Types of entrepreneurs I have met

Inspired by this story about how a cashier has written a book on her perspectives of the shoppers she serves, I decided to tell my perspective of the type of entrepreneurs I have met. As part of my job, I have met hundreds of entrepreneurs in Singapore and they are a mixed bunch. I thought it would be interesting to pick out a few categories and talk about them.

The Know-It-All
Hands down, the most irritating of the bunch. They assumed they know everything, even in the face of strong evidence. What are their characteristics? They counter every point you made, they interupt you even before you finish, their arguments are illogical, they are too absorbed in their views etc. When I encounter such people, I count that day as an unlucky one. Fortunately, they are not many of them around.

The Clueless
These types come in without knowing anything. They don't know their potential users, they don't understand the market, they seldom talk to real people. In order words, they live in their worlds. Unlike the first group however, they are open to listening. What I usually advise them is to be real. Get out of their heads and start talking to potential users. Gather real feedback rather than imagining everything in their minds.

The Money Minded
Everything is about $$ to these guys. There is nothing inherently wrong with this but you get the feeling you will not see anything special coming out from them. They might able to survive. Heck, they might even be doing well. However, they will not be the ones that create new markets or the next big thing. Those things are reserved for people who put value creation and their passionate ahead of money.

The Passionate
You can't help but to be touched by their passions. They may not have the most complete plans but they are willing to work at it and listen to all views. These types are typically a joy to work with. The only exception is when they are passionate about the wrong things. That is when they might become type one.

The Inspirational
They are the highlights of my job. Talking to them is like taking a live lesson. You get to hear deep insights about the markets they serve, the experimental models they are playing with, the lessons they have learned etc. They are what makes this job worth it. Every session with one of these type expands my horizon. You can't get better lessons than these.

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4 rules I used in my startup to leverage on the networked economy

The new networked economy requires new rules. As a startup in this new economy, I constantly looking for ways for my company to be part of the network. Here are the 4 rules of thumbs I always used to ensure that what I do leverages fully on the networked economy

Many touch points
I want my service to touch as many networks as possible because the value increases exponentially by the number of networks the action flows through. In practice, this means open APIs and confirming to open standards such as microformats and Open ID/Facebook Connect. The aim is to make it as easy as possible for my service to get in and out.

Tapping/Coordinating existing networks
Rather than creating new networks, I am always on the lookout for ways to leverage on current networks. More significantly, if my service can help to coordinate or bridge different networks, the value is even greater . Take the simple example of commenting systems like Disqus. It rides on the blogging networks to scale its users. However, because it works across different blogging networks, from blogger to Wordpress, the value it creates becomes much more significant.

How to benefit others
Networks become more powerful when more value is flowing through them. Hence, I would want third party developers or suppliers to come aboard my service and create new things using it. Therefore, thinking about ways to create benefits for network members is actually very productive. This cannot be accomplish by simply having an open API. I need to consider pricing tools, ability to collect payment, how to surface and promote the best third party services etc. Such support structures must be there to truly benefit other members.

Feedback LoopsThere is a viral effect for networks. I want to create high viral coefficients so that my service can spread itself faster. Conversely, I want to be aware of negative feedback loops as well so that it doesn't dampen my growth. One important factor here is the fees. Rather than charge as high as you can, Tom Evslin famously said that networks should charge as low as they can bear to maximise growth. Pricing in this case is an important viral factor.

These are my rules of thumbs. I watch for these in many of the startups we funded. Do you have any rules of thumbs to leverage on network growth?

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The downside of being in public

There is some negative publicity in the Singapore blogsphere right now about the programme that I am part of. I will not debate about the merits of the blog post that started it. Rather, I want to spend a moment to reflect on this incident.

Like it or not, government is a public figure. Like all public figures, your actions will be scrutinize. This is not a bad thing as we need transparency to make sure things are in order. Unfortunately, not all reporting are factually correct, especially in blog posts where it is easy to publish without the relevant fact checking.

The problem with inaccurate blog posts, especially when it is negative is its impact. Many senior folks in the government take things at the surface. A sensational title is all it takes to undo all the hard work the officers are making to help the community.

