Journey of an entrepreneur

Launch of New Title Labels

2006-09-26T20:20:00.000+08:00

I shall today launch new labels on the title of my posts:

1. Site News
2. Quick Events
3. Quick Event Cover
4. Business Events
5. Business News
6. Business Talk

Why Title labels? Just like what a title should do, it should give you enough information to let you decide whether you want to read the article. This is a function that will help readers choose the content they want to read. Read on to find out the various labels we have launched today.

Site News informs you about any news from me, site improvements and any site information I'd like you to know.

Quick Events informs you of upcoming events that I periodically receive via my business networks. I may not of course cover everything but will definitely post those which I find interesting.

Quick Events Cover gives you a quick coverage of events that I attended. I often have the opportunity to attend numerous private and public meetings. These posts will give you a quick rundown of these events. You might find some things which are meaningful.

With Business Events, I'd be giving a more indepth discussion on business events I've attended. I'd likely draw out some ideas or products or services that I see interesting and bring out an issue for discussion.

Business News will be indepth discussions on interesting news I find on the net and other media.

Business Talk will be about discussions I have had with other people whom I find it beneficial for us to learn from.

Now, with a quick glance on the title, you can see that the Quick Series are informational in nature, while the Business Series are more discussion-like. I feel that this is a good journalistic practice, something which I'd encourage you to do the same or similar with your own entries. I've not seen anyone done it so far, so it's good for us to start a good trend.

Alright, happy reading!

1000 words limit

2006-09-15T12:22:00.000+08:00

From today onwards, I shall be self-imposing a 1000 words limit to all of my posts. The reason is simple - no one reads long articles. It is also a good journalistic practice to suit the reading habits of readers.

In general, my articles will either be long or short, ie. within 1000 words for a long article and within 500 words for a short article.

The effect is good news for you. You’ll now only take about 8-10 minutes to read a long article, and 4-5 minutes to read a short article.

Happy reading!

My Story, Part 3 (Final Part) - What if you fail?

2006-07-17T23:15:00.000+08:00

I’ve shared with you, in Part 2, three important things for a business I have learnt during my journey these two years. I believe they are applicable to any startups as well. If you become successful in your own journey, well and good. Congratulations! But what if you fail?

Failure is one topic which is not covered in the media. Not many people like to talk about failure, let alone their own failure. Especially in Asia, failure makes you lose face value in society.

What I’m going to share with you now is in fact more important than what I’ve said so far! Why is this so? Because 9 out of 10 entrepreneurs will fail. Let’s all face reality! Instead of only listening to success stories, we must still be prepared for failure and know what to do if we fail.

I’m not going to talk about learning from your own experience – find out why you fail and the strengths and weaknesses you learned about yourself from this experience. Of course, you’re going to do that!

Earlier, I shared three things you need to know when starting a business. I’m now going to share with you the three most crucial things for true success for any entrepreneur. It’s not even about coping with failure because, like I mentioned before, I see entrepreneurship is an attitude, a belief. Once the entrepreneurship bug bites you, you’re not going to let go.

When to let go
What do you want?
What are you doing now to achieve what you want?

When to let go

The first thing to learn is knowing when to let go. When to let go of your baby. When to let go of something you’ve spent so much time, effort, sweat and blood in. When your business is your baby, the most difficult thing to do is to let go. Just like the innate reflex in all parents to protect their child.

But knowing when to let go is important. Because if the signs are there that the business is not working out, due to whatever reasons, for eg. unfavourable market conditions, your finances or your relationship with your business partners, the more you hold on to it, the more damage it will do to you and the more devastated you will be.

In my case, we realized the difficulty of making management decisions and responding quickly to what the market needs, we knew that we could not carry on. While my two other co-founders went back to their careers, I continued to research and watch the online education and internet marketing space and further took ideas from other developments on the net and refined my ideas. I am now happy to say that I am again starting my new venture and am ready to talk to investors.

Knowing when to let go also applies to when times are good. Yes, even when the business is reaching new highs. When the company needs a renewal in leadership, perhaps it’s a cue for you to let go. And I’m sure you know it when the time comes. It is to your best interest and that to the company too. I very much applaud Bill Gates for recognizing this and taking actual steps to reduce his time at Microsoft.

Letting go of something doesn’t mean it’s the end. It just means that you move on to something else, and perhaps something better.

