The Uncharted Waters

Spammers.....

2010-01-21T22:45:00.005+08:00

I have been very busy and haven't really check this blog for quite a while. To my surprise, there are a number of comments on my last post. And most are spammed comments. I really wonder how they select blogs to spam? Maybe blogs that are not updated for a long time? Anyway, I just cleared those spammed comments. Will update this blog when I find time. And mood. All the best for year 2010!

Grateful

2009-11-03T14:07:00.001+08:00

Last Friday, I was in office preparing a mass order from my distributor in central america. It was a rather mundane job, and I really wished I had some temp staffs to do all these on my behalf. In the midst of the task, a random thought suddenly came to my mind: “Wouldn’t it be a risk for my distributor to invest so much to import my product? I wouldn’t have invested my money on a non-big-name product myself.”

Strangely, at that moment of time, I felt very grateful to this distributor. He had enough belief in my product that he had decided to brand it and push it into his region. And I am just a small company. I am just a nobody. He had the belief in my product that even myself doesn’t have.

Throughout my career, including the period when I was an employee, there had been countless of people who chose to believe in me and give me opportunities. I used to take it for granted, thinking that it was all because of my abilities that earned their trust. However, these people can always choose to place their trust on another guy, another engineer, another company, or another product. The world will continue to revolve. I am not indispensible. Nobody is.

To those customers who have chosen my product, to those companies who have engaged me for their projects, and to those resellers who have chosen to work with me, I hoped I will always remain grateful.

My first motivational talk

2009-10-26T17:45:00.000+08:00

I do not quite know the correct term for it. Some call it “motivational talk/workshop”, some call it “self-improvement talk”. Anyway, there are plenty of such talk or workshop around in Singapore, with speakers “sharing” with you how to improve yourself, how to have better management of your time/cash, and most importantly how to earn more money. Most of such talks or workshops have free previews whereby the speakers will try to promote his sessions to the audience.

I had been to one such preview few months ago. I was invited by the speaker, who is a business associate. I had politely rejected the invitation a few times, until I felt that maybe I should just go for one session to stop any future invitations.

The room for the preview session was very small, with only about 10 attendees. I came in late and sat at the second row. The talk started with the organizer introducing the speaker in a very exagerrated tone, as if he was Warren Buffett or Bill Gates.

The speaker then started with his talk. With some simple presentation slides, he shared with us some of his “insights” which I felt was rather common sense stuffs. He would occasionally raised the volume of his voice, which I really don’t understand the rationale behind other than keeping us awake. Throughout the talk, we were asked to play some simple games, listing down items on papers and interacting with one another. The interaction portion would involve pairing off with the person beside you and then asked each other some questions designated by the speaker. One rather bizairre thing I noted was, some of these attendees were unusually “high” when playing some of those simple games or interactions. I was rather uncomfortable as I wasn’t a person who would get “high” for no particular reason. Guess I am just not that easily motivated.

The talk stretched to about 2.5 hours. Towards the end of the talk, the speaker began to introduce his workshop to the audience. He started by saying how much he charged companies for his consultation services. From there, he break down and compute the “value” of his time, and concluded that his workshop was worth $X. Then, he proceed to say that there will be a very special discount if we signed up on the spot.

In the end, I do not know whether anyone signed up for the workshop, or how much the workshop actually costs. I just wanted to get out of there asap and breathe some fresh air. I guessed, I valued my time a little more than the speaker.

Just a little updates

2009-07-17T16:26:00.001+08:00

Haven’t been updating this blog for more than half a year. A friend had asked me whether I intended to stop blogging, but that was never my intention. I was just too tied up with many things and blogging seemed to be a luxury to me.

Anyway, I had moved to a new office recently. It is around three times larger than my previous one. So I had a little more space to setup a mini-lab within my office. In fact, this new office is in many ways quite similar to my very first office: they are both of around the same size, they are situated at the same floor (though different buildings), and the view outside the window is also quite similar. One thing different is that, I had to setup this new office all by myself.

When I sat in my new office working at night while listening to radio, memories of the past silently crept in. I remembered in early 2006, after I parted ways with my ex-business partner, I was also working alone in a similar office. However, the feeling was very different. I felt lost, uncertained and weary at that time. But I refused to give up. I was thinking to myself, what’s left for me if I were to give up my dreams, ideals and passions? And thus, I persevered.

It seemed that a lot of entrepreneurs liked to talk about their early days struggles. I guessed the reason is similar to why a lot of guys liked to talk about their NS (National Service) days, especially those “siong” period. It is always memorable to think back how you overcame your difficult times. It gives you strength, beliefs and courage to face the more difficult times ahead.

Accountant from hell (Part 2)

2008-12-01T13:22:00.001+08:00

After trying all means to contact my accountant D to no avail, I decided to drop by his office to try my luck. To my surprise, D was in his office. And the first thing he said to me was to ask for my payment! Wow, how shameless can a person get. He kept delaying the deliverables, avoid my calls/sms/email, and he still have the cheek to ask for payment?

D claimed that he had emailed me the accounts, but I obviously did not receive and I had sms him about this. He replied my sms that he would send the email again, but he didn’t. When I questioned D about the lack of response, he simply told me that he was overseas and just came back. However, I really don’t believe a person can be non-contactable via call/sms/email even if he’s overseas. Anyway, I did not want to waste my breathe to argue with him, so I just told him to deliver my accounts straight away. But D started to try wriggled his way out, saying the source files are not in the computer, and he had to go meet another client.

When I insisted that he show me the accounts and returned me all my bank statements and other stuffs, he even had the cheek to ask me to settle the payment first. He claimed that I could have received his email and tried to set him up by denying any receival, while secretly use his completed balance sheet to file my company tax.

Alright, I had enough of his nonsense and was really sick of arguing with such weasel. I told him I would bring my cheque book to his office in the afternoon and he’d better deliver to me all my accounts in return.

Then at the afternoon, I went through the accounts with him, which still have quite a few errors. I gave him one more day to prepare all the necessary documents and paid him on the spot when I received those documents. However, he couldn’t find the invoices and bank statements that I passed to him, and needed at least two more weeks to find them and return to me. He also promised to send me the softcopy of the documents, but till now I had not received them too.

Anyway, I have used the hardcopy documents that D eventually delivered to me to file my company tax. I had never been so dissatisfied with a person’s services before, let alone one from a so-called professional. The way he tried to avoid responsiblities, push blames to others and argue shamelessly left a really bad taste in my mouth.

Accountant from hell (Part 1)

2008-11-25T11:17:00.000+08:00

Alright the story goes like this. This accountant D is actually a friend of my good friend AC. I asked AC to recommend an accountant to me earlier this year, and he recommended D who owns a small accounting firm, to me. I passed all my receipts, invoices, bank statements over to D and discussed with him about my accounts around February. Then I entrusted him to do his stuffs.

At around September, I contacted D to ask about the status of my accounts. D told me it was completed long time ago. Feeling relieved, I arranged a date for D to meetup with me in my office to deliver the accounts. However, at the day when we were supposed to meet up, D sms me that he had a last minute meeting with another client and requested to postpone the meeting with me. I didn’t suspect anything and agree to D’s suggestion.

Then at the postponed date, D again called me to postpone the meeting because he had some other meeting at IRAS (or ACRA, I couldn’t remember the details). So our meeting was postponed again. Apparently, the subsequent meetings were all postponed by D at the last minute, each time with a different excuse.

Then finally, on one Monday which I were supposed to meet D, I did not receive any sms or calls to postpone the meeting. I thought this time D would deliver my accounts. But it turned out that D never appear at my office at all. I sms and called him several times but wasn’t able to contact him. I had no choice and thought maybe I will just email him. To my surprise he returned my email, saying that his handphone and laptop were confiscated by MINDEF because he accidentally brought them into camp. D told me that he would be able to get back his stuffs on Friday and would call me by then.

So I believed in him and waited again. Then on Friday, he didn’t call me as promised. Ok to cut short the story, eventually after a few other postpones (with all kinds of excuses) I finally get to meet D in my office. But to my dismay, the accounts he presented to me had a few glaring errors. The income was totally wrong, having a few extra transactions that did not have any names or invoice numbers. The director fees and some other items were also computed wrongly. At that point of time, I was really furious. The balance sheet looked like some last minute work because it was full of errors that even a layman like me was able to spot. The director’s report was virtually non-existent as the only thing he showed me was 2-3 pages of the report and some sample templates of other company. I kept my cool and asked him to do the appropriate ammendments. I asked him when he could deliver the amended accounts and he told me next Wednesday.

So I waited again and as expected, he did not send me the accounts as promised. Two weeks passed by and I still did not receive his accounts. Again I sms him to check and he replied that he had emailed me the accounts and will email me again the week after. But I was very sure that he did not email me, as I had never failed to receive any emails that went directly to my company email account. To confirm that, I even check my spam folder.

So now, three weeks after the date which he supposed to deliver the amended accounts, he was uncontactable by phone calls, sms and email.

I remembered D once told me that he was a CPA (Certified Public Accountant). I would expect a minimum level of professionalism from him. But now it seemed that he doesn’t even have the basic responsibility. No matter how well educated you are, or how many professional certifications you have, you cannot claim to be a professional if you don’t have the basic responsibility. To me, people like D will never be a professional, because he has a serious character flaw.

P/S: My aircon repairman charged me only $10 because he was late. He seemed to be more professional than D. Or at least, he dares to take responsibility.

My most admired entrepreneur

2008-10-30T13:33:00.002+08:00

Recently, I came across an exhibition in the National Library showcasing the contribution of a prominent entrepreneur and philanthropist, Mr Tan Kah Kee and his son-in-law, Mr Lee Kong Chian.

Just a little background on Mr Tan Kah Kee:

Tan Kah Kee was born in Jimei, Xiamen, Fujian Province, China, and went to Singapore in 1890, when he was 16 years old, to work for his father's rice store. After his father's business collapsed in 1903, Tan started his own business and built an empire from rubber plantations and manufacturing, sawmills, canneries, real estate, import and export brokerage, ocean transport to rice trading. His business was at its prime from 1912-1914, where he was known as "Henry Ford of Malaya".

With the profit that he made from his business empire, Tan contributed greatly to the community, both in Malaya and his native Fujian Province. He set up the Jimei Schools (now Jimei University) in 1913. In 1919, he set up The Chinese High School, now named Hwa Chong Institution in Singapore, while in 1921, he set up the Xiamen University and financially supported it until the Government of the Republic of China took it over in 1937. In 1920, he married his daughter Tan Ai Li to Lee Kong Chian, who worked under him and who later became a famous Singaporean philanthropist and businessman.

The part that I admired the most about Mr Tan, is his relentless effort in contributing to the society while he himself leading a frugal lifestyle. From the documentary, I remembered there was one incident when Mr Tan’s business was not in a good shape and his advisors had advised him to stop his funding to the schools and used those funds to help the business instead.

However, Mr Tan did not agree. He said that his objective in doing business is to contribute to the society, especially education. If he cannot continue to contribute to the society, there’s no reasons for him to run business. Afterall, he is leading a very frugal lifestyle and he can live with eating just plain porridge every day.

In a society where we measured everything by its practical and monetary benefits; In a society where most people, be it elites or commoners, are being motivated by only the most pragmatic factor, that is money, I really wonder how many people can be like Mr Tan?

The exhibition is still open, at 10th floor of the National Library, until 31st December 2008. I would highly recommend people to take a look, especially entrepreneurs.

My encounter with MLM people

2008-09-23T12:48:00.000+08:00

Recently I received a call from an acquaintance, saying that she had a business proposal to discuss with me. I was rather surprised as I did not know her very well, so I was quite curious about the business proposal that she mentioned. Over the phone, we arranged to meet up one day to talk about the proposal, as she claimed that it was difficult to elaborate over the phone.

However, on the actual day, I had another last-minute appointment and wasn’t able to meet up with her. So I sms her about it, and requested for more information to be sent to me via email. She was quite reluctant to email any info to me, and suggested to arrange for another meetup. I was rather busy if my company stuffs and told her that I would like to know more about the business before commiting time on it. So in the end she said that she would drop-by my office to discuss with me and pass me some materials.

At this point of time, I began to suspect that the business proposal was actually some MLM scheme. I do know that MLM people like to refer themselves as business man / woman, and like to claim that they are running a business when they are just sales people or recruiters. So I purposely left my office early and instructed the receptionist to collect the materials on my behalf.

Anyway, when I looked at the materials passed to me, its all about network marketing and how people have misconception about the business model. There wasn’t any information on the products or services offered by the company, as those stuffs seemed to be of a lower priority to them. It seemed to me that it doesn’t matter what they are selling (otherwise they would be promoting to me how good their products are). The only thing that matters is to get more downlines and train their downlines to get even more downlines. Products….who cares?

So in the end, I told her firmly that I wasn’t interested in MLM stuff because I was too tied up with my own company. I didn’t tell her that MLM’s model is against my business philosophy of focusing on offering the best products/services, as I can sensed from our conversation that she is being thoroughly brainwashed already.

An interesting story

2008-09-08T17:52:00.007+08:00

I have heard of this interesting story recently:

There are two brothers living in a condo unit at the 80th floor. One night when they were going back home, they found that the lift was under maintenance. The two brothers looked at each other and thought, “Well, guess we will need to slowly climb the stairs.”

So the two brothers started to climb the stairs with their backpacks. When they reached the 25th floor, they began to feel very tired and decided to put down their backpacks. They stored their backpacks in one corner and decided that they will come back and collect them once the lift service resumed.

So the two brothers continued to climb the stairs without their backpacks. The next few floors were much easier without the burden, but as time passed it became more and more difficult to climb even without the backpacks. When they were reaching the 40th floor, the two brothers started to blame each other for not noticing the life maintenance schedule. The squabble eventually ended when they reached the 60th floor, because they were both too tired to quarrel and decided to climb the rest of the stairs peacefully.

Finally, when the two brothers reached the 80th floor, they discovered something terrible: their door keys were left inside the backpacks at the 25th floor!

***Updated:***

The eighty-storey building symbolizes our entire life. Most of us begin our life with lots of enthusiasm, dreams and passions. However, when we start our working life at around mid 20s, the burdens of new commitments and social expectations begin to exert pressure onto our shoulders. Many of us decide to put aside our dreams in order to pursue other materialistic aspect of our life. We think that we would come back and pick up our dreams one day.

As we are reaching 40 years old, the burdens of life become more stressful. The uneasiness within our hearts is growing despite the fact that we are more well-off than before. Whether we have achieved those materialistic gains or not, many of us would inevitably start to question or even blame the society and people around us. But not many of us would have thought of picking up the dreams that we once thought we would pick up one day.

When time goes passed, we stops the questioning and blaming and begin to place our hopes on retirement. We decided that the most important thing is to enjoy a peaceful life after retirement. But when we are reaching the end of our life, many of us start to remember the dreams that we once had, but abandoned at the 25th floor. We had so many chances in life to pick up our dreams again, but it always seemed to be placed at the least priority. And some day, we might totally forgotten about it, only to remember when we are approaching the end of our life.

It’s important to ask the right question

2008-08-05T12:52:00.001+08:00

Recently, a friend W asked me which programming language is the most popular one as he planned to learn programming. W is an IT administrator with very little programming knowledge, and I was quite surprised at his sudden enthusiasm in programming.

So I asked him why he intended to learn programming. Basically from what I understood, W was feeling a bit stagnant in his job, and therefore wanted to learn something new to have some breakthrough in his career, and perhaps to have some extra means of income.

Well, if W’s intention was to learn programming and eventually take up some freelance projects to supplement his normal income, I would advice him to spend some time to turn his current hobbies into an income source instead of spending time on something which he had neither flair nor passion in. For example, W had passion in photography, and was rather good in it. He went for photo shoots events regularly so obviously he quite enjoy it. Thus, I would advice W to hone his photography skills, build up his own portfolio and offer his freelance services to bridal studios. He could also setup a website to showcase his portfolio to other potential clients. From there, he could extend his services to videography, photo/video editing, etc. Of course, all these are easier said than done, but at least I felt that he would have a better chance to succeed in freelancing his photography services than programming services. Even if eventually he can’t get much income from this sideline, there isn’t any loss as he is doing something he enjoys and would have do it with or without monetary benefits.

If W’s intention was to have some breakthrough in his stagnant career, I would also not suggest him to learn programming. He would be better off getting professional certification like MCSE, which has direct impact on his current job. If he intended to climb up the corporate ladder, he could take up courses like project management. If he intended to stay as a technical staff but increase his employability, he could take up related courses such as information security, or even courses on other operating system admin such as Linux, UNIX, etc.

