Bubbles Out of Nothing..

Rants of a deversified Pakistani studying in Doha in an American Institution founded by a Scottish businessman.

[shahanmemon]

The valley of Europe - Stockholm

After Silicon Valley (SV), I got selected to be a part of a Product Innovation trip to Sweden. This is my second time in Europe - after a Greece trip last year for World Universities Debating Championship (WUDC).

Photo Credits : Maher Khan.

Initially I was not planning to pursue the opportunity, as to be honest, I am not a crazy-travel-loving person. But I finally decided to go for 2 main reasons : 1) It’s likely my last academic learning trip before graduation. 2) The group looked amazing which from my SV trip experience helps a lot in learning as discussions get triggered which then get fierce and interesting, and well discussions are my favorite part of any such trip. Besides, I obviously had to visit the founding country of my favorite brand H&M. (No I have not yet visited H&M here and Yes all the clothes in my closet, without exaggeration, are by H&M)

We arrived to Stockholm Sunday evening and were surprised by the pleasant weather contrary to the weather forecasts we saw before travelling. We lived in the central Stockholm which made commute relatively easy for the entire week. My first impression about Stockholm was that of a civil and quiet place with family-oriented and friendly people all around. I thought it was because we landed on a Sunday evening. But soon I realized that I am actually good at first impressions. Despite there being people walking up and down the streets, there was something in the Nordic air which made it quiet. In the restaurants and other places we visited, people were generally talking slow and in a low tone. Most of the shops closed after 7 p.m while the twilight, to our surprise, lasted until 11 p.m. 

Photo Credits : Maher Khan.

We learnt that in Stockholm people generally go to work early and get done as early as 5 p.m - except in the case of Spotify employees who have to work until 7 p.m as they have to collaborate with people from Spotify’s branch in New York. Spotify was one of the unicorns founded in Sweden that we visited. Their working environment was phenomenal, and not to my surprise everyone in the group wished to work there. Their office space had a great similarity to the AirB&B offices we visited in Silicon Valley. Even our professor - Maher Hakim - agreed to that. Most of these companies like AirBnB, Spotify, Google, Zynga, etcetra have a culture to make the office space colorful and comfortable for employees as it triggers creative thinking and motivates people to work. I think in these terms Qatar has a lot to learn and adopt yet. 

People ‘learn’ Entrepreneurship there

I do hear a lot of people saying that entrepreneurship cannot be taught like they used to say in the olden times that medicine cannot be taught. As a matter of fact, I believe, there is no such thing as an entrepreneur gene and that it can only be learnt.

Though the weather of Stockholm may not be as ideal around the year as that of SanFran, the startup culture in Stockholm is definitely booming. The city has created companies from Skype, Ericsson, H&M, Spotify and Saab to Funrock, iZettle and Truecaller. And against the norms, many of the people here have actually learnt Entrepreneurship as a major which brings to my first point of observation and realization i.e many startups these days are following a set of procedures and rules to pursue entrepreneurship as oppose to the traditional methods of doing business i.e to say that startups do know importance of creating MVP, business model, etc which I do not believe was the case in the past. This only shows that people are actually passionate about startups though I am yet to figure out the motivation of Stockholm’s youth in pursuing entrepreneurship. Is it because it’s cool? Or it’s stable? Or is there some other underlying reason to that. The thing is that Silicon Valley has a great advantage of Stanford which creates an environment where technology is always in discussion. But Stockholm is a different case. I believe and I maybe wrong but Swedish government has a lot to do with it’s success in the startup scene. We saw an evidence of this when we visited two governmental agencies Vinnova (an agency that funds needs-driven research and stimulates collaborations between companies, universities, research institutes in Sweden) and Svnesk Form (the Swedish Society of Crafts and Design founded in 1905). 

It’s a small city with big collaboration

One of the other reasons for Stockholm’s success could be collaboration. Sweden is a small country of 9 million people because of which the chances of you running into any founder of a startup in any gathering are high. Not just that, the chances of you being a friend of friends to anyone in the city are more than 90%. Now when you meet people, you discuss problems and share ideas and solutions. Hence there is a great scene of collaboration amongst individuals and even different companies. Joint ventures are common, companies know employees of other companies and team work is appreciated and encouraged. In fact, there are actual job positions of community building like that of Startup Grind’s Jonas Almeling who actually told us how community development is an important factor in success of startups and that it is based on three simple rules: enable, connect and inspire. Klarna, another unicorn we visited, also talked about how they highly value team success more than individual success when recruiting individuals. 

