Comment by M. Waseem Sindhu on September 24, 2013 at 12:15am

Great to hear the news!

Comment by Riaz Haq on October 6, 2013 at 6:51pm

Here's an Economist mag report comparing entrepreneurship in Europe and America:

standing before Germany’s newly minted entrepreneurs is a series of hurdles that have so far kept them from getting bigger and changing the world. The last German tech start-up to become a global star is SAP—founded in 1972. German firms, both the biggest ones and the much-lauded, family-owned Mittelstand, are innovative themselves. But founders dream of German Googles, and the government is keen to encourage them. The barriers are coming down. Unlike the Berlin Wall, however, they will not tumble quickly.

One problem is that popular attitudes towards entrepreneurship are lukewarm (see chart). Just under 50% of Germans polled by the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) agreed that starting a business was an attractive idea. Compare that with attitudes in Germany’s neighbours: 65% in France, 68% in Poland and 79% in the Netherlands had positive views. Germans are no more begrudging of success than the others. The problem seems to be that few start-ups achieve it.

Lack of finance is a big reason. Small companies need angel investors and venture capital to survive and grow. But these sources of capital are puny in Germany. Deutsche Bank reckons that there are as many venture-capital investments in Germany as in America (11-12 per million inhabitants). But the average investment in Germany is just €780,000 ($1m), compared with €6m in America. Lars Hinrichs, founder of Xing, a social network for entrepreneurs (and a growing public company), says that a big reason is that successful entrepreneurs do not become investors themselves, as they do in Silicon Valley.

German venture capitalists are cautious. Rather than bet on many companies in the hope that one will grow explosively, they invest more selectively and expect a high proportion to break even within 18 months. Germany’s banks—the local savings banks and co-operatives that fund many traditional companies—are hesitant to lend to untested digital entrepreneurs.

Fear of failure is another dampener. It would deter 42% of Germans from starting a company, GEM’s polling finds. That is far behind Japan’s 53%, but well ahead of the 32% in the United States, where having flopped a few times is a point of pride. Mr Nohroudi says “there’s no one [in Germany] asking ‘what did you learn?’” Instead, when his first company was shuttered, friends urged him to go back to the comfortable university job he had held....

http://www.economist.com/news/business/21587209-vigorous-start-up-s...

Comment by Riaz Haq on October 13, 2013 at 10:11am

Pakistani-American Entrepreneur Ahmed Khattak's GSM Nation revolutionizes #America's cell phone market, launches unlocked phones and MVNO service

http://gigaom.com/2012/06/15/meet-gsm-nation-an-mvno-selling-every-...

http://bostinno.streetwise.co/all-series/gsm-nation-unlocked-and-co...

http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/224539

Comment by Riaz Haq on November 26, 2013 at 10:24pm

Here's Yahoo Finance news on Pakistani start-up Convo getting $5 million from US VC Morgenthaler Ventures:

SAN FRANCISCO, Sept. 16, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Convo, a cloud-based collaboration service, today announced a $5 million Series-A investment from Morgenthaler Ventures. This financing is the company's first investment by an institutional venture capital firm. The funding will be used to evolve its offerings, introduce their service on more platforms, and accelerate user reach and growth.

Convo is a multi-platform service designed to allow teams to share and work together simply and naturally by combining discussions with messaging, images, docs, presentations and PDFs.

Since 2012, Convo has seen exceptionally high levels of engagement in their paying accounts, with an average monthly-active over daily-active ratio of 75%, which is noticeably higher than even the 30% of most social games.

Convo is available across all major platforms and has launched versions of its software for Windows, Mac, Web, iPhone, and Android.

"We built our company with slim resources and a small team, and therefore are excited about our prospects with Morgenthaler Ventures in our corner. They have helped companies at our stage and with our enterprise focus grow exponentially," said Faizan Buzdar, founder and CEO of Convo. "Our immediate priority is to use the new infusion of capital to continue delivering a service that meets the ease-of-use, reliability, and security demands of our customers."

Said Rebecca Lynn, Partner at Morgenthaler Ventures, "We have been amazed at the level of engagement we have seen from Convo's early customers, including many global brands. These organizations won't settle for inconsistent, light-weight solutions. Multinational organizations have selected Convo after putting them through a battery of security tests. There are collaboration services you use to run chit chat, and there are those that run your company. Convo is relied on for the latter."

"Looking across our portfolio, there is a common trait amongst our entrepreneurs, one of extraordinary tenacity and vision, which Faizan has in spades," said Alex Nigg, Venture Partner, Morgenthaler Ventures. "Faizan started his business in Pakistan, moved it to San Francisco, and overcame considerable odds to attract a list of loyal customers from around the world."

