The Curious Learners
I feel privileged to speak to so many great minds as part of my job. They are passionate builders, insightful investors, laser-focused leaders. They are all curious learners in their own way. It is their urge to learn more. That urge is curiosity. When I speak to these people, I hear fascinating ideas, solid business plans, genius growth hacking practices, relentless team building focus, unique investing strategies and many others. However, most of the time, key insights, business intelligence and inspiring stories shared in these conversations do not make their way to the outside world. The Curious Learners is an attempt to share the stories of those curious learners with those, who might find the inspiration that they were looking for or those who might get the encouragement for their own journey that they already started. Looking forward to a long journey together.
The Curious Learners
Hasib Malik | Motivation of Improving Outcomes for Entrepreneurs | The Curious Learners Ep. 20
My guest today is Hasib Malik. He is the co-founder of Creditbook, which is a technology company that empowers merchants and MSMEs in Pakistan.
Creditbook was built on the back of a deep market research that identified the biggest pain points for MSMEs in the country.
Hasib and I had an insightful conversation about the potential of Pakistan, what MSMEs need the most and Creditbook's current offerings and its roadmap to address them. Please see below a few key discussion points.
- There is significant opportunity in Pakistan as access to financial services is still limited while use of technology is increasing across the country (e.g. 1 million smart phones added per month, 70k POS terminals vs. 35 million cards)
- Creditbook is a B2B business, however it actually scales like a B2C given the characteristics of MSMEs, which actually shows the degree to which it contributes to financial inclusion
- Hasib's north star metric at Creditbook: number of transactions per user
- His role as the CEO is also Chief Communication Officer to ensure everyone understands their "why"
- Three key characteristics of Creditbook's team: comfort with ambiguity, bias for action and curiosity
Please enjoy my conversation with Hasib Malik.
