Just watched a podcast of Muhammad Raza Saeed, CEO Confiz and PakWheels at Thought Behind Things . It was around 2 hours session, here are my 17 take-aways. 1. Everything must be done in a propey way. Processes, not individuals, should drive a company to ensure consistency and quality management. 2. Whatever you do, identify patterns in your service, its where you would find new ideas to work on, areas to innovate by creating products. 3. Software is means to an end, and that end is "the problem it solve". Focus on problems identification and then building solutions to fix them. Digitalization globally is only at 15-20%, offering abundant opportunities for software businesses. 4. Large software platforms are complex and every business is different in operations, even when they are doing same stuff. People are needed to customize platforms to meet specific requirements. Here is the opportunity you can tap. 5. Business opportunities lie not only in grand challenges but also i...

A student asked about how to start feelancing at reddit. Here are a couple of points I shared. I found it a bit cool, so I thought to share with broader audience: 1. Pick one skill and master it thoroughly by learning from 3-4 different sources (e.g., Coursera, Udemy, edX, YouTube, etc.). Complete 2-3 academic projects to apply what you've learned. Try to incorporate most of the features or tools often demanded in related projects within the chosen tech stack. Start by selecting a technology that has good demand nowadays and in which you already have some experience (this is recommended but not required). Choose something you enjoy working with. Once you've made your choice, stick with it for at least 3-4 years. This could be MERN, MEAN, React Native, Shopify, Odoo, Java/Spring, Flutter, .NET, Laravel, Salesforce, ERPs, Blockchain, Web3, integrations, ML/AI, automation, web scraping, data processing, crypto, or something else. The key is to pick one and stick to it unless you h...

Students put high energy in developing their academic final year projects, they look very inspired by the technology-stack and many of them ask about technology only. When you discuss, they claim to launch the product too. Young friends, products are not made like this. Let me share a few things that I have learned with time: Developing something to learn a technology only (Node.JS, Angular, .Net, Android, etc) and creating a real product for users are different things. If you want to create a product, your primary focus should be the market e.g. value creation, target customers and their pain points, user experience, understanding market need and gap, idea validation and testing, understanding business processes your product target, along with creating the actual product. Technology matters but not that much as craftmen think. Technology stack can be improved with time, no one really cares about the technology used as long as the product solve their problem. How many times yo...