So basically, neither W’s problem nor solution involves programming. Yet, he posed a question to me based on a flawed solution. A lot of people tend to ask for the wrong advice because they have put themselves into an unnecessary constraint build up by a flawed solution to the original problem. In W’s scenario, his problem is his stagnation in his job and income, not what programming language he should learn. He thought that picking up programming skills is the solution to his problem, and unknowingly shifted the domain of his problem. As for whether a breakthrough in his job & income would bring about more happiness, that would be another question.

The first step to solve a problem, is to identify your problem, and then, ask the right question.

Where does your passion lies?

2008-07-30T13:24:00.000+08:00

Quite interestingly, more people likes to talk to me, ever since I started to set up my own company. Maybe to some people, I am quite a rare breed because I gave up a decent and stable job to pursue my dreams and passions. Maybe to them, I am doing something that they had long wanted to do but do not dare to take that first step. Thus, it would be intriguing for them to watch closely how I fared, or failed.

One interesting thing I noticed when speaking to people who wanted to startup their own company is that, they rarely talk about their passion, let alone their vision. Most just wanted to be a boss. Any kind of business, as long as they are the boss. To them, becoming a boss is merely a way of breaking the salary ceiling to achieve financial freedom. Just a means to an end. The means doesn’t matter much, at least not as much as the ends, that is, achieving financial freedom.

The same goes for some existing business owners, and venture capitalists. I once had a chat with a business associate. I told him about the financial strains during my early days of startup, and how I believed that having passion in what you do is important to an entrepreneur. He didn’t quite agree with me, as he himself didn’t have any passion in the businesses that he involved, except for the passion towards earning more money.

What exactly is passion, one might ask? Just imagine you strike a lottery one day, or inherited a large sum of money from some distant relative. You have the money to buy everything you desired, to tour around the world, and still have enough money left to support you and your family up to two hundred years old. What would you do next?

If you are a software developer, would you continue to write software? Or would you uninstall every single compiler and IDE on your computer?

If you are a writer, would you continue to write your novels? Or would you just stop writing because writing is just a tool for earning money?

If you are a chef, would you continue to explore new flavours or methods of cooking? Or would you stop cooking because cooking is never your passion?

In an ideal world, people would pursue their passion and earn their keep while fulfilling their potential. In a pragmatic world, people earn their keep while doing something that is probably neither their passion, nor fulfilling to them, so that they can pursue their passion after work, or after they retired, or never.

Think about your passion. Think about what you really want to do.

I got a new office!

2008-07-15T16:45:00.001+08:00

I had been looking for an office for the past few weeks. Ever since I moved out of my first office in the year 2006, I had been a mobile entrepreneur in the sense that I did not have a fixed place of work. I would always carried my laptop with me, and did my work in either some café, or in the library, or any places with aircon, internet access, and preferably a/c power supply.

The mobile office concept suits me well since the bulk of my work can be done on a laptop. However, now that I am starting to expand my operation a little, I feel that it is about time to get a new (small) office.

The reasons why I wanted to get a new office:

1. To have a fixed place to hold meetings with my sales people. Although I could hold meetings in some café, but it would be very dependent on how crowded the café was. Moreover, I would like to have some privacy when having meetings with my colleagues.

2. To have more freedom in managing my time. If I worked in some café or libraries, I would have to be restricted by their opening hours.

3. Better facilities. By having my own office, I would be able to do printing/ scanning/ copying/ faxing, as well as having reference materials or books to refer to.

4. Better focus. Having my own office would allow me to have better concentration on my work, compared to working in a café where there are people walking in and out all the time.

5. Place to store my inventory. Right now, my bedroom is filled with my inventory, and in one or two weeks time there will be tens of thousands of brochures coming in. I needed some place to store all these things and cleared the space of my bedroom.

6. Place to meet customers. Most of the time, I would offer to meet customers at their site. But sometimes, some customers would suggest to come to my office, probably due to their own office under renovation, or they themselves are also using home office. At times like this, I would have to suggest to meetup at some café. Now with my own office, I would be able to have more choices on where to meet the customers.

However, since the property prices in Singapore are still very high, right now I can only afford to have a tiny office. This new office that I have now is about 3 times smaller than my first office. It is about 5 to 6 times smaller than the laboratory which I worked in during my last job as an employee.

But to me, this is a new milestone. My first step towards expansion.

Patent Story 2: A peep into the Patents Act

2008-06-03T13:07:00.005+08:00

I had originally intended to give a deeper analysis on the patent “Method of locating web-pages by utilising visual images” and how ridiculous the Vuestar’s claim was. But, now I decided against it, because:

1. I had stumbled upon a website that had done a great job in analysing and refuting Vuestar’s claim, with some examples of prior arts. It has already covered most of what I had originally wanted to write, and much more. So interested personnels are advised to visit this website.
2. I felt that the patent itself is really not worth any further analysis. In fact, I am contemplating on sending Vuestar an invoice for wasting one hour of my life going through a worthless 29-pages article. Alright, perhaps it is not exactly worthless, at least not in the eyes of its “inventor”, Mr Ronald Neville Langford.

So, instead of writing about some silly patent, maybe I shall write about some interesting parts of our patents act.

Any person can applied to revoke a patent, according to subsection (1) of section 80 of the Patents Act:

Subject to the provisions of this Act, the Registrar may, on the application of any person, by order revoke a patent for an invention on (but only on) any of the following grounds:
(a) the invention is not a patentable invention;
(b) the patent was granted to a person who was not entitled to be granted that patent;
(c) the specification of the patent does not disclose the invention clearly and completely for it to be performed by a person skilled in the art;
…………

Note that a patentable invention is a product or a process that is new, has a non-obvious inventive (improvement) step, and has some form of practical application. So if it can be proven that at least one prior art exists, or the invention is obvious to a person skilled in the art in that technological field of the invention, the patent can be revoked based on the “invention is not a patentable invention” ground.

Section 77 of the Patents Act is also quite interesting to note:

Where a person (whether or not the proprietor of, or entitled to any right in, a patent) by circulars, advertisements or otherwise threatens another person with proceedings for any infringement of a patent, a person aggrieved by the threats (whether or not he is the person to whom the threats are made) may, subject to subsection (4), bring proceedings in the court against the person making the threats, claiming any relief mentioned in subsection (3).

And finally, subsection (1) of section 99 of the Patents Act states that:

If a person falsely represents that anything disposed of by him for value is a patented product, he shall, subject to this section, be guilty of an offence and shall be liable on conviction to a fine not exceeding $10,000 or to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 12 months or to both.

Last but not least, I urges all victims of this patent troll to come together and seek legal advices on how to deal with it.

P/S:
(1) I am not a patent lawyer, and all of the above should not be taken as any form of legal advices.
(2) I am not one of the victims, or in any direct relationships with any of the victims. I am just a concerned entrepreneur who thinks that patent troll is a bane to innovation and society progress.

Patent Story: A little background

2008-05-29T11:24:00.003+08:00

Recently, a local company (Vuestar Technologies P/L) sent invoices (ranging from hundreds to thousands of Singapore dollars) to numerous website owners. Basically, the company claimed that those websites are infringing their patent, and thus requesting for payment for the license fee.

Before we look specifically into the Vuestar scenario, I think it would be better to have a little more background knowledge in patents.

What is a patent ?

From IPOS (Intellectual Property Office of Singapore):

“A Patent is a monopoly right given by the Government to the owner of an invention to enable him to prevent others from using, copying or making the invention without his consent in the country in which he has obtained patent protection.”

What is patentable ?

“A patentable invention can be a product or a process that gives a new technical solution to a problem. It can be a new method of doing things, the composition of a new product, or a technical improvement on how certain objects work.”

According to IPOS, for an invention to be patentable, it must in general satisfy the below three key criteria:

1. New:
The invention should not have been made known to the public in any way, anywhere in the world. An invention is not new if it has already been made available to the public by word of mouth, or it has been commercially exploited, or it has been featured in an article or advertised in the press, or it has been demonstrated. Such disclosure may be novelty destroying and forms one of the grounds for the revocation of a patent.

2. Inventive Step:
The invention must be something that represents an improvement over any existing product or process that is already available. The improvement must be non-obvious to a person who is skilled in the art in that technological field of the invention. If an invention is new yet obvious to a person skilled in the art, the invention would not fulfil the inventive step requirement.

3. Industrial Application:
The invention must be useful and have some form of practical application. It should be capable of being made or used, or achieving a concrete end result in any industry.

A little background on the company

Now that we have some basic ideas of what is patent and what is patentable, let’s go back to the Vuestar scenario. A little search on ACRA will reveal that it is a private limited company registered in the year 2006, formerly known as Blue Steel Dragon Pte. Ltd. Its managing director is Paul Smith, while the patent “inventor” is Ronald Neville Langford. Don’t quite sound Singaporean? Right, from what I know of, Ronald is an Australian. In fact, the patent in question is first filed in Australia in 2001.

The patent in question

The patent which Vuestar Technologies claimed to be infringed, is titled “Method of locating web-pages by utilising visual images” (Patent publication no. 95940).

From the 29-pages full specification of the patent, the patent is basically talking about:

An improved method of locating web-pages and/or web-sites, as described in the following steps:
1. User submitting a search request to a server-side application via a terminal.
2. The server-side application searching a database in accordance with the submitted search request.
3. Identified database entries being transmitted to the terminal as a search results list, each entry containing a hyperlink to a web-page and visual content related to the web-page.
4. The user is able to view the visual content without being required to activate the hyperlink to obtain the visual content.
5. Contact information (telephone, fax, email, etc) for an organization is also provided as a component of an entry of the search results list.

So basically, he claimed that in prior art (search engines before application of patent), the previous search engines only returned text information and hyperlinks upon a search request, which is not very useful to the user. Thus, in this “invention”, he proposed that the search engine stored visual content along with other information of the websites in its centralized database, and returned these visual content as a component of the entry of the search result list.

There are other specific embodiments written inside the full specification, but basically it revolves around how the visual information should be presented to the user, and how the website should react upon user’s actions.

To my disapointment, there are very little (if any) technical details or innovative algorithms on how to implement this “invention”. The idea of this “invention” itself, I would say, isn’t really impressive and probably quite obvious to a person skilled in the art.

Vuestar’s claims

According to Vuestar Technologies website, it claims that:

“A web site which has been developed by or for a URL addressee/ owner and uses visual images to hyperlink to other pages in which any first or subsequent page provides the contact details of an Organisation would in Legal terms appear to use the steps and methods outlined in a claim of the Patent .”

If you have read the full specification of the patent, you would probably be as baffled as me. Contrast Vuestar’s claims and what I have written in the previous section “The patent in question”, it just doesn’t match. The methods outlined in the patent is about presenting of visual content as a component of each entry of the search results list. Yet, Vuestar claims that “using visual images to hyperlink to other pages” is an infringement to the patent, which I seriously cannot agree with.

*****************************************************
I shall just stop here for the time being. In my next post, I shall go into more detailed analysis on the patent itself, and what I think of the infringement claims in various scenario.

Serenity

2008-05-15T22:40:00.001+08:00

I attended a gathering recently. It lasted for only a few hours and basically we just played some games that I hadn’t been playing for years. On my way back, I was thinking about the gathering and the games, and smiled to myself. I suddenly realized, that I had not really enjoyed myself for a long time.

Ever since my company became an OMO (One-Man-Operation), I had been doing things all alone. I met my customers alone, I ate my lunch alone, I planned my company’s direction and strategy alone, I did all the coding and debugging alone. For more than two years, I had been fighting a lone battle and unknowingly accummulated loads of stress on my shoulders.

Whenever I meet up with friends, one question that they bound to ask would be: “How’s your business?” And sometimes I really do not wish to answer. I think I am just doing fine, but I don’t really have much to show. I had no problem surviving, but there are a lot more to think about than merely trying to survive, especially when you are in your third or fourth year of business.

One reason why I really enjoyed the gathering was that the people there didn’t know I am an entrepreneur. It was a mere few hours when I can immerse myself in the games and totally forgotten about the burden that was on my shoulders. And nobody would ask about my business. It was kind of like a few hours of mental spa to rejuvenate my spirits.

I am gonna put down some of my loads. I am gonna learn how and when to take a stroll. The view may be captivating at the top of the mountain, but I must first learn how to appreciate the scenary along the way. There’s still a long way to go.

I met my ex-director…

2008-04-17T12:31:00.001+08:00

Haven’t been updating this blog for some time. Somehow, I have lost some of my initial enthusiasm in blogging. Or perhaps it doesn’t exist in the first place. Of course, part of the reasons (for the lack of updates) could be that I am currently quite busy with a few plans going on simultaneously. Will probably talk about all these some time later.

Just recently, I attended an event and was surprised to meet my ex-company director Mr C there. Obviously, he was surprised to see me too. I could still remember the smirk on Mr C’s face when I told him I wanna startup my own company a few years ago. It’s no surprise to me that he still look as detestable as before.

Mr C was a typical management level person who strived on impressing his superiors to work his way up the corporate ladder. I used to be a project leader under him. He was the first technical director I worked with who didn’t bother to read my design document, just because he claimed he didn’t have the time. But the truth was he couldn’t understand the technical details that I wrote.

Some of my ex-colleagues commented that people like him wouldn’t go far. Well, it actually depends on one’s definition of going far. I personally think that people like Mr C would survive very well in the GLCs, because no matter how technically challenged you are, there will always be some clueless people above you that thinks very highly of you as long as you are able to string some buzz words into a sentence and paint some glamourous big picture.

I don’t really like to attend all these so-called networking events, where I can see lots of Mr C walking around wearing a fake smile. But sometimes attending such events is inevitable if I wish to grow my company.

In the end, I left the event early. I am still not quite used to it. The air is fresher outside. The vision became clearer too.

Looking back 2007: My life . My company . My future

2008-01-04T12:52:00.000+08:00

Time seems to pass faster ever since I graduated from university, which was some seven or eight years ago. Many of my peers are having the same sentiments, and I actually had my own explanation for this phenomena. Although time remains consistent as ever, the post-university phase of our lifes had somehow lacked prominent milestones. Most of the people, after a few years of work, began to lead a monotonous lifestyle of work-sleep-and looking forward to weekend. Life had become an auto-pilot journey while time crept away without anybody noticing. Another reason could be the feeling of under-achievement. As the best part of our life kept ticking away, the possibility of achieving what we wanna achieve in life become slimmer. Instead of the “I wanna earn my first million bucks before 30” wish that you have when you are 20 years old, you slowly find yourself need to compromise to more realistic expectations. And as time passed, when people find that even the more realistic expectations are hard to achieve, the notion of time passing much faster than before will come in.

My life

There isn’t much changes in my life for 2007. It’s the first full year of my life as a blogger, and I also started a chinese blog which does not have much readership. I had grown accustom to the lifestyle of an entrepreneur, as it was already my third year in entrepreneurship. Life as an entrepreneur can have the freedom that many working class craved for, but at the same time it can be very lonely. While many of my ex-colleagues are envious of the kind of freedom I am enjoying, I am also quietly reminiscing the times when I could just hop over to the pantry have a coffee and chat with other colleagues. As time goes by, I had gradually shed away most of my programmer’s ego and become more like a businessman. I noticed that I see things differently than before, and my perceptions of a lot of things had also changed.

I had read a lot to both deepen and widen my knowledge. I believe, whether you are an entrepreneur or not, one should always look to improve himself. As an entrepreneur, I had more control over my time and thus I always tried to allocate some slots for learning new knowledge. For the past year, I had been reading up on topics like company law & contracts, marketing, philosophy, strategy, and a whole lots of chinese novels. This is in addition to my usual dose of technical readings in programming and computer science.

I had participated in several volunteering events and am looking forward to more participation in 2008. And of course, like many others, I was addicted to facebook for quite a while.

My company

My company remained as a one-man-operation. The annual revenue for 2007 is better than the sum of first two year, but that’s not something to brag about since my first year (2005) revenue was pathetic. Towards the end of 2007, my focus shifted from the local market to the international ones. I had just signed a distributor agreement with a foreign firm, and is looking towards signing more of this to push my product to different overseas.

I started year 2007 with a few ad-hoc projects that pay rather well, though I always want the main focus of the company to sell its own product rather than doing ad-hoc projects. Towards the second half of the year, I was doing much less development work. More time was spent in planning, marketing, sales and negotiations of collaborations. And I do notice that I become more willing to spend, from both personal and company aspects, which is probably a good sign.

My future

My future is still uncertain. The only thing that changed is that I am getting used to this uncertainty. The financial stress is lesser as I had been drawing a reasonably comfortable director fee since the beginning of 2007, but the expectations are only getting heavier, especially when I saw my peers advancing in their own respective careers.