What do you want?

Second, the next good thing about having a failed venture is that you can now spend some time alone to think about what you really want in life. Many people, myself included in the past, don’t really know what they want to do. Not just in business but also in career and relationship.

Ask yourself these questions:

1. What do you really want?

2. How strongly do you want it?

3. By when do you want to achieve it?

4. How much money are you going to put in and how much do you want to earn?

Knowing the specific answers to these questions helps you tremendously in your life and career. Even if you don’t really know what you want, like most people, put something down and continue down the list of questions. The second question confirms to yourself your answer to the first and the third and fourth questions force you to be explicitly specific and targeted about your want that you wrote down. In fact, putting down every want you have and answering down this list of questions, will help you sort out which are your real wants and which aren’t.

I was lost as a sheep before as well! I spent 4 years to know that I really want to do my own business and another two years to decide that the internet is my future and I’m going to build this future I’ve foreseen. And believe me, this is the most difficult thing to do. It is not about making painful decisions, but searching for that gem in the clutter. As the saying goes, “You don’t know what you don’t know.” Once you know, it’s a matter of making that step ahead.

I’m not going to stray into motivation stuff, like Awaken the Giant Within by Anthony Robbins. You can get that from a lot of books. But I believe that once you are clear about what you want, go ahead and take that first step. Of course it helps if it is a well thought-through step and you have your family and friends to support you in making that decision (not financial support). And like I said earlier, if entrepreneurial is really in your bones, then whatever failures you faced, you know you’re going to do it again.

What are you doing NOW to achieve what you want?

Ok, having now known what you want to do, you need to ask yourself this most important question, “What are you doing NOW to reach that goal?” The key word of this question is NOW. Why now? Because success doesn’t happen overnight! From your first failure to your next project, or when you first decided to start your business, what you do now to prepare for your new venture will determine the success or failure of it.

I can’t stress this enough. I will say it again, “What you do NOW determines your success in the future!”

Let’s use my example again. Only until recently, I decided to put my thoughts in my area of expertise which are online education, building online communities and internet marketing to the world (online). I thought if I’m so good and knowledgeable, shouldn’t people know me? The fact is, I wasn’t thinking this way before. I thought my ideas are great and I shouldn’t share them with the world because someone would copy them.

Well, it’s a chicken and egg problem. Because if I didn’t share what I know, how do I know I’m good? And if I share and others copy it, is it really a concern? If others copy my ideas, it means that the idea is good. But I believe that success comes only with great execution. If I’m good, then I’ll be successful anyway. If other people are good, they’ll be successful too. It’s only a matter of how successful they are.

Now that I know a bit on using open source stuff, my creativity just unleashes itself. I’ve got so much in my head that I start to believe 24 hours a day is not enough for me to get my ideas out! There’s so much I can do now and I’m sure that I will have the recognition that I will earn, not deserved.

Finally, I want to warn everyone about procrastination. Procrastination is the most deadly of all poisons that might strike a person. Procrastination identifies the loser in you very strikingly. Procrastination is a disease of the mind far worse than any terminal diseases in the world. Procrastination is the end of you ever smelling the fruits of success.

I am harsh here and to the point. Because I see and know many people having this dreadful disease. I had it in the past and will not have it again in my life. Are you procrastinating?

Final message

My final message to those of you who’s followed me this far (thanks!) is, “Don’t give up!” Whatever you do, don’t give up. Whatever the odds you face, the barriers blocking you and the financial difficulties that burden you down, don’t give up!

Don’t give up! Because if you do, all the effort you’ve put in and the sweat, the blood and the tears that you’ve spent, would go to waste. You are walking away from what you believed in. Success may be just round the corner, but you’ve now turned the other direction.

Thomas Edison said,

Many of life's failures are experienced by people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.

I hope you are not the one who walks away from success.

This post concludes my three part series on My Story, which introduces myself to you in a more detailed manner. I very much hope that you have taken something back, think about it, set out an action plan for it, and take actual steps to realize your dreams. If you have, I’m glad for you. And if you want to share your story with me (us), do comment, write about it on your own blog, or just chat to me about it by email or phone.

Benefits of sharing your ideas and experience

2006-07-11T23:12:00.000+08:00

I wrote in Part 2 of My Story that one of the things I learnt from my startup experience is getting the right people to know you. Yes, instead of trying hard to get to know people. And writing a blog is the easiest way to do so.