I also find it difficult to respond to these blog posts. On one hand, you can't be defensive because that will only worsen the perception that you are defensive. On the other hand, you can't just do nothing as your boss will demand some actions. What is a good response? For me, it is engagement. It is to communicate sincerely to see if there are some things that can be done to address any potential problems, issues, situations that spurred the negativity. It is the best solution I can think of.

Anyway, from this, I learn how the costs of being 'evil' will outweigh its benefits. However, what happens when the perception is not representative of the reality and the so call 'evilness' is an empty claim? What can we do?

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Singapore's online classified sector

I had a chat with the CEO of JobFactory a couple of months back. One comment that stuck in my head was that the local classified market for jobs alone is worth 100M easily. This number was computed based on current revenue models of major job sites like JobsDB and the revenue for SPH's recruitment classified.

The number assumes that the market wouldn't shrink. I don't believe that is realistic. Disruptive companies typically shrinks a current market. Craglist is taking billions out of the US classified market because most of the listings are free. Similarly, Wikipedia is taking billions out of the reference market and driving companies to cease operations.

I think that will happen to Singapore's classified market as well. So far, we have not seen this happening because very few have realise this: classified business are community businesses.

Classified businesses are marketplaces and we know now that markets are conversations. Where do conversations come from? Communities. People like to discuss, debate, review, recommend, encourage etc. They do that to learn about new stuff, to do business, to just share. They like to do that in communities, with people they know and have hang out with.

That is why I compare building classified businesses to building communities. You need to anchor communities first before becoming marketplace. We have already seen many examples of this. Let's take Hardwarezone, a local community of gadget lovers, and look at their forums. You can see that people are already buying and selling stuff. This is the future of classified businesses.

Unfortunately, all the local classified startups I have seen are taking a transactional approach to classified, i.e. making things more efficient. I believe displacement will come when someone realise it is not about transaction, it is about building community first. The latter has inherent advantages over the former. If you focus on transactions, you will realise that the key to success is a large and effective (& costly) salesforce. If you focus on communities, you will completely reverse the trend and operate a light-weight and flexible operation. Just see Craglist.

If I am building a classified business, these are 2 direction I would try:

i) Be a pure network play and link up with all current communities. Provide the platform whereby each community can become a marketplace to buy and sell stuff that fits their niches. Because you are sitting on top of the different markets, you are now in a better position to provide value add services such as recommendations, identify experts etc.

ii) Build a community up from scratch by becoming the most powerful value provider in the niche. For example, if I am in the real estate play, I would focus on providing the most relevant information such as pricing analysis, local news, best value home contractors, home maintenance tips etc. I would build up my mailing list to those who want to subscribe. Once I have at least 10,000 subscribers, I would then allow members to post their selling or buying intentions.

The classified market in Singapore has not seen the full extend of innovations that are happening across the globe. I look forward to see some young startups disrupting what is currently available.

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5 local startups I will like to invest personally

I have been mostly critical of some of our local startups. However, there are others that I find that have tremendous potential because of the ideas they are experimenting with. Here are my top 5, which I will like to invest in personally when I am no longer with the office.

Interactive Vision Lab

They are doing to 3D scanners what digital camera has done to traditional cameras. By developing a technology that allows one click 3D scanning, they can potentially democratize many industries, from healthcare, to game development, to architecture etc. My hope is that they can become the Flip camera of 3D scanner to enable more creativity to be born.

StoryBoy

StoryBoy is creating interactive animated storybooks authoring and reading applications with multi-language narration for mobile devices. It is supported by an online library of ebooks created by a community of authors lead by Skyvu Pictures. What I love about this team is their understanding that ebooks will not be behave or look like traditonal books. They are defining what digial books can achieve and are focusing on the children's segement. I think that is a smart move because children are the most imaginative. With the right tools in their hands, they can redefine what reading means.

AdPrimus

I like this startup because they have an ideal: save more lives in hazardous work environments. They are developing Environment, Health, Safety and Security (EHSS) software management solutions and Asian-Centric EHSS content to help companies enable better safety practices. They may not be the next Google but if their software saves even 1 live, I think that is value enough.

