Mohammad Asif is the CEO of Probist and he has developed several web applications that are being used worldwide. He’s young; he’s smart and he has found a way to redefine social reformation and communication with technology. There are 30 thousand globally renowned brands using his applications including Google, Nokia, Timberland, Pepsi and Mountain Dew. Asif founded several and currently plays his part for Pakistan IT sector, residing in Islamabad.
Before founding Probist, Asif had been involved and worked with two successful startups at Silicon Valley. He is a Computer Science graduate from NUST and currently resides in Islamabad. He was also a part of Startup Weekend Peshawar as a mentor. He is using his innovative ideas and experience to boost the IT culture in Pakistan and market – a market that is full of challenges yet very promising.
Asif, tell us a little about your previous experience and how did you come up with Probist?
I was a research fellow at Stanford University in 2007-8 and I have been conducting researches. Later, I joined a couple of US-based startups which Playdom acquired and sold it to Disney. Stuzo was bought by a Dachis Group and it was the second startup where I worked. I returned to Pakistan in 2010 and started Sotlet, which was basically Shopify for Facebook but it failed.
And it was after this failure when I came up with the idea of Probist, which is basically a startup that powers brands on Facebook to engage their fans and links other social networks like YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn and Pinterest with Facebook. It is a simple application and makes it easy for brands to manage all major social networks. The demands for social media marketing are increasing by the day and our product is being used worldwide by more than 30 thousand brands.
Can you tell us more about the application and how it processes?
As far as processes are concerned, we are fond of Agile Based Development as well as Open Source tools like Laravel – a PHP framer that handles most of our hardcore jobs. Asana is a free tool that we use for task management. It’s not basically free for startups with bigger teams, but its free forever for startups with a team of less than 30 people. Besides, as we are a social media marketing company, we use some SEO tools as well.
What challenges did you face when you started?
Initially, the challenges I faced were mostly related to funding. The IT culture is still evolving in Pakistan and the market is getting familiar with the huge prospects of IT in future. At the moment, when you start up in Pakistan, it does not matter how great your product is, it is always a difficult task to get investments. Some investors are also pretty afraid of investing in local ventures because of the law and order situation. I see that culture changing but it will take its time.
Other than investments, young entrepreneurs have difficulties finding mentorship in Pakistan. There are mentors you get to see in conferences and workshops but it hardly ever happens when you really need mentorship to fine-tune your ideas. There also are problems in financial transactions via credit cards for software based companies. Banks do not allow internet merchandising accounts and we had to register our company in the US to use payment services like PayPal and Stripe – we process credit cards and it takes about a month to get our money back in Pakistan to handle our expenses here. It is a problem that every internet based/e-commerce company faces in Pakistan. The e-commerce scene in Pakistan is growing rapidly, but it cannot succeed and survive without any robust or reliable payment gateway in Pakistan.
Is there any advice that you have for young entrepreneurs in Pakistan?
Budding entrepreneurs should be focused and by the time they realize they are sailing, they should sail fast. They do not need to be afraid or shy of failure as it’s just a step towards success. There are problems in Pakistan – financial, economic and social problems – and it gives us lots of opportunities to provide solutions that could not only solve these problems but also prove to be successful businesses. The actual trait of a successful entrepreneur is transforming problems into opportunities that have a broader range of positive influence. Pakistan has great talent, and now there are lots of events for representing Pakistan on a global platform and it most certainly helping young entrepreneurs, motivating them to build products which can influence globally.