Photo Credits : Maher Khan.

“Fail fast not big”

Talking about success, failure is considered good in Stockholm, but if you fail fast and small. People like telling their failure stories and inspiring others. Most of the big companies in Stockholm are actually the pivoted ones. However, there are many companies who fail big. An example was given by an angel investor from Sup46 who said and my friend Yousuf Akhlaq quoted:

It feels awesome as an entrepreneur when your startup attracts a lot of attention and perhaps even gets press coverage. You feel proud and accomplished. That is where it goes wrong. The noise in the ecosystem at an early stage often distracts you; be wise enough to not fall for the trap.

This was a new perspective that we learnt which was endorsed by our Professor as well. Yes it is true that a startup should grow quick, but not too quick as neither big money nor big press brings big success. In fact they might bring big failure which is dangerous.

Cash is not king

If you go around the city, you will see that most of the restaurants, even the smallest ones, insist on paying by card rather than cash. One of the restaurants we visited even refused cash completely. This was something extremely modish and interesting to learn. So make sure you take both cash and card when you come to visit this place. Besides, money is not king as well. One of the locals gave us an estimatation of living cost in Stockholm. According to her, rent for an average single bedroom apartment in Stockholm starts from 7000 crowns (~3500 QAR) while the average salary is around 26000 Kr (~13000 QAR) which is not a very good salary if you take taxes and food expenses into account as well.  Also, in comparison to Doha, food in particular is quite expensive here. I am yet to eat a meal of less than 80 Kr (around 40 QAR) here.

Photo Credits : Maher Khan. 

Culture of drinking Infused water

But to be honest, food is quite good as well. Many of us had a reservation towards Halal food, but despite that, we were able to find good (though expensive) food here. There was one problem though i.e many of the restaurants here had their menus written in Swedish which made things a little hard for us. Google translate came handy in such situations. Few of our favorite restaurants were Max, Flames and Mother. Talking about food, people here actually care a lot about health and healthy eating. There are a lot of restaurants that serve green food like Mother itself. Also most of the people here drink apple,orange and lemon infused water which is something new. Besides, you will see a lot of people walking or cycling on the streets. Irrelevant but people here are very well-dressed, though my friend Sampriti argued that Londoners still outshine Swedes in that aspect.

Photo Credits : Maher Khan.

Ericsson is not a mobile company

My favorite visit in Stockholm was that to Ericsson. In my mind, the only thing I knew about Ericsson was it’s collaboration with Sony to produce mobile phones. Turned out they closed that deal a few years ago and have refocused to other cool projects. They are working on various areas of network and communication, for example, working with Philips to make street lights smart and efficient (named as Zero Site project) and  working with Volvo for intelligent media streaming for self-driving cars. The area I liked was their project called “Technology for Good” where they are working on sustainable, responsible and small socially beneficial projects. 

In all, Sweden trip was an inspiring journey and an opportunity for me to learn a new culture. Apologies for bouncing between past and present tense as this blog was partially written while I was there. Also I realize I have focused most of my blog on the culture of Stockholm and haven’t quite discussed the nittygrittys of the companies we visited. I will leave that for my friend Yousuf to blog about here. 

[shahanmemon]

Silicon Valley 101

[..] My purpose to bring you here is not necessarily to just bring back the startup culture in Middle East. My purpose regarding this trip, my expectation is to complete your academic education by inspiring you and providing you with opportunities to complement what you have learned in class - Prof. Maher Hakim on answering my question at the Arab Panel

WARNING : LONG AND IMPULSIVE POST

In most of the companies we visited, we had a QnA session at the end, and one of the recurring questions was “How can we bring the culture of Silicon Valley to Qatar/Middle East” or “How can we get back our Arab Entrepreneurs in the valley?” to which Zafer Younis from 500 startups very well said that “It does not matter as the goal of helping entrepreneurs and these students is to help them succeed. It does not matter if they come back or not” Ultimately, they are inspiring the little wantrepreneurs by representing that region. It does not matter whether they do a startup in Middle East or U.S. Later in the Arab Panel when our Professor asked us for reflections, I asked him a question that what are his expectations from us after the trip or in other words, what was the purpose of this trip, and he gave me the answer I expected him to give that how he values individual learning more than anything. He further elaborated that “It is also not necessary that all the people here go for a startup after graduation as this is not the purpose of the trip. In fact, I would be glad if you can get inspired, work for and learn from one of these big companies.”

