A-Players Bring the Best

When you have lots of B and C players in your team, chances are your organization is not likely to achieve greatness. It will live out its life in mediocrity.

So what defines an A player and how do the players differentiate themselves from others? Jack Welch and other such leaders have their own opinions, but for young entrepreneurs and startups, it has a very different definition and meaning. Here is what I think are the characteristics of an A player for a startup:

• Allround Personalities: The top of the class student is usually bookish and probably has avoided any other activity (social and extra curricular) among his/her peers, considering it “waste of time”. Such graduates are great for, may be, large and established enterprises, where work is defined, but are of little value to startups. The startups are better off hiring all round personalities, are street smart and can handle situations that are not pre-defined for them and can make crucial decisions in crunch situations.
  
• Should be active on social and club level (extra-curricular activities) on campus: This trait is extremely important. Once a person goes through the grind of managing an event, say, a music concert or running a student body/club, he/she learns things that are usually never taught in class and it better prepares them for the real life. These events create lots of opportunities to hone one's skills including communication skills, crisis management, people management, time management and relationship management among others. At times, these issues and skills are exactly what one encounters in their job. Therefore, this experience really helps.
  
• Should have played some active sport at a competitive level: This will bring out the competitive factor in a person. This really helps if you are competing hard against an established company as you will not wilt under pressure and can deliver the goods against all odds.
  
• Good schooling: This is extremely essential. I have hired from the best of the schools and the worst. I have worked alongside Ivy leaguers as well as community college graduates. In the end, I have always found the top schools produce the best students and hence the best colleagues. If you hire someone with mediocre educational background, you will spend more time teaching them the ropes to do things as compared to someone from a better school. In other words, the productivity of the organization would suffer. So hire smartly.

So can the B players deliver? They will, but will not be able to contribute significantly in keeping your organization as the best in class for that industry. A-players have thrived on being the best all their life and will bring the same attitude and mind set into your organization. They know what it takes to be the best.

There are lots of other characteristics that these individuals should have, but if they have the above background it will really make them stand out from the crowd.

If you are seeking a job or a business relationship with a company then check out its top management closely. See their profiles on Linkedin or google them carefully. If they are not part of the A-team, chances are you are setting yourself for up for disappointment. The top leadership defines the company's vision, policy and work ethics. If they are mostly B and C players, then the company is not likely to grow beyond a certain point and your career or project will go nowhere anytime soon.

So think wisely and hire smartly.

Startup Insider Islamabad Session

What a wonderful gathering at LMKR for the inaugural Startup Insider, Islamabad Session. At a conservative estimate, I would say at least 100 people showed up at the event including half of them students. Not bad for an event that was only marketed via blogs and email lists. The attendees included successful and budding entrepreneurs running great organizations, there were bloggers and journalists covering the event and professionals not just from the IT sector, but also from the Telecom, Media and Development sector.

The panel included successful entrepreneurs from BrightSpyre (Cogilent Solutions), Scrybe, Trevorsoft (Bentley Systems), Voxel among others. What surprised me the most was the fact that most of the companies on the panel had secured funding through some Venture Capital Fund. In fact, barring one or two, most of them were funded from the Silicon Valley. And quite a few of them were working on cutting edge technologies and beyond.

We had great case studies from the audience as well. We even heard from an enterprising student who had written a highly popular application on Facebook which today has almost a million users. He successfully negotiated and sold it off to another company in the valley from his dorm room in Pakistan! He is now busy launching yet another application on Facebook and already has offers from potential buyers, again from the valley. He asked a simple question from the panel. How can he now secure a bigger place (than his current dorm room) to build these applications in a more professional environment with a bigger team.

Another surprise from the audience was a budding young engineer who had written a wonderful application on the open source platform and had posted it to Sourceforge. And his application was not only being downloaded heavily but people were paying him money to enhance/customize it for them. Hence, he was running a successful one man shop right out of his home in Rawalpindi. And for payment processing, he was using Amaana, another enterprising application coming out of Lahore, which is Pakistan's answer to Paypal.

