneurs and university students throughout Pakistan. Welcome to all of you joining us online. Ovidiu Buzharan, our moderator for today's discussion, is the program manager for the GIST initiative at CRDF Global and one of the innovative minds behind the program. Ovidiu, over to you. Thank you, Cathy. This webinar is going to be fantastic. We have more than 100 individual logins online and also 19 viewing groups at universities throughout Pakistan and quite the crowd gathered here in DC. This level of outreach is possible because of the partnership between the U.S. State Department, the U.S. Mission in Pakistan, MIT Enterprise Forum of Pakistan and MIT Enterprise Forum of DC. We would invite you to use the hashtag GIST and at Pakistan when talking about the event today. Today's session of GIST Connect will begin a dialogue among panelists and American and Pakistani entrepreneurs, mentors and investors to exchange experiences, perspectives and trends in technology and entrepreneurship. We hope today is a beginning of a continued linkage between the U.S. and the Pakistani entrepreneurship communities. To begin, we want to look at some of the great ideas that are coming out of Pakistan. Here's one GIST transformer, a Pakistani entrepreneur who has participated in the GIST activities and is now transforming his innovation ecosystem. Listen as he shares his story about his company and his interaction with the GIST initiative. Chief Operating Officer of SolarTech Energy Solutions. SolarTech Energy Solutions is providing hot water using the rare and efficient technology of solar ponds. We are in the process of developing a commercial industrial scale for our business plan. We encourage all of the entrepreneurs from Pakistan to take international competitions like TISTEC in order to get mentorship and guidance for their business ideas. Thank you all. Thank you, Rizan Yousaf. We are very proud to have you as part of our GIST community, a growing community. As we've heard, mentorship and networking has been a great part of this entrepreneur's journey to success. So now I'll introduce you to the panelists so you can hear from them more about their experiences. We have with us Jeff Hoffman, who is partner and founder in Kolojara Venture Accelerator firm that helps entrepreneurs and small business owners launch and grow new business ventures. Mr Hoffman is perhaps best known as the founder and CEO of Priceline.com, currently valued at 31 billion US dollars. A family of companies where he led the development and launch of Priceline consumers company Priceline Yard Sale. Another panelist with us is Faisal Sohail who joined Simea Capital as a venture capitalist where he works primarily with energy and technology sectors in US and around the world. He's a Pakistani-American who is also a member of OPEN in Silicon Valley and we'd like to acknowledge OPEN support to actually confirm Mr. Sohail as a panelist. OPEN promotes entrepreneurship and business leadership including supports such efforts in Pakistan. And we have as well Matt Cooper, VP of Marketplace Operations for ODesk who has more than a decade of executive operating experience in both startup and Fortune 500 companies. Matt puts his finance operations and strategy expertise to work leading ODesk risk management, customer support and services and marketplace operation teams. I would like to ask now moving to the question side, I will start with Matt. ODesk is a company, is a startup, is a VC-backed startup that went through various growth stages. I'd like to ask you, as you are one of the people behind the scaling up of the operations of ODesk, some of your experiences in actually growing your startup to the stage where it is now that has become a leading online platform for human capital. Yes, I think the experience of ODesk over the last couple of years has been exactly that. How do we take an idea that has proven which when I joined in 2009 we had traction, it was clearly a good model but then how do we scale it to where we are today. And I think particularly for network driven models and ecosystem driven models there's always this chicken and the egg between supply and demand. You need both sides of the equation to get the flywheel going. And for ODesk there was that constant balance of focusing on bringing in high quality contractors in the network to provide the supply side but then also bringing in high quality companies and buyers of services to make sure that that ecosystem stays healthy. I think the other main challenge is balancing an open ecosystem and an open network versus one that's more closed and curated. Open systems tend to grow faster, curated systems tend to have better control over the client experience. So I think between those two most of our strategic and executive discussions over the last three years have centered around finding the right balance between those two questions. Thank you Matt, very exciting. I would like to move now to Faisal. You are a very successful venture capitalist and also entrepreneur. You are here because of hard work, dedication, smartness but also maybe because in your career you have people that supported you, advised you, and mentored you. I think it would be useful for our entrepreneurs in audience to learn from you one example from your career where you benefited from the support of a person or organization. That's a great question. Certainly I think after I finished my undergraduate in engineering I came out to Stanford to do my graduate studies. I was very fortunate to have a professor and head of the research lab who was just an incredibly great mentor and over the last we ended up doing three startups together. So I left Stanford actually to start my first company with him and then a few years later he was back at Stanford teaching and he left again and we started another company. Then he went back to Stanford and now he's the head of the electrical engineering department at Stanford and still continues to this day be a great mentor. I would say what was great about him was that he's one of the smartest guys I've ever worked with but at the same time he was extremely driven and he would not let me slack off at all. I think I've only been called a moron once in my life and it was by him. He would not take anything less than sort of perfect work and both as a professor and as a boss and as a partner. I think finding people like that that are extremely driven, extremely smart and really want to help you be successful, help you