My co-founder cross-questions a lot and assumes very little. Every time he is having a discussion with a Pakistani startup founder, he likes to compare the situation with a similar and often better startup in India.
The reason is that between the two markets, there are many similarities, and India is often slightly ahead in almost all markets. For example, in e-commerce the primary mode of payment in India is also COD just like in Pakistan. The advertising rates in India are just as low as the advertising rates in Pakistan. COD stays as the primary mode of payment despite that there are many payment gateways available and the credit card penetration is much higher.
When a Pakistani founder says that when X will happen in Pakistan, the company will grow very quickly. This is obviously an assumption. Saad then compares the situation with a similar startup in India where often the X has already occurred and more often than not the growth wasn’t seen as predicted or assumed by the Pakistani founder. This analogy helps avoiding the wrong assumptions.
Since India is running 5-10 years ahead in tech albeit having many market similarities, this comparison can frequently be used as a tool to project the future more accurately.
It sounds surreal. A million dollar out of thin air? How can you create money out of nothing. You can’t. But you can create money without having any money. Like you do in an employment. Although, you probably can’t make a million dollar with employment. Then how can you make a million dollar without investing any money. Only a few people can imagine something like that. Let me assure you, it’s possible. Not just possible, I personally know dozens of people who have done it.
You start with doing work that has no associated cost. The only cost would be your time and effort. Like starting a YouTube channel with your phone. Just like my friend ZSM did. Or you could work as a freelancer on UpWork / Fiverr and build your way up to becoming an agency or creating a product. Or you could just write a blog. Or create a following on Instagram or Facebook to be an influencer. Or you could sell arts and crafts, or T-shirts and hoodies on Etsy, or TeeSpring or Printful. If you’re a developer, you could be selling services on Fiverr and eventually start making plugins, apps and themes for WordPress and Shopify creating a product and a value-asset.
Let me assure you, I’m only scratching the surface here. If there are 99 ways to make money online without investment, I only know of 1. And I’ve written about what I know here. My brother recommended me this channel. May be you’ll find a lot more options to kick-start your internet journey there.
In summary though, there are hundreds of ways to make a living on the internet. Hundreds of things that need no capital to start. And hundreds of them that can eventually make you a million dollars. Sure, you’d most likely need to pivot at some point, but you can most certainly get there. Let me talk a bit more about the pivots below.
Suppose you start as a T-shirt designer on Fiverr. You sell time and skill to make money. Eventually you pivot and also start selling your designs on Etsy and use a print on demand to fulfil your orders. Once you get the hang of it, you now want to hit a larger audience or a global market. You pivot again and you take your designs to Shopify. You now invest a lot of money that you have made thus far in audience acquisition using ads on Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, Pinterest etc. You find more print on demand services in different countries so you can locally fulfil your orders. Eventually, you’re doing hundreds of thousands of dollars in sales. You have created a million dollar value-asset. All with sheer hardwork and no external funding or investment. You have successfully turned $1 into $1,000,000.
I don’t want to mention names here for the sake of privacy, but I know at least one millionaire in Pakistan from each of those categories: an influencer, a designer, a blogger and a developer.
The question is do you just like reading articles with a million dollar in the title, or are you gonna take actions.
A few weeks ago, I spoke of the benefits of building lazy portfolios that you can do so by buying certain indexes. That seems to be a good strategy at least while the over-all market is growing and not going through the bearish sentiment.
There are other types of indexes that we often can’t see. They are hidden in plain-sight and I think we all should be paying attention to them.
Yesterday, Saad RT’d this. And I couldn’t agree more. Both with the original tweet and Saad’s comments.
As someone who has been affected by internet visas, @stripe was the only one which helped us become an equal global player. No other payment processor worked with us ???? https://t.co/c3xIX6AKWd
Stripe is a really great company and despite being a fintech company, it’s really open and inclusive. Fintech companies are driven by mega regulations and can struggle with innovation. And considering that, Stripe’s openness is a surprise for me.
Off to the original tweet, Stripe is not just innovative and inclusive, it’s also an index. It’s an index of all internet commerce companies collectively powered by Stripe. Have a look at how Stripe has grown over time
One of the more striking graphs I've seen lately. Stripe's revenue history as of Oct 2012, and now. pic.twitter.com/Pplki4HuiZ
Shopify could also be an index like that. And as investors we should be paying attention to these indexes.
In the crypto sphere, Coinbase could be an index. However, since only private investors could participate in Coinbase’s growth and the IPO hasn’t happened yet, the retail investors can not buy that index yet. But there’s 1 crypto index, that you could still be buying, at your own risk of course. A few years ago I tweeted about it
Gambling rule # 1: House always wins. But what if gambler had the opportunity to buy equity in the house? $BNB#crytpo
$BNB is a native token of Binance which is one of the largest crypto exchanges in the world. And despite what direction crypto markets move in, Binance always makes a profit. And as $BNB holder, you can be party to that.
