My most admired entrepreneur
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.
Labels: Entrepreneurship
Where does your passion lies?
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.
Labels: Entrepreneurship
I got a new office!
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. Labels: Entrepreneurship, My Adventure in Uncharted Waters
I met my ex-director…
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.
Labels: Entrepreneurship, My Adventure in Uncharted Waters
Looking back 2007: My life . My company . My future
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.
Labels: Entrepreneurship, My Adventure in Uncharted Waters
Some advices on Entrepreneurship
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!
Labels: Entrepreneurship
Brief updates: On distributionship, rebranding and my one-year-old blog
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.
Labels: Entrepreneurship, Miscellaneous, My Adventure in Uncharted Waters
Sailing into International Waters….
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.
Labels: Entrepreneurship, My Adventure in Uncharted Waters
A tale of two companies
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.
Labels: Company Matters, Entrepreneurship
Entrepreneurs also have comfort zones
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.
Labels: Entrepreneurship
I’d never thought I could do sales….
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.
Labels: Entrepreneurship, My Adventure in Uncharted Waters
A small step forward
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.
Labels: Entrepreneurship, My Adventure in Uncharted Waters
Apply OOP techniques in answering difficult questions from customers
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:
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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.
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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.
Labels: Customer Service, Entrepreneurship, My Adventure in Uncharted Waters
In Business, you gain some, you lose some
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.
Labels: Entrepreneurship, My Adventure in Uncharted Waters
“Interesting” people encountered during my entrepreneurship venture
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. Labels: Entrepreneurship
Company’s vision : An entrepreneur’s thoughts
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.
Labels: Entrepreneurship
S$88 to transfer ownership from myself to myself ?
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.
Labels: Entrepreneurship, My Adventure in Uncharted Waters
Talking about Fear
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.
Labels: Entrepreneurship
Reasons stopping you from becoming an Entrepreneur
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.
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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.
Labels: Entrepreneurship
Reasons for becoming an Entrepreneur
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.
Labels: Entrepreneurship