E994

They are a location based emergency services, again with the focus on saving lives during natural disasters. Looking forward, I see such services becoming more and more important as changes to our climate leads to more sudden disasters.

Futurz Solutions

Finally, the first proposal I have seen that tackles the energy monitoring opportunity. Energy is just like information. How to make that liquid and hence enabling it to flow to the right context is a good opportunity to achieve energy efficiency. We have not funded them yet but I am looking forward to doing so in the coming weeks.

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Comparison of local startups using Alexa

I know Alexa ranking is not the best analytic software around but it gives me a quick and dirty way to know how my funded startups are doing. I recently did a sample comparison and thought it would be interesting to share the tidbits that I picked up just by looking though the rankings. Here is the ranking. Note that I only focus on the B2C type of startups. Also note that I personally may not have invest in any of them if I have a say in the investment decision : )

Viwawa (Social game): 6,057 (not funded by us)
XiaXue (Local blogger): 28,223 (not funded by us)
BattleStations (Social network game): 43, 834(NUS)
Fresbo World (2.5D virtual world): 139,839 (FrontEdge)
iHiPo (International Internships): 197,558 (Thymos)
Cherry Credits (Game payment): 215,449 (not funded by us)
GoThere (Local search): 224,099 (not funded by us)
ZopIM (Live chat for ecommerce): 258, 074 (NUS)
Mr Brown (Local blogger): 284, 612 (not funded by us)
Phlook (Making photos interactive): 437, 860 (Thymos)
HomeSpace (Real estate search): 812, 756 (NUS)
Spree2Shop (Shopping review): 910,466 (Thymos)
Motion Element (Stock Animation): 1,106,654 (Thymos)
Stockalicious (Stock portfolio analysis): 1,198,149 (FrontEdge)
Eteract (3D speed dating): 1,769, 180 (Thymos)
Jamifi (Interactive sound): 4,387, 905 (Expara)
MyWobile (Mobile social networking): 7,593, 129 (Azione Capital)

A couple of interesting things stood out for me:

i) The most successful startup is not funded by us! Moreover, our top blogger is even more successful than our supported companies. A one woman blogger (without any funding) attracting more viewers than our $50k startups. What does that say about our startups and incubators? More importantly, what does that say about Web businesses (which leads to my next point)

ii) The Web is truly a different. Startups that tried to build their online businesses the traditional way will find quickly that individuals are outflanking them. Individuals who have a deep sense of how the Web works and what are the true value drivers (making deals vs having true conversation with users, cultural vs business like, creating value vs capturing value etc)

iii) The more successful startups in terms of traffic seem to be games. Moreover, all of them are social casual games, rather than the hardcore platform games. Going forward, I expect to see more such startups especially in the mobile gaming space.

iv) How do we compare B2C businesses in different platforms? During the course of doing the comparisons, I had trouble getting numbers for virtual world and mobile startups and this inevitably will skew the rankings. A recent startup called BuUuk for example seem to be gaining traction on the iPhone but I have no way to compare it against the startups here.

v) Is there any disruptive ideas you see in the all the companies above? When Umair Haque talks about revolutionaries not revolutionising anything, it is exactly how these startups have been doing:

But a huge part of the problem is entrepreneurs. The current crop of entrepreneurs just isn't thinking big enough.

There are no shortage of massive problems next-gen media plays can help solve. Global hunger? Check. Healthcare? Check. Moral hazard across the financial system? Check. The loss of social cohesion? Check. The massive shift of global labour from town to megaslum? Check. Exploding demand for energy? Check.

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A summary of what our startups have achieved for 08

Through the i.JAM programme (a 50k pre-seed grant), we have already funded 120 projects in a 1.25 year period. I thought that this is a good time to share the progress programme and how the startups doing.

The entire objective of our programme was to create an easy (minimal transaction costs) way for entrepreneurs to experiment with ideas. I think we have achieved quite successfully. Over the period, we have received more than 800 applications, which is quite remarkable given that Singapore only has a population of 4 million.

