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It took Ahmed Khattak, a Pakistani-born entrepreneur, ten long years to push US Mobile past its first $100 million in annual recurring revenue. But what came next was a shock to the telecom world: just nine months later, the company doubled that number, hitting $200 million ARR.
In an industry ruled by giants like Verizon and AT&T, this kind of acceleration is unheard of. As Khattak explained in a recent LinkedIn post:
“Ten years of relentless building to reach our first $100M ARR. Then just nine months to add the next $100M.”
Khattak calls it superlinear growth: the idea that each customer makes it easier to win the next one. What may look like an overnight success is, in truth, a story of survival, struggle, and unshakable persistence.
That kind of acceleration is rarely seen in any industry, let alone in telecom, one of the toughest markets to crack in the United States. What may look like an overnight success is, in truth, a story of survival, struggle, and unshakable persistence.
Early Struggles in America
Khattak’s US Mobile story starts far from Wall Street or Silicon Valley. It begins with a young student from Pakistan arriving in the United States on an F1 visa, unsure of how to make ends meet but clear about one dream: to launch his carrier.
“What I wanted to do was launch my own carrier,” he recalled in an interview with Paklaunch. “But this kid who is totally broke out of Pakistan on an OPT F1 visa has no idea how to go and launch a carrier, right? The carrier market is a big deal.”
He knew he could not take on giants like Verizon or AT&T right away. Instead, he looked for a smaller gap to fill.
Building GSM Nation
The gap Khattak faced was the hidden cost of phone contracts. Most Americans believed they were getting “free phones” through long-term deals, not realizing they were locked into years of overpriced payments.
In 2010, Khattak co-founded GSM Nation, an online marketplace that sold unlocked phones and educated consumers about their choices.
“We started selling unlocked phones in the U.S. before that was even a category,” Khattak said.
By 2014, GSM Nation had scaled to $130 million in revenue. Yet Khattak soon realized that selling phones online was not enough.
“I very quickly realized that I actually didn’t want to be in e-commerce. I wanted to own the supply chain. I wanted to own the product,” he told Paklaunch.
Founding US Mobile
That leap became US Mobile, founded in 2014. From the start, Khattak’s approach was different. Instead of forcing customers into rigid plans, US Mobile offered a modular service where people could mix and match talk, text, and data as they liked. Families could pool data across multiple lines, and businesses could scale instantly.
US Mobile also ran on multiple networks, providing seamless coverage without tying customers to a single provider. And unlike traditional carriers, security was built in from day one with protections like dual approvals and Sentinel Mode.
But the early years were tough. Investors doubted the idea.
“Everyone obviously laughed us out of the room because no one had dared to disrupt the telco space,” Khattak recalled. Even suppliers treated them as if their survival did not matter. “Our biggest suppliers did not care if we lived or died. Our investors wanted us out. The only reason we stayed alive was because our customers carried us with their love, trust, and belief in what we were building.”
Fighting Google, Serving Customers
By 2023, persistence began to pay off. US Mobile had become one of the fastest-growing carriers in the country (but its growth path was unlike others). Khattak turned off paid ads entirely, including Google Ads, and relied instead on organic growth and word of mouth.
“Last year, we turned Google Ads off completely. CPC = $0. Growth has only accelerated,” he wrote in his LinkedIn post.
The decision to push back against Google became a defining moment. When Google asked US Mobile to switch to ACH payments for ad billing, the change would have cost the company over $300,000 in lost cashback and rewards. Khattak refused. “So I told them to take a long walk off a short bridge,” he wrote.
On Reddit, one supporter commented, “This is fire—he stood his ground,” while another praised it as “a boss move” to put customers first.
Instead of spending millions on Google, US Mobile introduced one of the boldest referral programs in the industry. Customers could now earn up to $1,575 per year in real cash just for referring friends and family.
“We’re actually tripling down on YOU, our community, by launching a monster referral program… cold, hard cash,” Khattak announced.
Unlike the usual store credits, US Mobile gave actual prepaid MasterCards. One Reddit user praised it as “better than anything the big carriers do,” while another said, “This shows they actually care about customers.”
From $100M to $200M Superliner Growth
On LinkedIn, Khattak explained why: “When α > 1, each unit of scale increases both reach and conversion efficiency. Every incremental customer interaction expands the surface area for discovery and accelerates trust transfer.” In simpler words, every new customer helped bring in the next.
Yet Khattak insists the journey is only beginning. Granted, US Mobile is growing at a rate of 100 percent a year, but it would still only reach 1 percent of the U.S. market within four years. The space is so huge, and we are just so early.
The challenge was to plant US Mobile squarely in the line of vision of tens of millions of people and make them understand what they could demand of their carriers, and what the notions of telecom infrastructure reconstruction could be.
The story of Ahmed Khattak is one of persistence against the odds. His journey has not been easy and is one that saw him grow as a broke student in Pakistan to being the founder of a $200M ARR company. He has demonstrated that by being loyal to its customers rather than depending on huge corporations, it is possible to make a fast-growing growing sustainable business.