succeed in what you're doing and make sure that you are the best that you can be. So I was extremely fortunate to have that type of mentor and I would encourage everybody to look for that. I mean they're all around us there in everybody's lives whether there's a professor, whether it's a business person, whether it is in your family. I would really encourage people to find that one person who can really help them. It's a very inspiring example. It's very interesting that you actually continued with the mentor throughout the number of ventures. So it's important that the relationship can go on long term. Now back to Jeff. Very glad to have you with us, Jeff. And you as a successful American entrepreneur and also a member of the GIST advisory board, very proud to have you with us. You traveled around the world and you interacted with entrepreneurs in Pakistan, in Malaysia, in Egypt. It would be wonderful to hear from you some of your thoughts, of your interactions with the entrepreneurs and how you see them comparing with the American entrepreneur. Similarities, differences, some of your unique experiences you had interacting with them. Sure. So, you know, the beauty of entrepreneurship is that it's about ideas and the beauty of ideas is that a good idea doesn't care where it came from. A good idea does not care if you're male, female, old, young, black, white, what country, what ethnicity you have. So there have always been smart people all over the world, the differences. In the United States they had the tools to do something with their idea and get it known that the rest of the world didn't have. So the ideas were just as good in Africa and Asia, in the Middle East and all these places, but they didn't have the platform to get them out. What's really exciting to me now, and this year alone I met with entrepreneurs in, again, in South America and Asia and Africa all over the world, with today's tool set, with social media tools, with all the online connectivity, there is the ability for somebody with an idea in Pakistan actually to share it with the world, and they didn't have that before. There's the ability for an entrepreneur in Egypt actually to reach out and find me or in any country in the world, express their idea, and there are tools now that the world didn't have. The same tools that we would use in Silicon Valley or anywhere in the United States, they would help us create our ideas, launch our startups, manage our business, promote, advertise, all the things that we do. Those tools are available all over the world, so it could not have been a more exciting year and time in entrepreneurship because finally every entrepreneur in the world has a chance to take center stage and take their idea, first of all we usually recommend that they build their idea in their country and prove it first, but the ability to reach a global audience or to reach out to people like us to have an event like this today would not be possible without that technology. With that technology today, I am getting good ideas almost every day, email text in some way, some entrepreneur somewhere in the world, half a dozen Pakistani entrepreneurs contacted me in the last couple days before this event to share ideas with me and they were just as brilliant as anything I hear in Silicon Valley. So I think tools, technology, information in a connected community is what makes the playing field level or at least a lot more likely for entrepreneurs everywhere now and I think that's great. I think that's a great point and I think this type of event that just connect aims to address just that, actually connecting entrepreneurs, investors, mentors across geographies so that the ideas can flow both ways. So I think that's very exciting to hear that they experience the same. Now let's open up to questions for our panelists from the Pakistani entrepreneurs. Here's a question from Mahayusuf of Piezo Electric Solutions and Sekyumi who is from Islamabad. As these questions are answered, please send your questions by typing in the space below. Hello, I'm Mahayusuf and I'm here to ask my questions for Jeff Hoffman and Matt Cooper. My first question for Jeff Hoffman is, how did you keep a balance between your startup and studies at Yale University as a student? How did you manage to work on your startup without being a dropout? And how did you budget your finance and entrepreneurial dream? What advice can you give me for my entrepreneurial and academic career simultaneously? Okay, Mah, that's a great question and I will tell you the answer to your question of how you manage a startup and university at the same time as two words, no sleep. The simple truth is this, successful entrepreneurs are people that set specific goals and then do what they have to do to achieve those goals. I had specific goals in mind in that I knew there was a set of things that I wanted to learn before I became an entrepreneur so I didn't want a dropout. I needed to finish that education and the answer is simply hard work. I had to stay up and work a lot more hours than my classmates because I wanted the learning I got from university coupled with the startup that I was running which I needed to finance my education. So set specific goals, be willing to do what you need to do but the truth to your question Mahayusuf, there is no easy answer. I just simply had to work a lot longer hours than everybody else did to be able to balance both of those things. Great, thanks for the excellent question Maha. Now we have a question from Maria Umar of the Women's Digital League who is from Rawalpindi. My question to both the VCs is what is more important to you? The business plan, the entire business plan and do you even read it? Or the 5 minutes presentation, the 10 minutes presentation time that the startup may have to pitch their idea to you? If you would like to answer. Sure, Maria, I'll take back questions since I see we see over 5,000 business plans a year. I would say VCs at the first glance hardly ever read the business plan let alone the entire business plan. The most important thing we're looking for is the entrepreneur. We're really looking to see what is the passion of the entrepreneur what's the capability of the entrepreneur and the entrepreneur team how strong is the team. Once we really get past that and really believe in the team that's when we start paying a lot of the detail attention to the business plan because we all know having been an entrepreneur and having built three companies we