I have been meaning to write this post for a while now. Last year in November, I was in Pakistan for my quick tour through Islamabad, Lahore and Karachi. I had posted about this on my blog and on my twitter account and made an open invitation for anyone who wanted to meetup with me to talk about anything related to Pakistan, startup and technology.

And I did end up meeting some really great people!

This is part 1 of the series of posts. This post is going to cover all about my experience in Islamabad.

First off before landing in Islamabad, during my transit from Abu Dabhi, I met a really nice young fellow (not that I am really old or anything) Naveed Zafar. Naveed is an IT/network professional based out of UK and was going back to Islamabad to visit his family. We had a nice exchange of ideas and thoughts around what can be done in Pakistan. Thanks for the talk Naveed, it really help me forget the first 14 hours of my flight from Toronto to Abu Dabhi.

Next, I met up with Owaeis Kiyani, a very energetic and young entrepreneur from Islamabad/Rawalpindi. Owaeis had me curious about his next startup called GidMid. So I asked him to tell me a bit about it, he wants to keep it off the record. So I won’t go into details but it all sounded very interesting. We also talked about his journey into entrepreneurship so far and the experiences he had as a freelance developer and even helping his friends and family in getting into the freelance business. Thanks for the lunch Owaeis.

Then after a day’s break and eating as much as I possibly could. I ended up scheduling a meeting with Aamir Attaa the founder/editor of ProPakistani.com – a technology related news website. I had very long and interesting conversation with Aamir regarding his views on online journalism, media, marketing, advertising and technology in Pakistan. I can confidently say that what Aamir is doing with ProPakistani is simply an outstanding effort and example of how to leverage the power of web to generate value for yourself. He is a great person, with very well thought out ideas and if I was running a newspaper in Pakistan, I would certainly hire him as a consultant to get the online presence setup that our newspaper industry seriously lacks.

I wanted to meetup with Osama Hashmi from Green&White but he wasn’t feeling well, so I had to settle with a phone call. I hope you are feeling better now and I wish you a speedy recovery.

I have missed out on meeting a few other good people from Islamabad and Rawalpindi who had contacted me to meetup with them, but unfortunately, due to short time-span of my stay I couldn’t meetup with all of you. InshaAllah that would be done in my next trip, which would be a longer.

To all those whom I met (and didn’t meet): keep up the hard work, encourage people around you to take action and create value.

I am planning to be in Pakistan for a short trip. I would love to meetup with you if you are in Islamabad, Lahore or Karachi. If you are working on a startup, working for a startup or just working on some super-awesome-cool project — then let’s talk!

InshaAllah (God willingly) I will be starting my tour from Islamabad/Rawalpindi, then going for a few days in Lahore and then to Karachi.

So if you are interested then email me at hello[-at-]obaidahmed.com

Please note that my tentative dates for this trip is from Nov 9th till Nov 24th. So keep these dates in mind when emailing me and also please do provide me with your contact phone number, as I might not have internet connection as soon as I land.

Hope to see you soon!

Watch this:

What do you think? Green side or Red side?

My thoughts will follow in a separate thread.

Even though you may be onto something but your startup idea probably sucks. See the thing is, we get so excited about our idea that we decide to keep it close to our chest, so no one else can run away with it and beat us to the punch.

Unfortunately, I have some bad news for you. There are at least 10 other people in this world who thought of exactly (or better) the same idea that you are guarding. It is a well known fact that it is the execution of the idea that matters and not the idea itself.

So my advice to all you out there is to talk about your idea, talking with others will help you refine your idea, gather feedback and fine tune it for the launch.

So go out there and make that idea a reality. Talk to people, fix it, refine it and relaunch.

I am not interested in “waiting” for your “big idea” to be rolled out after 2 years. This world wants instant results. So build that first iteration with just one feature.

That’s what we did for Mazaydar.

So yesterday I read an interesting article on Green&White. UFone GSM has launched UJob Portal that allows customers to apply for jobs right from their mobile phones. Wow! About time! Well not really but let’s not kill it right away shall we?

So how does UFone tell us all about this awesome feature?

Finding your dream job is now, just an SMS away. U-Job Alerts now gives you access to thousands of job announcements as posted on Pakistan’s Leading Job Portal, ROZEE.PK.

Hmm.. “dream job” an “SMS” away. Yes that’s what I want, I want you to spam with me SMS alerts for every single job that is posted on Rozee.pk — like you couldn’t just spam my inbox so I can look through them when I had a few minutes and apply for them with a proper resume.

To me this is a prime example of a product shoved into a space where it doesn’t belong. It is uterly useless and someone at UFone should be held responsible for making this decision.

I am not even going to bother explaining why is it a bad idea from an employer’s point of view, let alone candidate’s point of view. But if you are looking for job, my personal recommendation to you would be NOT to use UJob to apply for a job. I know I won’t hire you if you applied through the mobile.