One common complaint however from some startups is that 50k is not enough to build a business. To this, I reply that it was never intend to do so. This was a grant for you to experiment, to see if your idea actually works. For scaling into a real business, you will still need to raise further funding.

During this period, about 25 projects have been completed. Out of these, we are encourage to see 9 of them managing to raise some form of angel funding. This 36% rate is a bit higher than what we expect, which implies either our incubators have an exceptional talent-spotting ability or we are too risk-averse, picking ideas that have obivous market potential. The problem with the latter is that very little breakthroughs will emerge since disruptions are always unrecognisable in the initial phase.

One of my personal disappointments with this current batch of startups is that very few are attempting to renew some of our broken industries. Quite a number in fact are too focus on money making right from the start without the corresponding need to create real value. I hope I can see more radical startups as we begin our second wave of funding.

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5 filters I used to detect people not suited for entrepreneurship

It is great feeling every time you come across a driven entrepreneur. He/she typically has such commitment, passion and drive in how they carry themselves that it is easy to spot them. The reverse also holds true. It is easy to tell if someone is not suited for entrepreneurship by noticing some characteristics. Below is my personal filters:

They are swore to secrecy like their life depend on it
I always believe in this: if your only competitive advantage is your idea, it is not something worth supporting. I have came across entrepreneurs who refuses to send me any information about their ideas and yet expect me to fund them. They are afraid of so many things that it becomes a pain just communicating to them. This is a clear signal that I am wasting my time.

They have not change their business models since day 1
It is a fine line between being persistent and being stubborn. We have seen successful startups adapting their business plans as new insights are gained. However, some of the people I talk to have refused to change even when it is quite clear that their ideas cannot work. Some models for example can easily be validated by crunching some numbers. If the numbers doesn't make sense, it is time for you to rethink your plans.

They talk about markets all the time
As a startup, your compettive advantage is not in spotting undertapped markets. What I want to hear is your approach: what kind of institutional or even product innovations you are building to tap into these markets. Unfortunately, some entrepreneurs I talk to only tell me how big the potential market is, how they have to move quickly and why I need to fund them because of this. All these are fine as long as you are also able to say why you are the one that can succeed. There is a big difference between spotting a market and having the capability to tap into them.

They don't treat their customers with respect
Slightly related to the above point is that most entrepreneurs treat their customers like commodities. They treat customer like numbers, rather than real human beings with needs and wants. I think that in this new economy, paying respect to your customers might be the biggest source of advantage. The Web has given us personal voices. Nobody wants to be treated like anybody else anymore.

They try to do too many things and have too many ideas.
This is a slightly tricker filter. Many times, startups who are successful have laser like focus on their products and their customers. They don't think much about anything else. On the other hand, I have seen some entrepreneurs wanting to do this and that, without realising these are totally separate businesses and each requires different business processes.

The above are alarm bells that have been built within me over the years. They are not definite. Some of the alarms might turn out to be false alarms. However, in general, they work pretty well for me so far.

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Why are local startups not interested in R&D

We have now supported a couple of international research centres that are doing interested things in digital and social media. Most of these R&D will be made available for startups to exploit and commercialise. Thing is, I have not seen any interest from the startup community at all.

R&D is interesting to me because they are solving very hard problems. Problems that startups might not have the resources or capabilities to solve. The resulting solutions might unlock value that startups can capitalise on.

Let's look at one concrete example. There has been talks about Twitter being a real time search engine. However, real time search is tough, especially if you think of non text data streams such as live video streams provided by 12seconds.

One of the labs we are forming is a combination of TsingHua University from China and NUS from Singapore. The problem they are set up to crack is doing search in real time, multi-sensory data. To me, this is exciting research. What solutions they create can have lots of business implications.

I think that going forward, we need to reduce the transaction costs that make it easier for startups to start thinking of leveraging on the R&D we are funding.

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The challenges from the crisis and our response to it

After talking to numerous companies and startups about how the current climate are affecting them, a couple of major issues have emerged. From these challenges, we have fine tune our Future of Media effort to address them.