never ended up doing what the business plan said. The business plan is a great exercise to make sure that you've thought about everything you've addressed everything but it hardly is the way companies get built it hardly is the way you end up achieving success. The best entrepreneurs are the ones who actually figure out how to get around the obstacles get around the brick walls that you're going to run into in your business plan because you simply haven't been able to think through all the issues you're going to face because you haven't seen them yet. So although I like to see a robust business plan to know that the entrepreneur has the ability to think through and articulate what they plan to do but that's not the deciding point for me for me the most important thing is the entrepreneur and their ability to fix the problems when they occur. So it's a bit about but certainly the entrepreneur first. That's great. And actually from the entrepreneur side I'll second that I think the best advice I've had is if you're looking for money ask for advice and if you're looking for advice ask for money because if you go out looking for money as the sole focus it's a tougher road particularly if it's your first time and building relationships, finding mentors, finding people you can bounce ideas off of getting someone excited about your business first and excited about you and your capabilities and to the extent you've got the next Google as your business model that's great but very few people walk into the huge opportunity and I know just from Odesk's own experience we didn't start out as an online work marketplace we started out basically as a software company and then sort of evolved into global staffing then evolved into this open marketplace model so I'll second the investing in the people first and the business model second. Great, thank you Faisal and Matt and we have one more video submissions to questions from Imtiaz Ulhak. Hi, my name is Imtiaz. I have two questions. First of all, how important is VC backing? A lot of these more successful startups do have VC backing but in my case for example, I expect to generate revenue from day one so it can grow organically but VC backing I'm sure would help me scale up faster and also because I ultimately want to sell off my startup would you recommend going for VC funding for someone in my case or do you think that if I can secure my funding from other areas to not necessarily have to end with this option? Secondly, I wanted to ask you how important is the ecosystem for any startup like for example in Pakistan the ecosystem is no way developed so do you think that's an important element in determining the success of a startup? Would it make more sense for example for me to move to the US or the UK and London for example and the questions are open for everyone and in fact would be good if we can have more than one new one less. Thank you very much. Thank you Imtiaz. If we could have each one of you maybe say a few words I think the questions were very rich. Sure. So I think most importantly Imtiaz when you're talking about taking VC money versus organic growth and selling the company I think you have to have a lot of clarity in your mind in terms of what you're trying to build if you want to build a smaller organic business and be profitable and you want to sell it and have control over it in that respect don't take VC money. That's not what VC money is for. I think if you have a much bigger vision you want to build something much bigger and you're not necessarily even thinking about selling it you really want to build it and then let the market decide at the end whether you sell it or you take it public or you grow it further. That's the type of area where I think the VC money the advice from the VC's and the connections of the VC's come in very handy. So I think it's very important for you to know what you're asking for because you don't want to get VC money and get VC's on your board and then decide you really want to have a small company you control and you sell whenever you want to sell because our returns dictate our investment thesis and philosophies dictate that when we invest in companies we invest in companies to build very large enterprises otherwise our business model doesn't work so it's not in our interest to invest a little bit of money and get a small sale to somebody that's just not the way our business works I think it's important for you to know that otherwise you'll have a very rude awakening one day with your board when you want to sell or keep a company small profitable versus they want to build and have it be much larger So that's the first answer I would give to the VC or not VC As far as the ecosystem is concerned I think you absolutely need an ecosystem to build a company but that doesn't mean you need to move the company to Silicon Valley where everybody else is building but you do need to figure out what the issues are that you need to fulfill what type of mentors you need what type of resources you need and you need to figure out how to access them and I think that's one of the programs like GIST is perfect because these types of programs are providing you access to people that can help your startup ecosystem while you're still in Pakistan as opposed to having to be in Chicago or having to be in San Francisco So those are the types of things I would look for Matt would you like to add on the VC question On the VC aspect, the two things you said in the question one about scaling and I always hear that I want to scale, I want to scale, I want to scale and I think my advice is slow down and figure out your model first I think a lot of entrepreneurs they want to get big, quick they see the success stories they see zero to sixty overnight and Otis has been around since 2004 and most of our growth has been in the last three years but in the first five So I think the emphasis on growth and raising capital as a way to get there I think the probably the best value VC's add early on is how to build a scalable model So again it comes back to the mentorship and the advice, the money's great and yes to scale quickly generally speaking you need money but I think having people around you that have done it before they've seen other startups go through this they know what the pitfalls are they can give you some guidance to hopefully prevent you from making the same mistakes that every other startup makes on the ecosystem side I've spent a lot of time in Chicago and Vancouver