Adnan

Early life and background

Adnan was born and raised in Karachi. After school, he moved to Lahore. [1]

Education

Adnan attended Government College Lahore. He decided to study for a bachelor's degree in computer science in London. He studied at a university in London for about four years to complete his graduation, and his university studies ran from 2001 to 2005. He says he may be Pakistan's first software graduate to major in AI, around 2005. [1]

Early career and CureMD

Adnan worked in IT at a company for about a year. He found the IT work not very exciting and began looking for other opportunities. [1]

He joined CureMD in 2006 or 2007, he believes, and worked there for about nine to ten years. He says CureMD had maybe 70 employees when he joined and had grown to about 8-900 employees when he left. He says his main interest was the business side of things rather than hands-on tech work. Around 2010, he started digital marketing work and helping with sales. [1]

Australia

Adnan lived in Lahore for about 10 to 15 years before moving to Australia. He worked in Australia from about 2016 or 2017 for about a year and a half. After moving to Australia, he joined one of the biggest healthcare implementations, a hospital implementation in Melbourne. He says he led an implementation involving about 20,000 employees, and that the Melbourne network he worked with had seven hospitals. [1]

Founding Software Finder

Adnan says he always wanted to build his own business as an entrepreneur. He says the Software Finder idea took shape around 2014 and 2015. He saw that software product companies focused on the product and neglected marketing and sales. He says buyers can spend two to three months researching the best B2B software, and that most software buyers are non-technical. [1]

In 2018, Adnan was in Australia while a partner was in Karachi, and the two began brainstorming the idea by phone. He says that if they did not pursue the idea, he expected someone else to build it within two or three years. He says he called two partners to start the venture, and they agreed once they bought into the idea. They joined as co-founders. He says he told his partners that they had to be fully in, or the venture would not happen. [1]

Adnan says the company was formally started in 2019. He says that in 2019 the company could not yet pay him $13,000 a month, and that he took a huge salary cut. He says he was working 16 to 17 hours a day and used to sleep four to five hours a night. He says the company began doing well within a year or two of starting out. [1]

Software Finder

Software Finder is described as a global marketplace for buying and selling software. Adnan describes it as a marketplace connecting B2B software buyers and sellers. He says the platform helps buyers narrow a thousand options to a shortlist of five or ten. He says vendors value Software Finder for prospective buyers they can call and convert into paying customers, and that vendors pay only for leads that are in the market for their software. [1]

Adnan says Software Finder is the only company that gives vendors phone-qualified leads, and that the human element in the buying process sets it apart from other marketplaces. He says the company works to build its brand in front of software vendors. He says Software Finder is about six years old and supplies leads to 80% of medical software vendors. He says almost 70% of HR companies, including large US firms, buy leads from it. [1]

He says the site has about 50 to 60 major categories and 850 sub categories, with about 40,000 to 50,000 vendors listed on the platform. He says the site gets about 250,000 monthly visits from buyers looking for software. He says Software Finder holds a respectable position without any funding, and that its cost per lead is low enough to compete with better-funded rivals. [1]

Marketing and operations

Adnan says Software Finder is built on SEO and Google search, and that about 60% of the business comes from non-SEO channels. He says about 120 people at the company work in SEO and about 60 to 70 content marketers write for the company. He says about 220 to 240 of the company's 350 people work in digital marketing, and about 250 people work on the back end, about half on content and SEO. He says the company also runs email, SMS and webinar marketing alongside SEO. [1]

He says the company started with outbound lead generation because it lacked time to build organic traffic. He says Software Finder has collaborations with companies such as Apollo and LinkedIn Sales Navigator. He says getting email into the inbox has become extremely difficult. [1]

Adnan says Software Finder has started SEO work aimed at LLM search results. He says senior leadership has discussed where the company sees itself in 2026, given AI. He says the company holds quarterly leadership sessions to discuss the future. [1]

Views

Adnan says his motto is that nothing good comes without sacrifice. He says he believes founders can go further with partners than alone. He says he felt patriotism and a need to do something in Pakistan. [1]

Personal life

Adnan's wife works at Software Finder, where she leads learning and development. He says he and his wife built their life around family and work. He moved from Australia to Dubai because travel to the US and Lahore had become too much, and he says he visits the Lahore office almost every month. [1]

Timeline

2001

Began university studies, which ran to 2005[1]

2006

Joined CureMD, in 2006 or 2007 by his recollection[1]

2010

Started digital marketing work and helping with sales[1]

2014

The Software Finder idea took shape, around 2014 and 2015[1]

2016

Began work in Australia, around 2016 or 2017[1]

2019

Company formally started[1]

Appearances

Frequently asked questions

References

1. Software Finder made money before its website existed . Thought Behind Things , 2025-12-08.