Building the next wave of software unicorns from Pakistan - Let's go 🚀

Outbound Now is a monthly newsletter to explore the possibilities of building $10m ARR software businesses locally and scaling them to $100m and beyond!

Marc Andreesson famously said in 2011:

“Software is eating the world"

In a profound essay - which everyone should read - Marc made the why behind his intent of investing in software businesses clear. Despite the objections the financial markets had about tech valuations at the time, he saw the opportunity that lay ahead. Internet users had hit critical mass, tech infrastructure was in place globally, and the (scarce) talent building software businesses was doing so in challenging economic conditions - much like today - in circumstances that tend to filter out the best from the ordinary.

Fast forward to now, most of the startups Marc talked about have become the biggest companies in the world, some even valued at more than a trillion dollars. There are no doubters of Amazon, Apple, Microsoft and Meta today. Moreover, the talent that was working at those companies then, has since gone on to build and scale their own businesses to billions. Their journeys are well documented and many playbooks are readily available on how to build and scale big software businesses.

Which brings us to the point where we ask - what will it take to build big software businesses out of Pakistan? The answer lies in first studying who has done this before. Here's a list of 14+ unicorns by founders of Pakistani origin. 14 is a good number to start from, and with the earliest company in the list founded in 1996, Pakistanis have been building big companies for a while now. Two of them, I have previously worked for - more on it towards the end.

Some things that are common among the founders of these businesses is that they are all in on building the business for >10 years, they lead with a big vision, they speak with clarity, they execute swiftly, and they are able to attract and empower like-minded people to join in on their mission. Scale cannot be achieved alone. You need multiple teams operating with the same conviction to break through. Scale is repeatable!

What is Outbound Now?

I feel that within the next 10 years many new software unicorns can come out of Pakistan. Some of them are already operational today (not scaled to $100m in revenue so far) and some are yet to be founded. This newsletter is an attempt to learn, consolidate and share the best practices for scaling software businesses. The future is in collaboration, no single business or founder will be able to scale all by its own. We need dozens of businesses doing $10m in ARR to cash in on synergies for a few to get to $100m. Similarly, we need hundreds of businesses doing $1m in ARR to collaborate and learn from each other so that dozens make it to $10m.

Getting there will require local software businesses look for expansion opportunities globally starting today - with a sense of urgency. Hence the name , Outbound Now! With a monthly cadence, you can expect to see various topics related to GTM (sales, marketing, customer success, support and professional services), learnings from founders on scaling software businesses, viewpoints of investors on sectors ripe for software to capitalise on in the next 10 years and most importantly, guidelines for talent to break into and move up in software businesses.

About me:

I'm currently leading the GTM for Blink across all markets (a B2B SaaS food-tech) for the last 2.5 years, a post $2.1m seed round startup on-track to crossing $1m ARR this year. Previously, I helped launch and scale B2B sales in Careem (PK + KSA) with Careem for Business and led a double digit million ($) book of business (customer success) for Motive (a B2B industrial/iOT SaaS).

I was not always involved with software (made the transition in 2017), in fact my professional career started drilling oil and gas well across the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. It was not until the phrase "data is the new oil” became mainstream did I became a believer in software businesses. And still, data is the new oil today, and software is eating the world. Stay tuned!