Lack of access to bigger players
The crisis has bought about a bigger need to scale faster and to build a real business. One of the ways to do that is to leverage on platform players such as Facebook and iPhone. Unfortunately in Singapore, our bigger companies such as Singtel and MediaCorps are not as open.

Our respond: Our Future of Media initiative brings in the bigger companies as partners. As part of the network, they are committed to open up their market access to the smaller guys. In this way, we have effectively open up our relationships with the bigger companies to the rest of the industry. I think this is more useful than our grants because in this new economy, useful relationships are the new capital.


Difficulty in starting up
To get things started or to build things from scratch is actually very hard. Even with open source software, knowing what to use, how to put things together, where to start etc is a tough challenge, especially for first time entreprenuer.

Our respond: Our experienced partners in the Future of Media intiative is offering support beyond technology platform and market access. They are offering valuable mentorship through technical and market advice. Through the network, startups can gain guidance from fellow partners that will make it easier to startup.


Global marketing
For a startup to penetrate global markets is actually quite challenging. Even with the Web, the amount of localisation is still considerable. You will need local partnerships and connections. However, for a small startup, securing such relationships is difficult.

Our respond: With the network in place, we can market the network itself to our global counterparts. It is difficult to promote one or two companies but as a network of say 100 companies, we are in a position to make our deal more convincing. A network also means that the offerings will be more complete.


We sincerely think that the Future of Media initiative can bring great benefits to our industry. If you think we can do better, do drop me a comment.

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5 reasons why you should start a blog before doing a startup

Here is what I always tell first time entrepreneurs: start a blog in your area first and aim to attract x number of readers before attempting the startup. To me, blogging is the best way to test your idea as well as is the ideal training ground for your subsequent entrepreneurial journey. Here are five reasons why:

Blogging tests your commitment and fosters discipline
If you want to attract a certain number of readers, you will discover that daily blogging is almost a must. This is where you will know whether you have the necessary discipline to sit down and do the hard work of writing every night. This is where you will stop dreaming about success and start doing real work. If you find that you don't have the passion or motivation to write every day about your startup area, you are probably not suited as an entrepreneur or your current idea isn't right for you.

Blogging forces you to gain domain expertise
The most successful blogger picked a niche and dominate that. You will find that to be successful, you really need to be the best in your niche. This means every blog post must be thoroughly researched on. You will start to read books, hunt down relevant blogs, join discussions etc. You will gain more domain expertise through blogging about your startup area.

Blogging forces you to be customer centric from day one
It is easy to talk about customer centric than to actually live like one. Blogging forces you to think about what your readers really want. It puts you in their perspective. Practice enough of this and thinking from the other side becomes natural. Blogging also forces you to be value adding. You can't just write nonsensical posts and hope to attract an audience. You will need to be mindful of how your posts add value and that mindset will go a long way in helping you build a better product in the future.

Blogging teaches you about how online marketing works
In order to reach your target of X readers, you will begin to think about reaching your potential audience. You might start off with blatant advertising but you will soon discover that it is not sustainable. You will need to start reaching out to online conversations and add value to them. That is where real marketing begins. You will soon learn of the importance of linking, retweeting, aggregating etc that will be useful to you when you want to market your actual product.

Blogging builds your connections
Through blogging, you will earn new connections. Some of them can be your first customers . Some can be your most vocal supporters, helping you to spread your product around if it is good. Others might give you new ideas or perspectives or connect you to other important people. These connections will be better than any promotion or advertising dollars can bring.


So, if you are a first time entrepreneur, do start a blog first. It is the cheapest test bed for your business. If you cannot make a blog work, you probably cannot make your startup work as well. Have fun blogging!

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The confusing state of Singapore government's funding schemes

I must admit, government agencies are the least customer centric organisations one can find. This is manifested very clearly in the way we offer our funding schemes, in a maze-like structure for companies to navigate. This is insane. Imagine if you are a company and your customers can't find your products, how acceptable will that be?

