TechLahore

The following is a guest post submitted by Hassan Baig of Islamabad-based, White Rabbit. More about the author at the end of the post.

Foreword: Social psychologists have long known that any social set-up has a tendency to stifle dissenting voices and bring about conformity. This tendency, seen in the context of the tech industry, can spell bad news for the prime dissenters of the industry: the start-ups. Start-ups – especially seed stage – are by definition strapped for money, with most of their employees working for reasons other than a great salary. Any influence which dents the employees’ motivation would then put such start-ups in danger of disintegration. Negative influences can come from both within and without, and how they’re coped with can mean the difference between success and ultimate failure.

Imagine sitting in a classroom with ten people and being asked the question: what is two plus two? Imagine every one in class then confidently answering that two plus two, as even a kid knows, is five. Then imagine the questioner directing this rudimentary query at you.

What will you say?

Soloman Asch, a renowned Gestalt psychologist of his time ran exactly such an experiment in the 1950s. He’d have ten to a hundred conspirators in a room alongside one test subject. He’d have the conspirators reply incorrectly to basic questions before asking those questions from the real test subject. His findings were startling: the majority of the test subjects succumbed to peer-pressure and conformed, especially as the number of conspirators increased. Moreover, having a higher IQ did not lessen the incidence of this conformity.

So chances are, had you been sitting in one of Soloman’s rigged classrooms, you would have said five too.

White Rabbit: A case study in dissension

I run an Islamabad-based Facebook development (social gaming) start-up called White Rabbit. Our profile is extremely peripheral – to the extent that even other local start-ups here have trouble identifying with us. We are the quintessential non-conformists.

Here are our non-conformist credentials: unlike many Pakistani start-ups, we are not arbitrage players. I.e. our business model does not revolve around taking a proven internet concept and turning it desi for the local market. Instead, we exist on the cutting edge of the current social technology revolution. Another fundamental dissimilarity is that we develop for the end-user instead of existing as an outsource destination for first-world clients. We have no client pipeline. A couple of times someone proposed that we start taking on client projects on the side – both times our team broke out in spontaneous laughter. We actually trust our creativity to service the burgeoning social gaming market in Asia, EMEA and North America. Also, we’re seed-stage and unfundable for the typical Pakistani investor looking solely for arbitrage. Thus our dissension is not a product of a loaded balance-sheet; but rather purely a triumph of intellect over emotions.

In a nutshell, running White Rabbit is a bit like sitting in a hundred-person Soloman classroom and actually answering the question correctly.

“It isn’t happening in Pakistan!”

Around 2 to 3 years is considered an average-length time period in Silicon Valley for a promising start-up to cross the pre-revenue stage. Valley start-ups are used to working 80-hour weeks for years at a stretch with low compensation and slices of stock options. Why? Because they’ve seen the fruits such labors bring all around them. They know what it takes.

In Pakistan however, imparting The Valley work ethic is easier said than done. The motivational nudges start wearing off after a while because while your team can logically appreciate the usefulness of hard work, they haven’t seen many real-life examples which would viscerally ratify these same truths. In other words, they simply can’t feel it in their gut. That’s the anathema of being a pioneer.

Now without visceral ratification, even the most inspiring start-up story from The Valley is just that – a story from some alien land; an abstract concept. Its effect is thus temporary.

On the other hand, the pressure to conform to peers is omnipresent. One can’t escape it, unless one becomes socially unavailable. In its extreme form, peer pressure can lead to what prominent thinkers of our time call the “two plus two equals five” syndrome. And it’s not as rare as one would think. Consider this: sometimes my team tells me that their peers think they’re crazy for working for a start-up in Pakistan since, to put it in a nutshell, such things only work in gora-land (i.e. geography or skin color is the ultimate decider). As ridiculous as such perceptions are, over time the pressure to conform invariably makes them sound substantive, or at worst, undeniable. In the end, a peer’s opinion can make the most authentic foreign success story sound mythical. The primal instinct of being part of the pack over-rides intellect and brings it down to its knees.

”It isn’t happening in Pakistan” – a farfetched notion initially – then becomes dogma.

In a nutshell, keeping motivation up in the face of social opposition is one of the constant battles a start-up has to face when setting up shop in Pakistan.

I believe it’s the biggest battle.

