Startup Grind Islamabad team organized a fun hiking trip with Mark Turrell (CEO Vork & Orcasci, WEF YGL & Tech Pioneer, Author 'Scaling') and Yusuf Hussain (CEO Ignite - National Technology Fund, Tech Entrepreneur and 4th Industrial Revolution Enthusiast). This trip was followed up by desi breakfast at a local restaurant in Islamabad and a productive session on strategy by Mark Turrell with the attendees.
We're honored and thankful to Mark & Yusuf for their time and all our friends for making the effort to take part in this activity despite the difficult political situation in Islamabad. Special thanks to Ahmed Sajjad Zaidi, Mudassar Abbas Chaudry Mohsin Mushtaq Mahan, Syeda Rozeena Saleha,Shujaat Bajwa, Habib Afzal, Noor Ul Ann Arslan Tassawar for enjoying and staying till the very end and even thanks to those who intended to join but couldn't :)
This trip would have never been possible without the initiative taken by our Director Hassan Zulfiqar and provided an opportunity for knowledge seekers to get in touch with industry experts. Grateful to our team members Hamza Siddiqui Abdullah Shahram RaZa JaveD Immad Raza Ahsan Zahra Sajid Farheen Ale Syed and Muskaan Haq, for their dedication & being the part of Startup Grind Islamabad
Mark is a strategist, author, and entrepreneur. His work combines collective intelligence with networks, complex systems, behavioural science and neuroscience. Mark is the CEO and founder of Vork, a business social networking application. He also founded Orcasci, a consulting firm designing scaling and growth strategies with recent clients including the $1m Global Teacher Prize with the Varkey Foundation. Previously Mark co-founded Imaginatik plc, a pioneer in crowdsourcing and collaborative problem solving for innovation. During his 16 years at Imaginatik, Mark worked with hundreds of companies, including Allianz, Bayer, Cargill, IBM, Merck, Novartis, Pfizer, Whirlpool and Xerox. The World Economic Forum nominated him a Technology Pioneer and a Young Global Leader. Mark is a Professor of Global Strategy at Hult International Business School and author of 'Scaling: Small Smart Moves for Outsized Results'.
Yusuf, a Senior Partner at Jump Curve, is a technologist, entrepreneur and investor with international experience. At the helm of CresSoft, Inc. in the USA, he led the company to a $286 million valuation and a slew of GLOBAL 2000 and FORTUNE 500 customers. As CEO Ignite, he led the design and execution of an online AI-powered freelance training portal that attained over 1 million enrollments in a little over a year, with third party estimate of earnings by trainees at over $110 million a year.
The Ignite national network of 5 incubators was operationalized with over 300 incubated startups, that raised almost Rs 7 from the private and development sectors for every rupee invested by the Government into the program. The Ignite Seed Fund invested in startups in agriculture, education, energy, retail, fintech, health and telecom that were powered by Fourth Industrial Revolution tech like AI, IoT, Robotics, and Augmented Reality, with several raising subsequent rounds of funding and multiplying revenue. UNIDO showcased Ignite in its 2020 report entitled “Absorbing Advanced Digital Production Technologies to Foster Industrialization – Evidence from Case Studies in Developing Countries.”
As Managing Director at PSEB and LMKR, and as consultant at the World Bank, NDMA, and GHQ, he oversaw several digital transformation initiatives. During his tenure at PSEB, the IT industry experienced one of its highest-ever annual growth rates, at 55%, partly as a result of several new and innovative initiatives at PSEB. He is a founding director of TiE Islamabad and Founder Institute (FI) Islamabad, and has also served on the Boards of PSEB, Ignite, and WENR, a public NASDAQ company. He has been awarded a National Leadership Award by the Republican National Congressional Committee, membership of the Royal Society of Arts (RSA), and also been appointed Good Will Ambassador of the City of Houston. He has a Masters in Computer Engineering with a minor in business from University of Texas, Austin, and a Bachelors in Computer Science from Rice University. He writes and speaks frequently on issues relates to technology and innovation.
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