I have many plans for 2008 but I will not list them down in this blog. I know I will be leading a very different life compared to most people. Its afterall my own choice, and no matter how difficult it is I will continue to embrace it.

Some advices on Entrepreneurship

2007-12-27T13:17:00.000+08:00

Year 2007 is coming to an end, and many people are starting to make new year resolutions for the coming year. Perhaps one of the resolutions in some people’s list is to startup a company. As an entrepreneur myself, I think perhaps I can give some advices to those who are thinking of becoming an entrepreneur. Although I don’t see myself as a veteren or some successful entrepreneur, I believe I had more exposure than maybe a normal nine-to-five office worker. For the past few years, I had seen entrepreneurs come and go, some struggled and some are still struggling. I had seen people leaving the entrepreneurial scene with a bad taste in their mouth. Many people entered the scene with lots of enthusiasm and dreams, thanks to the constant glamourization of successful entrepreneurs and over-emphasis of success stories in the media, but leave the scene bitterly with a dose of reality.

So perhaps I would just list out a few things which I think can be useful to an entrepreneur here, as an end-of-year present to all those avid readers who have been reading my plain little text-only blog. It is heart-warming to know that people are willing to spend their precious time reading a stranger’s rant.

1. Make yourself comfortable, even if you are coming out of your comfort zone.

Don’t believe in the myth that entrepreneurs are all struggling to make ends meet. Don’t believe that entrepreneurs should live miserably before they see any glimpses of hope. Entrepreneurship is long journey. If you are making yourself miserable and uncomfortable, how long do you think you can last ?

But how to make yourself comfortable? Reduce uncertainties to the minimum. You need to make calculated risks before diving into the uncharted waters. Take into account your normal monthly expenses, plus your expected monthly expenses of your company, and make an estimate of how long you can survive without income. If you cannot survive at least one year, perhaps you should save up more or get external financial investments.

Apart from financial aspects, there are also the mental aspects. Try to do something you truly enjoy. It will enable you to persevere through hard times. And don’t make yourself miserable by working 24 hours, unless you are a workaholic.

2. Maintain a good health

A healthy body is the foundation of every entrepreneur. If you are not able to take care of your own health, how can you take care of a company? So, do exercise consistently, eat healthily, and you will find yourself having more energy to take care of other stuffs.

3. You don’t have to own 100% of your company

Sometimes, you may need to sacrifice some of your shares to bring in capital or expertise. But of couse, not to the extent that you become a minor shareholder that can’t make any decisions.

4. Separate your personal and company accounts

Even if you are a sole proprietor, it is advisable to separate your own personal accounts and your company accounts. Things will get real messy if you are paying your baby’s diapers and company’s inventory all from the same account. At the end of the day, you don’t even know whether you are truly earning lesser or simply because your personal expenses went up.

5. Mix with the right people

The people around you can have positive or negative effects on you and your company. There will always be people who are eager to offer their advices. And there will always be people who can’t wait to bring you down. Make your own judgement who you think is credible, and who is just NATO (No Action Talk Only).

Beware of those who are indecisive, over-optimistic, over-pessimistic, NATO, constant-whiners and forever-disgruntled. Take whatever they said with a pinch of salt.

6. Don’t enter entrepreneurship because you wanna avoid something

Be it stress, work, nasty bosses or responsibilities. Chances are you will get more of those in entrepreneurship. The entrepreneurial scene is not a place for people who wanna seek refuge. If you cannot leave your previous stage as a victor, don’t expect to come into entrepreneurship and emerge as a winner. You’d probably run away from the same problem again.

Ok, that’s all my crap advices, and remember to take it with a pinch of salt. Wish all have a fulfilling 2008!

My dreams

2007-12-04T13:06:00.000+08:00

I still remembered the very first job interview I had after I graduated from university. It was an interview for an IT post of a MNC, and the interviewer was an american. After some routine technical questions, he asked me to talk about my dreams. I did not know any “model answers” for such questions, and being a naïve fresh graduate, I just answered it from the bottom of my heart.

Well, people who only know me via my online identity would probably guess that my dream is to set-up my own company and be a successful entrepreneur. Or something along the lines of becoming a great software developer and creating some killer software products. But those weren’t the answers that came to my mind at that point of time.

Admittedly, I am quite a dreamer. I had a lot of dreams. To setup and grow my own company is one of them, to achieve breakthrough in my personal research in a specialized area is another. But when the question was posed to me, only one prominent dream came to my mind.

I told the interviewer that my dream is to build a farm cum animal shelter. Thousands of animals had been abandoned every year in this tiny island alone, and most of them had to be put to sleep. I wanted to create a haven for these helpless animals, whose only wish is to survive in this world that is dominated by human supremacy. I knew it would take a lot of money to fulfill such a dream, but I will still work towards it no matter how long it takes.

I did not get the job eventually. I did not even get through to the second round. I did not know whether it was due to my over-idealistic answer. But at least I spoke from my heart, and I would still give the same answer today. The only thing different is I had quite a couple of additions to my dream list, and most of them are not easily attainable.

Many friends that I know of, had in some way or another given up on most of their dreams. It seems that the older they grew, the more dreams they discarded. Somehow, as you grow older, pragmatism will inevitably override idealism.

I am still working towards fulfilling my dreams. And in the process, adding new ones. If I am able to live till 85 years old, I would still have more than 50 years to achieve my dreams. That’s a hell lot of time, so why give up?

P/S: I have added a “Support these Causes” section on the right panel of this blog. Those are free ads space for charitable causes. Feel free to click the links. I will be adding more in the future.

Brief updates: On distributionship, rebranding and my one-year-old blog

2007-11-06T21:01:00.000+08:00

Hadn’t been updating this blog for weeks as I was rather busy with some other things. Firstly, I had been preparing the distributionship agreement for my product, both the exclusive and non-exclusive versions. Secondly, I was also busy with some rebranding work on my product. Due to the recent advancement in distributionship talks with B, I had made a change in my original roadmap for my product.

My original plan was:
1. Upgrade my product to version 3.
2. Freeze the baseline and rebrand the product
3. Repackage the product
4. Revamp the product page of my website to be more interactive
5. Actively look for overseas distributors and more local resellers
6. Continue to upgrade the product to version 4

However, I figured that the upgrades to version 3 might take quite some time, so I changed my plan accordingly:
1. Revise the features to be implemented in version 3. Implement one small portion of it, scrape one portion of it, and move the remaining portion to version 4.
2. Follow steps 2 to 6 of previous plan.

In this way, I would be able to push my product to overseas market much faster than I originally planned. In fact, I should have pushed my product overseas much earlier, as the local market is too limited. However, the engineer side of me had always put product enhancement on top priority, and kept delaying the business aspect. It was this engineer side of me that was always feeling insecure about my product, and wanting to build it to perfection before I introduced it to the world. But the fact is, you need not be the best in order to fight the international competition, as long as you know where your strength lies. The international market is big enough to sustain many players.

Company’s matters aside, this blog had quietly marched pass its one-year-old birthday. My initial objective of creating this blog was to record down the thoughts and experiences during my entrepreneurship journey. When this blog was first created, I had just bounced back from a very difficult period in my life. I did not know how far I can go, or how long I can survive in this lonely voyage. Thus, I created this blog, so that if I eventually failed, I would still be able to remember all that I had went through. Slowly, as this blog had gained more readership, I began to share some of my thoughts on the local entrepreneur or IT scene and other stuffs.

However, I still had this strange feeling that I wasn’t really a blogger. Perhaps it was due to my low frequency in updating this blog (I still couldn’t understand how some bloggers can churn out posts everyday, or even multiple posts per day). Or maybe it’s due to my lack of participation in any bloggers’ communities or activities. Or maybe because I do not know any bloggers in real life. But whatever the reasons, ironically speaking, the importance of this blog had slowly grown in my heart. Although I had been blogging behind a moniker, there was a certain portion of my identity embedded into this blog, which effectively made this blog an extension of my true self. So I guessed, whether I feel like a blogger or not, is no longer important. At least, this is my true voice.

Sailing into International Waters….

2007-10-18T09:43:00.000+08:00

I just received an email from a prospective overseas distributor B. Apparently, after testing out our product, B was very satisfied and requested to become our distributor. In fact, he had already placed orders for my products, while we worked out some final details in our collaboration. I couldn’t really describe my feelings when I received his email. It was probably the same kind of feeling when I first setup this company, or when I first entered university, or when my crush first agreed to my date.

Over the past few years, there had been quite a number of people and companies that requested to be my product’s reseller or distributor. But none of them really materialized, because of various reasons. Most of them didn’t look serious, and didn’t really have any track records or concrete plans in pushing my product in their respective countries. This time round, B seemed to be a serious distributor as we had actually corresponded intensively for the past few months.

The collaboration with B wasn’t really a smooth sail. When B first contacted me with his requirements, I thought it was straightforward and my product could easily achieved that. After a few email correspondence, B requested for a trial version of my product. I tweaked my product to create a trial version which I was confident that it couldn’t be easily hacked, and sent it over to B. However, my trial version couldn’t work with B’s existing system and B emailed me with the error message displayed by my trial version. Initially, I thought it was just some connection problems so I adviced B on how to troubleshoot and rectify it. However, the problem persisted and I had a hard time trying to find out the problems because I did not know the actual environment of B’s site. I could only asked B over the emails to carry out my test instructions and try to deduce the cause of the problems. Eventually, I managed to find out the cause of the problem and the trial version managed to integrate with B’s existing system.

However, the problem didn’t stop there. After some initial simple testing, B found out that my trial version still couldn’t work to his expectation with his existing system. This time round I suspected there were still some problems which might not be easy to figure out if I continued to troubleshoot through B. So I asked B to turn on the logging function of my trial version and emailed me back all the logged information. After going through the logged information, I suspected that the problem might lie on B’s existing system and told B about that.

However, B replied me after a while that he had tried out a similar product offered by a company from his country and the product was able to work with his existing system. After checking out the product mentioned by B, I noticed that the product could only fulfill part of B’s requirements. However, since that product was able to integrate with B’s existing system while mine couldn’t, it was natural that B was thinking of trying out other alternatives. I replied to B that I could loan him a full system (including components that could replace the functionality of B’s existing system) for two months, so that he could use it for demo to his customers. There was a certain cost and risk for loaning B the full system, but I decided to go ahead to offer B the loan because I knew I was at the verge of losing a potential overseas distributor that could potentially contribute hundreds of thousands of revenues per year. B accepted my suggestion and I immediately sent the full system over to B.

But the problems just didn’t seem to let me off easily. B tested the full system sent by me and still encountered some problems. I spent nights trying to figure out what exactly was the problem, going through hundreds of thousands lines of codes and logged information. Finally, I realized that the difference in some third party environment could be the source of problem, and emailed B the remedy to it. It was my last straw of hope and I kept my finger crossed after sending B the email. To my relief, B replied me that after following my remedy, the entire system could work properly and he would proceed to test the more detailed features of the system.

And now, you could imagine the kind of satisfaction I got when I finally received B’s email that he wanted to buy my product and become our distributor. This is my first voyage into international waters and I knew it could be a very different ball game altogether. The local market is too small and restricted. In order to grow, I knew that sooner or later I would need to venture into overseas market, and now is probably the right time to do so.

The sea monsters lurking under the international waters are probably fiercer than I could ever imagine. But I just had to venture into it. I need to be stronger. For my passion, my dream, my belief.

I just need to be stronger.

Why hackers cannot survive in Singapore

2007-10-11T13:11:00.000+08:00

I remembered watching a scene in a Hong Kong drama series “Net Deception”, where a hacker (or cracker to be exact) played by HK actor Wong Hei was intruding a system using his laptop in a café. Apart from the unethical actions of the cracker, that scene looked cool though.

Now imagine, transfer the entire scene to Singapore. Cracker Mr C was hired to intrude a certain company’s system. Knowing that the local ISPs are always very cooperative in revealing customers’ information, Mr C decided to perform his cracking at a café instead. Afterall, the much celebrated success of the island-wide Wireless@SG had made his job much easier, he thought to himself.

So Mr C, sitting in a café sipping his favourite ice mocha, slowly opened his laptop and waited for the bootup and internet connection.

“In ten minutes time, I would be able to intrude the system.” Mr C let out a confident smile as he thought about it.

But alas, Mr C got a shock as he turned his face towards his laptop screen. The words “limited or no connectivity” was shown when his laptop was connected to Wireless@SG.

“Nevermind, there’s another café across the street.” Mr C kept his cool, packed up his laptop and slowly walked towards the other café.

Luckily, the Wireless@SG internet connection at the other café was alright. “Nothing can stop me now.” Mr C smirked while he quickly connected to his target system and launched a brute force attack at the first layer password system.

“Shit!!!” exclaimed Mr C, when the internet connection dropped after a mere 2 minutes. After several tries, Mr C was finally convinced that the internet connection could not sustain continuously for more than five minutes.

Again, Mr C moved to yet another café, only to find that the speed of the Wireless@SG connection was comparable to that of a 14.4Kbps dialup connection.

Not accepting defeat, Mr C tried out a few other cafés and fast-food restaurants, only to encounter the same problems. Finally, with some divine intervention, Mr C managed to find a café with proper and sustainable Wireless@SG connection. Mr C let out a relief sigh, and just when he wanted to launch his attack, his laptop was shut down. Apparently, his laptop had run out of battery after running for a few hours without any AC power supply. Mr C changed his job the next day.

P/S: This post is written after several frustrating experiences with Wireless@SG.

My way of categorizing IT personnels

2007-10-08T13:28:00.000+08:00

Over the years, I had the chances to work with a lot of people, both locals and foreigners, in the IT/Engineering fields. Most of them are software engineers, while some others are system engineers, network engineers, IT administrators, system analysts, etc. And slowly, I deviced a way to categorize these IT personnels according to their abilities and ego :

Category 1 - High abilities, Average ego
Category 2 - High abilities, High ego
Category 3 - Average abilities, Average ego
Category 4 - Average abilities, High ego

It may be a bit of generalization here but most of the overseas-based foreign IT professionals I had worked with belong to categories (1) and (2). Of course there are always some clueless IT professionals no matter where you go, but I am speaking from my general impression after working with some of these germans, russians and israelis professionals. It could be due to their education or environment, most of these people have in-depth knowledge in their own specialized fields instead of having superficial knowledge in many areas yet expert in none. And some have very high egos while some are reasonably humble.

On the other hand, the Singapore-based foreign-talents that I had worked with mostly belong to category (3). Most of them can boast knowledge of a dozen programming languages in their resume, but in reality their abilities are just average. Fortunately, most of these people whom I had worked with do not have high egos, and thus can still get the job done, albeit needing more guidance and supervision.

Lastly, the forth category is the category that I feel, the most difficult to work with. Unfortunately, quite a number of locals belong to this category. They have very limited abilities, yet possessing super high egos. Even when they are young and inexperienced. Even when they really have got nothing to show for. For this category of people, I can only say, the moment you acknowledge how average you are, would be the moment you can truly start to improve as a real professional.

P/S: There are good and humble local IT professionals too, just that a bit few and far between.

A tale of two companies

2007-09-27T13:06:00.000+08:00

Once upon a time, there was a company S whose key business was delivering technological and engineering projects. Since company S was closely-related to the local government, most of company S’s projects were also government or military related.

And then one day, there was this multi-million-dollar project opened for bidding. Company S was interested in the project, but did not have the technological abilities to develop it. Thus, company S decided to partner with an overseas company X, even although company X did not have a ready solution at that point of time either. As a result, the two companies secured the project, with company X as the main contracter and company S as the sub-contracter.

Company X then started with the design of the architecture down to each individual components. As fulfillment of the partnership requirements, company S sent a few young software developers over to company X to assist the developments. These young developers of company S were then deployed to work under the various group leaders of company X, throughout the development stage. However, due to the lack of experience of these young developers, they were not involved in any software design and rarely touched on the development of the core components of the system.

After the project was delivered, these young developers returned to company S and were subsequently dispatched to other different projects. Over the years, most of these developers eventually left company S, or proceeded their careers as managers. On the other side, company X retained all the architects, designers, technologists and developers of the project, and immediately proceed to develop version two of the system.

A few years passed by, and the customer decided to upgrade their existing system. This time round, company S and company X approached the customer separately. Company S presented to the customer their ideas and past track records. Company X also presented their ideas and past track records, but on top of that, they also gave the customer a demo on the version two of their system, which was a much improved system that met most of the customer’s requirements. When asked to quote for the project, company S quoted a figure and timeline equivalent to that of developing the project from scratch. Whereas company X quoted a much lower figure and timeline, due to their possession of an advanced system baseline. Needless to say, company X got the project.

