Schmoozing

When you get invited to a US Embassy event to meet some guy working with the government, your reaction is?

Mine was … *blech

But today I was in GEEK HEAVEN I tell you.

So there is this guy called Alec Ross who is associated with Clinton and ran Obama’s election-winning Twitter campaign. Used to run a NFP. Wants to meet bloggers and ppl active in social media. The Embassy sends some bio that I skim through but all I see is “blah blah blah blah blah”. But I go anyway. I am soon moving to Peshawar (another story for another day … or  maybe not) and thought what the heck. I’ll go see the guy. And then I have never been accused of saying NO to free lunch. So that was a good incentive as well.

So I arrive at the Ambassador’s house. Am greeted by the Ambassador … had no idea who he was until much later during the conversation. Am introduced to this young-ish guy. We shake hands and he says, “Hi, I am Alec”. Me, being me, said, “Hi Alex, I am Maria”. KILL ME!

Small gathering – made me feel very fancy shmancy and important. Then Mr. Alec decided to come and sit with me and start asking about what I do. I give my very rehearsed pitch about WDL. And the usual “oh wow, how great, wonderful, excellent, fabulous” followed. Americans do that a lot, no? I have picked up on it too. “Mr XYZ, what do you do?” “I do blah blah blah”. Me: “Oh how wonderful!”

I was saying …

Yeah, I mentioned how I found most clients through LinkedIn. And he takes out his BB and says you know what – Reid Hoffman is my friend and he will be very happy to hear about this so I am gonna email him right now”.

OH 

MY

GOD!

I find it hard to type any more. My heart stopped for a minute and all I could do was give him one of my goofy grins coz I didn’t trust myself to speak. I knew I was gonna start screaming. And he asked, “You know who Reid Hoffman is?”

Gun – trigger – face – BANG

I don’t know who Hilary Clinton is but I sure know Reid Hoffman.

LinkedIn 

PayPal

eBay 

*drool

Just thinking he has my name in his inbox in an email which he will prolly lay his eyes on in the next … say … 3 hours (he is on US PT) does funny things to my heart. SHIT!

Emailing Reid Hoffman <3

I can’t talk any more. But just so you know – I wasn’t a complete idiot. I remembered to ask about PayPal. Dudettes, back me up on that one.

The land where unicorns graze in rainbow colored fields exists …

and that’s where I am gonna be for a while.

byeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

Recipe for a Delicious Dinner

I am supposed to guest post once every two weeks but this was just too good to resist. Ladies, I met Sajjad Kirmani over email through a friend. And am I glad I did. He is definitely a great entrepreneur but more than that he is a wonderful human being who exudes a warmth and sincerity hard to find in people these days. I am so excited about this post. Without further ado … tuck in  

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Defining successful entrepreneurship has always been a combination of many words. A few stress on focus and leadership, some preach motivation and aggressiveness, while some sell innovation and planning. We can always argue on the composition and percentage of all attributes discussed but one thing is for sure that successful entrepreneurs know how to cook the delicious dinner without bothering too much about the recipe, ingredients and their composition. What makes them special is that, while collecting all the praises for that “delicious dinner”, they always relate to the hardships and sufferings they faced in the kitchen and yet they are full of advices in case someone else wants them to share the recipe.

During my career of 28 years in information technology, I had heard a lot of such recipe, at times ingredients were easily available too, yet the decision to actually move in to the kitchen was a difficult one. In later part of 2011, I decided to get into entrepreneurship and finally launched “INFOGISTIC” in Feb, 2012. Since then, it has been an amazing ride, days full of excitement, nights full of thoughts, with the focus to strike that perfect balance to make my delicious dinner. The journey no doubt can be long, definitely tiring but I have learned how to overcome my fears, how to absorb pressures and still able to smile and innovate.  Believing in the people, faith in the ideas, I am moving on and in a short time have been able to create the “Appetizer” for my delicious dinner. The company that started with a small footprint in Pakistan is now able to attract a good customer base in Middle East competing with best of the best.

Besides focus, determination, leadership and innovation, belief has been the key component of our journey. For a start up like us, we had to ensure flexibility yet drawing the line between changing and spinning. With a notion to invest in the people, we have been able to develop a mature and scalable IT services model and with the willingness to invest in technology we are on our course to develop a cutting edge software product based on cloud paradigm.

Summing up, Technology entrepreneurship has its own flavor that does not require heavy machinery, massive labor, and huge capital. With the advent of technology and business transactions taking place over cyberspace, there are numerous opportunities for budding entrepreneurs to be a part of the entrepreneurial ecosystem. Even in a developing country like Pakistan, there are platforms that facilitate entrepreneurs to convert their innovative ideas into their delicious dinner.

For me personally, it’s been a thoroughly fulfilling journey so far and most certainly one of the best decisions I have taken to setup my own kitchen.

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Sajjad Kirmani is the Founder and CEO of INFOGISTIC, an emerging IT company that focuses on providing information security, enterprise portals  and banking solutions to its customer across Pakistan and Middle East. He has over 28 years of IT experience with several years of senior leadership experience in the IT industry. He won the CIO of the Year Award in 2010 for his outstanding work as Director IT & Operations at NetSol Technologies. During his 14 years tenure with NetSol, he was instrumental in carrying out several groundbreaking initiatives, including NetSol´s emergence as the leading IT exporter and the first CMMI Level 5 Company.

Sajjad holds a Master´s degree in Computer Sciences from University of London along with a Master of Business Administration (MBA) degree from IBA. He is the President of IBA Alumni Association and has been the Vice President of Pakistan Software Houses Association (PASHA). He has a passion for gardening and maintains one of the best spring gardens in Lahore.

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