“Programmers know the benefits of everything and the tradeoffs of nothing"-Rich Hickey or to quote Shakespeare: "I could be bounded in a nutshell, and count myself a king of infinite space”. We see a lot of people in their nutshells thinking they are kings of infinite space

Outcomes

Something I wish people understood about success:

To do anything big/awesome you have to do a lot of small, unassuming, tedious things first(small data). If you’re too good for the little stuff, you’ll end up going down as the idea guy with analysis paralysis and a job you’re overqualified for. Willingness requires a relatively high level of consciousness but we loose it when we don't look at the small constructs of large problems. We get lost in the mundane, hurting our net outcomes.

Yet we don't learn. The trick is as quickly as possible, figure out what of the small things is just not worth your time, and a detriment to the rest of your day and automate, innovate or outsource.The devil is in the details and the dirt. The small tasks compound over time when you’re head down and honing your craft. Unless you have an impulsive need to know, understand and perfect the small tasks in your business, you cant scale. Scaling is tough, but scaling starts small. Most times.

Simple formula on the mundane:

Small and boring task is repeatable.

That means it compounds.

Big task are not repeatable.

Don't hope to get viral but grow consistently everyday. Favour process over short cuts, small outputs over big wins and allow time to compound for success.

The Law of Trade offs is a good starting position to predict your end state:

Know your trade-offs. Most organisations have not analysed their business model to understand the trade-offs implicit in their choices for how to do business. The precursor is to evaluate who is winning and losing in the status quo. Same goes for people.

Rethink trade-offs. It may be possible to construct a business case for a particular intervention that resolves the trade-offs in a win-win solution. This is the essence of shared value. The challenge is that most companies never move beyond knowing their trade offs. They get stuck in the business case, which leads to only incremental change.

Innovate around trade-offs. Companies can get out of the business-case trap through innovation. Rather than accepting the trade-offs, companies can innovate new ways to deliver value. Only if they take small steps, that happens when people think this way as companies arent living things they are formed on the collective basis of peoples ability to innovate or get stale and die when competition comes calling.

Thrive within trade-offs. In some cases, the trade-offs are intractable. But that doesn’t mean that companies/people shouldn’t try to address them. Organizations/people may wish to hold the trade-offs in tension — thinking about what experiments in future solutions are possible or how long-term goals can be pursued without compromising short-term returns too much.

Be willing to deal with the hand you are dealt vs wanting to change the hand, you drive outcomes when you understand the small data around any problem.

One New Thing...thats not really new..

Chicken TIkka. The origin story around this is a lesser known secret. Most Pakistanis when they order a chicken tikka outside Pakistan, all they get are small boneless barbecued pieces of chicken. Maybe some ones world view of what a tikka is supposed to be, but clearly not the inventors.

In Pakistan a chicken tikka means either a whole barbecued leg piece (with thigh) or a chunky chest piece of a chicken.

Very few know that this version of chicken tikka is the norm in Pakistan. In fact it was 'invented' by the chefs of the once famous Cafe de Khan in Karachi in 1952.

The cafe offered a unique version of the chicken tikka which it encouraged to be had with a paratha & a chilled Coke.

People loved it and ever since its invention, this version of the chicken tikka has been popular all across Pakistan - and, for decades, popularised. In the gastronomic sense, its a viral food sensation, that took a life of its own from the 50s. To where it is now. The grand children or great grand children of the founder have preserved family traditions and recipes albeit not in Pakistan. If you happen to be in Canada you can visit the restaurant of similar name sake with true lineage to the founders at http://www.cafedekhan.ca/

Truth be told, most of the above was pieced together using various online artefact. The real kicker to the story was graciously provided (including the picture of Hadi Ishaq) by my dear friend Yusuf Jan (Grandson of the Founder, an entrepreneur at large him self)

Wait there is more. Yusuf also graciously shared Tweets around historical pictures of the events arranged/hosted by Cafe De Khan (Below):

Link1 Link2 Link3 Link4 Link5 Link6 Link7 Link8

Boring stuff that scales

Boring businesses are money spinners. Most entrepreneurs avoid non-glamourous businesses due to superstition or stigma or taboos. Build a boring business. FLY under the radar print cash until some big exit opportunity comes your way.

Sexy businesses inherently invite competition, which in turn drives down returns. Find a dull business with extra ordinary growth potential.

If you're smart enough to get into top universities then be bold enough to leave to build stuff - you're likely going to be very successful. But when you do it build some thing boring Vs going after the sexiest problem around..

When you do a startup, even if it fails, you gain skills in: Sales, Hiring & Building teams & improving process. Running a startup gives you expedited learnings that would've taken years to learn at a big Co & if you succeed it enriches the collective fortunes of the ones you hire.