The mistake made by company S was what I had often critised about. That is, they failed to capitalize on their initial advantages and build up their own technological and intellectual assets. Company S managed their company from a short-term business aspect, while company X managed from a long-term technological aspect. Many local companies that I have seen are making the same mistake as company S, just that most of them don’t have the financial backing and customer relationship of company S to survive the mistake.

Entrepreneurs also have comfort zones

2007-09-14T13:24:00.000+08:00

Just recently, I read paddy’s post “Complacency, a big price to pay later”, which talks about how some employees tend to stay in their comfort zones, live from paycheck to paycheck, and face problems when they get retrenched. I believe the tendency of staying within one’s comfort zone, either knowingly or unknowingly, is a common trait among most working class people. So what about entrepreneurs ? Does entrepreneurs also have comfort zones? I believe the answer is yes.

Normally, one would think that entrepreneurs are highly-motivated risk takers. So how does being a risk taker corelate with a person who stays within his comfort zones?

An entrepreneur’s comfort zone usually originates from a self-perceived sense of security. At the initial stage of startups, entrepreneurs are normally driven by their passions and enthusiasm. They would probably work almost 7 days a week and not feeling tired. When time goes on, some survive and some fail, some struggle while some manage to achieve stability. The problem is, upon achieving a certain level of stability, some entrepreneurs may gain a false sense of security. And that false sense of security may eventually lead to complacency, or what I called, an entrepreneur’s comfort zone.

Very often, we have heard people saying that a certain entrepreneur had survived for a couple of years and thus his company is already quite stable. However, being around for a long time does not necessarily mean that a company is in a stable state. Or in fact, is there really a stable state for a company? Personally, I have seen companies that had been around for more than 10 years being closed down, due to various reasons.

So what exactly would happen if an entrepreneur stays in his comfort zone? Firstly, the entrepreneur would probably be contented with the status quo, instead of looking at how to expand his operation or thinking about possible future challenges. As a result, the decisions made by the entrepreneur would most probably be geared towards short-term gains and immediate monetary rewards. This can become quite dangerous as we all know, the world is changing very fast and sometimes it takes only a subtle change in policy or technology and whatever competitive edge you possessed can dissappear within a blink of the eye. Similar to an employee who lives from paycheck to paycheck, some entrepreneurs live from project to project without seriously considering building up the intellectual and other intangible assets of the company. When times become bad, these entrepreneurs may be surprised to find out that the foundation of their companies are actually much more vulnarable than they thought.

Feeling underpaid ? Assess your actual value from an employer’s perspective

2007-08-22T12:57:00.000+08:00

A lot of people would like to think that they themselves are underpaid, and their roles in the company are very important. However, your actual value may not be as high as what you perceived.

A logistic manager F from my ex-company, who was around fifty years old, was being asked to leave. He was being replaced by a thirty-year-old guy whose salary was just slightly more than half of what F got. Moreover, the new guy was able to work for longer hours. F may claim that he had twenty years more experience than the new guy, but in reality F’s experience may not be as valuable as he thought.

Thus, your actual value (to your company) does not equate to the amount of money you are drawing, or the amount of experience and qualification you possessed. Your actual value is in fact the amount of money your company has to pay for the next best alternative to do the job that you are doing. If you are a software developer drawing S$3K per month doing some software development, while an indian IT professional is able to do the same job at the same quality drawing only S$2K per month, then your actual value is probably only S$2K. If you are a manager drawing S$6K per month doing some project management job, while a young manager with 3 years of experience can do the same job at S$4K per month, then your value is actually being inflated. If you are just doing a data entry job, it doesn’t matter that whether you are holding a first class honour degree or not. The fact that you are handling a million-dollar project doesn’t mean that you are worth a million dollar. You are worth the amount your company has to pay for the next best candidate who can handle the million-dollar project equally well, or at least at a standard that your company is willing to accept.

So, by assessing your actual value, you can have a clearer understanding of your actual worth (in the eyes of your employer). If your actual value is higher than the salary you are currently drawing, then you probably are eligible to ask for a higher pay. If your actual value is lower than your current salary and you feel that your abilities are not fully utilized, then you may want to seek greener pastures or request for an upgrade of job scope, because it is very likely that one day your employer may realize they are paying more than they should for that particular job scope. When that happens, you may either be asked to leave, or have your pay stagnant for a long time. If your actual value is lower than your current salary and you feel that you have already applied most of your abilities in your job, then you should start to do something about your future rather than whining about being underpaid.

Seven habits of highly defective co-workers (3) – Mr KIA strikes again

2007-08-16T13:48:00.000+08:00

I had several projects with Company Y and inevitably sometimes I needed to work closely with Mr “Know-It-All”, much against my wish. His boastful character had been quite notorious within the industry, yet he still managed to work his way up the corporate ladder.

Apparently in late 2006, my company was again engaged by company Y for this particular ad-hoc project which required us to do some enhancement on one of their existing software. This particular software was developed by one of their in-house engineer a couple of years ago. The engineer had left the company and there wasn’t any design documents around. The only thing available was the source codes (with minimum documentation) and the executables.

As usual, Mr KIA claimed that the task was very simple and he could have done it himself easily, if he wasn’t so busy. He tried to describe the software features to me, and told me that a large portion of the software was making use of a particular “D” library. I got the source codes, executables and some verbal requirements from Mr KIA, and proceeded back to do the enhancements. However, when I went back and browsed through the source codes, I realized that it wasn’t the correct version which I was required to do enhancement. The source codes that Mr KIA had given to me was in fact one of the earliest version which was very different from the latest one. Then I tried to run the executables and received an error saying unable to find a certain “O” library. I proceeded to download the “O” library from the internet and eventually managed to run the executable successfully. Apparently, the executable was the correct version while the source code was one of the earliest version. Thus, I was quite certain that the correct version of the software was making use of the “O” library and not the “D” library to perform the tasks.

So, I called up Mr KIA and informed him that he had passed the wrong source codes to me. Initially he refused to believe me but I managed to convince him when I told him I could show him the exact source codes that he had passed to me and verified with him on the spot. Then he told me maybe it was because there were too many different versions lying around and the previous engineer had a very messy way of organizing things. In order to help him identify the correct version, I told Mr KIA that the correct version was using the “O” library, not the “D” library that he claimed.

Then when I went over to Mr KIA’s office to collect the correct source code, Mr KIA said something which was out of my expectation. He said that the software was using the “D” library, not the “O” library which I claimed, and that I had given him wrong information to mislead him and wasted his time. Well, I was actually quite sure that the software was using the “O” library, but since I had not seen the actual source codes of the latest version, I couldn’t refute his claim that the software was using “D” library. Since the “O” library and “D” library are performing very similar tasks, normally developers would use either one but not both in the same software. However, I reckoned the previous in-house engineer may had rather weird preferences in developing software (due to the constant bad-mouthing from Mr KIA), so there might still be the possibilities that both libraries were being used. I did not wish to get into any arguments with Mr KIA and so I just kept quiet.

However, when I reached home and looked at the latest source code, I found out that the software was indeed using the “O” library only. There wasn’t a single trace of code that indicates it was using the “D” library, as claimed so by Mr KIA. Apparently, either Mr KIA could not understand the source codes and made a stupid and erroneous claim, or he just couldn’t accept being proven wrong and blatantly lied to me. Either way, I told myself, in future I am not gonna believe anything said by Mr KIA, and hopefully do not have to work with him anymore.

I’d never thought I could do sales….

2007-08-13T13:44:00.000+08:00

If five years ago anyone told me that I would be doing sales, I would probably brush it off as a joke. I had been a software engineer all my life, and the time I spent in front of a PC is much more than that of facing another person. Add to the fact that I am a rather introverted person, the scenario of myself doing sales is a rather unthinkable one.

When I first started my venture in 2005, my job nature did not really change a lot. Most of the interactions with customers falls on my then-partner K’s shoulder. I would only attend occasional meetings when technical details were to be discussed. However, ever since I parted ways with K in 2006, I had to do every single tasks all by myself, and that included doing sales.

I could recall the first few sales demo that I was doing, they were more like FYP presentation than sales pitch. All that I did was to illustrate the functionalities of my product. In my mind, I was thinking of quickly getting over with the sales demo and went back to do my development work. To me, doing sales was like doing homework for a subject that I disliked. As a result, there wasn’t much success in sales.

I remembered there was this incident last year when I was on my way towards a prospective customer’s office. Normally I would travel via MRT or bus to my client’s place to do sales demo. As this client’s office was some distance from the MRT station, I decided to walk from the MRT station to his place. However along the way, it suddenly rained heavily and most of the people on the streets ran to the nearby shopping malls to take shelter. Knowing that I was already running out of time, I decided to take out my umbrella and continued walking towards my customer’s place amidst the heavy rain. As I was walking, I noticed that I was all alone on the whole stretch of street. A sudden feeling of loneliness crept into my heart, and I started to wonder why I was doing all these when I can choose to have a comfortable and regular paycheck working in an aircon room. Why do I choose to face nasty clients when I can just concentrate on my software R&D, working as a software engineer? If my passion is in doing software, why am I doing sales and marketing?

As I was walking, my mind kept churning out new questions. I thought I already had the answers for these questions, but whenever a new storm came about, the ghost of uncertainties will come back haunting me. I realized that the feeling of loneliness will always be there, as I continued my journey in pursuing a dream that isn’t shared by anyone else.

In the end, I reached the customer’s place with my shirt all wet. I do not know whether it was due to the rain or the sweat for walking long distance. I managed to close the deal eventually, and sorted out how I should do my sales more effectively and efficiently in future, instead of running away from doing sales. Looking back, I would always remember those days when I braved through the storms in pursuing my dreams.

Seagull steals potato chips from shop!

2007-07-24T20:19:00.000+08:00

A seagull has regularly been walking in to a Scottish store and stealing bags of potato chips. The bird just walks in the open door, hits a nearby shelf, and then heads back out to the street!

The employees have since nicknamed the seagull "Sam", who has become so popular with locals that they have started to pay for the bird to have its daily supply of crisps. Once outside, the seagull rips the bag open and shares the chips with other birds.

It’s a strange week ….

2007-07-13T15:58:00.001+08:00

A couple of rare events happened this week:

i. A prospective customer who “disappears” for a few months suddenly contacted me to order my products. The last time I talked to him, he and his partners said that they were evaluating some other systems. After months of disappearing acts, I did not expect them to recontact me, let alone confirming their purchases.

ii. A friend’s friend contacted me to discuss about some collaboration projects. Apparently, this guy was looking for people to develop some systems. The odd part was, the last time we communicated was like more than half a year ago. Then he “disappeared”. And now to my surprise, he reappeared and contacted me directly.

iii. An ex-colleague who had lost contact with me for seven years suddenly approached me to talk about some project collaboration also. Apparently he had just setup a company and was looking to outsource most of his software development jobs. On top of that, he was also very interested in being a distributor for my products using his overseas distribution channels.

iv. One of my advertising medium company offered a complimentary advertisement placement (worth S$1500) to my company. I did not ask for that.

v. Bumped into my JC classmate who had lost contact for about eight years.

Other than the above-mentioned events, I had also received more sales and distribution enquiries than usual this week. It just feel so strange that all these happened within the same week.

A small step forward

2007-07-06T13:05:00.000+08:00

I received a cheque from a customer recently. The amount wasn’t huge, but to me it signified an important milestone.

Apparently, this customer X is the owner of a rather well-known company. Several weeks ago, I received an email from him requesting a trial version of my product. Normally, I would not give out trial version as I was quite paraniod about piracy and hacking. So I offered to go down to his office to give a live demo of my product. Upon reaching his office, I gave X a demo on my product’s functionalities and he was quite impressed. But X seemed to be a rather cautious person and requested that I tested my product with his company’s database. So he led me to his desk and I proceed to install the system onto his PC.

To my surprise, I saw a few of my competitors’ software on his desktop. Obviously, X had researched and tested quite a few of my competitors’ trial version before he came to me. This was rather uncommon to me because most of my customers would not do that much “homework”. So after the installation, X proceed to test out my product with his own database and much to my relief everything worked well. After the demo, I had a chat with X. Apparently X had previously bought a similar product from one of my competitor but only to find the product extremely buggy. I wasn’t surprised as this competitor’s product is the cheapest amongst all, and I myself had tested it before. Thus, this time round, X was more cautious and decided to test out a few similar products before making the decision to purchase.

A few weeks later, I received a purchase order from X. Though the revenue from this single deal wasn’t much, I viewed it as a significant victory because X had decided to purchase from my company after some detailed comparison among my competitors. It shows that our product is able to withstand competition from some of the bigger and older boys in the industry.

Sometimes, I feel like a toddler who is curiously and eagerly exploring the world. Every little step forward is a significant moment.

Seven habits of highly defective co-worker (2) – Mr Know-It-All

2007-06-28T22:08:00.000+08:00

Mr Know-It-All (KIA) is not exactly my co-worker. He used to work in another department of my ex-company. During my time in the ex-company, I seldom had the chance to work with him ~~luckily~~. But I did hear a lot of bad things about Mr KIA, particularly about his boastfulness.

After I set-up my present company, I had taken up a few ad-hoc projects to supplement the revenue of the company. One of my customers, Company Y, is a company that is in the same sector as my ex-company. Apparently, Mr KIA had joined Company Y, and ~~unfortunately~~ is the highest ranking technical person of this company.

My first assignment with Company Y was to enhanced one of their existing software within a short time frame. I was then engaged by their AGM, and this AGM ordered Mr KIA to assist me by providing the relevant specifications. Mr KIA claimed to know the system very well, but eventually the specifications that he gave me was full of errors. Nevermind, I fully expected that to happen and I managed to deliver the required tasks despite of the obstacles.

One thing I wasn’t quite happy about Mr KIA was that, he persistently claimed that the tasks assigned to me was very simple and he could have easily done it, just that he was too busy with other works. However, from my many years of experiences, I could safely gauge that the tasks had a certain level of difficulties, even to an experienced software developer. Furthermore, Mr KIA is a hardware person with very little software knowledge and experience. I was highly skeptical that he could even understand the design of the system in the first place, let alone implementing any enhancements. Moreover, the assignment was already lagging behind their promised schedule and absolutely nothing was being done. If it was so easy as claimed by Mr KIA, shouldn’t he put aside other tasks and delivered this assignment first?

Anyway, when I delivered the system, the AGM requested that I port the software over to one of their existing PC. However, I do not know about the environment settings required for the software to run. My development work was done on a laptop supplied by the AGM, with all the required environment settings preset by Mr KIA. So obviously, I would need to ask Mr KIA about the required environment settings. To my dismay, Mr KIA ignored my requests, claiming he was very busy. So eventually, I had to trial and error, meddle with the registries, run into a lot of errors, just to get the software working on the designated PC, all because Mr KIA was “too busy” to tell me the required environment settings.

In the end, I spent one whole day in their office to settle the configuration and environment settings all by myself. At the end of the day, when the AGM came to ask about the progress, Mr KIA suddenly turned very helpful and asked me whether I need help, in front of the AGM.

Furthermore, during the few meetings I had with Company Y, whenever the AGM asked for my opinions, Mr KIA would try to interrupt and eagerly offered his opinions before I could say anything. I figured out that Mr KIA perhaps felt a bit threatened by my existence, and thus tried to make things difficult for me and at the same time hope to impress the AGM. But I was just an external consultant, not a colleague in direct competition with him. Why should he feel threatened by me? One explanation would be, it was just his nature to try to impress people at all cost.

My subsequent dealings with Company Y had further unpleasant experiences with Mr KIA. But that was another long story.

Customized or COTS software ?

2007-06-23T00:27:00.000+08:00

Some of my customers don’t quite understand the difference between customized software and Commercial-Off-The-Shelf (COTS) software.

Customized software is a software that is built to cater to a particular customer’s needs. Normally, the process involved would be requirements gathering / analysis, software/system design, coding, integration, testing, deployment, etc. Due to the details of customization, customized software usually cannot be transferred between projects, though some components may be reused. Such project would normally be charged according to the number of man-hours / man-months. For example, let say a certain customized software project required two engineers to work on it for a total of three months, the number of man-months required would be six. If the total cost of one engineer is S$4000 per month, the cost of the project would be S$24,000.

On the other hand, COTS software is developed without the intention to meet specific customer’s needs. Such software is normally built to fulfill the basic needs of majority of the customers in the target sector. Thus, the price of COTS software is normally much lower than customized software, except for some very specialized COTS software. The downside is, you will have to accept whatever the COTS software provides you. Some example of COTS software would be Microsoft Office, Adobe Photoshop, etc.