And with that I would put out a do and don’t list which I think is important for wantrepreneurs (aspiring entrepreneurs) out there i.e.

Startup is not something that is forced. Do not try too hard for a startup if you are not interested to do that. Do not do a startup just because it is cool. Yes, do a startup if you have a problem that will burst your head if not solved. Do a startup if you want to be independent. Do a startup if you think you can contribute and be recognized on a bigger scale for your work and that it would be impossible to do that if you work for bigger crowded companies.

With that being said, I don’t disagree that there is a need for the Arab region to grow in terms of product development and entrepreneurs. I also don’t have any objection at the question about how the culture of the valley can be brought back. What I just want to say out loud to the next year’s batch is that when you describe your reason to visit the valley, it is nice but not necessary to say “I want to bring the culture of silicon valley back to Qatar.” And as Professor Maher Hakim said and as we saw in the Valley that even if we work in U.S, we are representing and helping this region one way or the other.

With that being said, here are some interesting and favorite things I observed in the valley :

1) Good Questions all around : Unlike most of the conferences/seminars I attend, all the questions that our group asked in the qna sessions were relevant and important. Before we went to a company, we used to do a 20 minute research at the breakfast table about the company and what’s going on with it. Later in the van we used to tell each other about the company and our findings to give context before meeting. Now the purpose of the research was not to “think” of a very critical/controversial question that we could ask the reps (representatives) and score. Yes, many people do that in the seminars but it’s just unhealthy way to think about it. The purpose of the research was to see if there was any question that was bugging us or that got ‘triggered’ from that research. So if you have to “think” of a question, you really don’t have a question.

2) Similar cultures in companies : Interestingly, most of the companies had wide open spaces, no executive offices to tone down hierarchy and encourage collaboration. Interestingly, almost all the companies (Uber,500 Startups, AirBnB,etc) we visited had their rooms named after cities (Paris,Dubai,Dublin,etc). So if you are in a room and someone calls you to ask where are you, you can sound cool and say, “I am in Paris.”

Picture Source : Link

3) Post-Conversations : After each visit, we used to argue in the van about the company. Some topics we discussed were : So would you like to work for the company if offered (many of us said No for Zynga), This guy (Louay Eldada from Quanergy) is the boss, Anki could have done a better start than starting with a toy, AirBnB offices were amazing, why Zynga is not stable company to work, how inspiring Marwa Mabrouk from Google was, whether Kashmir belongs to India or Pakistan, Egyptians are smart or not, most of the startups at launch festival were useless, difference between cmu and stanford, how we could have worked hard to get into stanford, etcetra. HAVE THESE CONVERSATIONS. These are amazing ways to learn, especially learn at times why your thinking is wrong. These conversations are best to observe things. Trust me.

4) Do not underestimate : When we went for Quanergy, we all literally thought that it is some small company with an Arab CEO trying to copy google’s self-driving car and that it would not be worth our time. Let me tell you, this became everyone’s most favorite company. This was as big as any other company. The guy (CEO) had an amazing personality and man he was the smartest man many of us had met.

5) Google and Stanford : Visit to Google was my favorite part of the trip. Not because of obvious reasons of it being amazing. But because of the inspiring talk we had. Host Marwa Mabrouk told her inspiring story which we all could relate to. She told us her struggles of the conservative society, and how she had to call “Mufti” to talk to her mom in Egypt to let her go to US for work  as her mom was not ready. Also, we cycled around the beautiful Google campus on GBikes. Amazing right?