Osama Hashmi (Green & White) and Owais Ashraf (Bentley Systems) managed and moderated the whole event quite brilliantly. Thank you LMKR (Atif Khan) for hosting this event and treating us to wonderful coffee/tea and appetizers.

It was really pleasing to see active participation of the students as well. It showed that some of them will probably take up entrepreneurship as a career and will forgo the urge to work for another company. Just one observation. The folks on the panel be requested to provide a detailed personal background (education, work experience and why they chose entrepreneurship over employment) and what is so great about their company. This will further enhance the experience of listening to these success stories and understanding where they are all coming from. Startup Insider Sessions will be held once a month in Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad.

Please check Green & White blogsite for the event details and do attend them if you are in the area.

Startup Insider Sessions: A must attend event

The current economic boom that has gripped Pakistan for the most part of this decade has also had its impact on the IT industry. Many pioneering companies with innovative products and solutions have sprouted all over the country. Among them, BrightSpyre for innovation in introducing online recruitment to Pakistan (a company that I co-founded in 2002). Amaana sort of Pakistan's version of Paypal, Green & White, our own techcrunch to report all the local happenings, PixSense, Scrybe, Orgoo, among many many others.

PASHA, the official trade body, finally has a full time staff (almost 20 years after its creation) and with them comes another innovation, Startup Insider Sessions. Connecting local IT talent with brilliant minds who may want to forego their jobs for an entrepreneurial life. As Green & White puts it on their blog,

“A lot of bright, energetic and passionate entrepreneurs have great ideas but want to figure out how to take their brilliant idea and convert it into a business”

I think this sums up what the sessions are all about. So if you are one of them, make sure you are there.

These sessions also points to another level of maturity that the industry has achieved. We now have our own local stars and entrepreneurs in enough numbers who have ably demonstrated through successful startups that have made it big not only nationally and but also internationally. And interacting with these people will definitely provide the inspiration among many potential young minds to start it on their own rather than seek a job. Maybe, through these sessions, we may find some wonderful new ideas that further fuel innovation within the country.

Startup Insider sessions are organized by Green & White in collaboration with PASHA. All hats off to them for their wonderful effort.

For more information, please visit Green & White blogsite.

Allvoices.com - A refreshing approach to news and events

Each day, I visit dozens of websites including blogs, news sites, forums and even social networking platforms. The purpose is keeping tabs on various technologies, events, and of course to see what else is going on around me. Whether it is political, sports, IT or even finer side of life, I prefer to find it online. And sometimes, I even write about some of it (like right now) at some forum or on one of my blogs out there…

Allvoices.com is one such startup out of the valley that has caught my attention and has literally made some of my surfing easier. It not only organizes information professionally of everything that I want, but also gets my point of view out there faster.

The first thing that you see is not textual information, but a world map. As a user, you choose the region that interests you and it takes you to the news and events related to that region directly. Remarkable. For example, the story of sudden death of Benazir Bhutto spread around the world like wildfire. There was hardly any website, blog, newspaper, TV, radio that did not cover the event in detail within minutes of its happening. Even CNN listed found Benazir's death as the most sought after event on its website. Within two days of its happening, it has probably achieved the notoriety of becoming the biggest news story for 2007. But allvoices.com seems to have found a way to filter and bring the best of these stories out for its readers.

http://www.allvoices.com/people/Benazir-Bhutto

I get to read what the other newspapers are talking about, view comments left by people and also add my own blogs/feeds/comments to this list. Wonderful!

As another example, I was watching some news story on TV and a name Miliband came up in UK. I clicked on the map of UK on allvoices.com and got complete details about him, including a link to Wikipedia of his entry.

I think this is the future of how we shall gather news, read, and comment. It is a mix of traditional (imported news items from major players including fox, cnn, bbc etc) with a blend of blogs and viewers comments. CNN is trying to do something similar with iReport, but so far allvoices.com seems a better effort. Good job guys.

