While I am in no position to generalize it, I have seen many senior Pakistani entrepreneurs getting lazy. They usually end up resorting to their long-running online businesses and do nothing new.
These folks are making good money (up to tens of millions of rupees a month), and living lives that 99.9% Pakistanis can only dream of.
Majority of such entrepreneurs are mostly into the publishing business. Not many of us would have even heard of them.
But just to give you a hint — since I can’t name anyone — these local millionaires (and billionaires in some cases) are the faces that we used to see back in 2007-09.
As I said, these entrepreneurs are into publishing business mostly (like us, but much more diversified) and that is exactly why they know the audience and consumers vert well. So well, that they can tell you instantly on how well a product or service is likely to do on the internet.
While they have developed content, reviewed countless products over the years, or both, they know exactly the kind of products that do better in a specific segment or age-group.
Not only this, they are also best judges of user experience, quality of product and the features that could make a product unique, scale-able and sell-able.
They are mostly the mind readers. They will tell you in a second about what people like or dislike, or places where people spend money, and whatnot.
These individuals are remarkably experienced when it comes to user behaviors. They can predict the need even before consumers know it or well before a company develops the solution for such a need.
And needless to say, they have hefty cash in hands.
All of this is good. And now here comes the problem.
Most of such gentlemen, who are in their early thirties or less, have seen it all. Money, luxury, world-tours, real estate, family etc. You name it, they’ve experienced it. And that more or less makes them stagnate at the end.
While they are concerned over how Pakistan’s startup ecosystem is developing, they choose to do nothing about it. They tell me how miserable our startups are, or how amateur are the products that are developed here, but they tend to shy away from doing this themselves.
I think this has to change now.
Gentlemen. Its time you must step in and put your decade of experience in the digital world into use. You know this online space better than anyone and this is why you and only you alone can help trigger a shakeup in the entire ecosystem.
We need people like you, who don’t have to rely on PTA numbers to determine the potential of a product. We need you because you won’t have to get a survey done or read a research paper before defining a user experience. We need you because you have done this before, and we trust that you will do it again.
Think of products that can scale locally, and maybe even globally. A web service, an app, a digital product maybe or an unique solution to everyday problems that human beings face.
Think of something and build it. You have all the guts to become the first Unicorn of Pakistan.
Do we have any influential bloggers in Pakistan? Do we have blogs that impact their readers and influence their opinions? If yes, please name a few.
These days, anyone with a blog (usually hosted at free sites like wordpress or blogspot) and few posts based on rantings or paid reviews calls himself /herself a blogger. No one seems to care about the quality of content, readership and impact /influence.
Kashif, this post is intended for select few dozen bloggers with tens of millions of page views a month. Yes they do exist. WCCFTech.com is one of them.
WCCFTech isn’t a Pakistani blog per se, as it caters to an international audience. Appreciate if you can share examples related to Pakistan. Putting a list along with this post will be greatly helpful so that we know who are the influential Pakistnai bloggers out there.
ProPakistani is one, I believe :)
It doesn’t matter which market you are catering to, its the skill-set that you attains through years of blogging. And trust me, user behavior across all markets is same, its just the ROI that differs :-)
Here’s one in the making https://goo.gl/ZomU2v
You did the right thing. More need more examples.
Hi Aaamir,
Good wake up call to bloggers. We are a society where people doing something worthwhile come up with thousands of reservations when you reach out to them…
Other than ProPakistani, there is Tech Juice which caters to Pakistani Audience. Mango Baaz is another along with BrandSynario, Moremag.
If you are interested in international then Redmond Pie, Segment Next, WPBeginner are particularly worth following :)
Kashif your observations are absolutely correct. One more things i would like to add: The content they post cam be found at many places on the web if not everywhere with little difference. Anyone in the business of writing can quickly spot this. Just rephrasing, use of synonyms and alternative words and gimmick like this. Google so far is not that good to capture this.
Thanks
Tanveer
Well i this Amir Aata awesome blogger..And thousands of tech people read propakistani daily..
No offence bro. But if you can’t name a few yourself then this post was surely not intended for you.
Sorry if that was harsh.
one spelling mistake in this article.
Well said! I hope people can follow the likes of Ghaus Iftikhar, the founder of AddictiveTips, who has now taken on file-sharing with his incredible startup, JumpShare.
Unfortunately, for every few like him, there are a lot more who have just stuck to online publishing.
Because it is hard. Blogging is what they know and it is easy to mint money (Trust me, because I have a blog). Going into unchartered territory requires one to take an enormous risk, which many are not willing to take. It’s simple as that!
Good one there, Aamir!
We really do have many bloggers that are influential on the world’s and local’s territories, and that you’re one among them.
First off, there has to be more gatherings, more meetups to bring the people on board and spark the interest of blogging.
Blogging is something not let you to learn into school or universities, it is more of the self-taught skill.
Sharing what you know and what you learned over the years are always healthy to give back to your own people.
May the idea of yours turn into reality and be able to help Pakistanis at the greater level, amen!
~ Adeel
If you ask me personally, being a blogger, tried it several times. And, guess what?
It is all about running a story, and get defamed everywhere. You will soon start receiving emails, texts, messages to stop doing this or that. People will start entitling you with that you are unsafe to work with. And, after all this, they will come up with statements stop criticizing, the market is very new as compare to X, Y, Z. It is all shit.
However, after all this, I and few others are still ready to take over this and let them know what we can do. And by mean, few others, I am talking about some real people that you and I know mutually :)
– H