IBA Centre for Entrepreneurial Development is hosting an exclusive session titled Cracking the US Market: Exports, Expansion and the Silicon Valley Mindset on Thursday, June 11, 2026, from 11:00 AM to 12:00 PM at the 11th Floor of Aman Tower at IBA City Campus in Karachi. The session features Zain Jeewanjee, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of i23 Insurance, Agency and Upmatic, a Silicon Valley veteran with four decades of experience in the United States insurance and technology ecosystem and a charter member of both TiE and OPEN. The session is open and free for IBA and IBA CED alumni, and registration is available at forms.gle/XNTVJgM1Hkaw44Ap6
The session is built around a practical, battle-tested playbook for cross-border growth rather than a theoretical overview of what the United States market looks like from the outside. Zain Jeewanjee draws on forty years of direct operating experience within the American business and technology ecosystem, having built and scaled ventures in insurance and technology from a position of deep familiarity with how American buyers think, how Silicon Valley networks function, and how entrepreneurs from outside the United States can navigate the specific cultural, commercial, and regulatory dimensions of building a presence in the world’s largest and most competitive startup market. For Pakistani founders who have been building domestically and are beginning to think seriously about North American expansion, access to this kind of firsthand, operationally grounded perspective is considerably more valuable than the generic international expansion frameworks that most business education provides.
The session will cover three interconnected dimensions of US market entry and growth. Mastering US market entry addresses the specific steps, decisions, and pitfalls involved in establishing a credible presence in the American market, from the structural and legal considerations of setting up a US entity to the product and positioning adjustments that Pakistani ventures typically need to make when their offering crosses into a market with different competitive dynamics, customer expectations, and purchasing behaviour. Building trust with North American buyers addresses the relationship and credibility dimension of cross-border business development, examining how Pakistani founders can overcome the distance, unfamiliarity, and risk aversion that North American buyers often bring to relationships with vendors from markets they have limited direct experience with. Leveraging Silicon Valley networks for growth covers how founders can access and activate the most powerful startup and investor networks in the world from a position outside those networks, and how TiE, OPEN, and similar organisations create structured pathways for Pakistani entrepreneurs to build the relationships that enable serious US market growth.
IBA CED’s decision to bring a practitioner of Zain Jeewanjee’s calibre and experience to its alumni community reflects the centre’s understanding that the most valuable learning for aspiring and active founders comes from people who have done the work at scale rather than studied it from a distance. For IBA and IBA CED alumni who are running ventures with international ambitions or who are considering the US market as their next growth frontier, the June 11 session at Aman Tower represents an hour of direct access to a knowledge base and network that would otherwise take years of independent effort to approach. Founders interested in attending can register at forms.gle/XNTVJgM1Hkaw44Ap6 ahead of the session.
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