Successful Strategy

Good strategy is the key to success of any enterprise. Failing to create or execute one could mean disaster, regardless of the size of the company or the qualifications of the people leading it.

Tips to Formulating a Good Strategy

• Primary Focus: A well formed question as to what is the strategy of the company. For example, how do we expand nation-wide in the next 6 months? How do we increase our revenue by 30% in the next year? How do we make our new product number 1 in the market by 2009?

• Understanding Current Situation: One must know what is going on around the enterprise. For example, know what the competitors are doing. Are there any new players in the market. Has anyone become more aggressive in the market? Where the market is heading. Is it moving to on line purchases from stores? Is it slowing down as compared to last year? Customers. Are they satisfied with the services or are considering choosing others.

• Timeline and Targets: Must be clear of what you want to achieve in which steps in a fixed amount of time. There is no point in having an open ended strategy with no targets. Every target and strategy should be absolutely time bound. The goals should clearly be defined. For example, that the six billboards for our new product shall be up in the city by the end of February 2008. Similarly, the new product release shall hit the shelves of retailers before the Christmas shopping season begins.

• Understanding the Future: Must know where the market, customers, suppliers (and other critical factors like economy, political scenario etc) will be when the strategy is executed successfully. Say, if we are going to launch a new desktop software in 2 years that is slated to capture a niche market. But will the penetration of Internet based products eliminate the desktop software market? Would Google or Microsoft also get into this market with their cheap or free web based products? Will the political instability cause an economic shakeup?
  

• Measuring the Performance: Must gouge and measure your strategy every step of the way. For example, have the revenues increased significantly in the past two quarters to show that we shall achieve the targets by the end of the year? Is the product development meeting the milestones on schedule so that we can achieve our target of launching the new release by Christmas?
  

Factors to failure

• Lack of Communications within the team: Communications within the various departments in the enterprise. One of the most common reasons for failure in strategy is breakdown in communications and not sharing and seeking critical information from each other.

• Being reactive rather than proactive: Spending too much time in firefighting, resolving issues, following up on opportunities and not allocating and spending time on strategic thinking.

• Thinking short term, rather than long term: Most of the time, we think of a few months ahead and not worry about where we will be in the long term. Short term is usually reactive, focuses on doing and is customer driven. The long term is where you want to see your company and what you would like to achieve by that time. It also sets a clear direction and vision for the company.

Positive Energy

Always bring a positive attitude towards work. Always smile even in adverse conditions. It is better not to say anything than to say something bad. Thinking negatively contributes very little to the organization. If you are a manager with a negative outlook, you are more likely to cause your team to slide downwards.

Always contribute positively

If you are given a task to do, give your 200% and nothing less. Take every task, no matter how trivial, as a challenge and accomplish it to the best of your abilities. If you lack in some area, always seek guidance from your peers and superiors. But never say never.

Be Proactive

Never wait for your supervisor to ask you on follow ups of the already assigned tasks. Never give them a chance to run after you and pester you for results and updates. Get reports in early and have your communication channel open, and keeping them abreast of all updates on the project and tasks assigned. Do not procrastinate on tasks and work.

Fix issues do not just point them out

Whenever an issue arises, try to find a solution or work towards one. There is no point in pointing out lots of problems and excuses for something that has gone wrong. It is very easy to point out issues, problems and mistakes within an organization, but very difficult to suggest solutions. The best of the lot are those who have suggestions and solutions to issues. If someone continues to point out issues, he/she will soon be branded a “whiner” within the organization. Also, the management will never consider that person for leadership role as he/she is more likely to fail.

Small minds find excuses. Great minds find solutions.

Entrepreneurship in Developing Economies

Someone recently asked me at a conference in the Bay Area, as to how has been my experience of entrepreneurship in the US as compared to the developing economies. My answer, which astonished him, was it is far more difficult to succeed in developing economies than in the US.