If you focus on trying to treat the working man fairly & offer an opportunity he will pay back in kind by being your biggest champion.Create a job and you will create the right kind of pride. You give people dreams. People can go home and tell their kids about their future and share their dreams.

The best boring businesses either build or use distribution networks. Think about what markets exists for which products & apply the scaling mind set to it. Imagine how that market scales if distribution was infinite. Would demand for that market be directly proportional to distribution?

There is little to no need to follow the herd. For instance look at high volume specialised businesses that enjoy natural monopolies in PK. Hardware and tools is one such. There is no price list besides what the merchant tells you. It's a near monopoly due to scarcity of info.

Groups and collectives are an other great place to start. People tend to collaborate to strong arm others out of business. Rabi center & cloth merchants were an other such example from an other era, till the likes of today's poster child brands displaced them and a new market was born.

Look around you for markets dominated by or organised around communities of traders of similar backgrounds or dispositions. Those are the best markets to target. Hardware pricing list or engine is not a sexy business. No one has it. If you had price transparency and built a store you would win and displace and entrenched monopoly. When you break monopolies using distribution tech, you unleash insane value.

Building materials is an other. The tile, cement and fixtures mafia is a great place to be an information provider especially with the on going construction boom. Similarly lighting and bulb supplies. With the markets flooded with imports do you know the price or the difference between each? If you have or can build distributor pricing guides locally, ping me and I shall be happy to license them all.

There are so many places and so many things to participate in where you break up the natural monopoly locked in, due to missing price or quality info . Think about being in the boring company content business. Build up from it. Grocery pricing is an other such area.

Instead of you also raising 6 figures to build yet an other D2C or B2B distribution or retail consolidator. Build an engine that shows real time prices of commodities. Publish an API let all the retailers participate should they choose to and give the consumer boring info on price.

No one will give you price to start with. It's easy. Get it your self, organise the bread basket and publish prices for top 20 national retailers for that bread basket. Then partner with a dark store and beat the best retail brands price and service by serving customer at home in your chosen vertical if need be.

You can substitute national brands with OEM/Generics. When people care about quality & you deliver it, in a price sensitive market you become a national hero if all other things remain consistent. Be in this boring business. No ones doing price comparison for entire grocery list. So perhaps you should.

Don't stop there. Use your info & small data on price sensitivity to work your way up the retail supply chain and sell to every one searching for the info. Also you will break the myth (that is independent of data(today)) as to who is cheaper or more value for money in the national retail space.

The idea is to think about things around you and look for a path to monetising around boring stuff. Build it and they shall come

You heard it here first ...

Focus on being fit for the digital age, so you can be fit, play in the market.Think of logistics of things like operating systems. TL;DR any user will be able to use them for shipping & any developer can write apps to run on them. Remove friction and you win. Create hurdles & die.

There is a key opportunity to finance massive technology and debt plays in the logistics space. Last mile, direct 2 people is the way to think about it. All businesses will soon transform. Make sure you are ready to capitalise and innovate to be agile enough to service that space.

If you are at the helm of an organisation that is dated and paper driven your outcomes will be paper-thinking type of "digital transformation". You will do every thing on paper for board meetings & presentations, that is where it will end. You have to be willing to UNLEARN and build a logistics OS(operating system) to every thing you do.

Process is key but not the solution alone. Typical board room discussions revolve so much around updating the process and not properly challenging the problems of underlying processes. Or building a common meaning. Focus on the problem and apply small data and iterative thinking. Challenge every solution.

Remember that the productivity jump with the right Digital Transformation will mean faster growing profits, faster growing economies, greater usage of all things digital, lower prices for consumers, and greater liquidity in the job market. But you must define what it will be. Not easy, but if you have the right lens it can work. If you produce any thing, be it digital or physical you have to obsess about delivery channels. Thus thinking of logistics in bits and bytes along with letters and parcels is a key tenant of designing the right digital transformation program for your self.

What you should be reading & why

The Jews of the Ottoman Empire and the Turkish Republic

Insight in to humanity is what it is about. We can all learn about humanity more than we know today, especially in this day and age.

This book studies the role of the Ottoman Empire and Republic of Turkey in providing refuge and prosperity for Jews fleeing from persecution in Europe and Byzantium in medieval times and from Russian pogroms and the Nazi holocaust in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It studies the religiously-based communities of Ottoman and Turkish Jews as well as their economic, cultural and religious lives and their relations with the Muslims and Christians among whom they lived.

An interesting book showing how the Turks tried to and/or protected the Jews during World War II from certain death in gas chambers.The wife of the Turkish Council General to Greece was heinously killed by a German air raid to his house.

This tradition of protection goes back to 1492 when the Ottoman Sultan invited all the Jews expelled from Spain after the infamous "Spanish Inquisitions" to Turkey. History is well worth the review if nothing else because there are so many things we don't know that we wont know till we read.