The second most favorite part of the trip was Stanford, and for obvious reasons. CMU Alum, Dilsher and Fahim received us. Dilsher told us about the ecosystem at Stanford and differences in CMUQ and Stanford. How Stanford does not have any invigilators in exams as it trusts its students. How it does not use plagiarism detectors, etc. The campus was just beautiful, and the weather was amazing as it was pouring. Silicon Valley has a great advantage of Stanford as it is primary source of smart founders and engineers here or in other words as my brother writes, the source of mana of Silicon Valley. Warning when you visit : You will get depressed thinking why you are not part of it. But yet it is an inspiring place to visit and eat amazing Waffle fries.

Picture Source : Link

Places we visited : Zynga, 500 startups, Indiegogo, Ideo, AirBnB, Anki, Uber, Google, everyone’s favorite Quanergy, Facebook (from outside),Launch Festival 2016, Plug and Play, and Stanford.

And I say this with zero exaggeration that this trip was and will be the best and the most inspiring trip of my life. Finally, I would like to end this blog post with something I feel is important :

Never think less of yourself. It is highly likely that when you visit Google, AirBnB, Quanergy or Stanford, you would feel depressed to see how smart people are, how people younger than you are part of it and that you aren’t. How you could have done better in classes/SATs to get into Stanford. Not that this is a wrong way, but this is just an unhealthy way to think about things you “could” have done. Think about things you “can” do. There’s no way you cannot work in Google. There is no way you cannot be successful. All you need to do is work hard and not procrastinate and above all enjoy what you do.

- Shahan Ali Memon

[shahanmemon]

San Fran 101

It’s my day 2 here and I know it’s quite early to write a blog post about the valley as of yet, but I’ll just put out some observations, first impressions and hypothesis I have about what some people call “San Fran”.

Taking my foot down the plane to the immigration desk, I realized that people seem to be quite genteel here. Given the fact, I hold a green passport (and not the green-card), I was expecting some absurdities in behaviors of the officers. To my surprise, immigration officers were actually very friendly. They did not ask many questions from me. Though - funny story - one of my friends, Musab, was confused for an Indian and on him telling the officer that he was actually “Pakistani”, the officer got bemused and said “Oh! When did they separate?” which I clearly thought was a satire. Anyways, my observation about people being well-mannered comes from not just that, but the hotel staff, waiters, and general public. Of course, once we start visiting companies, I’ll get to know more. (More on this in my next post Silicon Valley 101).

On our way to Parc55 hotel where we were staying for the first 3 days, we saw beautiful Graffiti all around the city. The first half from the airport was mostly suburban. The city seems very lively as compared to Pittsburgh and Doha. A lot of people walking around the city, many of them with their dogs. The weather is perfect - would not be wrong to say that it’s kind of the one to trigger creativity, code and work. As soon as we reached the hotel, we were given heads-up to try not going to the North of the hotel as it might be a little shady. We were hungry, so we headed out. Saw some restaurants here and there. We were finding “Chipotle” to have some Mexican food. Soon, we realized that we were actually going North of the hotel. And here we saw the amazing dichotomy: Just too many homeless people around the city. It was sad, but not quite surprising as after all you are talking about the highly exorbitant “Silicon Valley” here.

Nevertheless, we had chipotle and then at least I was so tired and jet-lagged enough that I passed out. The next morning I woke up, it was great to see many people -young or old - on the streets early morning, in gym and in cafeteria as early as 6 A.M.

Today we are going to Cheese Cake Factory for dinner. I am looking forward to some good gelatin-free cheese cake.

Besides, next few days are exciting as we are going to visit companies like AirBnB, Zynga, Google, Youtube, 500 startups, IDEO,  etcetra. But the most I am excited about and am looking forward to is the Launch Festival as that is where we would get to learn about the wantrepreneurs of the valley.

Will keep you updated.

Shahan.

[shahanmemon]

From "Karak Chai" to just "Karak"

A glimpse of my cultural journey from Pakistan to Doha.

