National Incubation Center Peshawar recently wrapped up a How to Startup session that brought together two practitioners from Pakistan’s broader technology and venture ecosystem to guide early-stage founders through the fundamentals of building a company from scratch. The session featured Kelly Pang from Orbit Ventures and Muhammad Hilal from IGDA Pakistan, both of whom shared practical, experience-backed perspectives on what it actually takes to move from an idea to a functioning business.
The session covered a range of foundational challenges that first-time founders frequently encounter, including how to validate an idea before committing significant time or capital to it, how to read and understand a target market, and how to take initial steps with a degree of clarity rather than operating purely on instinct. For founders at the earliest stage of their journey, this kind of structured exposure to real-world thinking can make a measurable difference in how they approach the months ahead.
What distinguished the session from a standard lecture format was its emphasis on building with purpose. Rather than encouraging founders to simply ship a product and see what happens, the speakers pushed participants to think carefully about the problem they are solving, who they are solving it for, and whether the people they are building for will actually use what they create. This user-centric framing is increasingly considered essential in startup circles, particularly as Pakistan’s ecosystem matures and the bar for what constitutes a viable product continues to rise.
Muhammad Hilal’s presence through IGDA Pakistan added a dimension specific to the games and interactive digital media industry, a sector that remains underdeveloped in the country despite significant global demand. Kelly Pang, representing Orbit Ventures, brought the investor’s perspective into the room — a vantage point that is often absent from early-stage founder education but proves critical when startups begin thinking about funding and growth.
NIC Peshawar has been steadily building out its programming to serve founders in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, a region that has historically received less startup ecosystem investment than Karachi or Lahore. Sessions like How to Startup reflect an effort to close that gap by bringing credible voices directly to founders in the city rather than expecting them to travel for access to mentorship and networks.
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