The Turkish Sultan personally welcomed them to Turkish soil when the ships carrying the Jewish refugees arrived. This book is well researched with data and facts. In a world of mis information consume less tv and do some first person research it will be its own reward. Less Ertugrul and more reading.

Monetise your time

With all the Urban solar going up in Pakistan. Now is the time to launch a nice side hustle. Cleaning service for solar panels. In year 1 its free by the installation company. In Year 2 it becomes expensive if done by the original outfitters.

So how the hell do you identify where/who has solar panels. Some months ago, during the endless hours of lock down, I had an urge to start building some code after being away from actual code writing for a while. I looked at online maps for inspiration. What could I build that had applicability but people didn't know they needed it yet.

I started looking at Maps and started "finding swimming pools" that were typically identifiable fairly easily to the human eye. Built a small "tool" that would parse through maps data and drop pins where it would find a pool. Done enough time in a US Zip code, could find out the address of homes in a certain area that has pools.

Next took an online to offline mail delivery system where I automated the printing and dispatching of "pool services" fliers. With a call back number in place and a small landing page. Total time spend 8 hours over a few weekends. 62$ in printing/mailing services and 86$ for an inbound call center service. 3 Days after the mailer ran I had 271 leads to the landing page, 31 calls. Now let's remind our selves, that I never had a pool services company in small town USA nor did I have any intention to serve any client directly. But with people at home with Pools on the West Coast especially they were using them more during lock downs.

You know 4000kms being in the way. Clearly the tool was working, the rest of the back end process could be automated. So I looked up the top ten reviews for pool services in small town USA. Called them and offered them the leads. Offered to give three leads for free. Sold the average lead across vendors at 20$*200= 4000$. Lo and behold a qualified lead affiliate network. Over time If I was really compelled I could build out a rev share or some thing else business but this was just a simple idea whose monetisation potential I wanted to test. Now imagine if you became the global consolidator of Pool cleaning services leads? Clearly I didn't have that ambition in mind.

Should you so be inclined pull up maps data, see solar panels, drop pins, get addresses and send fliers to all or get a rider and do mail drops for maintenance/cleaning services. If you are willing to invest more, do a time lapse map(you will have to pay a few 100$s for it by area) to see how many panels were there a year ago or more, those are the guys who now need servicing.

A simple model, to monetise your time, build some machine vision stuff, basic ML models and either build a business or document leads or have compelling data on all the solar installed in an area or pools or some thing else, using services you don't own. Gotta love the free economy.

Made in Pakistan

Kinnos. Oh well Grown in Pakistan. Pakistan exported 375,000 tonnes of kinnos mandarin worth $200 million US in 2019. This year, Pakistan will bulk export the citrus fruit mainly to Russia, the Philippines, Indonesia, and the UAE. Now you know. If you have any continued interest in the space heres a great resource to read up on.

An other piece of advice would be to review the resource and understand the farm to market and farm to export value chain. If you've not done so yet and want to build a distribution or export business you must understand its horizontal and vertical integration points. For 200m$ being exported if you can find a niche within the Kinno segment even as a domestic service provider you have now identified a new vertical for growth. Heres to finding made in Pakistan opportunities.

One Last thing

Bicycles. That too Pakistani Bicycles. Sohrab in Particular. What you must know is that if you are lucky enough to operate in a space with little to no competition and resting on your laurels, that space is ripe for the taking. What it also tells you that if you dominate your space, it doesn't matter how crappy your website is.

And then there were 2. How so, you ask? Well there were PECO Bikes too. Who made PECO? A product of Pakistan Engineering Company(PECO), previously known as Batala Engineering Company (BECO), It was established by CM Latif in Batala, East Punjab, British India.After the formation of Pakistan, he moved his industrial base to Lahore, Pakistan. It formerly manufactured diesel engines, aircraft parts, and other materials which they exported abroad and was a crown jewel Pakistani engineering and thought leadership. The company was formed in 1950.

In 1972, an other kind of leadership had a different kid of idea, the company along with many other high economic output corporations, was nationalised by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto government and was subsequently renamed to Pakistan Engineering Company, a sister company of PIDC Pakistan Industrial Development Corporation. Yea and they were reduced to making really shoddy orange bicycles. Internet time machine has a fantastic article written by some one on their memories of sohrab + peco.

If you are interested in the history of Nationalisation and how disastrous it has been for us, feel free to read my detailed blog post here.

Zhou Enlai wanted to train his engineers in this Pakistani steel industry — www.youtube.com

Before Bhutto’s nationalisation of industries in 1972, privately owned industries were doing wonders for the country. BECO was one such industry. It was foun...