Sadly, some customers that I met want the best of both worlds. They want the software to be customized to their specific needs (with functionalities that are normally not present in similar category of software), yet compare the price with COTS software like Microsoft Office when we talk about the customization charges. In cases like this, I would have to patiently and painstakingly explain to them the complexity and effort involved in implementing the customization they required, and the man-day charges of my company.

Customers are not always right. Sometimes, they also need to be educated.

Apply OOP techniques in answering difficult questions from customers

2007-06-20T17:05:00.001+08:00

Some of my customers liked to ask questions beyond the scope of my product, especially when they found out that this is my own company. However, not all questions can be easily answered without exercising a bit of selective truths. Well, in object-oriented programming we called this “Data Abstraction”:

Simplifying complex reality by modeling classes appropriate to the problem, and working at the most appropriate level of inheritance for a given aspect of the problem.

Below are some of the difficult questions and its corresponding abstractions:

***************************************************************
Question: How many people are there in your company ?
Answer: Currently there are five of us, plus some temp staffs.
Abstraction : In the “MyCompany” class, there is 1 director and 3 other passive shareholders. To simplify things, the class only exposed the attribute “people”, which is the total number of active and passive headcounts, to outsiders. Hmm…did I mention my pet ?

Question: How many customers from my sector are using your products ?
Answer: (Insert a respectable yet reasonable number here)
Abstraction: In the “MyCompany” class, there are 3 private attributes concerning number of customers: “total customers”, “potential customers” and “existing customers”. However, we only provide accessor method for the attribute “total customers”, which is the sum of “existing customers” and “potential customers” multiply by a random constant.

Question: How long has this product been in the market ?
Answer: Around 2 years.
Abstraction: Well, the first version launched 2 years ago is far inferior to the current latest version. But the truth is, it is really in the market for around 2 years.
****************************************************************

Well, it would be rather suicidal to reveal to customers that this is an OMO (One-Man-Operation) company. They would most probably not give you the chance, and instead opt for an inferior product from a bigger company. Or in some case, they would try to “eat” you by requesting a lot more features while reducing the price.

As for question two, nobody wants to be the pioneer to try out a new product, even though it had already proven working in some other sectors.

I guess sometimes in life we need to be selective in what to say and what not to say, even though we may not like it, as long as we are not hurting anyone in the process. Applying “data abstraction” techniques is just one way of doing that.

Seven habits of highly defective co-workers (1) - Ang moh accent VP

2007-06-13T21:59:00.000+08:00

I remembered bumping into my ex-VP at the pantry, when I was still working in my ex-company. Apparently, my ex-VP tried to be friendly by striking up a conversation with me.

“Hello Nk, jiak ba buay (hokkien: have you eating already) ?”

I looked at him blankly. I was trying to figure out which was more absurd: Speaking hokkien in a fake ang moh accent, or acting friendly with someone you don’t even know his name ?

“Oh, you are Nk or CS ?” my ex-VP somehow sensed that he got my name wrong.

“Neither. I’m XXX.”

The conversation ended abruptly.

Lesson 1: You don’t have to call the name of the person in order to act friendly. It may just bring about unnecessary embarassment.

Lesson 2: If you are a low-profile engineer, try not to go pantry too often.

In Business, you gain some, you lose some

2007-06-10T00:41:00.000+08:00

I rejected a business recently. A client called me in regards to a quotation that we sent to him two years ago. It was some kind of networking and integration project. It wasn’t our company’s core business and frankly speaking we do not really have the expertise to undertake the project. However two years ago, our business was so bad that we were desperate enough to take up whatever projects that came to us. And thus, during that time, we issued a quotation to that client, with the intention of outsourcing the project to some other company if we happened to get it. Surprisingly, the client did not proceed with the project back then, only to come back to us two years later. I hesitated before I rejected the project. I am thinking of whether I should refer the client to other companies but in the end I didn’t, because I did not know those companies well enough that I can be sure they will do a good job.

Ever since I was at the helm of the company, I had been very careful and selective on the projects that my company undertakes. My approach towards business is obviously very different from my ex-partner K in the sense that K was more concerned about earning as much revenue as possible, while I always think of the long-term growth of the company as my top priority. To me, building up the core capabilities of the company is much more important than earning revenue through some ad-hoc projects, although sometimes revenues from some ad-hoc projects can be too attractive to reject.

Coincidentally, I have another rather lucrative software project coming up, but I still haven’t decided whether to take up because I have some considerations that are holding me back. Firstly, the level of complexity of the project is extremely high. Secondly, the project isn’t something that I liked to do. I may sound idealistic but one of the motivations behind setting up my own company is to be able to do things that I enjoyed, and create products that I really wanted to create. However, the potential revenue from this project would enable me to expand the company quickly.

I believe in business, there bounds to have some level of compromise between idealogy and pragmatism. Sometimes you choose to hold on to your ideals. Sometimes you need to do stuffs that you may not like, yet is good for the company. I am still in search of this balance. In business, you gain some, you lose some. Losing some deals is just part and parcel of the game, but losing your ideals can be disastrous.

“Interesting” people encountered during my entrepreneurship venture

2007-06-06T23:38:00.000+08:00

Ever since I ventured into the uncharted waters, I had encountered a lot of “interesting” people. Much more compared to the days when I was still a software/R&D engineer. The interesting part is, not only did I meet new people with interesting attitudes or characteristics, my existing friends and associates had also exhibited similarly interesting sides of them. I shall just categorize them to better illustrate their uniquely interesting traits:

1. The Advisors

This group of people have inborn advisors’ mentality. They are always eager to offer their advices, even if nobody requested for them. I had no problems with people giving me free advices on how to manage a company, although most of them do not have the adequate knowledge or experiences. Normally, I would just listen to them patiently.

However, some advisors are not contented with just giving advices. Sometimes, they would argue with you passionately and insist that you should implement what they suggested. That’s where I would get a little piss off. If these advisors really felt so strongly and passionately about something, maybe they should try to do something themselves. Instead, they prefer to sit in their own comfort zone and force people to heed their advices.

2. The Analysts

This group of people loves to analyze. Particularly, they love to analyze how you will eventually fail. They like to analyze your business model, your operational cost, your profit margin, your market sector, etc. And very often, they will reach the conclusion that your business / company cannot survive.

Again, I have nothing against people who gives me free analysis. However, this group of people should also realize that there is only so much that one can see from the outside. There are many other factors like the roadmap of the company, the changes/maturity of existing market, the R&D and technology management, new opportunities, new team members, etc. All these factors contribute to the success/failure of a company, and they are often not readily revealed to outsiders like the analysts group of people.

Sometimes I can’t help but to feel a bit bizarre about the actual thoughts of the analysts. Why is it that this group of people loves to analyze how you will fail? I sort of smelled some sour-grapes in them. Perhaps some people do not enjoy witnessing other people’s success, as it would remind them of their own lack of courage to pursue their dreams.

3. The Whiners

The whiners complain about almost everything. They attribute their reluctance in pursuing their dreams to lots of external factors, but fail to see that maybe the greatest factor of all is their own inabilities and fear. It’s easy to whine and point fingers, and perhaps it is self-comforting for this group of people to view themselves as victims of circumstances. But if you have the time to whine over and over again, you would probably be better off if you start to do something about it.

Company’s vision : An entrepreneur’s thoughts

2007-05-27T22:08:00.000+08:00

I remembered during my university’s HRM course, we were taught about the importance of having a company’s vision and mission statement. A company’s vision is basically where the company foresee itself to be in the future, whereas a company’s mission is basically what the company is now. For example, "We deliver cost-effective, mission-critical and reliable system for military training" is a mission statement. Whereas, “To be the world leading provider for military training system” is a vision statement.

When we first started the business venture 2 years ago, we didn’t really have any mission or vision statement. We created a product which we thought was useful for a few target segments. However, sales wasn’t as good as expectation in the initial stages. Over the years, I had refined and enhanced the product according to customers’ needs into a relatively matured and comprehensive one.

Now that the product and sales have become somewhat stable, I begin to think about where the company would be in the future. That is, the company’s vision. In fact, this thing had always been in my mind for the past few years, even before I ventured out.

Where do I hope to bring my company to, in the next 5-10 years ?
What type of company do I foresee it to become in the future ?
Simply put, what exactly is my company’s vision ?

I am still not too sure about my company’s vision. But to say that I am in a lost would be an overstatement. A more apt description would be, there’s a fog between me and my company’s vision. A fog that I believed would eventually disperse in time to come. However, the presence of the fog caused some feeling of anxiety. The anxiety of not knowing where I would be heading towards. The anxiety of not knowing whether I am walking in the correct direction.

To be fair, I do have some plans for the near future. I have plans for another two new products, one being related to my existing product while the other is kind of experimental towards an area which I feel having good potential. In addition, I also have plans for bringing my existing product to another level, targeting to launch by end of the year. However, all these are only individual product roadmaps, not the overall company’s roadmap. They are parts of the jigsaw puzzle, but at the moment the links are missing.

Maybe I had been thinking too much. But it is better than not realizing the problem, or realizing the problem but pretending it doesn’t exist by sweeping it under the carpet. At the very least, I realize that something critical is missing. The next thing I have to do, would be to continue learning and enriching myself, and hope that in the process I would find the missing links. The links between now and the future.

S$88 to transfer ownership from myself to myself ?

2007-05-16T10:49:00.000+08:00

Went over to IPOS (Intellectual Property Office of Singapore) this morning to settle something that I should have settled long ago. Well, I am going to transfer the ownership of a trademark from myself to myself.

Sounds a bit weird? Alright, my previous sole-proprietary business owns a registered trademark. But I terminated the business early last year and incorporated a pte ltd company of the same name with myself as the sole director. So in order to continue using the previously registered trademark, I will need to transfer the ownership from the previous sole-proprietorship to the present pte ltd company. And in doing so, I need to pay S$88 to IPOS.

It seemed a bit funny that I had to sign off as both the previous and present owner, and pay S$88 just to transfer something from myself to myself.

Please help to stop this cruel “sport” of killing baby seals !!!

2007-05-10T19:42:00.000+08:00

Got this email from SPCA recently. Please sign the appeal letter if you felt strongly against this cruel “sport”:

International Fund for Animal Welfare

Or directly to the letter of appeal:

Letter of Appeal

*********************************************
Norway and Canada have a new kind of tourism. Killing baby seals!!!! They call it "hunting" and it's a sport.

But do you really consider such cruel acts a sport ?

Are these people sportsmen or murderers ?

Please save these animals….they are being slaughtered by ruthless people and it's going on RIGHT NOW...!!! Save these seals….save humanity…

What’s your plan after graduation ?

2007-05-02T00:12:00.000+08:00

It’s May now. It’s this time of the year when local universities students are finishing their exams, and some of them are running their last laps. Many of them would be entering the workforce soon, just like what I did seven years ago.

Seven years ago shortly after I graduated, I had an ex-colleague HK who had lived in quite a few countries. He had spent a couple of years in China and Taiwan. Thus, sometimes he would like to compare the people from these countries with Singaporean. I remembered he used to say something like this: “In China, when you ask a student his plans upon graduation, he would probably says he plans to do postgraduate studies like Masters or Phd. In Taiwan, the student would probably wants to start-up a company. Whereas in Singapore, a typical student would probably says he wanna join an MNC upon graduation.”

I understand there is a bit of generalization here. What H was trying to highlight was the difference in mentality of typical students in these countries. In general, China students are hungrier for knowledge and don’t usually stop at undergraduate level, while Taiwan students have more entrepreneurial spirits. In contrast, a typical Singaporean student seemed to be perfectly contented with a bachelor degree and a stable job in an MNC.

While there is nothing wrong in wanting to work in an MNC, somehow HK felt that something is seriously lacking in our students compared to their overseas counterparts.

“What is that thing which our students lacked?” I asked.

“Directions.” HK replied.

Yes, directions. HK felt that in general, our students didn’t have a clear direction of what they truly want in life, even after they graduated from university. When a Singaporean student replied that he wanted to join an MNC upon graduation, the thing in his mind was probably a decent and stable paycheck and a comfortable lifestyle, rather than ambitions, passions or dreams.

Although I do not want to agree with HK, my encounters with quite a number of fresh graduates had more or less affirmed his observations. Many of these local fresh graduates that I encountered do not really know what they want in their lifes, and the thing I am worried about is that they never seemed to have given a serious thought about it. And as a result, many people make career switches because eventually they found themselves doing something that they do not like.

I do not know how close to reality HK’s observation is, and whether things have changed ever since. If you have just graduated or had been working for a couple of years, have you ever spend some time thinking about what you really want to achieve between now and your retirement? If your answer is no, maybe it’s about time to start thinking. Start thinking, before you turned yourself into a worker ant.

Talking about Fear

2007-04-28T08:02:00.000+08:00

To an entrepreneur, there is always the fear of failure. Before venturing out, one would often ask:

“What if the venture doesn’t reap the benefits that I expected ?”
“How much time should I give myself ?”
“What should I do if the business fails ?”

It is very normal to fear about failure. From young, we had been taught to strive for the best. We are constantly being reminded that it is a very competitive world outside, starting from primary school level. As we grew older, the fear of failure became greater as we had contantly and subconsciously told ourselves that we might not have the time to pick ourselves up after failure. Life has become a never-ending marathon, and once we tripped ourselves, we may find ourselves lagging behind other runners. Far behind. And thus, the feeling of being an underachiever crept in.

We fear for failure because we are unable to accept the feeling of lagging behind others. We feel the obligation to satisfy certain social benchmarks set on us. We feel the need to have a decent pay package at certain age, a car at certain age, and a house at certain age. We feel the need to achieve a certain career status at a certain age. We become more focused on the rewards instead of the journey itself.

As a result, most of us choose to be risk averse and give up our dreams in exchange for a stable paycheck. Seldom have we asked ourselves, is this really the way we want to live our lifes? Is this really the only feasible way of living our lifes? We didn’t ask. Because we fear. Much like a worker ant that fears of taking an alternative path.

Fear is very common. I also have my fear, even now. I fear that my company would not be able to withstand tough competition in the future. Thus, I never stopped enhancing my existing products while thinking of new ones. I fear if one day my company collapsed, I would be left with nothing. Thus, I never stopped thinking of efficient ways to grow my company’s financial and intellectual assets while keeping my operational cost low. As such, fear might not necessarily be a bad thing. It keeps me from falling into my own comfort zone.

Having fear is normal. The closer you are to the reality, the more you feel the fear. There is no way to completely avoid the fear. You just have to overcome it. The important thing is, whether you are already an entrepreneur or aspired to be one, don’t let fear take away all your focus. As only when you look beyond the fear, you can see what you really want in your lifes.

Reasons stopping you from becoming an Entrepreneur

2007-04-20T13:25:00.000+08:00

So, you want to set the world alight, you want to be in control of your own destiny, you want to earn more money and you want to be your own boss. But why are you not an entrepreneur yet? What’s the reasons that are stopping you from becoming an entrepreneur?

1. Lack of capital

For people doing retail or F&B businesses, a lot of upfront capital would be needed for the advanced rentals, renovations, equipments and furnitures. And not forgetting the operational costs which include the monthly rental, salaries, inventories and other advertising expenses. If you are doing capital intensive business, you would probably be facing the problem of lacking capital. One way to overcome is to start small, accumulate enough capital and then expand. Another way would be to find a few sleeping partners to chip in. There are always people who have tens/hundreds of thousands in their bank, wish to invest to earn some passive income, but do not wish to get their hands dirty. Whether you are able to persuade them that your business has high potential would be another question.

2. Heavy commitment

Some people have heavy commitment like cars, house installments, and kids. Well, the only thing I can say is, if you have the intention to be an entrepreneur, then try to manage your personal finance properly. Its like, if you are going for hiking, bring along only the necessities. Don’t stuff a television inside your backpack.

3. No business idea

You want to be an entrepreneur, but you do not know what you want to do? Then I think you’d better go and review why you wanna be an entrepreneur first. Chances are, you do not even know what you want.

4. No business partners

It is not easy to find like-minded business partners. Think about this: Would you still venture out if you can’t find a partner? If not, why? Because you do not have the required skillsets? Or because you are afraid of doing it alone?

There are diffent ways of overcoming this problem. Try to speak to more people, especially people who have experiences in startups.

5. Opportunity cost too high

Well, one of the reasons why many graduates are not venturing out is probably because of high opportunity costs. To give up high paying jobs to pursue a dream or passion that may not succeed seems to be a tall tale in this pragmatic society. Till date, I had sustained an opportunity cost of more than S$120,000. It would be quite demoralizing if you keep looking from this perspective. As I always said, if you really feel strongly about something, a S$1,000,000 opportunity cost is the same as a $10 one. To me, as long as the people around me don’t suffer (financially or emotionally) from my decision, opportunity cost shouldn’t be a stumbling stone.

