Faisal Aftab

Early life and background

Aftab was born in Rawalpindi, Pakistan, in a military hospital, and comes from a military family. His father was a civil engineer. His father took a sabbatical from the military to do a PhD at UC Berkeley. Aftab says his father was behind several large projects in Pakistan and is his main source of inspiration. [4]

He lived in Pakistan, including Karachi, until about the age of six or seven. He grew up mostly in Berkeley, California, and says he lived in the US for most of his life before he moved. He finished high school in Pakistan and attended a military school. Aftab says attending the military school gave him exposure to the grit of Pakistan, and that the military is the actual melting pot in the country. [3][4]

Education

Aftab studied at Michigan State University. He took a five-year honors program that combined a bachelor's and a master's degree, and he graduated in 2000. He holds a master of science in MIS and a master's in professional accounting. [4]

His father wanted him to become a civil engineer. Aftab switched his major from engineering to business, and says most of his friends were in the business school at the time. During a summer internship at a Big Four firm, he realized he did not like financial audit work. After the internship he decided to also take management information systems. He studied finance and economics. He also studied calculus in college and says he has never used it, and he has said he could do what he does today without 12 years of school and four years of college. [1][2][4]

Early career in New York

After graduating, Aftab took a consulting job offer from Deloitte Consulting and moved to New York. He says he wanted to move to New York at the time. He worked at Deloitte for about five or six years. His clients included Blackstone Group and JP Morgan. He says his consulting work was largely technology-oriented and included the back-end systems of the New York Stock Exchange. [4]

In 2006 he moved to National Financial Partners, where he did corporate M&A and operational restructuring. He was in New York during the 2008 global financial crisis. [2][4]

Entrepreneurship

In 2006, while still working, Aftab started a side business. He saw demand among viewers in the West for Pakistani television channels. He later joined a company founded by someone else and became one of its executives to scale it. He proposed creating a content company that would acquire content rights, and says content rights were secured for Indian, Afghan, Pakistani and Persian content. [4]

Aftab says he went entrepreneurial in 2012, and that he then moved into making technology investments himself. He says he got into a rabbit hole of economics merged with technology, Bitcoin and Ethereum. [4]

Venture investing

Aftab created one of Pakistan's first institutional venture capital firms. He says he started investing in 2018. For his first fund he invested in an edtech company, which he says is still around but did not scale to expectations. He does not think edtech is ripe in Pakistan. He has chosen to focus his investing on B2B, B2C and fintech. [4]

His fund invests through holding companies because its investors will not allow direct investment in Pakistani operating companies. He says regulators allowed investors to create holding companies for startups, since startups lack physical assets. He describes his venture capital fund as institutional, with international investors, and says he invests at the greenfield stage so that he can set a company's ethos from the first cheque. [2][3][4]

Aftab says he has backed individuals from Bookme and PostEx, and that five deals, including Krave Mart, PostEx and Bookme, have raised money. He says most of the companies he invested in during 2021 are doing well. He says the founders he backed had little capital of their own but high intellect, capability and resilience, and that he never invested at a valuation cap higher than about 6 million dollars. [3]

He says he turned negative on Pakistan's startup ecosystem in early 2022. In March 2022 he advised portfolio companies to expect a tough couple of years, and to raise what they could and then conserve capital. He says the sentiment bottom in Pakistan's market was April to June 2023. [3]

Aftab says he lobbies for venture capital in Pakistan for a better tax environment. He describes himself as patient capital because he is older and has been able to accumulate some assets, and says he analysed his own investments in Pakistan. He has said his aim is to back founders who could build four or five unicorns from Pakistan. [1][2]

Shark Tank Pakistan

Sony and its local production team approached Aftab around the tail end of 2023. He was worried about the quality of the programme's production, and became more confident after seeing its vision and set plans. He says his team carries out due diligence after the programme ends, and that the numbers in pitches often do not add up in due diligence. He says far more pitches are filmed than make it to air. [2]

Aftab says one of his deals was with a single mother. He says she sold about a thousand bottles of hair oil from her native village. [2]

Views

Aftab has said he did not leave Pakistan because he hated the country, and that he left because he felt he had no further growth there. He counts himself among the educated Pakistanis who have left. He has said people that leave the country are eventually an asset, and that there is nothing wrong with younger Pakistanis leaving. He says he is very bullish on Pakistan, and not only because he invests there. He says Pakistan is not a poor country, that it has as many smart people as India, and that Pakistanis abroad do well when they are put in a fair system and given a fair chance. [1][2][3][4]

He argues that bringing the hidden economy online would fix Pakistan's macro numbers, and says a lot of Pakistan's underlying economy is undocumented. He says Pakistan could accelerate its economic growth by demonetizing, and that its economy could grow from about $350 billion to a trillion as it digitizes over ten years. He has said India captured much of its informal economy, which helped its GDP figures. He says Pakistan's digital payment adoption is one of the fastest in the world and expects QR codes to become the standard as the State Bank standardizes them. He argues that bribery becomes impossible once money is digital. [1][2][3][4]

On money, Aftab says the current monetary system dates from 1971, when the dollar was delinked from gold, and that he began studying economic cycles after the 2008 financial crisis. He describes the current monetary system as debt-based and says it went insolvent in 2008. He has said the dollar is debasing at about 10% a year and that debasement should be people's primary concern. He describes Bitcoin as digital gold, and says digital payments are not only about cryptocurrency, which he calls an asset offering. He has predicted a settlement and a new digital monetary system within five to seven years. [1][2][3][4]

On technology, he has said AI can do most logic-based white-collar work and expects accountants and lawyers to be disrupted rapidly in the next 5 to 10 years. He says he leans toward the negative side on AI, that in one outcome human beings become somewhat irrelevant, and that people who do not use AI will be left behind. He has said the next phase of AI is expected to start around 2030 and will be very disruptive. He has also questioned whether K-12 schooling was built for the industrial age to produce workers, and says the industrial age education system is becoming irrelevant. [1][2][4]

On geopolitics, Aftab has said Pakistan, Turkey and Saudi Arabia could form a potential block, and that Pakistan could be a kingmaker in the China, Russia and US negotiations. He says the China-US rivalry is existential for Pakistan and that Asia will be the growth engine of the world going forward. He says authoritarian systems can work if the population feels it has agency, and that purely authoritarian models do not work in diverse countries like Pakistan without popular buy-in. He describes himself as apolitical and says he thinks politics is an illusion. [1]

Aftab has written an article for the Express Tribune about Pakistan in 2040, which he says discusses municipal governance run with AI and technology. [1]

Personal life

Aftab has described himself as a Pakistani American. He later met his wife in New York. He says he shows his children how to use ChatGPT under supervision, and that Gen Alpha children are digital natives who will innovate in this world. [1][2][4]

Timeline

2000

Graduated from Michigan State University after a five-year program.[4]

2006

Moved to National Financial Partners and started a side business while still working.[4]

2012

Went entrepreneurial, by his own account.[4]

2018

Started investing, by his own account.[4]

2022

Advised portfolio companies in March to expect a tough couple of years.[3]

2023

Approached by Sony and its local production team around the tail end of the year.[2]

Appearances

Frequently asked questions

References

1. Pakistan as a middle power in the new world order . Thought Behind Things , 2026-04-09.
2. Faisal Aftab: the 1971 system is over, and Pakistan is mispriced . Thought Behind Things , 2024-12-19.
3. Why smart money came into Pakistani startups when everyone left . Thought Behind Things , 2023-11-15.
4. Is America a diminishing power? . Thought Behind Things , 2023-05-19.