The top issue is one, ironcally, that the web would have solve: search. There are so many funding schemes from various agencies that a company will not know where to start. Pages are not optimised for search engines so they don't show up in google searches. Even when there is an attempt to provide a one stop listing, the information is so minimal and incomplete that it is next to useless.

Let's look at one of those attempts at listing all the relevant funding schemes:
















The first thing that jumped out at me was that the funding scheme was organised by agencies, with very little information on the details of the scheme such as description, funding scope, crtieria, grant amount etc. This is again a reflection of the non-customer centric attitude of the agencies.

What I would like to see is a startup that organises such information for the rest of the community. I have given up any hope that the changes will come from within the agencies. We need a startup to create a pull system that lets companies key in what they need, which sectors they are from etc and then recommend the right schemes to them. If that is too much work, even a comparison engine with the options to filter schemes by criteria, grant amount, grant type, sectors etc will be much more useful.

Anybody wants to take a crack at it?

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Our crisis package for startups

With bailout plans announcing all over the world, I thought it would be a good time for me to write about some of the things we are doing to help our startups as well. They may not billion dollar packages but I think it is something that will benefit them more than blindly throwing money around.

Generating demand
As part of our efforts to build partner networks in 6 verticals (I am responsible for phone and books), we are pooling the demand for applications from our bigger partners. What we are effectively doing is creating marketplaces akin to the AppStore across our bigger partners for the smaller startups to tap into.

I think this is sensible as we are allowing the marketplace to decide what startups should survive and what should not. We don't believe in keeping startups alive just because we funded them. They must prove their value in the market place.

Offering common assetsThrough the partner networks, we are also offering access to common assets such as open APIs, distribution points, payment systems, access to markets et al that is contributed by all our partners. This will signficantly reduce startup costs for any small companies.

Our belief in offering help at this infrastructure level is that all companies are equal. We don't believe in companies that are too big to fail.

Match making
We offer match making services for our startups to meet private investors for different stages of funding. Part of my open call for a business angel network is to find a more efficient way to match startups and angel investors. This is to complement what we have already done for Series A fund matching.

Talent development
Finally, we are subsidizing talent development programmes for people whom companies might have retrenched during this period. This is to help keep the team intact and at the same time, develop their capabilities.


The above will be the core of what we will be offering. We are not sure whether these are sufficient but we are always listening. If you like to suggest anything else, drop a comment.

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Do our startups blog?

I was checking out my traffic sources when I saw some referrals from a French site, 22mars. If you look at the image below, my post on linked journalism was the fifth item, a couple of months after I wrote the initial post.

Although this is nothing new, I am still impressed by how information spreads across the web. It is much easier now to reach places and locations you haven't thought possible before.

Despite this, I am still amazed by how many of our startup don't have a blog to communicate to their potential users. I want to do some research later this evening to gather statistics on the following:

• How many of our funded 120 startups have blogs?
• What is their updating frequency?
• How often do they reply to their comments?
• How long in terms of delay was their replies?

It will be an interesting research, especially when I compared how their statistics fare to mine, a government official :)

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I can't believe we are still having Digg clones in 2009! The sad state of Singapore startups

I was in shock when I read this: Breaking.Sg - Singapore’s Digg Clone .

Wow, I can't believe that somebody is making attempts to do a Digg clone in 2009. I mean, didn't Ycombinator funded slinkset that enables anyone without programming knowledge to do a digg clone? I even implemented a Digg clone (see ijam.sg) for proposal submission way back in 2006 (bad idea btw).

Don't get me wrong. I think attention markets, of which Digg is but one form, has great potential. Unfortunately, I don't think our guys are thinking that deep. If you are exploring these areas, the minimal you can do is at least understand what attention markets are and how are they shaped.

One last comment I have. Sg Entrepreneur guys, be more constructive in your articles. Don't just report. Analyse the issues deeper. Understand about the economics and drivers that are shaping the industry. You guys have the community. You can make a difference in raising the level of our startups.

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Why I choose to work for Singapore's government

I was contemplating earlier this year about leaving the office and start my own thing again. It was a hard choice. So, what I did was to list down the reason for staying and they turn out to be pretty compelling. I am sharing them now to maybe give you some considerations to ponder if you are thinking about leaving your current job.