6. Do not have the required skill sets

Don’t have the required skill sets? You just have to go and acquire it, or find someone who already has it.

*************************************
At the end of the day, you either feel so strongly about something that you would go ahead at all cost, or you just don’t really have enough passions.

Have I left out anything? Yes, it’s the ultimate reason, FEAR. I will talk about it in my next post.

Reasons for becoming an Entrepreneur

2007-04-17T21:27:00.000+08:00

Ever since I started my venture, I had more chances to meet people from all walks of life. I realized quite a lot of people were sick of their jobs and wanted to be their own boss. And I also started to gather the different reasons they gave for wanting to be an entrepreneur. Below is a list of the reasons I gathered (some added by myself):

1. Want to earn more money
2. Frustrated with boss/company
3. Feel un-appreciated / under-recognized by company
4. Have a brilliant idea and want to implement it
5. Want to pursue your own dreams and passions
6. Want to be in control of your own destiny
7. Like the title “entrepreneur”
8. Want to try out your own idea of how a company should be run/managed
9. Want to change the world
10. Saw a business opportunity or a potential market
11. Want to experience being a boss
12. Want to seek new challenge
13. Feel stagnated or disillusioned in present job

Whether you are contemplating about becoming an entrepreneur, or you had already gotten your feet wet, it is always good to review why you wanted or had decided to become an entrepreneur. This is because when you are experiencing bad times, those same reasons can either keep you going or make you quit. My ex-partner K ventured out because of reason (1). After going through almost 1 year without salary, it was quite natural that K wanted to quit.

Another ex-colleague SL ventured out because of reasons (2) and (10). But soon after he quit the company, the business opportunity he saw disappeared and he was left with only reason (2). He didn’t manage to survive more than 5 months.

Another friend H also ventured out because of reasons (10) and (12). He saw a potential market in a particular sector, and he felt it was time to seek new challenge. From what I heard of, he doesn’t seem to be doing very well but he is still trying.

As for me, it’s a combination of (1), (3), (5), (8), (9) and (12). Out of those six reasons, I would say reason (5) is the main reason. And it is the same reason that keeps me going when I am experiencing bad times.

I will write about “Reasons stopping you from becoming an Entrepreneur” in my next post.

Still remember your very first time…..?

2007-04-10T21:32:00.001+08:00

Do you still remember the first time you chat online with strangers ?

It was 1996 then. I was a first year undergraduate, enjoying my first vacation in my university life. I was coding my own home page hosted on Geocities. Back then, all the html and javascript codes were written line by line on Notepad, instead of using application like Frontpage.

I was searching the internet for some cute icons that I can ~~steal~~ reuse and put on my website. Back then, there was no google so I was using a number of search engines like Alta Vista, Lycos, etc simultaneously. And somehow, I navigated to a site called “Alamak Chat”, which was a web-based chat room. Feeling curious, I entered a nickname and logged on to it. Upon logging on, I saw a main screen with quite a number of users chatting. That was actually the first time I entered a chat room. I dared not to chat. I just sit down in front of my PC watching the online conversation on the main channel.

Then suddenly, I saw a small box (or a window? I can’t really remember the details) flashing on my screen, indicating that someone had issued a private chat with me. I opened the window and started my very first online chat with the stranger. The other party was a gal who was three years younger than me and just finished her A levels. We chatted for around an hour. And we continued to chat for the next few days, until she recommended me to use ICQ (I was very suaku then, don’t know what is ICQ), and from then on we switched over to ICQ.

After my new semester started, we continued to correspond via emails and ICQ. And eventually we agreed to meet each other during my one-week term break. We met near my school library because I was a kiasu student and was busy studying during the term break. She was a pretty and petite gal, and was rather quiet. I brought her around the campus, exchanged gifts and then had lunch at the nearby shopping mall.

From then on, we remained in contact regularly via email, phone or ICQ, and went out for movies and dinner quite frequently. We remained as very good friends, though I wasn’t very sure about my actual feelings towards her. Eventually, she went over to Germany for undergraduate studies when she was year two or three in NUS. And slowly, we lost contact with each other.

The last I heard, she was still in Germany. Or maybe she is back in Singapore, I don’t know. I hope she is doing well and living happily. We started as complete strangers, and would probably ended as strangers. But I just wish to say, at some point in my life, I really liked her even though I wasn’t very sure at that point of time. And, wish you a happy birthday and stay happy forever!

Visit to Phase Z.Ro Technopreneur Park

2007-04-06T16:28:00.000+08:00

Went to meet a client somewhere around Dover yesterday. Upon going back, I decided to pop by the Phase Z.Ro Technopreneur Park located near Buona Vista MRT station. The technopreneur park is owned by JTC, and is said to be providing quality incubation space for technology entrepreneurs.

The techno park is actually made up of huge container-converted offices, with a total of two storeys for each container. The units come in 3 sizes: 27sqm, 54 sqm and 108 sqm. Each unit comes with individual aircon, lightings, carpeted flooring and broadband connectivity.

The rental are as follows:
27 sqm - $30/sqm (Net Rental rate) + $4.50/sqm (Service Charge) = $931.50 (Gross Rental per month)
54 sqm - $26.95/sqm (Net Rental rate) + $4.50/sqm (Service Charge) = $1698.30 (Gross Rental per month)
108 sqm - $23.05/sqm (Net Rental rate) + $4.50/sqm (Service Charge) = $2975.50 (Gross Rental per month)

Well, not all companies are “eligible” to apply. To apply for a space at Phase Z.Ro, the company should be:

less than 3 years old
have a turnover of less than S$1 million per year
be involved in technology such as: Information Technology, Software Development, Telecom Technology, Application Service Providers, Internet Content Providers, Networking Technology, Wireless Technology, Technology related to B2C & B2B businesses, Peer-to-Peer technology or Distributed Computing Technology.

Alright, my company seems to be eligible, but I am not looking for an office space yet. Maybe next year, if everything goes well and I get to rope in a few more people, I may need to have an office space. But not now. So why am I visiting the techno park?

One of the reasons is I am quite curious of how this techno park looks and feels like. It claims to be an incubation techno park, and thus I actually expects it to have a vibrant kind of environment. I like the idea of having lots of young startups located within one techno park as it can provide a vibrant environment to stimulate interaction, innovation and creativity between like-minded technopreneurs.

But from what I see, there seemed to be quite a number of vacant office spaces, even though the whole park is not exactly that big. And most of the rest of the offices don’t have people around (Yes, I am a peeping tom). It doesn’t really fit my expectation of a “vibrant work environment for like-minded technopreneurs”. Or did I go at the wrong timing? Even their lobby is empty.

Anyway, let’s take a closer look at the rental rates.
27sqm (290sq ft) - $931.50
54sqm (580sq ft) - $1698.30
108sqm (1162sq ft) - $2975.50

I assumed the broadband connectivity is included in the rentals. But I highly suspect that the individual aircon bills is not included. Ok, let’s ignore the aircon bills and take the above as the gross rental.

I do not really know the rates now, but I know the rates 1-2 years ago as I was looking for office spaces back then. For small offices (200sq ft to 500sq ft), the rates should be between $2/sqft to $3.50/sqft, depending on locations. For larger offices (>1000sqft), the rates will be much lower, around $1.50/sqft.

So let’s say comparing to another office space of 300 sqft, at the rate of $2.50/sqft, the overall rental will be $750. Normally, this would include PUB bills and may or may not include aircon bills. To subscribe for business broadband unlimited, the cheapest rate offered by Singnet is $252/mth (promotional price will be much lower). So ultimately the gross rental plus broadband for a normal office space of 300sqft can be expected to be around $1000 or lower, which is roughly what Phase Z.Ro offers.

Now, let’s consider bigger offices (though startups normally don’t need large offices). For an office space of 1200sq ft, it is quite normal to get a rate of $1.50/sqft or even lower. Taking account a business broadband unlimited rate of $252/mth, the gross rental plus broadband for a normal office space of 1200sqft can be expected to be around $2050 or lower, which is much lower compared to what Phase Z.Ro offers.

This somehow baffles me. I actually expect an incubation techno park to offer a rate much lower than the outside market, since it has such a stringent eligibility criteria and it positions itself as an incubator. But from what I see, the price isn’t that competitive. This may be the reason why it is not attracting lots of technology startups to create a vibrant techno park environment.

We need to know that, not all startups can secure fundings from venture capitalists, and this is especially true in Singapore where many of the venture capitalists come from traditional business background and may not have the knowledge or familiarity to invest in high tech startups. Moreover, most startups will need to invest time and resources into R&D before it starts to collect revenue. Thus, from the view of a cash-strapped startup, the attractions of Phase Z.Ro isn’t that great, even though I personally would like to see such a incubation techno park to succeed.

Bug Fix or Feature Upgrade ?

2007-03-24T00:51:00.000+08:00

I run a software company. Prior to that, I worked as a software engineer. Throughout my life as a software professional, I had always felt that it is the obligation of the company that produced the software to fix any bugs that prevent it from behaving the way it supposed to. Totally free of charge. That is what we called, Bug Fix.

On the other hand, software is often upgraded to provide new and better features. For example, Microsoft upgraded MS Office from 95 to 97, and then to 2000, and so on. Since the upgraded version has more features, it’s only right that the customers have to pay for them. If the customer feels that he doesn’t need the new features, he can choose not to upgrade the software and it will not affect the performance of the current one. That is what we called feature upgrade, which is different from bug fix.

The reason why I am talking about the difference between bug fix and feature upgrade here, is because of a sight that I had seen which hovers around my mind for quite a while. I lived in an old flat which does not have a lift that service every floor. One fine day, after my morning run, I saw an old man climbing down the stairs with his crutches. Slowly, step by step, he finally reached the ground floor. A feat that most of us could do easily, but probably a daily challenge for the old man.

I started to ponder, if we have a lift that service every floor, it would actually do a lot of good to people like the old man that I had seen. People who are old, sick or handicapped. People who have difficulties in climbing up and down the stairs. To these people, lift upgrading is not a luxury, but a neccessity.

And that brings me to further think about whether lift upgrading should be considered as a feature upgrade, or a bug fix. Flats are built for Singaporeans to have a home of their own. Singaporeans, including the old, sick and handicapped. And the basic functionalities that one should expect from a home, is not only the four walls and a roof, but also its accessibility.

If any people who lived in a flat has difficulty in stepping out of his house because of the inherent design of the flat, I would view it as a bug that prevents the product (flat) from behaving the way it supposed to. A bug which the company has the obligation to fix, free of charge.

So, lift upgrading is actually different from other fanciful upgrading carrots like playgrounds, sheltered pathways, additional storeroom or tennis courts. The latter are, what I called, features upgrade. They provide new features for your house and neighbourhood. If you opt for them, it is natural that you need to pay. But the former (lift upgrading), should not be lumped together as features upgrade. It should be seen as a bug that needs to be fixed, ASAP.

And I understand that, there are quite a handful of flats throughout the island that need such a bug fixed. But yet, we are required to pay for this bug to be fixed. Worse still, even if people are willing to pay, they may not get the bug fixed just because they lived in certain parts of the island.

Politics is dirty. And I know that. In politics, dangling carrots is one of the lethal weapons to win the battle. But we are talking about real people with real problems here. They are Singaporeans. They are humans. They are one of us. You may have win the battle. But are you prepared to lose the hearts?

How’s your typical day like?

2007-03-21T23:22:00.000+08:00

A friend CY recently posed this question to me. He was interested to know, since I had ventured out for two years, how is a typical day of an entrepreneur like?

I wanted to give a straightforward answer, but found that it wasn’t that straightforward. I had worked in MNC and GLC as software engineer before I ventured out. My typical day in MNC is something like this: Every morning at about 9am, I arrived at the R&D centre of the company. I went to my desk, switched on my PC, checked my email and then open my compiler to start coding. Other than occasional pantry visits and some very rare meetings, the most part of my time in the MNC was spent in front of the PC doing programming stuffs. Seemed boring to some, but actually I quite enjoyed my job there.

My typical day in GLC was a bit more exciting. Other than doing software design and development work, I was also involved in other miscellaneous stuffs like training other engineers, doing some feasibility studies, attending stupid meetings with clueless superiors and customers, lots of documentation, etc. And sometimes I would need to go to customer site to do some integration testing. But overall, I would say 80% of my time in the GLC was still doing technical stuffs like software design and development.

However, being an entrepreneur is quite different. I had to take on different roles at different times due to the scarcity of resources. When I am doing software design and development, I am a software architect cum programmer all-in-one. When I am doing research on new technologies, I am an R&D scientist and Chief Technology Officer. When I am devising the marketing strategy for my products, I am a marketing director. When I meet up with advertiser, I am a marketing executive. When I discuss ad-hoc projects with other companies’ decision makers, I am the CEO. When I do sales demo, I am the sales manager.

So there is actually no typical day for me as an entrepreneur. Normally, I would pre-plan my work-load for the week, and then plan my daily schedule. So my role for the day would depend on how my schedule is like. When I am not doing sales or meeting any customers, I would normally bring my laptop to some public places with air-con and internet access, and do my work there. If my work that day requires multiple PCs or devices like printer / scanner, then I would probably stayed at home. Of course, when I feel that I need to take a break, I would do so and probably do some light stuffs or spend my day walking around or reading some books in a bookshop.

Some of my friends are quite envy of this kind of life-style. Some even thought that I should be rather free, since my products are already developed and all I have to do is to sell them. Sometimes I wonder, do I look so free to them or do I make entrepreneurship looks so simple to them?

So, how’s your typical day like?

Learn how to piss off your Customers

2007-03-06T17:39:00.000+08:00

Last month, I received a mail from my ISP (Internet Service Provider), inviting me to recontract my broadband account. Since the monthly subscription would be lower, I decided to recontract for another 12 months.

According to the mail, I need to go to their website to perform the necessary procedure. So I logged on to the site, indicated my choices, submitted all required information, and clicked the button to submit. That’s the beginning of my nightmare.

Oh no, there’s some mysterious errors encountered which they (my ISP) deemed too confidential to reveal to a normal customer like me. The only ‘useful’ information in their error page is “Please call XXXX for assistance”.

Being a typical kiasu singaporean, I assumed I must have done something wrong during the recontract process. Nevermind, let’s repeat the process again, carefully. Oops, the same mysterious error came out.

Alright, being a well-trained engineer, maybe I should try to isolate the problem by changing the variables. I tried on different PC, used different web browser and used different internet connections. And I got the same mysterious error.

So, finally convinced that it wasn’t my fault, I called the number indicated on the error page for assistance.

“Welcome to Blah Blah Blah. For existing subscriber, please enter the phone number blah blah blah….For new customer, please blah blah blah…….”

I entered the phone number for my broadband account.

“For sales and product information, please press 1. For add-on services like email anti-spamming, virus scanning, blah blah blah, please press 2. For blah blah blah, please press 3. Blah Blah Blah…….For other enquires, please press 0.”

I pressed zero.

“Please wait for our operators to attend to you shortly.” Followed by some music.

So I wait.

“Sorry all our operators are currently engaged. Please wait blah blah blah…” Music started again.

I wait again.

“Sorry all our operators are currently engaged. Please wait blah blah blah…” Music started again.

I continue to wait.

“Sorry all our operators are currently engaged. Please wait blah blah blah…” Music started again.

I hanged up.

Getting fed up, I packed my stuffs and went to the nearest shop of my ISP. I told the person at the counter I wished to recontract my broadband account. To my horror, he told me that they don’t perform recontract here and asked me to use the internet instead.

Hey, I tried the internet and got some mysterious top secret error that nobody knows how to decipher. I called your hotline but apparently it is so hot that not a single operator is free to answer my query. Now I came down physically to your shop and you are telling me that you don’t do recontract here? The worse thing is, you asked me to try using the internet. Am I playing some merry-go-round here?

Finally, he led me to another counter and the staff there is so kind to take down my account particulars. He told me the particulars would be sent to the department handling recontract stuffs and I would receive a call from them for confirmation within 2 working days.

I waited for more than 7 working days.

Pissed off, I tried my luck using the internet approach, yet again. The error is more stubborn than me.

I called the number again for assistance. Alas, after some waiting, finally there’s some kind-hearted operator willing to answer my call. So I related my problems to the operator, and she yet again took down my particulars.

“I would pass your particulars to the people in-charge. They would call you back for the recontract.”

“So approximately when would they call me back ?”

“Around two working days.”