I was therefore very glad today when Kee Peow of Kaplen I.T. Services Private Limited sent me an email commending me on my blog, saying that my articles are "thought provoking and interesting". Thank you Kee Peow.

He said he was particularly drawn to my piece, Part 2 of My Story, especially on the point where I firmly believe that entrepreneurship is an attitude, a belief. He went on to add that entrepreneurship is also a lifestyle.

I think this word is powerful as well and it adds to the many meanings of entrepreneurship. Indeed, if entrepreneurship is a lifestyle, then what you do, guided by your belief, is a reflection of your attitude and living out your day-to-day life becomes a lifestyle which you are immersed in entirely.

Kee Peow went on to share with me (and us) about the importance of forming a good team to manage the business. He agreed with me that the team that the founder(s) of a company form, can indeed make or break the business.

Overall, I guess Kee Peow today shared with me, not just his experience, which comes from actually starting and running his business, but I felt also, his feelings about having gone through it all. Times of triumph and times of despair. I very much felt that my article must have tugged a heart string of his, and his email, a heart cord of mine.

I have today, met a friend and a good person to add to my network of business contacts, all from sharing my thoughts on a blog. Though one example, I was able to receive a valued response in a short period of time (2 days). Imagine how much more you would be able to learn from others because you are able to touch them yourself? Do you see the power of reaching out and yet drawing in the right people? What's stopping you to start sharing?

Pre-BlueSky 2006 Briefing cancelled

2006-07-11T22:52:00.000+08:00

I just received an email from SPRING today that they will be cancelling a previously planned pre-BlueSky 2006 Festival briefing for entrepreneurs before the actual pitching to VCs during the BlueSky festival.

Well, this means that the piece I've prepared for this briefing will not be presented. But for those of you who's following my blog, that's ok, because I'll still continue with the series My Story, the long version of my original speech for the briefing session. You can read Part 1 here and Part 2 here.

Part 3 coming up...

Coffee shop business talk with Lionel Yeo

2006-07-08T16:23:00.000+08:00

I had tea with Lionel Yeo, founder of YeeOuch.com, this morning at my local neighbourhood coffee shop. Lionel is a young man with an extremely analytical mind and a big dream. This is one young man who has the intelligence and drive to make things happen. Watch out for him on the internet space in time to come!

We met up to chat about an idea of mine. Although I have everything inside my head, including how exactly the business will work, how the revenue will come, how the website will look like and how users will interact with one another, Lionel still offered me some great advice for my business.

Being a mathematician and someone who doesn't take a problem lying down, he showed how one without knowledge of computing can learn and achieve so much in such a relatively short period of time. I respect him for that.

And having had consulting experience for online businesses before, he clearly and confidently impressed me with his logical presentation of ideas and business. For those of you who wants to start up a company, do consult the advice from Lionel which I'm going to show below. Though generic, it's great questions you need to ask yourself when working on a startup.

1. What is the goal of your business?
I understood this as "What do you want to achieve with your business?" This is where you need to write out the mission and vision of your business clearly. Make no mistake here with the word clearly. You've got to write out exactly what it is and it has to be focused and specific. Just look at Google's mission statement:

Google's mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful.

I'd like to add something very important here. I wrote an article on business positioning two weeks ago. Because your mission and vision will guide your business in all that you do, you've got to be clear about "What Problem do you want to solve?", or how big your business is. In my article, I advocate, especially for online businesses, to grow big first fast and then lap up the rest, as opposed to growing a little by little.

2. Objectives
I understood this as the targets you set for your company's growth. Again, this has to be very specific and this time measurable. For example, you want to have 10,000 people signed up for your service in 3 months; and you want 80% of these users to interact with at least another user within 3 months; or you want to generate 20% of all Singapore's online traffic in one year's time. Some of these can further be sub-divided into smaller categories. For example, you might prefer that 70% of your users are working adults and the rest students.

To be specific about goal setting, I find that the time tested management tool of SMART works best here. Every goal that you set must be:

Specific
Measurable
Attainable
Realistic
Tangible

SMART works and I'm sure it can contribute significantly in the running of your business.

3. Resources
The above two points are about you asking yourself WHAT exactly you want to do. Having thought about what you want to do, the next is to find out what resources you have on hand to help you towards your business goals.

