Endeavor Pakistan has appointed Mubariz Siddiqui as its new Managing Director, bringing a lawyer with a long record of working alongside the country’s founders and investors into the top role at the organization. Siddiqui has practised law since 2008 and has spent more than a decade advising the people who build and fund companies in Pakistan. He founded Carbon Law, a firm that advised founders, investors and technology companies on venture financing, corporate structuring and regulation. He has also held senior legal roles in venture capital and has worked with regulators on reforms aimed at early stage companies. He has paused his legal practice to lead Endeavor Pakistan, which he described in his own announcement as a chance to work full time on the thing he cares about most.
Siddiqui framed his years around Pakistani founders as a wide vantage point, having seen them as a founder, an investor and a lawyer. From that experience he draws a plain conclusion about the work. Building a company in Pakistan takes unwavering belief, and founders often have to will their companies into existence, frequently on their own. His stated aim is for far fewer of them to do it alone. He described entrepreneurship as the most credible route to social mobility in the country and said the priority is to make it a viable career for far more Pakistanis. That ties the appointment to a larger argument about who gets to build a business and how many people can realistically try.
Endeavor’s model is the means to that end. The organization selects founders who are ready to scale and places a global network of entrepreneurs behind them, a network that spans more than 45 markets. In return, the selected founders mentor, invest in and inspire the founders who come after them. Siddiqui pointed to the board as unlike any he has seen in Pakistan. It is chaired by Mudassir Sheikha, who is himself an Endeavor Entrepreneur, and its members include Aaqib Gadit, Tania Aidrus, Ali Mukhtar, Jawad Khan, Samad Dawood and Ammar Hanafi. The Endeavor Entrepreneurs in Pakistan lead Bazaar Technologies, Abhi, SadaPay, LAAM Technologies, PostEx, Priceoye, Qist Bazaar and KamelPay, a group that spans commerce, fintech and logistics and shows the range of businesses the network has backed so far.
His first priority is to find the next generation of Endeavor Entrepreneurs early and in every sector of the economy. The announcement notes that Pakistan’s scaled companies sit in retail, agriculture, healthcare, logistics, service exports and consumer brands as much as in software, so the search is meant to reach well beyond technology. Siddiqui thanked outgoing Managing Director Shehryar Hydri and earlier leader Ali Samir Oosman for their work and said he intends to build on it. He will do so with the team that runs Endeavor Pakistan every day, Samia Aslam, Saad Shehryar and Usman Butt. He also issued an open call with three parts. Owners of fast growing companies are invited to meet him, founders who have built a company and want to help the next one can mentor with Endeavor, and leaders of institutions that want to back Pakistani entrepreneurs are asked to start a conversation. The results will show in the founders the organization selects in the coming months, and particularly in whether the selection reaches sectors such as agriculture, healthcare and logistics that have been less visible in startup coverage.
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