Motivation of an entrepreneur

2007-03-06T12:33:00.000+08:00

Seems like I haven’t been blogging for quite some time. Actually there are quite a few things going on my mind that I wanted to blog about, but somehow I just couldn’t get my engine started. Maybe I had been too busy with my company lately, or maybe due to the lack of motivation to blog.

Anyway, went for lunch with a few ex-colleagues the other day. One of them, Nk, had just resigned and so it was sort of a farewell lunch for him. I happened to be meeting my clients in the vicinity and so I just joined in. Most of them were quite surprised to see me, as afterall I had left my ex-company for almost two years and wasn’t in contact with most of them. And apparently, they didn’t know that I had set up my own company and looked quite amazed when I told them so.

So during the lunch, one of my ex-colleagues TL asked me what’s my main reason/motivation for striking out on my own. Is it for earning more money, or is it for self-satisfaction, or some other reasons?

I replied that it wasn’t for the money. In fact, if anyone wanted to become an entrepreneur just for the sake of earning more money, I would discourage him to do so.

Firstly, the failure rate of entrepreneurs are much higher than the success rate. And the consequences of failure are rather harsh – depletion of savings, debts, opportunity costs, and the perception of becoming a failure. I had seen far more failed cases than success ones.

Secondly, even if you are able to sustain your company for a few years, you will not necessarily be earning more than your previous job. Especially if you are in a professional or managerial position before you ventured out.

Thirdly, the amount of stress and uncertainties faced by an entrepreneur is beyond one’s imagination. Resources are scarce, especially when you did not secure any funding from venture capitalists. The fear of failure will accompany you throughout the first few years. And the further you go, the more you feared for failure, because it would be very difficult for you to turn back and become an employee again.

Fourthly, you would most probably need to put in a lot more hardwork than before. So to put it simply, it would be much more physically demanding than before. Sooner or later, you would start to ask yourself, is it worthwhile to endure all these physical and mental stress and yet not earning significantly more than your previous job?

So, if money is your only motivating factor, there is a very high chance that you would eventually quit. Even if you managed to sustain for a while, you will probably be feeling unhappy because the amount of stress and sacrifice overwhelm the amount of monetary benefits you may be getting. Because there is no passion. If you do not have enough passion in what you are doing, you can’t expect to go far. If you do not have dreams that you yearned to fullfil, you would eventually collapse.

I did not elaborate much during the lunch. I just said that it is for my passion and dreams. No amount of money can retain me two years ago, and no amount of money can make me turn back now.

My ex-colleagues, mostly in managerial or team leader roles, seemed to be quite envious of my “carefree” entrepreneur way of life. I do not have to report to any bosses, do not have to attend stupid meetings and wayang in front of top management, have more freedom than before and is able to dictate my company’s direction. All these are very attractive, especially to people in junior or middle management. But would any of them venture out? I don’t think so, because they had not yet overcome their fear.

What's happen to Blogger?

2007-02-20T08:18:00.000+08:00

Don't know what's happening to Blogger nowadays? My latest post wasn't updated, template loaded wrongly, now even cannot comment on others' blogs! Things are getting worse ever since I switched over to the new Blogger account....Let's see whether this post get published correctly.

P/S: Seems ok now. Perhaps there were too many blogs queueing for updates during the Chinsese New Year period such that the Blogger server lagged severely. Anyway, it is a free service so I don't really have any complaints.

Singapore Budget 2007: From an entrepreneur’s point of view

2007-02-19T15:14:00.000+08:00

There are a few areas in the Singapore Budget 2007 that have direct effects on me and my company. I shall address them in this post. And when I have time, I shall write about other aspects of the Budget which I am interested in but not directly affecting me.

For information of the full Singapore Budget 2007, please visit this link.

Reduction of Corporate Tax from 20% to 18%

That’s certainly good news for me and all business owners that are liable for corporate tax, though it should have greater effects on large companies. For small companies like mine, where the chargeable income is not that high, the effect isn’t that obvious. Nevertheless, still a welcome move from the government.

Removal of YA2009 expiry date for full tax exemption

Now, that’s the one that has a greater impact on future startups. Start-ups currently enjoy full tax exemption on the first $100,000 of their chargeable income for each of their first three years of assessment between YA2005 and YA2009. Removal of the expiry date indicates that all future startups that meet the criteria shall enjoy full tax exemptions for their first three years.

However, there’s still a little suggestion that I wish to make. Very often, startups do not have much profits or are making losses in their first few years. Considering a startup that is making losses for its first 3 years and only manage to obtain some profits on the forth year, the current tax exemption scheme will not serve any help to them.

Also, for startups that do not make much profits in the first 3 years, they will not be able to take full advantage of the tax exemptions. So, instead of rigidly stick to exactly S$100,000 for each of the first three YAs, maybe we can have something like this:

Total combined tax exemption of up to S$300,000 for the first 5 years of assessments. Startups can choose when to utilize the tax exemption within the first 5 years, and how much to utilize for each of the year of assessment. Let say, the chargeable income of company A is S$40,000 for the first YA, the director can choose to utilize S$40,000 of the tax exemption his company is entitled to, and leave S$260,000 for the next 4 years. If a company is making losses for the first two YAs, he still have the full S$300,000 tax exemptions to utilize for his next 3 years.
I do not know how difficult it would be to implement the above suggestion, but at least I feel that it is more flexible and caters more to the needs of startups, without exceeding the limits of the original tax exemption scheme.
GST increase from 5% to 7%

Currently, my company does not register for GST. But, my suppliers do. As such, the operation cost of my company will inevitably increase since I will have to absorb more GST. Hopefully, the corporate tax reduction is enough to cover for the loss.

Alright, that’s about those that have direct impacts on me. The SME rebates on CPF contributions do not affect my company at the moment, but may have some implications in future. However, it is rather insignificant compared to the above three areas.

Random Thoughts

2007-02-11T14:39:00.000+08:00

About a year ago, I had a chat with a business associate NC. That was during the time when everything in the world seemed to be against me. I had a lot of uncertainties then, and was quite undecided on whether to continue the business or not. I remembered NC commented that in business, one had to be ruthless. Apparently, he made that comment because his competitors (some big GLC companies) used some underhanded means to ~~snatch~~ win a deal from his company.

I was very naïve then. I replied that I still wasn’t sure whether I am suitable to be an entrepreneur, and whether I am really equipped to survive the coldness of the business world. I thought to myself, maybe I would just take a step at a time, and if I eventually had to go against my principle, then I would probably go back to the lab to do academic researches.

One year pass-by. I am still very naïve. I still believe one need not play politics in order to survive as an entrepreneur. I believe, in creating a better world through innovation. I believe, in passions and dreams, not money, as the motivating factor. All these, despite I had experienced betrayal, lies and setbacks. And despite the fact that I had almost drowned myself in the swamp of depression.

All because, I still see the goodness in people. For every bad thing you encountered, there probably lies a sincere smile in some other corner. Life is a test of character. No matter which path you choose, it probably would not be a smooth sail. But every time you tamed a storm, you become stronger. And only by becoming stronger, you can continue to stand by your principle, to make changes and to help the rest in braving the storms in their lifes.

NTU lecturer shares funny teaching feedback survey results

2007-01-27T18:02:00.000+08:00

I miss my university days ......

Quote of the Day

2007-01-17T12:11:00.000+08:00

I like the above quote from Mark Twain. I guess it sums up the sentiments of many entrepreneurs. In fact, the same can be said about scientists, artists, musicians, and a whole lot of people who dare to pursue their dreams and passions in this materialistic world.

Year 2007 Resolutions

2007-01-11T09:20:00.000+08:00

I realised that I did not achieve any of my resolutions last year. In fact, I had never achieved more than 50% of any new year resolutions that I had set for the past decades. One reason may be because I am sort of a perfectionist and I tend to set a rather high target for myself. Or, I am simply not hard-working enough.

So this time round, I shall write down some of my new year resolutions (not in any order) so that I can review them by end of the year:

1. Reduce my weight to around 72 kg

That’s my weight around 10 years ago, when I was able to run 2.4km under 10 minutes and complete SOC within 8 min 30 seconds. I don’t expect to reach the same level of fitness, but at least I hoped to attain a similar physique. Should be achievable if I stick to my work-out schedule of 3-times-weekly 3-km jog plus a weekly gym work-out.

2. Obtain my driving license

Had been postponing this for far too long. Better to settle it once and for all.

3. Build up my company’s cash capital to S$XXX,XXX.

Without enough reserves, I wouldn’t feel comfortable to grow my company. My target for this year would be to build up as much financial and intellectual assets as possible for future expansions.

4. Steadily grow my personal asssets

My personal bank account had been drastically reduced for the past two years. Its about time to build it up again.

5. More contribution to the online programming community

Had been a member of this online programming community for several years, but wasn’t as active for quite some time. Will try to allocate more time to it. It makes me happy when I am able to help new programmers with their problems.

6. Continue learning

There are so many things to learn. Technologies, financial, economics, marketing, philosophy, psychology, literature, etc. Not all are directly useful to my company or closely related to any income-generating avenues, but that shouldn’t be the way to judge the usefulness of any knowledge.

7. More involvement in voluntary works.

Something that I had (shamefully) neglected for the past few years. Had been an active SPCA volunteer during my university days, but ever since I started working, I had become less involved in these voluntary works. Busy is just a convenient excuse.

Though I had donated more money compared to my school days, I would somehow consider that as “Convenient Charity”, that is, giving out some spare money to charities (or some poor families) to make oneself feel better. Sure it is better than nothing. But if I can do a little more than just donating money, why not contribute my bit to a better world?

8. Be a vegetarian for once a week.

I loves to eat. But sometimes I can’t help feeling bad when eating the meat of other animals (Btw, I am not a Budhist). So I think, why not start from being a vegetarian for once a week?

Alright, that’s all. I shall come back to this post by end of the year to do a self-apraisal.

Reflections for Year 2006

2007-01-09T12:20:00.000+08:00

I would start the first post of the year with some reflections on year 2006, followed by my year 2007 resolutions.

Time really flies. In one month’s time, I will be celebrating my private limited’s one-year anniversary. After all the ups and downs, I had become more determined and focused on the path I had chosen. Till date, I had been wandering in the uncharted waters for more than 21 months (including the partnership period). The slight feeling of loneliness, fear and uncertainties still hovers around, though I had somehow grown accustom to it.

Looking back, there are of course a lot of things that I think I should have done better. I had wasted too much time during my “depression” period. I thought I was well-prepared for venturing out, but eventually I realized there are so much things I needed to learn. I should have learnt more about marketing before I designed the product. I should have know more about SEO before deciding the design of my company website. But if anyone asked me whether I regret my decision to start-up my company, my answer at any point of the time is a firm ‘no’.

Life is just too short to have regrets. I always think that I am very fortunate to be able to receive education and eventually go into university. My university education and the subsequent work experiences helped to build up the foundation for my present venture. Compared to my father, who only managed to have 3 years of formal education because of financial problems, I am much more fortunate. My father told me that he used to top his class, but was unable to continue his studies because he needed to go out for work.

So, instead of whining about how unfair life is when faced with obstacles, I would rather spend more time to work out a solution. Life is never fair, but how you look at it depends on who you compare yourself with. I am fortunate enough to have the chance to choose the path I wanted. A lot of the older generation didn’t even have the chance.

Some interesting Links…

2006-12-28T12:43:00.000+08:00

Found some interesting articles about entrepreneurship:

The Million Dollar Question for Singapore: What’s holding back our entrepreneurs?

Interview with Guy Kawasaki

Quoting from the above interview (in case some are too busy to click the link) :

I: What do you see as the biggest difference between the United States and Singapore in terms of inculcating entrepreneurship? What do you think the local environment lacks?

Kawasaki: Singapore has based its educational system on the expectation that its graduates will work for the government or multinational corporations (MNCs), neither of which prepares one for entrepreneurship. In America, if you work for a large company for a long time, people ask why. In Singapore, if people leave a large company, people ask why. This is a huge difference.

I: Does the small population base in Singapore serve as a barrier to success in entrepreneurship?

Kawasaki: From day one, Singaporeans have to think "international" because a population of three to four million people does not provide a large enough market. Israel proved that this can work. It has clearly created great technology that has been exported around the world. Israel has five million people, six million entrepreneurs, and fifteen million opinions. Singapore has five million people, six entrepreneurs, and one opinion.

If Israel can do it, why can't Singapore? It will take changes in social conventions. If Singaporeans are raised to think that the best people work in government, education and large companies, change will be slow. Singapore needs a few technology entrepreneur heroes - for instance Creative Technology's Sim Wong Hoo.

I: Does making money figure very highly in motivating someone to become an entrepreneur?

Kawasaki: Contrary to popular belief, it's not the most important motivation. Money is one of the natural outcomes for successful companies, but it's very seldom the original and central goal.

If you are not too busy, do go and read the full articles.
Wish all a Happy New Year and hope we live a more fulfilling life in 2007!

Looking Back 5: Rise from the ashes (Year 2006 – The Transition Year )

2006-12-17T19:20:00.000+08:00

A series of setbacks hit me during the start of the year. Firstly, my uncle (my mother’s elder brother) who was living with us passed away during mid January. He was quite close to me and basically treated me like a son. Weeks before his death, he had been in and out of the hospital and needed to rely on the portable oxygen concentrater. It was really painful to see him suffering and it had been a physically and emotionally stressful period to me.

At about the same time, my partner K decided to withdraw from our partnership and went back to his previous company. And he wanted to take back his initial capital plus some more amount for the work he had done. So eventually, I paid him an amount out of my own pocket for his withdrawal, despite the fact that the business was not doing well and our company account was already depleted.

So the partnership became a sole-proprietorship at early February. I looked at the loads of problems stacked in front of me:

Company bank account was depleted to only S$500++.
The lack of sales for the past few months.
In addition to product R&D, I will have to take care of admin, sales and marketing stuffs in future, which I had no prior experience on.
Problems from existing customers: Complaining and demanding for new features but unwilling to pay for it; Bad debts from some clients.
No income for the past 11 months. Personal bank account was decreasing drastically.

I had no confident to carry on. I wasn't prepared to run a company on my own. Quite a number of my friends advised me to terminate the business and find a new job. But I was very reluctant to just end it this way, as I had put in so much effort in the business. Most importantly, I still believed in my passion and dreams.

So I tried to write out a business plan, and along with my product, I approached some of my friends and ex-colleagues for investment. After a few unsuccessful attempts, I finally convinced 2 of my friends to invest in my company as sleeping partners. Though the total amount gathered wasn’t a lot, it was enough to sustain my company’s operation for quite a while. I terminated the original sole-proprietor business and incorporated a new pte ltd company with my new shareholders, with myself as the sole director.

To prevent my personal account from further depletion, I decided to draw a monthly allowance to partially cover my own expenses. I learnt to take over the admin stuffs and tried to service my existing customers’ demands by enhancing my product’s features.

Then during mid March, I was informed by the building management of my office that they will not renew the lease of all the offices in the building. I needed to move out of my office by end of May. Since my company was an OMO (One-Man-Operation), I felt that there was actually no need to find a new office. What initially seemed to be a bad news (losing my office) may turn out to be a blessing in disguise. Without an office, I would be able to cut down quite a bit of my monthly operational cost. The compensation I received more than covered for the cost of registering a virtual office, reprinting of letterheads and engaging transportation for moving my office furnitures (to my friend’s house).

But the sales remained poor and there was a period of time when I begin to question my decision to carry on the business. I started to think whether I should get a full-time job and do my business part-time, or simply terminate it. Gradually, I started to lose confidence and hide myself in my bedroom like an ostrich. I would just switch my handphone to silent mode, refusing to take any phone calls or emails. I was feeling extremely tired….physically, mentally, emotionally. There’s a voice inside me screaming, “I need a rest, I need a rest, I need a rest….”

Then came July, I finally felt that I needed to brace up. I began to read up on marketing stuffs and decided to re-position my product. I carried on enhancing my product according to the new positioning, and created a few different editions out of it. I reviewed the original price list and made some modifications. I thought of more effective ways to do sales presentations. As a result, I had more enquiries and managed to close some sales. I started to regain some confidence and believed that I can do sales and marketing, better than K previously did.

As the end of the year was approaching, my company had managed to accumulate some profit and this somehow had given me the confidence to carry on. Looking back, I had learnt to overcome my fears and adapt myself to changes. And most importantly, I had learnt to enjoy the path I had chosen.

SOHO, or DOMO?

2006-12-07T15:06:00.000+08:00

Several years ago, the term SOHO was sort of a buzz word. In case anyone doesn’t know, SOHO stands for Small Office Home Office. For more information of SOHO, one can refer to here .