       The aestival heat of August blazed down on the tinted windows of our crowded bus as we rode down the road for my first friday prayer in Qatar. We were going to 'Fanaar' which was called the 'English Mosque' of Doha. I was wearing my favourite teal blue 'Kurta' contrasted with a white 'Salwar", my attire perfectly defining where I came from - Pakistan. Around my shoulders I wore 'Ajrak', a cultural cotton block-printed shawl dyed in red and black and tinged with white borders, a design quite similar to the cushions that a typical Qatari household would have in their sitting area, also called the 'Majlis'. Around me sat many of the Bangladeshi, Indian and other Pakistani peers belonging to their respective universities in Education City (EC). These three neighboring countries have a lot in common due to their geography and history. The most common thing is our national clothing and the second most common thing is us outnumbering other nationalities in EC.

Sindhi Ajrak(Left) and Qatari Majlis (Right).

Source : http://tinyurl.com/p4t5b3p (Ajrak)

              http://tinyurl.com/qcqowsz (Majlis)

    Aside from this blend of south Asian sub-continent in the shuttle bus, I was surrounded by students from Egypt, Palestine, Qatar and other Arab countries, many of whom were wearing 'Thobe',a long pearl white-colored traditional shirt harmonized with a "Gutra" - an arabic scarf also known as "Keffiah" with a black rope known as the "agal". In Sindh, where I was born and which is one of the four provinces of Pakistan, many men prefer covering their heads with a 'Sindhi Topi', a traditional circular hat embroidered with intricate geometrical designs and cut out in the front to expose the forehead. It was thus fascinating to come across a similar version of my culture in the Arab world as well. It's possible that Sindh adopted this culture from Arabs, after all they ruled Sindh for three centuries.

Agal with keffiyeh (Left) and Sindhi topi with ajrak (Right)

Source : http://tinyurl.com/khcn3tu (Keffiyeh)

            http://tinyurl.com/pzctpru (Sindhi topi)

    I am normally the kind of person who would rather sit and observe things than talk, especially when I'm surrounded by new people. It's possibly because it takes me some time to adjust to a new environment. It had always been my dream to study abroad at a U.S institution that involves not just international but also intercultural exchange. Though I was living my dream, I couldn't be sure if I had made the right decision until I could find myself comfortable in the community. The transition from high school to college is blatantly stressful. The icing on the cake is when your high school and college are in two different regions of the world, thousands of miles apart from eachother. Thus there are factors that revolve around your minds preventing you from adjusting, namely; change in routine, pains of self dependency, comparison between past and present, and the most important thing, 'separation'. Not just the separation from family, high school friends and routines, but separation from your culture and environment. However, when I look back now, I realize that surprisingly it did not take me much time to adjust to Doha and its culture probably because of the many similarities that the two cultures share: one such similarity is the behavior of general public.

Pakistan is an Islamic country like Doha, and their cultures are highly influenced by religion, in particular the culture of Sindh. People in the interior Sindh would lower their gazes whenever they encounter women. Women on the other hand would almost always cover their heads. In Doha too it's quite similar: Physical contact between men and women is discouraged in public and majority of the Arab women wear 'Hijaab'. In Education city however, these cultural norms are not as strictly imposed but are still maintained. I was overthrown by my own stereotypes about Arab men and women. I thought they would be rude,impolite and loud. This prejudgement about them was proven wrong when I came to EC. Not only are my Arab friends soft-spoken and approachable, but they are very hospitable as well.

Hospitlity is one other similar trait found between Humans of Doha and Humans of Sindh. Benevolence, large heartedness and hospitality add up to the very spirit of Sindhi culture, and it is the association of these cultural elements that elevate it and keep aloft its banner among the contemporary cultures of South-Asia. Go to any house in the interior Sindh and you would be whole heartedly welcomed and treated with traditional Sindhi cuisines. On your farewell you will be escorted with traditional gifts of Ajrak and Sindhi Topi. Doha is no different. When talking to people here, one would not only be exchanged with mutual respect but will also be shown warmth and genuine interest. One of the prominent encounters of hospitality in Doha I've had was the invitation to Al-Thani Family Farm where the whole CMUQ community was invited by one of the Qatari students and was treated with cuisines from around the world. Not only are such cultural attitudes, traits and behaviors similar, but Qatari and Pakistani culinary appetites are also quite similar. The crazy consumption of tea is perhaps a prime example.

Pictures from our trip to Al-thani Family Farm.