recently at different startup events and you hear a lot about the ecosystem and a lot of what you hear about is I just need access to talent all the talent's on the coast if you need developers they're all in San Francisco or New York and I think there are it certainly does help just being in Silicon Valley you just brownie in motion you tend to run into things and things bounce around and happen but you can do that online there are communities, there are groups there are various organizations to help create that same random chance that tends to get a lot of companies going Thanks, thank you and Jeff would you talk a little bit more about the ecosystem built up and that's one of your key areas of focus Sure, it's definitely one of my passions as well but let me say something about the VC question first the advice that we typically give entrepreneurs is go as far as you possibly can without taking anybody else's money it's the bootstrap issue there's two reasons that we tell people to build as far as they can first before you approach a VC or anybody one, the more you prove your business model the more you get built and the more you demonstrate the feasibility of your concept the easier it is to raise money the more developed you are and second of course you'll get better valuation if your company is farther down the path so we encourage people to plus by the way as investors we like to see that you have done everything you possibly can as an entrepreneur to make your idea work it's kind of the blood sweat and tears you really put everything into it instead of just asking for money on day one with a PowerPoint presentation so it's important to go as far as you can and by the way I understand that MTA has this question it was VC money but there's my first three startups we also took private funding so a VC money is a decision that you make as Matt mentioned they can contribute a lot of value in business models but that's not your only source to consider for funding on the ecosystem side I mean I think it's absolutely critically important in fact the reason that I personally donate my time to GIST and the State Department efforts is because what we're trying to do is help people help themselves going around the world and trying to help build ecosystems and an ecosystem consists of the entrepreneurs the universities the local and state governments and federal governments involved the investors in the finance community mentors in the community here's the most important thing I can tell you do not wait for somebody to build you an ecosystem do it yourself that's what entrepreneurs do and you know what's the big secret to building an ecosystem the ask pick up the phone contact mentors contact investors contact state and federal government contact the universities you need to have that ecosystem because the rising tide lifts all boats we all win when we all work together to do this and none of us can do it alone those are excellent points thank you to the three of you and with GIST basically that's the part of our work we are actually working closely with our partners on the ground to help build those ecosystems and also identify local mentors and connect them with the global mentors such as yourself so that's at the core of our activity as well thank you Imtyaz for your questions and thank you all for the responses we will now take live questions from all of your line online our first question is Umair Ahmed asks how can we find funding for a startup based in Pakistan very specific question call Faisal drop my checkbook it's right here I think so it's interesting that even though our venture funds are based in US and we predominantly fund companies in US I have been getting involved in funding companies personally in Pakistan so I would say the best way to look for funding in Pakistan is to find connections that you have to either local funders or funders in US that are interested in that space can be more than just to be funders can actually be mentors can help you connect with other sources of funding can help you with your business model so in my case it's all come through sort of friends and family connections where they've identified an entrepreneur who's doing something really interesting and important and I've gotten engaged with that and started mentoring them then started investing in them went on their board and now helped raising capital for them from US from Silicon Valley because the ideas are now to Jeff's point that now it's proven we have customers we've actually gotten profitable in a couple of the companies that I invested so now it becomes a lot easier to raise money because the risk is a lot lower so I think first you need somebody who's credible to back you even a little bit because that will give you a lot of help and it will give comfort to other investors that okay if so and so is involved you know it's a venture worth pursuing great thank you Faisal Faisa Yousef from Ned University in Karachi asks how do you suggest we choose a mentor or a partner when starting up a new ventures what are some of the criteria you are looking for I'll jump into that especially on the mentor piece a mentor by definition is probably successful or you wouldn't want them to mentor you and they got successful by being busy and working hard so the mentor that you want is probably the hardest person to get because they're very busy however there are a lot of people out there certainly the three of us that are willing to donate time willing to mentor and willing to give back the key is to do your research and find a mentor who has similar interests when you go to somebody I've had people contact me for example about a healthcare venture I've never been in healthcare I would tell them there's a better mentor than me there's somebody much smarter than me you should get what I used to do was go look at a cross section of interest what are my goals and what are the mentors goals in life, what interests, what background what experience do they have and what I'm trying to figure out is what is the likeliness that this person would have similar interests to mine and want to mentor me so what I'm saying is do your homework and find someone who's worked in your industry who's in your space one time I did my research on a potential mentor found out a charity that he was interested in attended the charity event I couldn't get a meeting with him in his office every time I called they said listen kid quit calling us but when I saw that he