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.