Basically, there are three strong reasons why I choose to remain in the office for another year:

The office offers unparalleled learning experiences: As part of our work, we deal with many companies and institutions, in various forms and shapes, from startups to MNCs to investors. Each and everyone of them represents a accumulative experiences of their trials and tribulations. You can see how startups fail or become successful. You see how big companies struggle with their transformations from traditional to new media. You see different business models being attempted. You see cutting edge technologies being researched on.

All these are great learning points. Only in the office are you allow to fund new innovations and learn whether they work. It is as if the $500M budget is your tution fees for learning. Where else offers such a rich learning around?

Freedom to drive national projects: It is rare that a 31 year old guy has the freedom run national programmes the way I think it will work. I don't have the answers but I have the freedom to experiment, learn from feedback and retry again. To be able to do this, especially in a government agency is a rare luxury.

For my past work, I had the freedom to create, experiment and shape an incubation effort for the entire nation. This year, I have been tasked to head 2 interesting projects, forming nation-wide partner networks to shape 2 sectors: future of phone and future of books. Trying these different models gives me opportunity to apply and master new forms of coordination that I think will be critical in creating innovation business models for the years to come. They allowed me to master what Seth Godin calls emotional intelligence skills i.e. managing projects, visualizing success, persuading other people of your point of view, dealing with multiple priorities.

A great mentor: My boss (Google for michael yap) has been a great mentor. For the past 2 years under him, I have matured as a manager, learning stuff ranging from

• how to do ppt to win buy-in,
  
• how to think from your viewers' end,
  
• how to write minutes that get you what you want,
  
• how to setup meetings that win negotiations,
  
• how to read you boss,
  
• how to find strangle holds in contracts,
  
• how to dream big,
  
• how to evaluate startups,
• how to have a natural feel for numbers, to know whether they are right or wrong at one glance
• how to anticipate failures and to build that into contracts and mechanisms
  

This is perhaps the biggest reason why I am staying. Ask yourself this: is your boss a mentor or someone that merely gives you stuff to do?

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How to make company grow

I have see many startups that we funded not growing. In fact, how to make company grow is a very challenging problem. Very often, when I asked them for the reason, I hear this: we need more advertising. Somehow, I don't think that is the answer. Take a good hard look at your product/services and ask:


Is your product a purple cow?: Is your product a remarkable product? Will people talk about it because it is cool, meaningful, authentic, innovative etc? Many will argue that their products, by nature, cannot be a purple cow. If that is the way you think, you are already on the wrong path.

Let's take a great example: Little Miss Matched. It is a company selling socks. What can be more unremarkable. Yet, they have successfully turn socks into a purple cow by understanding what their customer group care about. It leverages on a deep understanding of what young girl would like. Are you doing the same for your products?


Is your product a viral loop?: I have mention this before but this is worth repeating:

understand the context of of sharing: when does sharing occur, under what circumstances and for what type of products?

You need to apply the principles of viral loops to your product principles in the context of solving a issue in your industry. Often times, applying game design is a good way to start the thought process. Does your product have a viral loop?



Is your product creating real value?: This is perhaps the most important question. We have enough of entertainment stuff in the world. We have Youtubes, WOWs, Facebooks, Meebos of the world to gives us all the entertainment we want. What we need are products that help us solve our real problems.

Here is a one common problem I see: we are all stuck in jobs we hate. How do you create products that help people do what they are passinate about and enjoy a healthy financial income? Are you empowering people and giving them a means to an alternate lifestyle that people love?

What is the value you are creating?

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5 lessons from my failed startup in mobile location based service

I must admit, startup is a difficult road to travel. I do have my fair shares of failures. I just like to take this post to share 5 lessons from my failed attempt in creating a business for mobile location based services.


Every startup needs a full time founder: The three founding members of my team all held full time jobs. We naively think that we can cook this up in our spare time. Obivously things didn't go as planned. Schedules were often missed. Development was slow. At times, it seems everybody is too busy to be doing anything.