About Convo

Convo (www.convo.com) is designed to help any group of people working together to achieve great things. Convo allows creative and innovative teams to easily have the real-time conversations needed to advance a cutting-edge campaign, launch a new product or break the latest news story. Convo, an interactive workspace, is made for people who thrive on the creative process and who want to "get there first." The company (formerly Scrybe) has recently reincorporated in the United States and is headquartered in San Francisco with an offshore office in Pakistan.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/convo-secures-series-funding-morgenth...

Comment by Riaz Haq on November 26, 2013 at 10:38pm

Here's more from <a href="http://tribune.com.pk/story/631651/up-and-coming-pakistani-startup-raises-5m-from-venture-capitalist/">Express Tribune</a> on Faizan Buzdar's Convo:

<i>The funding will be used to evolve the company’s products, introduce its service on more platforms, and accelerate user reach and growth. Convo will also use the money to more than double its team in Pakistan, the company’s Director Marketing and Operations Shehryar Hydri told The Express Tribune.
The product is making big waves already and giving social enterprise giants, the likes of Yammer and Jive, a run for their money according to reviews published by top technology blogs; it has even taken away a chunk of their clientele.
The company’s market position couldn’t be determined because it didn’t disclose financial data. It did say however that over 10% of the Fortune-500 companies use their product, and they have 6,000 customers in more than 150 countries.
What really brought Convo to the limelight were the rave reviews it received from customers and leading technology blogs, such as TechCrunch and The Next Web, for its innovative features. In fact, this innovative product even got the attention of the United States President Barack Obama few months ago.
“Faizan,” Obama tweeted, “is a perfect example of why we [America] need immigration reform.”
Obama’s tweet, which praised Buzdar, was meant to gather support for an immigration bill that would allow non-US citizens into the country to help promote innovation in the country’s technology industry.
Buzdar, too, faced a host of immigration hurdles before getting his green card recently. “America needs immigration reform or it risks losing out on innovation,” he had told The Next Web prior to getting his resident permit.
Launched from Islamabad in 2005 as Scrybe and later renamed Convo, it is one of the few software product-based companies that originally started in Pakistan and gained a global footprint in terms of funding and customers.
Buzdar started his company from a five-member team working from a small room in the federal capital but he is determined to make it big, perhaps the biggest in the market it serves.
“Our customers say that Convo is the first app they check as soon as they wake up, even before email or Facebook. I want to see that behavior across many more organisations,” Buzdar said.</i>

http://tribune.com.pk/story/631651/up-and-coming-pakistani-startup-...

Comment by Riaz Haq on January 1, 2014 at 9:40am

Here's a WSJ PR release on Pakistani engineer Farhan Masood's SoloMetrics:

Mace(R) Security International, an established manufacturing brand known for its personal defense pepper sprays and security equipment, announced today a joint venture with SoloMetrics LLC, to provide safety technology inspired by the film "Minority Report."

The Steven Spielberg thriller, set in 2054, focuses on the role of protecting citizens by preventing crime. While watching the film, inventor Farhan Masood realized he could design the futuristic technology. And he went on to create a successful multi-national company called SoloMetrics.

Now SoloMetrics is partnering with Mace(R) brand to provide innovative technology and services that produce the next generation of safety and security products. The joint venture, named SoloMace, will significantly enhance the Mace(R) brand line of personal defense products and increase its range of law enforcement products.

"This partnership will create unprecedented opportunities in the area of security," said John J. McCann, president and CEO of Mace Security International.

SoloMetrics is a Chicago-based research and development company that invents and assembles technologies addressing gaps in security and access control, time and attendance, business process automation and location-based tracking systems.

Under the newly announced partnership, SoloMetrics will work alongside Mace Security International, its partners and customers to create integrated, automated and intelligent products and solutions. SoloMetrics will utilize its arsenal of patent pending hardware and software technologies including biometrics, complex pattern and gestures recognition, augmented reality and big data.

Mace(R) plans to launch SoloMace in the summer of 2014.

"This will transform what it means to protect yourself and engage law enforcement in new ways," McCann said.

Masood, an engineer whose work was recognized by the MIT Enterprise Forum in 2012, is known as the originator of the Arabic, Urdu and Persian languages on the Internet.

Carter Kennedy, interim CEO at SoloMetrics, said, "Our alliance with Mace(R) brings together technology and protection. It creates a security blanket for people who could be in threatening circumstances."

