There are few cities in the world where innovation and communication are as deeply intertwined asBoston. Known globally as one of America’s foremost centres of higher learning, the city is home to institutions such asHarvard University,Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Northeastern University, andBoston University. Surrounding these universities is one of the world’s most concentrated ecosystems of biotechnology, life sciences, enterprise software, artificial intelligence and deep technology companies.
Technology Speak
It is an environment where brilliant ideas are born every day, but where innovation alone is never enough. In a city crowded with world-changing discoveries, the ability to explain complex technologies, earn credibility and build a reputation has long been regarded as a competitive advantage. It is no coincidence that Boston is equally recognised as one of the birthplaces of modern business-to-business public relations.
For Kam Hashim, Boston became a second home for over a decade. Arriving in the early 1990s to pursue his Master’s degree at Boston University, he expected to complete his studies and return to Malaysia. Instead, what began as an academic journey evolved into a sixteen-year immersion in one of the world’s most sophisticated communications industries, an experience that would fundamentally shape not only his career but also the mission he would eventually bring home.
Boston Beginnings
“I was privileged enough to get a job in America after I finished my Master’s degree. I landed a job in public relations (PR0 and that was the starting point for me to understand exactly the world of PR. So happened that I was in Boston,” he recalled.
Kam joined a communications agency specialising in high-tech public relations, a phrase that immediately caught his attention because it represented an entirely different dimension of communications. That curiosity quickly became a career spanning twelve years within the agency, followed by another two years as an independent consultant.
During that time, he worked with technology companies from across North America, Europe and Australia. His clients ranged from South Korean, Australian and French technology companies establishing operations in the United States to security software company headquartered in Canada but competing globally.
“B2B companies relied on communications professionals because America was such a huge market. The strategy was to raise the standard of communications, but it wasn’t just about writing press releases. The consultation and strategic thinking were very different.”
One service, Kam mentioned, stood out. In the United States, analyst relations with influential research firms such as Gartner and Forrester formed a standard part of technology communications. Helping companies shape industry perception among analysts was considered just as important as speaking to journalists. It was an approach Kam would later discover was almost absent in Malaysia.
His early years were anything but glamorous. As one of the youngest members of the agency, he managed the company’s library of newspapers, technology journals, magazines and reference materials. Every unfamiliar term sent him searching through dictionaries and industry publications, steadily building an understanding of technologies.
Without realising it, Boston had become far more than the city where he earned a Master’s degree. It became the place where he learned that communications was not merely a support function. It was an essential business strategy capable of helping innovation find its audience.
Malaysia Meanings
After sixteen years abroad, it was not career ambition that brought Kam home. It was homesickness. “I missed the country.” Returning to Malaysia in 2011, however, proved far more difficult than he had imagined. He had no carefully mapped transition plan and, surprisingly, no intention of continuing his PR career.
He briefly joined a local communications agency before leaving after only a few months. “I was looking for something else,” he said. Kam explored business opportunities, attended trade fairs and even considered starting a small trading business. Nothing seemed to fit.
Ironically, it was the struggle to find meaningful employment that ultimately redirected him to familiar terrain. “It was almost an accident that I got into PR and started Hashim Communications,” he mused. The challenge, he realised, went beyond entrepreneurship, the communications landscape he encountered was vastly different from the one he had left behind in Boston.
Building Basics
Determined to understand Malaysia’s technology ecosystem, Kam researched. What he discovered left him conflicted. Tech company websites, he noticed, appeared outdated. The messaging was often unclear and failed to communicate the sophistication of the technologies being developed. Yet behind the websites, he saw something much more important.
“We have great talent. We have brilliant minds. We have the brains.”
Malaysia, Kam observed, is producing capable engineers, software developers and innovators, but many lack the ability to communicate their value confidently to international audiences. He started asking what he could do to change it.
Hashim Communications’ first client arrived through a cold email. A Penang-based software company preparing to launch the next version of its product responded, and Kam immediately recognised that the company was aiming far beyond the Malaysian market. That meant its communications had to meet international expectations. Kam got to work. The results were immediate. “Within minutes of the product launch, an internationally respected technology publication had picked up the story,” said Kam. The rest, as they say, is history.
Mission Malaysia
Throughout the conversation, one aspiration surfaced repeatedly. Kam wants Malaysian companies to stop thinking of themselves as local businesses. “If you’re in Malaysia and you develop software using the SaaS model, your market is already global.” His ambition extends well beyond winning media coverage. “I want people in Ecuador, Brazil and Kuwait using our products and talking about them.”
That ambition has already produced tangible results. One entrepreneur from Ipoh, initially unfamiliar with PR, secured international industry coverage, and eventually got the attention of a major global corporation exploring an acquisition. For Kam, that moment represented everything he had hoped to achieve. It demonstrated that world class products already existed in Malaysia. They simply needed to be seen.
“We cannot stay quiet anymore,” he said. “Let’s go global. Let people know how good we are.”
Looking back, Kam admits that returning from America without a proper plan was one of the biggest mistakes of his life. Yet that uncertainty also became the catalyst for discovering his true purpose. The lessons he brought home were never simply about PR. They were about helping Malaysia present itself differently to the world. “One of the reasons why I want to do what I’m doing now is that I appreciate how hard I worked. I was professionally trained in communications, and now I’m able to capture the good practices and transfer them to my clients.”
Onwards and Upwards
A decade on, Kam’s ambition for Malaysia remains remarkably consistent. He wants more founders to become confident communicators, more Malaysian technologies to earn international recognition and more local companies to believe they belong on the global stage from the very beginning.
Boston taught him that world-class innovation deserves world-class storytelling. Today, his mission is to ensure that the next globally recognised story does not necessarily have to come from Boston. It can just as confidently begin in Malaysia.