Think about the most obvious resources you have:
Yourself - and your brain, drive, determine, expertise, etc
Money - how much money do you have or can source
People - Who do you know who can help you or are willing to help you? This can also include businesses who may have an interest in what you're offering. How about the government and public services who also may have an interest?

Personally, I think these are all you need. What you need to do now is to muster these resources to help you in your quest.

4. Business Plan
So ok, you know what to do and the resources that can help you, you know need to know exactly what steps you need to take to achieve your goals. This is where having a business plan will greatly help you.

My post, Part 3 of My Story, will give you some excellent suggestions on how to approach a business plan.

But for now, you'll need to know what products and services are you offering to your users. What is it about these products and services that makes you different from the others? Even if you have no competitors, find some companies who offer similar products and services in other industries.

Next, you need to know how it will look like on your website. You need to know how each part links to the next, where each hyperlink will jump to and how you want to present your information.

If you're not a techie and you can't afford to spend big time to get a full site up, here's a great advice from Lionel. Get a web graphics designer to design an initial page of how your website will look like. You've got to pay but not much. The good thing is you can now show people how your idea will look like on a webpage and you can take your discussions / negotiations further. That's practical and can be easily done and it doesn't really cost much.

I believe these four points will be helpful to any one of you starting up a business. You can read more about my own experience and advice to starting businesses here. If you do need help in crystallizing your business concepts or ideas, you can always talk to Lionel or myself.

My Story, Part 2 (Speech for BlueSky 2006) - Lessons learnt

2006-07-08T15:21:00.000+08:00

Lessons learnt from my experience

I learnt 3 lessons over the course of these few years.

Making the jump
Management team
Getting the right people to know you

Making the jump

I guess this is the WHY question. The first question which you have to ask yourself why you want to start up a business. To me, it’s more than just a first question. It’s the foundation question which will determine your career, if not your life. If you can’t answer truthfully to yourself why you want to start a business, then it’s likely that your determination will easily waiver when things go wrong.

If your resolve is not strong, the easy way is of course to fall back to work for others. Many people I talked to always tell me, “I’m giving it a try!” and “I can always find a job if I fail.” I mean, this is fine. But to me, entrepreneurship is an attitude, a belief. Once the entrepreneurship bug bites you, you’re not going to let go. Because if you do, perhaps starting businesses is not in your blood and not something you really want to pursue.

Making this decision is a commitment, just like a commitment to your religion, your family, and your spouse, even your boss. A promise that you will do your best, provide your best and be the best you can be in that role you play.

A commitment is about responsibility and accountability. I read this from Buck Rodgers from his book The IBM Way. In this journey that you are going to take, you are responsible to a lot of people whom you will affect or influence – your family, your colleagues, your customers, your partners, and the most important of all, yourself. Everything that you do affect these people one way or another. It is a power you have. As the saying goes, “Being powerful is about being responsible.” Bear this in mind as you walk this path.

At the same time, great responsibility comes with accountability. You must be held to what you believed in, what you promised and what you can deliver. Many people joined you in this path, because they believed what you believe in. They believed that you can give them a future that they want. Everyday, these people are watching you. And to take on this responsibility is to be fully accountable for what you do, however the minutest detail. Only by adopting this “Siamese Twins” principle can one truly run a great business. And businesses adopting these principles will last the test of time.

Building your management team

The next most important factor for success of any business is your management team. In this case, you, the founders of your company. This is what VCs will be looking for in any business they are going to invest in. It is true that they invest more in the people they trust and who can take the business far than the business idea.

Next, you got to ask yourselves this. What do you have as a team that is so compelling that VCs will throw money at you? Is it your shared vision, so strong and noble that everyone thinks it is a worthy cause. Just like Bill Gates, who dreamt of putting a PC in every family in the world.

Is it your experience? Were you all CEOs, COOs, CFOs, CTOs of MNCs before, or were you the senior management of the same company and you worked closely together before? Or are you just a bunch of very good friends with the same ideals and dreams who grew up together?

Do you all have complementary skills – one with the vision, one has the ability to sell and another with the technical expertise?

In addition, the lesson I learnt from my own startup was that your team has to be geographically together. For us, we were puzzled as to why no one wants to fund us when no one said that our idea was bad. We only realized the real reason when one VC finally was kind enough to tell us that he doesn’t see the team would work well together when we are apart. Decisions cannot be made quickly, timely and decisively, especially at this most crucial period of the company. Thanks to him, we took his advice and pulled the plug on our baby.