Mace(R) brand (OTCPINK: MACE) is a manufacturer and provider of personal defense, safety and electronic security products for home, school, business and law enforcement use. The company provides site assessment and integrated security strategies, ranging from pepper spray devices to electronic surveillance and rapid response rescue networks. Mace(R) brand has been a source of non-lethal solutions since 1970.

http://online.wsj.com/article/PR-CO-20131230-903841.html

Comment by Riaz Haq on February 2, 2015 at 10:31pm

The Syrian conflict has been marked by a very active, if only sporadically visible, cyberbattle that has engulfed all sides, one that is less dramatic than the barrel bombs, snipers and chemical weapons — but perhaps just as effective. The United States had deeply penetrated the web and phone systems in Syria a year before the Arab Spring uprisings spread throughout the country. And once it began, Mr. Assad’s digital warriors have been out in force, looking for any advantage that could keep him in power.

In this case, the fighter had fallen for the oldest scam on the Internet, one that helped Mr. Assad’s allies. The chat is drawn from a new study by the intelligence-gathering division of FireEye, a computer security firm, which has delved into the hidden corners of the Syrian conflict — one in which even a low-tech fighting force has figured out a way to use cyberespionage to its advantage. FireEye researchers found a collection of chats and documents while researching malware hidden in PDF documents, which are commonly used to share letters, books or other images. That quickly took them to the servers where the stolen data was stored.

Like the hackers who the United States says were working for North Korea when they attacked Sony Pictures in November, the assailants aiding Mr. Assad’s forces in this case took steps to hide their true identities.

The report says the pro-Assad hackers stole large caches of critical documents revealing the Syrian opposition’s strategy, tactical battle plans, supply requirements and data about the forces themselves — which could be used to track them down. But it is not evident how or whether this battlefield information was used.

“You’ve got a conflict with a lot of young, male fighters who keep their contacts and their operations on phones in their back pockets,” said one senior American intelligence official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss espionage matters. “And it’s clear Assad’s forces have the capability to drain all that out.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/02/world/middleeast/hackers-use-old-...

https://www.fireeye.com/content/dam/fireeye-www/global/en/current-t...

Comment by Riaz Haq on March 11, 2016 at 8:15am

#Pakistani-#American Asher Aziz's cybersecurity firm #FireEye probing #Bangladesh bank heist of $100m. http://reut.rs/1U6vS3z via @Reuters

Investigators suspect unknown hackers managed to install malware in the Bangladesh central bank's computer systems and watched, probably for weeks, how to go about withdrawing money from its U.S. account, two bank officials briefed on the matter said on Friday.

More than a month after hackers breached Bangladesh Bank's systems and attempted to steal nearly $1 billion from its account at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, cyber security experts are trying to find out how the hackers got in.

FireEye Inc's Mandiant forensics division is helping investigate the cyber heist, which netted hackers more than $80 million before it was uncovered.

Investigators now suspect that malware that allowed hackers to learn how to withdraw the money could have been installed several weeks before the incident, which took place between Feb. 4 and Feb. 5, the officials said.

Investigators suspect the attack was sophisticated, describing the use of a "zero day" and referring to an "advanced persistent threat", the officials said.

A zero day is a vulnerability in software that has yet to be identified or patched. Hackers leverage this hole to plant malware on the target computer.

Advanced persistent threat is a long-term attack on a system, where hackers remain inside the target, for months, and sometimes even years.

So far investigators have not found any proof of involvement of the central bank staff in Bangladesh, one of the officials said, but added that the probe was continuing.

Unraveling the mystery behind one of the largest cyber heists in history is crucial for security in a connected world. Understanding how it happened could help banks shore up security of their computer systems and payment networks that form the backbone of global commerce.

Security experts say the perpetrators had deep knowledge of the Bangladeshi institution's internal workings, likely gained by spying on bank workers.

Bangladesh Bank officials have said hackers appeared to have stolen their credentials for the SWIFT messaging system, which banks around the world use for secure financial communication.

The Fed, which provides banking services to some 250 central banks and other institutions, has said its systems were not compromised.

The Bangladesh central bank had billions of dollars in its current account, which it used for international settlements, officials have said.

The money stolen from the Bangladesh central bank made its way to the other side of the world.

Some $80 million are believed to have ended in the Philippines, and further diverted to casinos and then to Hong Kong, according to bank officials.

One $20 million transaction was directed to a non-profit organization in Sri Lanka.

But the unusually large transaction for the island nation and a misspelling of the NGO's name raised red flags that helped bring the robbery to light. The transaction was blocked as was another huge payment instruction that was for between $850 million and $870 million.

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