was attending a charity I bought a ticket I wandered up to him at the food table and said nice day huh wonderful charity and he started chatting with me and said what do you do and I actually said I don't want to talk business at this event and he said no I asked you to his office and invited me to lunch I would have never got that appointment in his office but by sharing interest and attending something that he was interested in we had a chance to talk creative recruiting well it worked in the end one other aspect I think there's the hey I'm going to go get this mentor and you are going to help me and you know it rarely works out that way you know I think you tend to end up with mentors the other way to think about is there's a portfolio approach I mean if I'm looking for advice on one topic I may go to one person if it's a different topic I may go to another I think finding someone to quote unquote sponsor you and to be your mentor I mean I think Faisal's example is unique whereas most people I think you find different people in different aspects of your life and career to help you at different points so I think it's a constant effort to be looking out for people who can give you and give you good advice and the other thing is think about how you can give back you know it shouldn't be a one way street you've got to find ways to add value to what they're doing or their lives or give them something in return so I think if you approach it from how can I help you hopefully it will come back but go into it genuinely looking for ways to help them and hopefully it will come back and that's I think great advice from both of you in terms of it's not one way street it's not just to help me help me help me because that's you know it's very hard for people to have that type of time so find out what are they really interested in and how you can help them you know from my sort of examples that I was chairman of Silicon Valley Education Foundation for seven years and ended up mentoring a lot of people through that who were actually interested and came to the foundation for to help the children to help the education cause and that and they ended up getting a lot of help from the not just me but from the entire board which included CEO of Adobe, CEO of Cadence, CEO of many other large companies but it was that passion they found a passion that was shared by both and that drove a lot of mentorship. Great insights thank you all Faruk from Moftak Solutions asks what are the three key elements to be a successful entrepreneur or innovator? Are there only three? Only three. Persistence, persistence, persistence it's not an easy road it's a very you know unless you're passionate and you're persistent it's a road that you shouldn't take because not an easy road but it's a fun road once you're on that road and you're you know working on your dreams and you're doing something that you're passionate about there's nothing like it. You know I'll add as well one of the things that's really important is focus I see so many entrepreneurs that have all these goals and they're all great goals and all these things that they want to do but you know the key at least for our businesses and for a lot of entrepreneurs to being successful was find something that you can do really well and get that done people need to you need to build something prove yourself as an entrepreneur and you need to focus it means you have to tune out the eight million other things that you want to do and build something that everybody comes back and says who's the girl or the guy that built that you need to be recognized by your ability and your ability comes from delivering a valuable product not from talking about it so focus and get it done the other thing is team I hate to burst anybody's bubble but you're never as smart as you think you are in fact sometimes the worst thing that happens to an entrepreneur is they're successful because then they start saying hey look at me I'm smart you're never that smart and you not only did you not do it yourself but you can't do it yourself so an important thing is to realize that you need to build a team every chance you get to network and find people smarter than you try to team with them so when you have the best team and you're focused on achieving a very specific goal that's when you win as an entrepreneur I felt you're addressing me directly we do have a very good team we're not running for anything great so we have a question from Nast with the weak regulatory regime in Pakistan to foster entrepreneurship what are the key suggestions you have for enterprises in Pakistan how do you overcome some of the challenges in the entrepreneurial ecosystem I'll start to address that because I've had to actually work through this issue given that I have investments in Pakistan essentially the project that I've taken is that I'm going to just ignore the government and work try to do everything that needs to be done through the private channels which is I think don't count on any support from the regulatory bodies or from the other institutions try to build what needs to be built create the value proposition for the customer that's amazing create the channels that are amazing create your product which is better than everything else is and really push towards building it and not really count on any support from the regulatory bodies because I think right now unfortunately in Pakistan that's a very difficult thing to count on yeah and I think just regardless of the government if you're waiting for the government to support you as an entrepreneur you probably shouldn't be starting your own company I think entrepreneurs should be coming at it back to the biggest question about the passion and the energy and the effort I mean it's a long haul it's going to be a battle every day and if you're waiting for a regulatory regime to prop up your model or your effort you know I think you're already lost so you've really got to push through barriers and not worry about anybody else supporting you you're going to be fighting all the way through you know to Faisal's point the most unstoppable force in the universe is a good idea so as Faisal said if you have a good idea and you work on on developing it and bringing it good ideas have a way of rallying everybody around them and they will come whether it's private sector, public sector but the most important thing is that you have a good idea and you prove that it is a good idea before you worry about support from a