How we keep motivation high

We’ve instilled a culture of keeping all eyes on the prize. Being tunnel-visioned is important because distractions can hit your productivity before you even know it. Especially in the industry in which we operate – where our average competitor is sitting in Silicon Valley, is well-funded and staffed – operating at any intensity less than our best is going to get us killed. If you can’t handle the heat, get out of the kitchen.

We’re always on the lookout to recruit smart people – especially those with game art design experience or AS3 skills. However, more important to us than mere skill-sets or smarts is the candidate’s desire to want to do something with real impact. We’re a shop for leaders; a shop for those with vision and we never compromise on this one principle.

Thinking outside the box is another trait we greatly value. During interviews I look for people who have the capacity to think beyond cause-and-effect relationships. Call this ability whatever you want to – the x-factor, originality, craziness etc. – it’s what will give your start-up the edge that you’re looking for in your industry. I remember this Groucho Marx quotation from my days at LUMS which sums up the importance of outside the box thinking very pithily:

“Blessed are the cracked ones, for they shall let in the light”.

We consider hiring conformist sheep, no matter how smart or skilled, fatal in the long run since they’ll invariably infect the team with negative energy. Remember that just because someone sounds intellectual does not mean they’ll understand an out-of-the-box vision. Ancient man worshiped the sun for a thousand years; did intellectual people not exist then?

However, all this does not mean that smarts don’t count at all. In fact, one of my favorite interview questions is asking candidates about what social games they’d make if they were in my shoes. Their answer shows me their research and creativity – both solid indicators for smarts. My belief has always been to hire not only a person’s hands but also their intellect. It is paramount to ensure only the deserving enter our ideas factory where creative freedom is granted to everyone in the team.

How Pakistani Start-ups can keep motivation up

Start-ups in Pakistan essentially constitute a small band of dissenters. Thus, they’ll easily get ironed out if they try to take on peer pressure alone. But there’s good news: results in Soloman Asche’s experiments improved dramatically when the test subject heard even one dissenting voice before his own turn to answer the question came.

In other words, we need to stick together. I love what Y Combinator does every summer for instance – seed stage start-ups are invited to come down to The Valley and live alongside each other. They get a small stipend to make their ends meet, plus loads of time to work solely on their ideas. This enables them to develop their products in a supportive environment where everyone around them is similarly a storm-chaser. All distractions are removed; all passions are unleashed.

The Y Combinator model isn’t possible on in Pakistan just yet. But what is possible is leveraging social media to unite. Pockets of such effort we’ve seen already in the blogosphere and periodic meets. But let’s be honest, this collaboration is nowhere near the scale it should be at. It’s exclusive, it lacks visibility for those of us on the outside looking in, it’s location-centric. There’s loads of room for improvement here before it can become an effective platform of support for us dissenters.

Secondly, we all must learn to ignore the noise.

Once I reached out to a respected tech blogger based in Karachi – let’s call him AB. I was looking for people to hire and needed some references. He didn’t have many people to recommend – which is fine – but he did send me lengthy indictments of the social gaming industry claiming it would never work since, among his other laments, “even their graphics are not so good”. He had probably never dated someone with a mind blowing personality!

Eight months down the line, here we stand with every 5th Facebooker a virtual farmer and many social gaming start-ups having broken more than $50 million in yearly revenue. Venture capital circles in Silicon Valley frequently start investor presentations with their first slide claiming that anyone who’s not doing this is either ignorant or a fool. What a gold rush!

So here’s second the lesson: learn to differentiate and cull the AB’s in your life. An AB is someone who’ll mouth off without knowing the fundamentals of the discussion. He does this so he can feel better about himself. He sees you as a therapy session.

Cut him out.

Conversely, industry insiders are not AB’s – those are the people to lend your ears to. Being able to differentiate between these two polar opposites will ensure you stay on track throughout the life of your start-up.

Bottomline

A good analogy is cricket. Remember all those times when you cussed out the Pakistani cricket team because their batting collapsed? Remember how everyone keeps saying they’re a talented bunch but need mental strength? Well that’s true for start-ups too. High spirits can accomplish what money cannot. Exorcise your psychological demons and success will inevitably come.

That’s guaranteed.

Hassan Baig is a LUMS and Duke University grad with substantial experience on Wallstreet as an investment banker. Currently, he’s running a Facebook Development start-up out of Islamabad called White Rabbit, Inc. You can contact him at baig.hassan-at-gmail.com in case you want to ask a question, help out, condemn, fund, apply, laugh at, advise, get advice, interview, pester, make an example of etc.