At the time of my tweet, the total market capitalization of all crypto assets collectively valued at $381 billion dollars. Today the collective market cap is $216 billion dollars which is almost 45% lower.
Combined market-cap of all crypto-assets on 13th March 2018.
BNB’s market cap at the time of my tweet was $814 million dollars. Today the market-cap stands at $2.2 billion dollars. BNB has posted growth of 2.7x despite the over-all performance of the crypto-market.
$BNB’s market-cap on 13th March 2018.
So watching out for these proxy indexes can be a relatively safer way to grow your investments.
Disclaimer: The information provided is for informational purposes only. It should not be considered legal or financial advice. To the maximum extent permitted by law, I disclaim any and all liability in the event any information, commentary, analysis, opinions, advice and/or recommendations prove to be inaccurate, incomplete or unreliable, or result in any investment or other losses.
2019 was a strange year for us as a company. We didn’t achieve much. We passed many opportunities and kept waiting to do the right thing. While it appears like an average year on the surface as far as what we achieved is concerned, I don’t really mind it.
Because at this point in career, where I stand today, doing the right thing makes way more sense than doing things right. What I mean by that is we’re assessing all opportunities for their long term impact. We are passing the ones that are promising but only in the short term and still trying to find the ones that will make the most sense in the longest term. We want to work on opportunities where long-term value assets are created instead of opportunities where quick money can be made.
For early stage entrepreneurs, I think it makes the most sense to do things right, no matter what kind. For mid-stage entrepreneurs like us, I think the quest for doing the right thing makes the most sense.
There is a money trap. Almost everyone I know falls for it. Most people are so deep in this trap, they are in complete denial. They think it’s not a trap but a safety net. This trap apparently gives them stability and peace of mind.
I’m talking about traditional employment. People like traditional employment because it gives them a false sense of security. I say false sense of security because no employer will keep you hired if you’re no longer profitable for him. So in essence, his business risks do not just apply to him, but to you as well. But since it works best in the favor of employers, they love to sell this false sense of security. I think it’s a trap. You think it’s a safety net.
The second reason people resort to traditional employment is because of instant gratification. You get paid really soon. In comparison, if you choose to be self-employed or a consultant or a freelancer or a business owner, your pay-day may vary.
Lets explain this further.
This is because of the principal called time value of money. Money in your hand today is more valuable than promise of money to be given to you tomorrow. You can spend the money in your hand today. You can’t spend the promise of money. So naturally everyone is attracted to the money that you can get now.
However, there is a reward for waiting which is generally much larger than the combined money you’d have made with your instant monthly payments. And most people are so consumed by small, scheduled payments, they are unable to see the bigger picture.
I don’t expect all of you to become entrepreneurs or business owners. You could be self-employed or a freelancer or a consultant. You still get hired, but at your own terms and with a bigger pay-check as long as you’re willing to display some patience.
I hear a lot of people say that successful people got lucky. I think everyone needs a bit of a luck on their side to accomplish something great no matter how worthy they are of their success. So in a way, I don’t disagree with those who believe it was luck. Except that, many people believe that it was only luck, which of course I completely disagree with.
Luck is a game of chance. Getting lucky is having favorable conditions on your side. However, I think there’s a simple way to increase your chances of getting luckier.
Since luck becomes favorable out of randomness, if you worked everyday to improve your business or yourself, the randomness will eventually be in your favor. Since you’re missing no chance of trying to be lucky, the luck will eventually find you.
I can look back at hundreds of good things that happened to me, where I got extremely lucky, but only because I was trying.
And so if you want to be more lucky, you have to stay consistent and work everyday.
Today, I’ve completed 2 months of writing this blog at least once everyday. A few days ago, I spoke to my friend in a vlog about game mechanics. We spoke of one of the game mechanics that I introduced in my life called streaks. Today, I wanted to talk a lot more about game mechanics.
Games Are Awesome
Games are very very interesting in psychological terms. They are interesting because they don’t (directly) solve any problems like email or Uber does. Despite not solving any problems, game developers retain the users. And they can only do that because they hack human psychology. Because games work in this particular manner, it means game developers must have learnt a great deal from psychology and sociology research.
I Never Played Games
I haven’t really played a lot of games. Then how did I end up studying games? I did that because I read on “gamification” which is the science of taking game mechanics from the games and implementing them in your websites, apps, businesses and even your life. And so instead of reading psychology, I simply studied games as I found it to be an easier hands-on case-study of implementing human psychology for user retention and other reasons.
Why Game Mechanics
As already spoken in a post I made earlier, user retention is often much cheaper than user acquisition. So the startups are always trying to learn new ways to retain existing customers. And there’s no better way to do it than gamification of your startup.