Getting the right people to know you

The third factor for success really comes from you. As the saying goes, “In business, it’s not what you know, but who you know.” I’d like to one up this saying by changing it to “It’s not what you know, but who knows you.” Those who have done sales before would know this very well. The success rate of cold calls is perhaps 1-5%. And we always start from our warm market (which is exactly the who you know part). The limitation here is that you don’t really know more than 1000 people right? The more well-networked might know perhaps 3000-4000, but still there’s a limit. After that, you still have to run to the cold market, right?

Well, the answer is no. You can create what I call the “Celebrity Effect”. In today’s world of blogs, it’s easy to achieve it. Some very successful people in this space are Mr Brown, Mr Miyagi, Nick Pan, Bernard Leong, Justin Lee and Bjorn Lee. Are they big time businessmen? No. But do people know them? Yes. And if they want to set up businesses, is it easier to find the right business partners? Yes.

Of course, I’m not advocating you not do the necessary rounds of attending events, seminars, talks, forums, etc. But by sharing constructive views on your area of expertise, you might just have someone knocking your door for a business venture. Which is why, for me, this blog exists, and you’re reading it.

To do this, I suggest you become an expert / guru in your own area of knowledge. This means that you not only have to know what’s happening in your chosen specialty area but also you have to know what’s happening in the world and you give constructive opinions of issues in the world with your applied expert knowledge.

Take for example myself. This entrepreneur journey of mine. Because of all the research I have done, the comments and advice I have received from people and the experience I have gained by executing the business, I am now quite knowledgeable in the field of online education and online marketing. I know very well what works and what doesn’t. I believe I have foreseen what the future trend in online education is. I know what are the effective methods in reaching audiences in the online space. Some executives from a few local education company have even sought my opinion on some of the things they do. It’s just a pity I didn’t charge them consulting fees. So I’m now the online education and marketing expert. For those of you who’s thinking of doing education online or thinking to run an advertising campaign, you can talk to me and find out for yourself.

The advice I’ve given is what I’ve found important to me as I continue to travel this path. Although the path you’ve chosen or the business you’re doing may not be the same, I believe that there’s always something here you can take back, think about and put to action if you feel it’s worth a try.

Finally, I’d like to recommend a great resource to all of you. I found out that there is such a movie called Startup.com. It’s about the life and story of the founders of a startup during the dot com hey days and the successes, trials and tribulations they went through. I recommend this movie because it’s a great resource to remind ourselves why we are walking this path. If you’ve got to watch more than once, do so. I’m sure you’ll learn something new each time you watch it.

You can get it on Google Video here. Courtesy of Bjorn Lee for the pointer.

My Story, Part 1 (Speech for BlueSky 2006) - Introduction

2006-07-05T22:53:00.000+08:00

This piece is a longer version of a speech that I will present at a pre-briefing for entrepreneurs who are pitching to VCs at this year’s BlueSky event. I thought to put it up on my blog because here you’ll get to know more about myself and what I’ve done and perhaps learn a few things from my experiences.

You can read Part 2 here and Part 3 here.

“My name is Coen Ching. I was the co-founder and CEO of Cafelingoes.com, an online education service for education institutions, educators and students.

I’m supposed to talk about failure today. In particular, my failure. I hope we can all draw lessons from my experience and learn something from it. I will also share with you what I believe are the crucial things you should concentrate on taking this entrepreneurial route and walking it, and how you pitch your business plan. I hope you will be able to crystallize some concrete ideas today, ideas you will now put into action to move closer to your dream.

The primary aim of Cafelingoes is to provide educators to manage their workload, the homework / assignments that they give to their students. Students on the other hand can log in anytime, anywhere to complete their assignment. When implemented in a school environment, the benefits of free-time learning becomes possible and will so make the classroom hours more flexible. That is the third benefit, to education institutions.

When I saw the business plan by my partners, I saw this was the future. I felt the idea was so good that I quit my job as a Regional Financial Analyst at Allianz Dresdner Asset Management, an international fund management firm, to pursue my dream.

When I joined Cafelingoes, I was the only full-time person working on the startup. My two partners were still having a job with other companies. Worse, one of them was in Tokyo and the other in New York. I am the person responsible for developing the business, and one of my partners the technical platform. My main job was to seek funding for the startup.

