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.

There are many ways to help:

P@SHA has launched a relief effort.

Here is a list from ChapatiMystery

Please donate at:

• UNCHR’s Pakistan Page.
• Mercy Corps, Pakistan.
• Checks can be written to the best humanitarian organization in Pakistan:
  USA Edhi international Foundation.
  42-07 National street
  Corona, New York, 11368 USA
  Tel: (718) 639-5120
  Fax:(718) 335-1978
  Toll Free# 1-888-899-EDHI (3344)
• Pakistan Red Crescent Society.
• A compilation of organizations you can support.
• Another great list at Teeth Maestro.

Please do take a few minutes from your schedule to address this issue. Tell your family and friends and encourage them to donate. These people really do need our help.

Now I am all for improving web services in Pakistan. Online payment gateway will definitely open up a lot of ecommerce related websites and will encourage us to make more and more services available online.

But I also think that it is useless to ask Paypal (an American company) to cater our needs. Why should they even consider expanding their services to Pakistan? What good can that possible do for them? 160 million (well not all of them) users? nah, if I was Paypal, I wouldn’t even think about expanding to Pakistan. I am sure Paypal has many other countries to expand to that are worthwhile.

Banging our head against their walls doesn’t really solve the problem. Actually, this is a good problem to have. It leaves the space open for innovation in Pakistan. So lets get our NED and FAST and LUM heads togther and do something about it. Trust me, there is a HUGE first mover advantage in doing this.

So instead of writing letters and spaming Paypal, lets hold innovative sessions on campus (or off-campus) and think about how can we solve this problem. If our banks are playing hardball, than we need to find a way to play around it. Remember, nothing is impossible.

We all will be working together to create these services in Pakistan. We started Mazaydar as our first step towards that mission. It is a long road — a tough road, but I know there is a light at the end of it. So lets get back to work.

Paktive - Pakistan on the map

So this mornings coffee chai got a bit interesting with an article on GreenWhite about Paktive (what’s with the name?) 

Okay, so what is Paktive all about? Well this is what I found on their website:

“Paktive.com is an experiment to compile and present map locations of Pakistani places of interest like restaurants, parks, landmarks, services and businesses in major Pakistani cities. Currently, it uses satellite imagery from Google maps.”

Interesting eh? Well GreenWhite author Saad Khan has written them off today. According to him its a dead venture. And sadly I agree with him.

The problem with Paktive is that it is not designed for the masses. Nerds like to draw polygons, normal people (and we have a lot of those in Pakistan) do NOT like to draw polygons and identify places on the map. They would rather use the old method of dumping text based data into a database and query it. 

Think about it, how many of you have gone to Google Maps custom map section for Pakistan and drawn or identified any location? (did you even know that Google Maps had that feature?) 

We need to think about the business plan around it. I know community based contributions and web2.0 is all WOW but really this WOW can never become a real WOW without proper business model behind it.

In Paktive.com’s defense they do call it an “experiment” so I will let them go without a attack plan.