It is from this lesson that I have insisted on having at least 1 full time founder in all our investees. Think about it. For every idea you have, there are at least 10 other teams working on it around the world. If every of these teams is as clever as you, and is spending 100% of their efforts on the project, what chance do you have if you are not fully committed?

Do not customise your product too much: Our first potential client was a bank. The number of times we had to meet, the effort we spent to customise our product etc was taking a heavy toll on the team. Worse of all, the deal fell through at the end due to the crisis. This means our cash flows were in a bad shape as we have incurred the expenses without realising the expected revenue.

We learned that if you want to sell to businesses, don't comprise on your product. If your client requires too much customisaiton, it probable means they are the wrong group. It is better to focus on getting the first sales of your existing product, rather than spent resources customising it.

Decide early on when to cut losses: As we were losing money, there came a time when we didn't know to cntinue or to stop. This caused us a lot of disagreements and unhappiness. I now believe that you should plan for such things. Decide in advance what losses are you willing to bear before letting it go. This will be very useful when things turn sour and your team need to make a decision fast.

There is no business in location based services: On paper, location based services seem like the best new thing. How seriously wrong we were in overestimating its demand. Make sure that when you decide to do a startup, base it on strong economics. Don't do something just because of the hype or some superficial understanding of the industry. Invest some time to learn the underlying economics that is creating the opportunties. This is why I have been posting on stuff like this, this and this.

Do not be afraid to fail: The final point is that it is common to get your hypothesis wrong. As long as you know it is a mistake, cut your losses early and start again. Our office, in fact encourages failed entrepreneurs to reapply for another project. Don't be afraid to fail. As long as you keep on trying, your success will come.

There are actually many more lessons to learn but these are 5 that I find the most interesting to share. If you have your own lessons, why not share them in the comments section?

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4 issues with Singapore Startups

I have been investing and advising startups in Singapore for the past 2 years now. It has been a fun ride and it gives me great pleasure to be able to contribute to the startup community. However, there are certain broad issues which I am seeing across Singapore's startups, especially those in the digital media sector.

Lack of depth in their thinking: Many of the Singapore startups are well aware of the latest companies and trends in the digital media space through blogs such as Tech Crunch, Mashableet al. If you know these blogs, they are good in providing coverage on the latest news. Unfortunately, they don't touch on strategies and structural opportunities, which are covered by less well know blogs such as John Hagel, Umair Haque, Taylor Davidson et al. Hence, most of our startups are learning the forms from the US counterparts without understand their true economics. Without that understanding, you can't built real competitive advantages.

Lack of global ambition: There are very few examples of Singapore startups that we funded who want to change the world. Most of them talk about building cash flow positive businesses in a local context. While there is nothing inherently wrong with that, this means you are solving problems in a different scale. This has implications. When you are solving global problems, you might fall short but in the process of tacking these hard problems, you might have built a stronger and more durable competitive advantage that otherwise will never be built if you focus on a small scale business.

Lack of collaboration: This is a bit ironic. Most of the Singapore startups are building 2.0 services and yet I have never seen much collaboration between themselves. This is perhaps an example of my earlier argument that they lack true understanding of what is important. Capability leverage for example, is a powerful lever that very few of our startups are using. Even the incubators are not helping these companies to build that kind of new advantage in our hyperconnect economy.

Related is also the issue of lack of social capital building. It is so surprising that so many of our startups and even incubators do not have blogs or twitters. How then do they connect to the rest of the world? It reflects a great deal when a government officer like myself blogs more than these startups when I have the least incentives to do so.

Lack of belief in building dynamic capability in the team: Some of the startups I have seen have no technical capability at all. They rely on outsourcing instead. This method might be ok if the environment is stable. Unfortunately, that era has past. In our sector, that means you need the ability to constantly evolved your technology and that cannot be achieved with a outsourcing model, unless you have created a new form on coordination like what Li Fung has achieved. Outsourcing, in the traditional sense, cannot help the company to create any sort of capabilities.

This is not a criticism. All these are issues that as government, I need to think about resolving.

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