government or anybody else yeah and Faisal also is in close connection with Victor Hugo who said nothing is as powerful as an idea whose time has come so I think it proves once again and I have one question for you is Matt because you do have entrepreneurs on your platform from Pakistan, Algeria, I met some of the ODS programmers in Algeria who connected with the entrepreneurs of the GIST event and I think we see more and more some of these platforms that are able to bring people together across geographies which is actually one of the idea behind this event and actually overcoming some of those challenges and working together using these common places of work and exchanging experiences right there is no small business smaller than an independent contractor you're an independent contractor, you are an entrepreneur you're doing sales, you're doing delivery you're doing finance, you clean up your own desk you're the whole company so I think what we see by nature the people that are working on ODS tend to be entrepreneurial, they tend to be entrepreneurs, they tend to be looking for ways to build something new and different and what's fun to watch is you see this global basically we've completely removed all geographic barriers so you've got Pakistani entrepreneurs working for Silicon Valley startups, you've got Silicon Valley developers working for Romanian startups so you're really seeing that kind of global cross-pollination of like-minded individuals it's really fun to watch it's great to hear that Mariam Zahour from Neduet in Karachi asks once an entrepreneur starts up his or her ventures, what are the things that he or she must watch out for what things may jeopardize the startup okay, I'll jump into that it's interesting because we talked a few minutes ago about business plans and the mistake that a lot of entrepreneurs make is they think that a business plan is a place where you're supposed to write down all the answers and the truth is you don't know the answers you don't know most of the answers and if you did write down most of the answers we would know that you were lying because until you launch the business you don't know them a business plan is the place to write down all the questions the importance of going through the plan is for you mentally to say what am I watching for, what do I have to learn what do I have to prove so the answer to Mariam's question is one of the things to watch out for as an entrepreneur is having metrics what was I trying to do what does success look like what does a failure look like what set of numbers and measurable results should I be watching for so that I can say it's working and that's what happens a lot of time I've been to events where it's the meetings it's the end of the year the entrepreneur and the investor are together or even not the investor just other people and you'll say so how did the year go and at the same time one says great and I say how could this be it's because they didn't know decide in advance what were we expecting to happen what were the measurements for success to say I should keep investing my life and somebody else's money in this idea so that's what you need to watch out for is clearly define success in measurable metrics and continue to track against that as you go so that you can see when you need adjustments instead of waiting until the end of the year one thing I've seen a mistake I've made myself is building in advance of demand I think a lot of times an entrepreneur they have the concept they know what the product should look like they know what the ideal scenario is fake it before you make it figure out ways to test the idea see what the acceptance is the painted door you can mock up a web page pretty easily and then have hamsterware behind the scenes as far as the customer is concerned while you're running around like crazy in the background trying to deliver so I think there are lots of ways to test ideas get something out and see what happens as opposed to creating a nice pretty business plan spending a lot of time and money in development then releasing it and hoping people show up and I think getting something out there quick will end up paying dividends getting something out there and pivoting on it is really important I think the other mistake that a lot of entrepreneurs make and it's really hard for them to because they fall in love with what they're doing because this is all they do 100% of their energy, their effort their intellectual capabilities goes into one venture and they sort of lose perspective on what else is happening around them and that becomes sort of the most important thing and sometimes they lose sort of how the bigger market is developing the biggest issue that I have seen entrepreneurs running into is creating solutions that are I would call white men's as opposed to aspirants so the thing that I always tell all my CEOs or all the entrepreneurs are you solving a problem which is incredible pain for somebody and that somebody is more than one person and as long as you're solving something that's really a big problem for somebody then that's worth pursuing a lot of times a business plan ends up being it's nice to have product and by the time you come out into the market there are nine other solutions that are equally good or can do the job differently and those are where the failures happen because you fall in love with your own technology your own solution so be very critical of yourself be very critical of are you really solving an incredible pain point for a large market or are you providing something which is nice to have for a small group of people you know those both solutions as you said one person that was a horrible year depending upon your perspective your perspective as you're providing a nice product for a few people that's a great year if you're providing a breakthrough technology for the masses and you don't have it that's going to be a horrible year so it's just a matter of perspective so be very critical of yourself and really think about what are you really providing and solving a problem let me just quickly throw one more thing on that which is exactly what Faisal said but then add to that a value equation and by value equation what I mean is you may in fact determine as you just said that you are solving a real problem but are you solving it in a way that the value chain that everybody on the food chain can make a living doing it meaning is there a value equation is there a price point at which people