We didn’t have the money to hire someone to do sales and marketing. Everything fell onto my shoulders. We didn’t manage to get any schools in Singapore. I suspect the reason could most likely be that our product is not something that the Singapore market needs. We tried to get someone to market in the US, but that didn’t work out as well.

After spending some time traveling and talking to people, my money was totally spent. Moreover, we didn’t get funded. So we finally decided to pull the plug last December.

What lessons did I learn? Follow my story in Part 2 here.

Making the jump
Building a management team
Getting the right people to know you

To be continued…

Business Positioning

2006-06-26T20:00:00.000+08:00

I attended the Press Launch of the 5th Singapore Promising Brand Award this morning. I got this emailer from ASME some time back and decided to attend and find out more.

The reception was grand, with quite a large reception desk and lots of people were at the hallway networking with one another. The brochure given out is very very well done. Lots of artwork, design and good printing. Inside, all the VIPs were naturally flocking around one another and probably exchanging cordial words. This is totally unlike the unconference I had experienced just a few days ago. I felt that the establishment can and should learn some things from us too.

Today, I want to talk about brand or business positioning, something which reminded me of some thoughts I had during my entrepreneurial journey.

There are two schools of thought. One - Start small then grow big. Two - Be big first then capture the smaller ones.

Today's event seems to be talking about or promoting the grow up model. The brands mentioned are all locally well known brands - Ya Kun, Haach, Travel Pac, Old Chang Kee, 77th Street and Goodrich. They are all past award winners. A few of them has gone regional while some has not.

I was thinking why not? Is it because their financials do not allow them to do so? Or because they have difficulty getting good business partners or find good talent to run their business overseas? Or is it because their business model or the industry they are in restricts their ability to expand out of Singapore's shore?

I would think that it's the last one. Some of them work on the model of franchising and others direct control of their outlets. And I noticed that most of the companies are in the retail industry. But franchising as a business model definitely works, especially for the retail market.

In this case, instead of the products that these companies are selling that works against their expansion, I feel that it's the market or the consumer they are serving that controls their fate.

Why so? We all know that culture, education and economic background have a large impact on the consumption habits of people. What works in Singapore might not work even in Malaysia, although it is the country which we have most in common. Not to mention people in Korea or Japan. For example, most people like a good 'ol toasted bread and teh si, but why would someone in Malaysia pay a premium for the same thing which they can get from a coffeeshop down the road? Some would say the nicer surroundings with air-conditioning helps, but can't anyone else do the same with another shop?

But you might say that no, how do I know whether the Japanese or Koreans like toasted bread with Kaya and teh si or not? I don't. But the companies can pay someone to do market surveys there. Perhaps they do. If so, then franchises there would mushroom away. A good example is Sakae Sushi, our home grown conveyor belt sushi restaurant. The last I read about them is that they are now in Russia and their business is roaring!

The more risk-taking amongst you might also challenge with "How do you know whether the taste of Koreans and Japanese would not change even if a preliminary market survey says that they hate toasted bread with kaya and teh si?" They just might. I remember learning about a story (unverified) of a great missed opportunity for Ms Jennie Chua, President and Chief Executive Officer of Raffles Holdings Limited. It was in the 1970s that Ms Chua was presented with a business opportunity to start a franchise selling burgers in Singapore. Her analysis at that time was, Asians eat rice not bread. Today, McDonald's is the cash cow king of all franchises in the world. Was there a hint of regret? If I were she, yes I would be.

My take on this first issue is this. Instead of bringing your products and services that are made to suit the local market overseas, why not change your products and services to suit the tastes of the overseas consumers? And even changing your products and services entirely, eg. changing the menu or changing the entire fashion collection (for 77th Street), does not really matter. I learned one great wisdom long ago. "Provide people what they want and the riches will come." What you are still retaining is your brand. Your brand of providing great products (food or clothes) and services, eg. great burgers even though the bread is now made of rice (as in McDonald's Fantastic burger or curry which is not spicy at all for the Japanese), or great cosplay fashion (short for costume play where the youth dresses up as their anime characters, which is so hot now in Japan) instead of street fashion. Burgers and fashion nonetheless.

Next, the second school of thought. Be big then lap up the competition. This is the big bold strategy that big America likes and what some VCs in the US are looking for. They want startups that can change the world. They are looking for the massive returns they can get in a relative short period of time. Of course they are taking the risk as well. It's an attitude and it's fine.

