NIC Islamabad held a Product Development session as part of Founder Institute Cohort 5, giving founders guidance on turning validated ideas into products that solve real customer problems. The session addressed a stage of startup development that follows initial idea validation, focusing on the practical work of building, testing and refining a product rather than the earlier work of identifying a problem worth solving.
The session covered how to build effective minimum viable products, prioritise what matters most during early development, test products with real users and continuously iterate based on customer feedback. This progression, from building a first version through structured testing and iteration, reflects an agile development approach that treats early customer feedback as a core input into product decisions rather than something addressed only after a product is largely finished.
Guiding the session were Mahnoor Salman, AI Transformation Specialist at the Ministry of Energy’s Power Division, Mohammad Mansoor, Founder and CEO of Vinci Labs, and Kamran Taufiq Khan, Program Manager at NIC Islamabad. This combination of speakers brought together a government sector perspective on AI transformation, a founder’s firsthand experience building and running a company, and an incubation centre’s programme management view, giving participating founders exposure to product development from several distinct vantage points.
The session’s framing, that great products are not built in one go but evolve with every customer insight, positions iterative development as central to how founders should approach building their products, rather than treating a single launch as the definitive test of a product’s viability. This approach aligns with broader startup methodology that emphasises continuous learning and adjustment over a single, extended development cycle before any user contact.
The session took place on August 11, 2026, from 2 PM to 5 PM at NIC Islamabad, forming part of the ongoing Founder Institute Cohort 5 programming at the incubation centre. The session is supported by the Ministry of Information Technology and Telecommunication, Tech Destination Pakistan and Ignite National Technology Fund, alongside collaborators including Fauji Foundation, Founder Institute and Cybervision International, consistent with the institutional backing behind NIC Islamabad’s broader cohort programming for founders.
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