The courage of Sidra Qasim
Sidra Qasim is a Pakistani woman entrepreneur that founded Atoms. A courageous one. Here is her story, up to today.
Sidra Qasim is one of the founders of Atoms, an online shoe retailer that started selling leather shoes on the internet as Markhor. With Markhor, they obtained the most successful Kickstarter campaign in Pakistan and admission to Y Combinator in 2013. Nowadays, she resides in San Francisco and Atoms has pivoted to the perfect everyday shoe.
“Once you’ve gone through so many experiences in your life, you pay a price but you become more courageous”.
Her context
Sidra Qasim has always had a very special entrepreneurial mindset, always trying to carry on new projects. Sidra was born in Pakistan. Her parents were both teachers, and when they both got home, dad rested and mom cooked. Girls were raised from a young age to believe their purpose in life is to get married.
Sidra was taught to keep her head down and give up her ambition. Her mom warned her that her entrepreneurial ideas were going to harm her in her culture. This happens due to a phenomenon named the Petrie Multiplier: Minorities in fields where they have traditionally been excluded from, receive more harassment because there are more predators than prey.
Those imposed sexist ideas to discourage Sidra from entrepreneurship, sounded like nonsense to her. Who is society and why should I pay attention, she thought.
But, in Sidra’s reality, one thing is to want to pay attention to the demands from society, and another is seeing the day when the pressure to step down, give up your ambition, and get married stops.
The business
Sidra met Waqas Ali serendipitously. Sidra had been through a matchmaking process, but the interaction she had with Waqas was different: he listened to her ideas, and they communicated more openly than usual. He started an Internet business and wanted her in the team: “With someone like you, people will take us seriously”. And so, they started a series of entrepreneurial endeavors during many years which would take them to sell leather shoes online.
After a year of selling 50 pairs of shoes per month, they launched a Kickstarter campaign with the goal of $15,000. They mailed the campaign to the media, and everyone started talking about them. They raised $107,000, becoming the most successful Kickstarter campaign in Pakistan.
For Sidra, whenever something big happened in her life, something bad happened simultaneously.
Waqas’s parents were constantly congratulating him on the campaign. Sidra’s parents did not look and did not call. She didn’t have anyone in her family to celebrate with.
After the campaign, in 2013 they applied to Y Combinator and got admitted.
But Sidra’s family was not complacent with her entrepreneurial reality as it was, and with her just going to the US. They pressured her to get married once and for all. Therefore, with a simpler than usual ceremony, Sidra and Waqas got married.
After, they went to Y Combinator, where they sold leather shoes to many participants. However, on Demo Day no one wore them and few investors approached them to potentially invest.
After this hit, they pivoted from leather shoes to the ideal everyday shoe, a product born from their research of shoes and Sidra’s pursuit for product excellence. They rebranded Markhor as Atoms. It was well-loved in social media, and investors approached again.
Epilogue
Sidra’s story is far from over, it is an ongoing journey. She still combats the fear of falling back. She sees a challenge:
As a woman, there are moments in your life in which you receive inside and outside pressure to step down, a reminder that this is not your place.
Sidra is very intentional about what she wants and about communicating that if she wants to do something, she wants to and she will, and she will be the one deciding to step down or to carry on.
To me, the epilogue of this still ongoing story is that the success of a woman is for every woman.
Sidra made a remarkable change in her family: her cousins now tell her about her dreams, her mom is about to retire as a teacher and wants to run a business with her sister, and her family now thinks differently of children's development, both for boys and girls. She made herself an example of what a woman entrepreneur could be. No le falta corashe.
If you want to know more, here is an interview Polina Marinova from The Profile recorded with her:
And if you want to see Sidra’s story from a different angle (and are up for a good cry), here is her story in Humans of New York.