But I've also seen some local companies doing just that. The best example would be our big 'ol Creative Technologies. But there's also one recent company that follow that belief - muvee Technologies. I had an opportunity to speak to Terence Swee, founder and Chief Opportunities Officer, last year at Bluesky. What he said to me was invaluable. He said, that instead of growing the market from Singapore, he knew that for his company to make it big is to conquer the big markets first. He started getting his first big customer in the US and then Japan and Europe. The key he said, is to have your first break, ie. your products being accepted by one of the big boys and then the rest is easy. If you can conquer the market that will generate most of your revenue, the road henceforth is downhill and easier.

Now this is something. This is against conventional advice. This is not entirely new because Creative did it 20 years ago. It's just now brought up again into the spotlight. And I like it.

For those of you who's got startup funding already (the next stage after your seed round), this is the strategy I'd suggest you take, especially the tech companies. Moreover as a tech company, what you're offering should be one that can scale. I'm not sure about you, but I'd like to come up with a tech solution that would change the world, wouldn't you?

In the end, it's a matter of what problem do you want to solve, in this world or in a certain country or a certain market size. Be very clear in what you want to do, because this is the most difficult part. And once you're decided and crystal clear in your thoughts, position your business and the rest will follow.

I've made some assumptions here, with and without research, from my past experiences and from people I've met these few years. I might have missed some facts in this article (please let me know), but what I'm doing here is to highlight some business practices that you can take away as useful and as yours. Let me hear what you say.

Focus on business, excel in technology

2006-06-25T23:29:00.000+08:00

I attended the Entrepreneur27Singapore event a few days back. In fact, I'd like to thank them for pushing me into action and starting this weblog. Seeing so many smart and enthusiastic young people sometimes can really kickstart your otherwise dormant desire to do something.

Much has been said about the event. You can read more from Entrepreneur27Singapore site and from SGEntrepreneurs.

I'd like to offer my perspective on what I saw and felt that evening. Indeed, seeing so many young people testing their new ideas and putting them to work is really encouraging. And everyone is so warm to one another and walking up to chat to anyone is really comfortable. This I think is a good way to showcase your stuff and network to know more people. Plus, I get to meet some of my friends there - Nick Pan and Edmund Leng of Nanyang Polytechnic.

I'm indeed impressed with the presenters. They showed great knowledge of their technology or website. And it's obvious they had spent quite some time coming up with their presentation slides. I'm glad to know that there are quite a few sharp technical chaps from the audience too.

I'd like now to draw out an important point from this event - Concentrating on business. I felt that the ideas presented or floated around were really good, although of course they need some polishing. I'd just like to comment on the team from Yearbook and Xshare, as I was in a conversation with someone else when Choon Keat was presenting RSSFwd.

As a business person and a non-techie, I could not see how the two teams are going to drive revenue from their business. I could not see a reason that compels me to part with my money to use their service, both from the perspective of a consumer and an advertiser.

In the case of Yearbook, to me, it's pretty much a social networking site and the revenue stream is going to come from advertisement. There is success now because of the novelty of the site and the high amount of traffic that is driven from the mrbrownshow. However, I cannot see beyond a few months time how this traffic will be maintained. Likewise, I do not see beyond the first few advertisers why they are going to stick with Yearbook, especially when there isn't much conversion happening.

I've had the opportunity to email chat with Jeremy, founder of Yearbook, two days before the event and the day after. My suggestion to him is to focus. Focus on building a great community. Give his users a very strong reason to come back again and again to his site. Never mind about the advertisement for the time being. If there is traffic, advertisers will come.

For the XShare team, they've got a great technical product. What XShare does is to allow the user of a mobile phone equipped with camera function to be able to send his pictures or videos to anyone in the world or to send them to the user's blog or other designated sites he wants by using a simple to use software application on the phone. Great! Who doesn't want that?

I don't. I just don't. For example, I'm on holiday in Europe and I am now right in front of Buckingham Palace in London. I like the guard on duty so much, because he doesn't move whatever you do to him, that I snap a pic and want to share it with my friends. The question is, how soon do I want to share with my friends. Would it be now, because my urge is so strong that I must immediately share with my loved ones back home, or can I defer my urge for instant gratification of this desire? I think I can wait and there are, I'm sure, a quite a few people in this world who are like me. I can always go back to my hotel or hostel or an internet cafe one hour later and sync my phone with a USB port to an internet enabled computer and upload my pics from there, and email or post those pics to the people or websites I want. Maybe, I'm old-fashioned, but aren't you sometimes?