Quoting from the above link:

“The 36 hour or 48 hour cycles of much of software development has led many practitioners in this domain to do their work in home offices given the difficulty of the traditional business world to adapt its 'normal' hours to some of the more extreme needs of software engineering.

Technology has also created a demand for larger businesses to employ individuals who work from home. (See also Homesourcing) Sometimes these people remain as an independent businessperson, and sometimes they actually become employees of a larger company.”

I am in the software line. But personally, I don’t like to work from home, because of the following reasons:

In Singapore, there are certain months that the temperature is extremely hot especially during daytime. To turn-on my air-con for these days would drive my PUB bills up drastically.
There are simply too much distractions for me to work at home. The television, fridge, etc are the main culprits.
My neighbour’s childrens keep running around the corridor, causing further noise polution.
To me, staying at home over a long period of time isn’t good for my morale. Somehow I will feel isolated from the society or even get into depression.

But too, I don’t like the idea of having to report to the office everyday just for the sake of showing people (superiors) that I am alive (and working). I believe that people are productive at different times, and productivity is subjected to external parameters such as the weather, health, mood, environment, etc. I guessed most of us have the experience whereby we are just not in the mood to work but yet we have to stay in the office acting busy and not doing much productive work. So to me, the end result is more important than ‘showing face’ in the office. If you feel that you are not in the mood to work today, then by all means go and have a good rest or do anything that you like. As long as you can deliver the results on time, I don’t really care about the rest. So that is my little philosophy and I planned to inculcate it into my own company culture.

And thus, I invented a new term called “DOMO”, which stands for Dynamic Office Mobile Office. So basically, I would encourage my (future) employees to work from anywhere, at anytime. For me, as long as I have my laptop with me, I can work at any convenient (and comfortable) places. I can even do my work while waiting for my friends at MRT station or cafe. So effectively, the concept of work doesn’t exist because it is fully integrated into your lifestyle. Wanna watch a movie in the afternoon? No problem, as long as you have or are confident to deliver your result on time. Feeling more productive at night? Then maximize your productivity by doing your work at night. In a nutshell, you work at your own pace and be in full control of your life. Of course, the prerequisite is that you must love and have passion on what you are doing, and have enough self-discipline.

So do I need a physical office? If possible, I would still like to have a physical office. But it would not be a traditional one. It would more like an internet café. A place where staffs can brainstorm ideas as well as chill out. A place where you don’t have to force yourself to go every morning, to wayang. A place where you can have a sense of belonging. A place where like-minded and passionate people get together with dreams to rock the world!

So can I realize this little dream of my own? I believe, I can.

Looking Back 4: Setting Sail (Year 2005 – The Orientation Year)

2006-11-28T20:25:00.000+08:00

So on April 2005, I finally ventured out full-time. K and I had registered a partnership business, and we rented a small office at the east side. I felt fresh and enthusiastic, just like how I felt when I first graduated. I enjoyed the freedom of an entrepreneur’s life. In fact, I could work 7 days a week without feeling tired.

During the first few months, I focused on the development of the product while K did some marketing and packaging materials. I managed to release the first version of the product by early June and proceed to do some enhancements. K launched a minor marketing campaign on July and we got our first deal on August. Till then, everything seemed to be going well although we did not take any salaries.

The next few months, I continued with the enhancements of the product and did some occasional proposals for some ad-hoc projects. We had closed a few deals but because we sold our products mostly at discounted prices, we did not really earn much revenue. In fact, our revenue couldn’t cover our expenses and as a result, our company’s bank account kept decreasing. By November, our company bank account dropped from an initial S$10,000 to slightly over S$1000. We did not have a single deal in November and December, and our account dropped to a danger level at around S$500+.

At that point of time, we started to feel a bit demoralized. We knew it wasn’t easy but we did not expect to be that hard. K started to blame our product, and wanted me to look into developing other products. But I felt that we had spent so much time and effort on our product that it made no sense to just switch to other product. Developing a new product would take more time and would not guarantee success also. Moreover, I still believed in the potential and value of our pioneer product.

During December, K told me he had some personal problems and requested to take a break. He did not come to office for most part of the month. I had a premonition that K might wanna quit. I started to take over some of K’s roles in anticipation of what might eventually happened. I started to ask myself questions, when I looked out of the window of my lonely little office.

Should I continue if K decided to quit?
How much longer can I sustain the company?
What should I do to sustain and eventually grow the company?
Should I get a full-time job too, and carry on the business part-time?

I had no answers then. The year ended with the future looking bleak.

Looking Back 3: My Resignation

2006-11-17T14:46:00.000+08:00

It was January 2005. According to the plan, I should have finished with the development of the product and be ready to release the first version. But unfortunately things don’t always go as expected. Doing part-time product development was more tedious than I expected, and I only managed to finish about 20% of the product. My partner K’s idea was to release the product before we resigned, so that we can have a “smooth” transition. But at the rate of my part-time development, this was quite impossible.

So I decided to tender my resignation on 31st Jan 2005 so that I can go into full-time development of my product as soon as possible. I wasn’t in the mood to do anything useful that day. The only thing in my mind was how and when to tender. Time seemed to passby very slowly. I waited till after office hours, as I knew my manager T often worked quite late and hopefully other colleagues would have left by then. I had been thinking about how would T react at my resignation. Although I was very firm about my decision, the execution wasn’t without any hesitation. Afterall, leaving the familiar environment that I had been working in for several years wasn’t easy.

I went over to T’s office at around 7pm. There was still some other colleagues around, so I asked T to come over to the laboratory that I worked in. At the lab, I handed my resignation letter to T. He was rather surprised and asked for my reasons. I told T that I planned to setup my own company. And I told him about certain push factors that contributed to my decision. I told him that as a technically-inclined person, my future was rather bleak in this company. I foresee myself to be in his position several years down the road, doing management & administrative stuffs that I had absolutely no interest in, if I remained in this company. And lastly, I asked T : “Do you really enjoyed your job?” T sighed and said, “What do you think? If only I had your courage ten years ago…”

T was able to fully understand what I wanted, and wished me good luck in my future endeavour. T is an interesting person to work with. He is what I called an “accidental manager”, as he was an engineer for years before being promoted to a manager, pretty much against his wishes. It is quite obvious that an engineer and a manager requires very different skillsets, and a good engineer not necessarily can become a good manager, and vice versa. T can be considered as a competent engineer, but he is never a successful manager. And I meant that as a compliment, not a criticism.

A Stroll at Vivocity

2006-11-14T18:50:00.000+08:00

Went to the much-hyped vivocity yesterday morning. There are more shops and restaurant now compared to my last visit some time last month. My main purpose is to take a look at MV Doulos, the oldest active ocean-going passenger ship. They have a bookshop onboard the ship which sells books at a low price, which is in line with their aim of “bringing knowlegde, help and hope to the people of the world”.

The “book shop” is actually a tentage setup at the deck, and it is rather warm inside. From what I see, most of the books are for children or about christianity. Though I do not find any books that suits me, I would still recommend a visit to MV Doulos if you have the time.

Customer Satisfaction == My Satisfaction

2006-11-13T20:34:00.000+08:00

Went to visit an old customer last friday. They had bought a new server and requested me to assist in porting my software from their old server to the new one. Their director showed me how they used my software to integrate with their back-end databases to provide some new services to their customers. He seemed very happy with the whole system and commented that this was a “success story”, and said that I can use their company as a reference.

Upon leaving, I was feeling very happy. Not because that I can use their company as a reference (I don’t normally do that), but because of the satisfaction of seeing my product being appreciated by the customers. It is this satisfaction that gives me the energy to carry on when things aren’t going too well.

Looking Back 2: Planning my second voyage

2006-11-07T07:48:00.000+08:00

My initial voyage suffered a prematured failure at around Dec 2003. KY was posted overseas but I still maintained contact with him via email. I tried to bring out the topic of continuing our business venture but he seemed totally uninterested. So I started to ~~desperately~~ actively look for another business partner.

During the first half year of 2004, I was promoted to senior engineer and tasked to lead a new project. The new role and responsibilities somehow kept me busy enough to stop thinking about any business venture. Then came July, I had a chat with my colleague K from customer service department. Apparently, he was quite unhappy with the increments these few years and was looking for other opportunities. Quite obviously, our topic started to shift towards the possibilities of having a business venture together. We had a few talks after that, and eventually we decided to create a product and setup a company together.

This time round, I was quite confident of the product we had thought of. There wasn’t many similar products in the market and most of them had serious flaws. The possible market segments were rather untapped at that moment. So I started writing the requirements specification and software design, while K took care of the administrative stuffs like name cards, letter-heads, company stamps, brochures and packaging.

My target was to finish the development and release the first version by January 2005, and then quit my job to concentrate full-time on my own company. I would have 2 months notice period to fully hand-over my job, so the earliest I can leave would be around end of March 2005. I was very determined about this venture as I knew I wasn’t getting any younger and there wasn’t many chances I can afford to slip by.

A lighter schedule

2006-11-03T21:20:00.000+08:00

Having deployed two systems in this week and worked throughout Wednesday night, I decided to have a lighter schedule today. Met an ex-colleague H for lunch. Apparently H just resigned and most probably gonna set up a company. And H was quite interested in my product so we may work out something together in future. H told me about his business idea, but it seemed to me that it is rather general. I am actually expecting a more concrete business plan, but all he mentioned was just a general idea of the kind of business he wanted to do and how big the targeted market is. Well, it is too early to say whether H can succeed or not. Or eventually he may decided not to setup company at all. I had seen quite a number of failure cases due to lack of proper planning. I believed H has some business development experiences which may come useful, but being an entrepreneur needs much more than that.

After the lunch, I went to the library to do some leisure reading and surfing, before going to the gym for some work-out. There wasn’t a lot of people in the gym, because it was still within office hours. Guess that’s one benefit of being one’s own boss: more freedom in time management.

Looking Back 1: My Initial Voyage

2006-11-01T21:56:00.000+08:00

When the decision was made on August 2003 to venture out, the first thing that struck my mind was: Find one or more business partners. I did not have the courage or know-hows to venture out alone then. I found my university coursemate KY, and after some lengthy persuasion he finally decided to join me. Then, we carried out several meetings outside our normal working hours to discuss what to do. Since we did not really have any great business ideas, I suggested that we shall take up projects part-time while still holding on to our full-time jobs. Any revenues that we earned shall be placed into a joint account. By the time this account accummulated enough capital, we most probably would also have a considerable customer base and we can venture out full-time.

At the first thought, this idea seems brilliant and risk-free. I have the technical know-hows while KY has the industrial contacts. However, after several months, we were unable to clinch any deals although we sent out proposals and tried to lower our price. I had even developed prototypes of systems that the customers required. After a while, KY seemed discouraged and lost the initial enthusiasm. Eventually, by the end of the year, KY was posted overseas by his company and our short partnership ended abruptly.

I figured that, this initial short voyage failed mainly because we did not have a clear direction and were rather half-hearted in the business. As we were both engineers, most of the time we were so tied up with our full-time jobs that we did not really have spare time to think about our business. And KY was actually rather afraid to take risk and preferred to be in his comfort zone. But I wasn’t prepared to give up just like that and went on to plan for my second voyage.

Why I take the path less travelled? (Part II)

2006-10-31T14:23:00.000+08:00

After I left my first company, I choose to join a GLC subsidiary. Till today, I can’t really say whether that’s a good or bad decision, but surely it’s an ill-informed one. Well, during the interview, I was told that I will be in-charge of a certain project that is graphics intensive. I was thinking, “Wow, I would be in-charge of designing and developing a project of such considerable scale. That would be quite a breakthrough for me as I had been assuming a team player role in my previous company.” But it turn out that, their understanding of “in-charge” is quite different from mine. I was tasked to “maintain” the software that is already developed and delivered by some foreign company. That is, if there is any minor modification required, I would be expected to do it. If the manager or customers wanted to know anything about the software, I would be expected to answer it. But no design and development is needed from me. And that was not what I really wanted.

Anyway, throughout my stint in the GLC, I did eventually get my chance to do software development. And since the company frequently worked with foreign companies, I did have the opportunities to interact with developers of other nationalities and learnt the various software designs and programming techniques from the source codes that I had access to. And one thing I realised about the difference between foreign companies and local/GLC companies, is that foreign companies invested a lot into their R&D and had genuine concerns about building up their own technological assets and capabilities, while local/GLC firms are normally more business-oriented and concerned more about short term gains. Well, of course there are exceptions and that’s just my own little observations.

There was one incident that really triggered me into thinking about my future in that company. There was a mass promotion and several of my colleagues were promoted to senior engineers. But I wasn’t in the list. I was told that it was because I did not join the company long enough (less than 3 years), though my performances were far better than others. But considering the fact that some of my colleagues joined as fresh graduates while I joined from another company, my total years of experiences were actually not less than them. Furthermore, what’s happening to the performance oriented environment that I was promised during the interview? It seemed to me that it was based more on seniority. Although I was promoted half a year later, I felt that it was time to get out of my comfort zone and seriously think about my future. I was able to foresee that I would meet with a bottle-neck few years later, if I continue to stay in the company. I would have to choose between going into junior management, or remained as a ~~condemned~~ senior engineer.

So eventually, I decided that I shall set up my own company. I came to realize that there isn’t exactly a perfect company, other than the one you set up yourself. Since I do not agree with the way the company is run, I shall set up my own company and run it the way I deemed correct. Since I do not agree with the company culture, I shall set my own company culture. Since I felt that my effort wasn’t adequately recognized, I shall create my own series of products and let the market recognized me. I wanted to take on the world and ready to take on the world. The decision was made and I started planning. That was August 2003.

Entry Barrier

2006-10-30T22:38:00.000+08:00

Had a chat with AC few months ago and somehow our topics moved towards the internet café business in Singapore. I told him that I saw one old shophouse at the east being converted into an internet café and it claimed to be the cheapest in town at the rate of S$1 per hour. But their PCs were rather old and the ambience didn’t look that cosy.

Recently, I past by the area and found 2 other internet cafés opened just beside the first one. And all are priced at S$1 per hour. I do not know how adversely the business would be affected by the increase of competition. I do not even know who are their target customer base, since most people nowadays have internet access at home and the shops aren’t located near those low-cost hotels. But anyway, my point is in business, if your entry barrier is low, you will see competitions sooner than you expected. So, when you think that you have a great business idea, you should also start to think about how high is your entry barrier.

Why I take the path less travelled? (Part I)

2006-10-29T11:17:00.000+08:00

I had been trying to recall when did I start having the idea of setting up my own company. I graduated from NTU on the year 2000. Like many other graduates, the first thing that came to my mind was to look for a job. My savings was depleted to less than S$300 then, after paying for most of my university school fees. Setting up a company wasn't in my mind back then.

I joined a german MNC shortly after I graduated, as a R&D software engineer. I had a colleague HK who is 5 years older than me. We became very good friends and often went out for supper after work. Being the older and more experienced one, HK shared with me things about the real working life. I started to think beyond the daily job and asked myself what should be my career path. I was lamenting about how IT specialist and technical personnel weren’t properly recognized in Singapore and often encountered bottle-neck which forced them to switch over to project management instead. One thing I remembered HK told me was: “你不要去想做别的东西. 你天生就是搞软件的.” (Meaning: “Don’t think about doing anything else. You are born to be a software designer/developer.”) That was probably the first time my passion and ability was explicitly recognized. And HK was probably the first influencer that led me to holding on to my passion. And I started to toy around with the idea of starting my own company, or pursue a software developer career in the states (where I presumed would be more recognized).

Why The Uncharted Waters?

2006-10-25T12:10:00.000+08:00

It was the name of one of my favourite computer games during my JC days. It was a game which required the player to take on a fleet captain's role, venturing into unknown waters, fighting pirates and exploring new cities/harbours. I always like games that allow me to explore. I like the joy and satisfaction when I discovered something.

To me, entrepreneurship is just like the uncharted waters. There are so many unknowns and uncertainties awaiting you to discover. And the satisfaction of building up your own company is simply unmeasurable.

My First Post – Selamat Hari Raya

2006-10-24T20:46:00.000+08:00

I had been contemplating about setting up a blog, for a long long time. I wanted to note down the thoughts, feelings and experiences during my venture into the uncharted waters of entrepreneurship. I wanted to share my experiences with other young and aspiring entrepreneurs-to-be. And thanked those who help me along the way, either intentionally or accidentally.

Well, blogging definitely is a new experience to me. And I do hope that I have the time and enough interest to update it regularly.

I guess that’s enough for a warm-up post. Wish all my fellow Singaporeans, Selamat Hari Raya!