will pay and you can make money and the example I use one time to demonstrate this to some entrepreneurs who said everybody loves our product but they had never sat down to do the economics of it was I read a story that there was a machine that you can actually make man made diamonds so I said come with me and we went outside and we asked everybody who wants a machine that can make diamonds at home 100% of our target research audience said I love your product I want one then I went back and said they cost 20 million dollars each and not one person placed in order so the fact that everybody likes your product doesn't make it a good business make sure you have a value equation where you can make a living doing this and everybody in the food chain wins that's great participant with the group at IM Sciences the entrepreneurship development center at the institute of management sciences special helps students start their businesses in the incubation center that we have how can we link with our entrepreneurs with you as entrepreneurs I think I can you should sign up for the GIST initiative I did not have anything but music to my ears so basically I would encourage you to connect with the GIST community also to be in close touch with our partner on the ground MIT Enterprise Forum of Pakistan has been one of our best partners have been extremely dedicated in helping the Pakistani entrepreneurs and actually preparing them for all the events that GIST is organizing as a result the Pakistani entrepreneurs perform very well in the GIST competitions I think another opportunity is to identify other entrepreneurship centers from US and other parts of the world and find ways to kind of bridge and collaborate we have few students in attendance here in DC and will be glad to ask the questions if they can facilitate an introduction so because that's one of the purposes of this event as well and see how we can facilitate more connections between US and Pakistan entrepreneurs and mentors so make sure to follow up on this question we have one more question Umayyar Malik from Sukur IBA asks most venture capital that's available in Pakistan is mainly for tech companies why is it that venture capitalists are not investing in amazing non-tech businesses in Pakistan um that's a good question I only invest in technology and energy businesses I think that has to do with predominantly what we understand so in order for a venture capitalist to invest in something they really have to understand that sector they have to have the right deal flow they have to have the right entrepreneurs they have to have the right understanding of that market so they can be value added otherwise it's just throwing money at something they don't understand so I suspect the reason is that there are just not venture capitalists or people who invest in other sectors so you have to find people who have made money in that sector understand that sector like ex-CEOs of companies less is agriculture or is textiles and find the people who know that sector have made money in that sector are running successful enterprises and use them as sort of the initial funding because they'll understand your business better than I will understand it and they're more likely to invest in something they understand as we see you have to remember one thing you know we have to invest in things that we understand if we go outside of our domain we'll likely lose money thank you I would like just to add two more resources for the prior question I would encourage our audience to connect also with activities at MIT Enterprise from DC and as well the open chapter in DC and also other chapters around the U.S. I think those are like few other opportunities that they can leverage to connect with other centers in U.S. Abdul Wahid Ikrah University Islam about us what points do you think we should ask while assessing our idea what are VCs who might help financially with an idea or the startup I could take the first half of that which is what you should focus on while initially launching your idea and the key to that is proving that you have a real customer base that it's real and that it's sizable and that it's a product that not only do they want like the example I gave a minute ago but a product that they will pay for so a lot of times as Faisal said we see people that are really excited about their technology because they're technologists or really excited about an agricultural product because they're a farmer of course you love your product what we need to see and what you should focus on is proving that there is a market out there and a sizable and grow scalable market of people that not only also like your product but will pay money for it that's the most important thing lots of cool products out there but they're not businesses and there's no money market market for them to make money that's what you should focus on prove that somebody that you've never met before will say I love this product the debate of is it a feature or is it a business comes into it and back to earlier comments around metrics it's hard for someone to learn that their baby is ugly and when you come in and you've got this great idea and you want to launch a business around it make sure you've gone through all the steps and given plenty of people opportunities to tell you that your baby is ugly and then even once it's launched having metrics in place, having milestones having those key indicators of whether or not you really do have a viable business as opposed to just a really neat idea is really really important great, thank you all for the answers I have a question myself is like how do you see the role of the new trend in crowdfunding and actually having the entrepreneurs play some of their initial ideas for validation on the market using some of these new tools is a way kind of to get some validation from the market sure, so actually that leads me to want to address something else for all the entrepreneurs out there sometimes entrepreneurs say to me I don't want to share my idea or tell anybody because somebody will go do it and that's required for crowdfunding you have to put your idea out there to which this is just my opinion you guys can jump in but if your idea is so simple and so easy to copy that just by telling somebody about it they can steal it from you, get another idea okay, your idea either needs to be something you're uniquely qualified to deliver you have relationships you have experience or it's intellectual property