So I thought that the XShare team is really good technically. No doubt about that. But my suggestion to them is to think about who their consumers really are and how many of them are there in this world. Moreover, the price of today's MMS sending is quite exorbitant at the moment. Perhaps that will change when 3G finally arrives.

Someone in the audience, in fact my friend Edmund Leng, pointed out an interesting example of how a similar picture sending technology is being used in Japan. He shared with us how one cosmetic company tied up with a mobile operator and allows users to send pictures of their skin back to the company for analysis. Within minutes, the users will get back a report and recommendation of which cosmetics they should use for their particular skin type, at which point they might make a purchase decision on the spot.

There is a big difference here between the business model of this Japanese company and XShare. First, the business model of the Japanese company is C-B-C. Along this chain of interaction, there is value added in the information or content provided by both the business and the consumer. While the picture of a user skin to her is not valuable, it is so to the cosmetic company. The minute that the company receives this data, they immediate add value to it by giving suggestions on the type of skincare the user should use. They might even throw in advice on how to improve and maintain that user's type of skin. The user receives value back from the company by initially providing something which is seeming non-valuable to herself. In this simple scenario, both parties are happy because both receives valuable information. This example is a perfect example of customisation and efficiency and economies of scale.

Moreover, the company, having collected so much data from thousands or millions of users, they could use all this information to do further research on improving their skincare products. This seemingly useless information, in fact, provided double or even triple-fold value to the company.

For the consumer, the information that she receives is way more valuable that the friction of the transmission fee paid to the mobile operator. For a few yen, she knows exactly what she needs almost instantaneously. Moreover, she can trust this information because it comes from real experts analysing her skin. This is way more powerful than being introduced cosmetics by friends or MLM sales people because of how great the result is on them, not herself.

XShare's busines model on the other hand is more C-C. Like most of us know, and the presenter mentioned it, we send crap to one another. Sometimes, you just want to share a snippet of your life with your friends but this information might not be really valuable to your friend seeing it. Why? Have you had experience before when you spent a lot of time arranging and decorating a nice picture book of a beautiful holiday trip you recently took, and when you showed it to your friends and family, they flip the album so fast that you wonder why you bother showing it to them in the first place? I think we all know the answer. The reason is that those pictures you took are valuable only to yourself because you were there, and you saw the beauty of that scenery or that moment and it's still fresh in your head and emotionally strong in your heart. But to those persons who were not there, they can't feel the special moment that you felt.

My suggestion to XShare is this. Find out how you want to position your business. What's your angle? And what's the angle for your business partners, eg. the mobile operators? Once there is value created, in this case for the consumer as your business is still consumer based, I'm sure you'll be rolling in the cash in no time.

Well, it's been great sharing some of my thoughts on this event here. I hope you've already taken some good ideas away from here, just like I did at the event. If you have any comments, just post them up.

Publishing my journey

2006-06-24T23:25:00.000+08:00

Welcome to my site! This site is meant for anyone who wants to have a reference in starting a business. This site is meant for people who are passionate about what they believe in and who want to make the world a better place by offering products and services that will improve the lives of people around the world.

There are an incredible number of people whom I've met in my career and my journey starting businesses, who are smart, talented and absolutely creative. And they all have wonderful stories to share with me about their lives, their experiences and obstacles which they have overcome. These people, to me, are the real successful people in this world.

In my own entrepreneurial journey, I too, have had great experiences and down times. Positive experiences that I have learnt and now incorporated as part of my life and work. And dreadful moments which almost always left me wondering whether what I'm doing was worth it at all.

I'd like to take this opportunity to share with all of you, my experiences and perhaps offer some advice in the areas which I feel are important to be aware of while starting a business and those areas where my expertise lies: online education, online community building and internet marketing.

In addition, I'll bring up pieces of news or issues which would be pertinent for startups or existing businesses and give my opinion on them and draw out lessons for us to discuss, debate and learn.

If you like what you read, just link to me or simply just tell your friends about this site. Let me wish you success in your own entrepreneurial journey.