Youtube's desi cofounder

Jawed Karim's resume shows Paypal, Youtube and now Stanford. Wiki entry sheds a bit more light on education and family history.

Jawed joins Shoaib Abbasi at Oracle (now Informatica), Atiq Reza at Nexgen, AMD (now Reza Foundaries) and Safi Qureshi (AST) in the list of non-Indian desi's to have made it. (Atleast the ones that I am aware of and recall without any assistance - if you belong to this list, please feel free to add your name)

On a side note, the trend now is to go to Stanford, after doing your thingee, not before.

PASHA update

The Pakistan Assocation of Software Houses (PASHA) now has 42 full members - members that are making enough money to pay full dues as well as survive for atleast two years in business. Overall membership, full as well as associates members now rests at 182 including members from Karachi, Lahore, Islamabad, Multan, Sahiwal and Peshawar (weclome to the techno boom). This btw excludes traditional multi national technology players, IT departments and other vendors and suppliers. (No NCR, IBM, Unisys, SAP, Oracle or Microsoft within the member list)

Unconfirmed sources indicate that the number of technology firms in Pakistan (unconfirmed source quoted unconfirmed PSEB survey) has now crossed 800 odd firms. This is a mix of less than a year old 2 man shops as well as decade old 300 strong firms.

One additional indicator is the number of firms competing in the annual PASHA-ICT awards. Last year the number was 36 - this year 50 plus.

I think the revolution is going in the right direction, but we could certainly do with some more steam.