Source : Facebook

    If you head to any tea point in Doha in the early hours of the morning or late at night, you will find endless rows of cars queued up for what would seem to be just a small cup of inexpensive traditional sweet tea called "Karak". This creamy, fragrant tea is one of the most popular hot beverages whose actual beginnings are considered to lie in the South Asian countries like India and Pakistan. This is probable because Pakistan holds a vivid tea culture which has made it the third largest importer of tea in the world. The most popular tea is the 'masala chai' made by brewing black tea with a mixture of aromatic spices and herbs. 'Masala Chai' is commonly regarded as 'Karak Chai'. Thus it is likely that when 'Karak Chai', which roughly translates to strong tea, arrived in the Middle East, it got modified to just 'Karak'. Talking about the similar food patterns, Doha's traditional dish is 'Machboos' which is a rice dish cooked with Hamour, chicken or red meat. The extremely spicy alternate of Machboos, "Biryani" is the Crown of Pakistani Food. One would not find a single Pakistani who would say 'No' to Biryani anytime of the day.

Machboos/ Kbasa (Top left), Biryani (Top right), Karak with Chapati (Bottom left) and Chai with biscuit (Bottom right) Source : http://tinyurl.com/ngqgxky (Machboos)

             http://tinyurl.com/ndpzt6k (Biryani)

             http://tinyurl.com/qzfcdlt (Karak)

             http://tinyurl.com/phk34q7 (Chai)

     It was almost 10 minutes and we were on the Corniche street. On my right I could see a beautiful Palace surrounded with green grass called "Emiri Diwan", the office of the Emir. On my left was the waterfront esplanade, Corniche. In a few minutes, we reached Fanaar featuring a very unique minaret design I had not seen anywhere. The way Qatar has preserved its culture is beautiful. Walking through the aisle, I reached a big auditorium inside the mosque with folding chairs all around, where people were quietly sitting and listening to "Khutba", a weekly sermon given in the mosques around the world. This is where I saw the difference between our cultures. Not only was Fanaar different from the traditional mosques, but the way Khutba was being delivered and listened was quite different. Normally in Pakistan people would sit on the ground and listen to the person addressing on the microphone. In Fanaar, however, they had a projector to display the Khatib - the person delivering Khutbah in the other room. The other difference was the presence of the abundance of women. The upper portion of the auditorium was filled with many women. In Pakistan, women normally don't go to the mosque. Moreover, the diversity here was excellent. I could see people from around different nations - Phillipines, Qatar, Pakistan, Nepal, India, Jordan,U.A.E, Bangladesh,U.S, etceteras. Truly Doha was an arena of modernity and diversity. The last time I went to the mosque, I was in Pakistan praying for everything to go alright. This time I was thanking Allah for everything. We performed prayers and headed back to the residence halls.

Emiri Diwan (Left) and Fanaar (Right)

Source : http://tinyurl.com/q6f4v6e (Emiri Diwan)

              tumblr (Fanaar)

On my way back, I got a sight of Souq Waqif, the pictures of which I had seen back in Pakistan. Souq Waqif is an amazing historic spice market, a place worth visiting that gives a taste of what Doha was in the past. They say "One will find everything in Souq Waqif at cheap rates". This market is not only home to the stalls of handicrafts, pillows, spices and garments, but constitutes many ethnic-themed restaurants with citizens' favorite 'Sheesha' places. A while later, I was gazing upon the colossal skyscrapers that made Doha what it is today. It was the first time I was looking at the skyline so closely. It was a beautiful sight. Looking at these high-rise buildings, I realised that no matter how modern Doha is, everything here has got a pinch of traditional sense. Qatar has preserved its culture in every aspect of life. It is truly a fusion of modern and traditional values.

Souq Waqif

Source : tumblr and wordpress

   It's been more than one year since I came to Doha and here I am sitting back and reflecting on the blend of culture that I am a part of now; enjoying a magical blend of tradition and modernity, a fantastic experience of globalization and localization at the same time.

[shahanmemon]

To thy streets O Nation! I pledge my life, Where the lawless vagabonds abound, […] Today the power of the oppressors may touch the zenith But these four days of omniscience too shall pass. ~ Faiz Ahmed Faiz

#Pakistan #PeshawarAttack #16Dec2014