There are reasons for that and plenty of them, but I list here the three most important. To an extent they are true for all economies; from Bangladesh to Nigeria, from Philippines to Pakistan, from Sri Lanka to Kenya.

Political Instability:

For one, the political instability can play havoc with your plans. Say, if you were in Pakistan, Bangladesh, or even Nigeria, chances are that the political system is heavily dependent upon military and how it reacts to the highly mischievous politicians. Chances are that there will be one political upheaval every five or so years. Enough, to not make business plans and forecasts beyond five years regularly. In fact, I recently, met up with a Chairman of a multinational corporation in Pakistan and asked him precisely about this trend. He said, they used to make a 5 year plans for the country in the past. Now, they are down to 3 as it is difficult to see beyond that.

Government Oversights:

To an extent, if you are running an IT related business, chances are the government will not interfere much. However, that is just the illusion. The governments are slowly becoming aware of what is the all hoopla about this new technology and are becoming a major roadblock in its growth. Take the example of bandwidth. If you are anywhere in Africa, chances are you are paying by the kilobytes that you are using. Yes, not all you can eat, unlimited packages as we see in the US. Even if setting up a software company is cheap, it is too expensive to connect with the outside world on high speed bandwidth.

In Pakistan, the waters are further muddled, with the paranoia built by the government around VoIP. Now, if you are a call center or a software house, and want to use VoIP then you have to first register with the government (Pakistan Software Export Board), and then get a clearance from Pakistan Telecoms Authority (PTA) and this process could take an average of four to six weeks, if not more. And once you do get this clearance, you are still not allowed to do inter office communication using VoIP. You still have to use traditional telephony for that! Imagine that! And yes, they can raid your offices, lock up your staff and do all sorts of government bureaucratic bullying in the name of protecting you against the illegal use of VoIP.

Financing:

Now, this is where it gets really tricky. Numerous surveys conducted by various agencies including World Bank, United Nations has indicated that Financing is one of the major issues in developing countries for SMEs (Small and Medium Enterprises) to survive and grow. The banking systems are also quite archaic in nature and have not really developed since the colonial independence. For example, it is quite difficult for them to finance anything without “physical assets”. Now that is fine, if you are an industrialist, but what if you are an IT company? There are only electronic assets and intellectual property rights. Sadly, such enterprises can secure no funds from any banking institution on these basis. And there are hardly any Venture Capitalists out there either. That leaves the budding entrepreneur with his/her own money or rely on some angel investor.

The Effective Executive, by Peter Drucker

I recently came across this book The Effective Executive by Peter Drucker and I recommend all budding entrepreneurs read it thoroughly. Especially those who would be managing a fledging startup right out of school.

Here are five things that Mr Drucker recommends all managers do.

1. Time: To be effective is to know "where your time is spent". Time is one commodity that cannot be replaced or changed. Once lost, it is gone for good. Therefore, all managers must be careful of what they do with their time.
2. Focus on results: A lot of us tend to work long hours but fail to achieve the desired results in a given amount of time. We strive to work really hard, rather than smart. We should set up goals before initiating a task. What needs to be achieved in what time. What results are expected. Once that is clear then we should execute the task.
3. Build on Strengths: Get the best out of the team by making them do what they are best at. Not all of us are able to handle everything. Some of us are good managers, others are great at taking orders and executing them. For example, in a typical software house, some are excellent software engineers but fail to see the finer side of managing a large project. While others may be weak in programming, but can manage large and dispersed teams quite well. Others can handle customer relationships and clients much better. Find what is the best among your team and give them the work that they are ideally suited for.
4. Keep a clear focus: Always be clear of what you want to do. Trying to do hundreds of tasks in a short span of time will not achieve desired results. Rather, you will end up behind in most of those tasks. It is better to prioritize and clearly focus on a few tasks that you can achieve in a finite amount of time. Do them and reassign the rest to others.
5. Make effective decisions: Never shy away from making decisions, but weigh them before making them. Always get everyone's opinion, but make your own judgment.