Questions have given birth to miracles. Science itself started off with a question, which has changed the course of human history. I’ve always been curious to ask questions. I read books, yes, but I also chase people. I sit with them in curiosity and ask questions. And lately, most of my questions have been about startups. I recently attended a workshop on startup financials and fundraising led by Naeem Zamindar. This opinion piece is my attempt to answer that, with what repeated patterns keep revealing.
I have often wondered why, despite so much talent and so many urgent problems waiting to be solved, Pakistan still has not managed to crack the startup code at scale. On paper, the ingredients seem promising: a youthful population of 240 million, a growing digital footprint, and the kind of everyday problems that should be producing meaningful innovation. Yet the reality remains sobering. Most startups do not scale, and many do not survive beyond their first three years.
The funding numbers make the problem even harder to ignore. Pakistani startups have raised roughly $1.0–1.1 billion in total since 2015, while Indian startups have attracted well over $160 billion during the same period. That gap reflects a deeper difference in how ideas are tested, built, trusted, and financed.
What helped me think more clearly about this was a framework shared in a startup financials and fundraising workshop led by Naeem Zamindar. It was simple, but it cut straight through the noise. He referred to the Stanford Framework, which pressures a startup idea through a few basic but unforgiving questions: Are you solving a big and real problem? Is your solution actually new? Can it be repeated? Can it scale? These are the questions that separate excitement from strategy.
The first rule is that investors bet on the founder, not just the idea. In a market like Pakistan, where capital is cautious and trust is still fragile, the founder becomes the real signal. Investors are looking for judgment, resilience, and evidence of execution.
The ecosystem shifts when founders stop chasing outcomes and start moving with purpose
The second rule is that there is no universal pitch deck. Many founders in Pakistan approach fundraising like a rehearsed performance, carrying the same slides, the same story, and the same energy into every room. That approach rarely works. Each investor sees the future through a different lens. Some care about impact, some care about fintech infrastructure, and some care about unit economics above all else. Founders have to understand who is sitting across the table and what that person values.
The third rule is to build trust before building hype. Many Pakistani founders are first-timers, and investors know that. They are paying attention to more than the market opportunity. They want to know what kind of truth the founder will speak when things go wrong. For that reason, trust has to be built deliberately.
The fourth rule is what I would call awakening the giant within. Founders often treat inner work as something secondary, yet it shapes every major decision they make. Stillness, self-mastery, and emotional discipline are part of the job.
The fifth rule is to learn to let go before scaling up. Leadership eventually demands clarity of a painful kind. Founders may have to cut what is not working, shut down parts of the business, restructure the team, or abandon ideas they were once attached to. These decisions are difficult, but they are often necessary for survival. Pakistan has seen turnarounds where progress became possible only after hard restructuring. Wateen is one example people still point to. The lesson is simple: growth requires space, and that space often comes from having the courage to release what no longer serves the company.
Pakistan’s startup problem, then, goes far beyond a shortage of capital. It has to do with how founders choose problems, how seriously they prepare, how honestly they build trust, and how ready they are for the inner and outer demands of leadership.
Despite the challenges, Pakistan has seen moments that show what is possible.
Rehan Jalil is one such story. A Pakistani-born entrepreneur who built a cloud security company called Securiti AI out of Silicon Valley. In 2025, it was acquired by Veeam for $1.7 billion. There are also examples of Gobi Ventures doing successful exits, along with others. The conclusion I keep coming back to is deeper than fundraising. The real ask is to find the driver, both personal and entrepreneurial.
The ecosystem shifts when founders stop chasing outcomes and start moving with purpose. That is where real momentum begins. In the end, as Zain Jeewanjee says, “Don’t chase the cup, chase the finishing line.