What Can You Do With Game Mechanics
There are many many types of game mechanics. We’ve already spoken of streaks and I’ve first hand seen benefit of implementing it in my life, time and again.
Other types of game mechanics could be points, achievements/badges, leaderboard, etc. Have you noticed Careem gives you both points and a gold status badge, if you use it repeatedly. It’s done to retain you as a user.
Another type of game mechanics is to make user feel like he’s the chosen one. The chosen one feels he was born to carry out the task given to him by the business or the app. When you receive marketing material stating that you’re chosen for something, they are basically just trying to hack your brain.
Users are also driven by sense of accomplishment and progress. A lot of apps try to integrate progress into the app usage to make users feel like they are in process of solving great challenges. This makes users feel accomplished.
Another kind of gamification is creating impatience. It sounds insane when I think about it, but revoking access to a certain feature for certain amount of time and only enabling it after a certain time has passed has a positive affect on user retention. The user craves the feature despite not even wanting it otherwise. This is creating unessential impatience.
And my favorite, scarcity. Almost everyone in e-commerce uses this. Because the stock is obviously always running out and there are only 4 pieces left that would probably go away in 8 minutes and 7 seconds. The fear of missing out is triggered and you make an impulse buy.
There are many many more types of game mechanics and I’d actually like to learn some more from you in the comments below.
Yesterday I wrote a bit about the limitations of trying to run an internet business from the under-developed and developing countries. The global online services treat different people differently based on their country of residence. Hence running an online business from Pakistan is clearly far more difficult.
But you can always circumvent the limitations and find ways to get the many benefits that the developed world offers.
Although, you’re restricted from using certain features based on the country of your residence, your company could be based anywhere in the world. And as long as your company is based in US for example, you’ll be treated like a US entity and you’d have similar features available to you as to anyone in US. I’ve only used US as an example here, your business could be registered anywhere in the world. It can be in UK or Singapore or Estonia.
You can have a virtual address & a virtual phone number anywhere in the world. You can have a virtual bank account using services like Payoneer, TransferWise & others. You could also register your company anywhere in the world right from the internet without ever leaving your country.
I’m not kidding but you can create your company, phone, address, bank etc all under $100.
Some businesses and services require that in order to unlock all features, you need to be physically present inside a particular country such as US or UK. This can be solved too. While most people would think VPN here, a better, safer alternate is to rent a server in the country of your choice and use it with remote access.
In the end, it’s still going to be more difficult than physically being in a better geo-location, but I just want you to know that all of this is possible even if you live in a village of Pakistan and have no money to start your business with.
While I acknowledge that internet is the biggest game changer of the human history, it is still not what it was supposed to be or what it can be.
In the offline world, all humans aren’t born equal. They are born in certain conditions where their lives are driven by their socioeconomic circumstances. Their lives are dictated by their place of birth and half of what they can and can’t do is written in the stone. Sure they can break the chains and the barriers to come out stronger but that happens very seldom.
On the internet, everyone has the same opportunities. In theory, though. You could get on YouTube and make a living regardless of where you live. Hundred of millions of people have benefited from such global opportunities that didn’t exist 30 years ago. But these global opportunities are still not provided equally to everyone, although they are marketed as such always.
For example, YouTube first launched their monetization partner program in 2006 for select countries but it wasn’t until 2016 that this program was launched in Pakistan.
Facebook restricts fresh Pakistani ad accounts at Rs 1000/day spend ($6.46 on today’s exchange rate) while a fresh US account is restricted at $50/day spend. Restrictions are lifted more quickly for the developed world, and less quickly for the emerging world. The scrutiny of AI is much harsher for us than it is for the developed world.
In summary, AI is no different than the visa issuing officers that judge us more than our counterparts elsewhere in the world.
On the bright side, in the offline world, if you try hard enough, you can sometimes circumvent these restrictions. You can sometimes emigrate or obtain a better travel document by meeting certain criteria or just by wanting to have it bad enough.
Since internet is almost always better than the offline world in every regard, you can also circumvent a lot of these restrictions if you try hard enough. In fact, on the internet, like everything else, this circumvention is often not as hard as in the offline world.
Super lookalikes isn’t officially a type of audience by Facebook. It’s just a term used by performance marketers to describe lookalikes made using top percentiles of the audience.
This kind of custom and lookalike audience is generally not publicly made available by Facebook but it’s kind of a hidden gem. If you don’t know about lookalike audiences, please check this out. And if you do, read ahead.
This is where you generally create or find your custom and lookalike audiences
But super lookalike audiences are created here.
Using the percentile option under activity in analytics section
You can create a filter to reflect the top percentile of your readers or buyers and save as custom audience
You can then use this custom audience to create lookalikes using the standard way. I call these super lookalikes.
Because results for super lookalikes speak for themselves.
