Grateful
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.
Labels: Miscellaneous, My Adventure in Uncharted Waters
Just a little updates
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. Labels: Miscellaneous, My Adventure in Uncharted Waters
Accountant from hell (Part 2)
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.
Labels: My Adventure in Uncharted Waters
Accountant from hell (Part 1)
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.
Labels: My Adventure in Uncharted Waters
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
Serenity
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.
Labels: 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
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
Seven habits of highly defective co-workers (3) – Mr KIA strikes again
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. Labels: Co-workers, My Adventure in Uncharted Waters, Working life
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
It’s a strange week ….
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.
Labels: My Adventure in Uncharted Waters, Personal
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:
***************************************************************
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
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$88 just to transfer something from myself to myself.
Labels: Entrepreneurship, My Adventure in Uncharted Waters
Year 2007 Resolutions
I realised that I did not achieve any of my resolutions last year. In fact, I had never achieved more than 50% of any new year resolutions that I had set for the past decades. One reason may be because I am sort of a perfectionist and I tend to set a rather high target for myself. Or, I am simply not hard-working enough.
So this time round, I shall write down some of my new year resolutions (not in any order) so that I can review them by end of the year:
1. Reduce my weight to around 72 kg
That’s my weight around 10 years ago, when I was able to run 2.4km under 10 minutes and complete SOC within 8 min 30 seconds. I don’t expect to reach the same level of fitness, but at least I hoped to attain a similar physique. Should be achievable if I stick to my work-out schedule of 3-times-weekly 3-km jog plus a weekly gym work-out.
2. Obtain my driving license
Had been postponing this for far too long. Better to settle it once and for all.
3. Build up my company’s cash capital to S$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.
Labels: My Adventure in Uncharted Waters, Personal
Reflections for Year 2006
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.
Labels: My Adventure in Uncharted Waters, Personal
Looking Back 5: Rise from the ashes (Year 2006 – The Transition Year )
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.
Labels: Entrepreneurship, My Adventure in Uncharted Waters