you could patent there needs to be something in your idea that gives you personally and your team an edge in executing the idea if that is the case then of course I personally love things like crowdfunding and crowd sourcing right and you know in a way you are a version of that because you have teams of people all over the world that people can go to to get a job done so I think it's one of the wonderful things about technology today as entrepreneurs that used to live you live in Islamabad you have no network bigger than the city you're in today with all these online electronic platforms and tools you can not only find teams of people to help you build your product but you can find people to help fund your product so I think crowd sourcing and crowdfunding represent an excellent opportunity to get help in an environment in a world bigger than yours and I think there's a couple of other things that are extremely favorable for entrepreneurs sitting in Pakistan, Islamabad, Karachi wherever they are I'll give you a small and a total example my first start up 27 years ago when I left Stanford to start this you know to be part of the founding team our first round was 10 million dollars and we raised 30 million before we had a successful IPO and a company today we're investing $250,000 sometimes $500,000 and for that amount of money our entrepreneurs not create one product, two, three, sometimes four different products they launch them in the market they test them, they kill them they relaunch them, they pivot and so the amount of leverage that's available today for entrepreneurs to either leveraging the crowds in terms of funding or crowds in terms of a crowd source to get work done or to launch products is an order of magnitude better than it was 20 some years ago in Silicon Valley so I think it's an incredible time so in terms of your question of how to look for VC money look for Angel Angel, crowds funding, friends and family now that type of capital can actually launch pretty successful companies without even venture capital money I think it's you know, prior to the openness and the crowd funding type models a lot of the a lot of the due diligence was happening before you got your funding you'd walk into his office he'd chew you up and spit you out and hopefully you got a check at the end of it with crowd funding the easier it is to get the money now alright it's easier to get money it's easier to get something launched so now all the hard work happens after your product is out there and so it's interesting seeing it shift further down the pipeline instead of it happening at the idea stage and having to prove that the idea is good now you can build it and get it out there quick and see if it's good but what happens is you have a lot of products flooding the market in alpha and beta stage and then they get chewed up and spit out so you're just you're shifting it down but I think what's nice is you can actually see it work it's not theoretical anymore you're still going to get chewed up it's just depends on when it's going to come and you can fail with a lot less dollars which is really really important in our business you don't want to you want to that's right you want to fail fast and you want to fail cheap you don't want to fail late and fail expensive we have time for one quick last question I see from Air University Islamabad how can someone be a good entrepreneur and what steps should he or she take to build or polish his or her entrepreneurial skill set one idea each one of you okay so I think the most one of the most important things you need as an entrepreneur is your communication skills you are not going to launch the whole company yourself you're not going to be the developer, the marketer the finance person and all those things over time you start that way so one of the most important skills you can develop are your interpersonal communication skills so that you can go find all those people and convince them to join your team that's great I'll give one word answer networking one word is probably too tough for mine but appropriately dispassionate I think entrepreneurs they get fired up about their idea they want to go make it happen the chances of you getting it right the first time is really really small so being able to step back take a good retrospective view of how things are going make adjustments and changes as you need to that ultimately helps you navigate the path to success and I'm afraid we are now out of time for questions I would like to mention that our speakers, moderators agreed to answer any questions we have as a follow up of this we would be glad as organizers to pause this online to close I would like to emphasize how this is just the beginning of this conversation we can continue by staying involved with GIST the MIT N-Prize Forum of Pakistan and MIT N-Prize Forum of D.C please come out and vote for our Tech Eye competition videos we'll have 90 videos from all the countries that we are working with the voting will begin October 31st thanks to everyone who submitted an application to our competition we are grateful to all the universities and organizations to recognize the importance of supporting entrepreneurs and we help make this event a great success if you are interested in becoming more involved with our partners please check their websites I think we'll have the links to their websites online both MIT N-Prize Forum Pakistan of D.C. the GIST initiative the State Department I would like to make two announcements we are very pleased that our speakers as well as entrepreneurs and executives from the D.C. audience agreed to mentor a number of Pakistani entrepreneurs will be facilitate this in close partnership with MIT N-Prize Forum of Pakistan and D.C. we will also seek to connect the students from the audience with the students from Pakistan and also we plan an event on November 16th jointly with MIT N-Prize Forum of D.C. three entrepreneurs from the countries we work with to organize a startup clinic and we'll be glad to have I think both Jeff Hoffman and also Faisal with us on November 16th and lastly I would like to welcome ideas regarding the organization of future GIST Tech Connect events with other countries in our network we think this was an excellent opportunity for some of the wisdom experiences of our speakers to be shared with the entire network in GIST and stay tuned for more activities and thank you everyone for everything thank you this program has been brought to you by Kinex