How to get started?

Many people have entrepreneurial dreams. But starting a business just seems to be a rather mysterious process, especially for those who have yet started. There are roadblocks, inertia, fear of the unknown and failure. Maybe out of a million people with ideas, only half a million actually start a business, and probably only 10% of these group actually survive the first year. Then again, I have witnessed how some of my friends have succeeded and become multi-millionaire at age less than 30.

I spoke to my mentor Mr Yeo Keng Joon lately. He is an active NUS MBA Alumni and has his own business. According to him, starting out on his own was not a difficult decision. He was versed in the industry due to his previous job. He knew what the market needed and he just aimed to do it better. His advice to me was not to jump into starting a business, but keep my eyes open to opportunities.

Sometimes I wonder what it takes to even take the first step. I have heard a funny analogy.. "Instead of jumping into a swimming pool full of water, what don't we just go into an empty swimming pool and fill the swimming pool with water over time?" It is the same debate on whether one should build experience first or just start a business straight after school. Entrepreneurs would need the right attitude to be prepared to fail and persevere through the hard times. It is the process and experience that matters. It helps that the business is build around what you know so that less resources is needed to acquire the knowledge, eliminating consultants and outside assistance.

In both a casual conversation with Mr Lim Ker Han, director of a chain of beauty salons in Singapore, and a talk by Mr Allan Lim from Nestle,  I understood the importance of the ability to make pitches. The ability to effectively communicate ideas to relevant stakeholders (management, customers, suppliers, investors) is an important skill to have. Every startup team would need someone who can pitch amazingly well.

There is this thing called the Sweat Equity, which is an accumulative value of the business that was build upon from days of hard work. Far more important than money is the investment of time to make sometime meaningful. An example was how Brett Kelly wrote a guide for Evernote software with the aim to take $10,000 over a year. But ended up making more than $100,000.

Recently, I went through a simple process of "Ideation to Validation" with 2 of my MBA friends. We came up with the idea called Journey Pal to target daily commuters who will be delighted to have an auto-notification for bus/train arrival times. We turned a general idea into a specific idea by narrowing the scope of who is likely going to use the app and how revenue could be made. We fan out some surveys and receive more than n>30 responses, which further validated there is a need for it. Excited as we were, we pitched to SMRT personnel during a Hackathon event. However, the idea was so good that SMRT is currently doing it in-house and is undergoing a beta-testing phase. Well, it was an interesting journey I had and I believe such process will be iterated many times in our quest to start a business.

There is this video which I would like to share and remind myself not to get fixated about getting the best idea and keeping it secretive. Some key pointers:
1) Ideas don't matter. Execution does.
2) Share you ideas to gain valuable feedback and create a social contract that holds you accountable.
3) Put yourself in a position where you feel as much pressure as possible by telling as many people as you can about your ideas.
4) Can I do something meaningfully different or better than others?

The Fallacy of the "Good Idea": Ideation - How to Start A Business

The Next Decade by George Friedman

It has been a while..., busy working and part time studying. It was a pursuit of paper qualifications to pass time and meet new friends. Still, there is a sense of accomplishment for sticking through and completing my MBA and Specialist Diploma in cosmetic Science. What will be next? I have no thoughts about it. For now, i am just relaxing in one corner of my room and reading a great and thought-provoking book by George Friedman.

Dr Stephen Turner

Dr Stephen Turner spoke on 24 July on a Distinguished Technopreneur Speaker (DTS) Forum. He qualifies as a speaker as he is a physicist turned entrepreneur, who founded Pacific Biosciences in his pursuit to develop technology capable of performing gene tests and DNA sequencing at the cost of $1,000 or less. Despite difficulties in surviving on small grants, his determination and perseverance has put him in the lead to develop the disruptive single molecule real-time (SMRT^TM) technology platform that is unique in the field of DNA sequencing and offers the ultimate combination of speed, long reads and low costs. 

During his speech, he gave a succinct analysis of the entrepreneurial landscape in Singapore, which he found is rather entrepreneurial. Dr. Turner performed a quick word search on LinkedIn with keywords such as "entrepreneur", "CEO", "start-up", and analyse the prevalence of entrepreneurship in various cities. It was surprising that Singapore ranked closely behind San Diego which is widely regarded as having a thriving entrepreneurial ecosystem. What he felt was lacking in Singapore, yet a crucial determinant of success, is not the lack of entrepreneurs, but the lack of access to local VC community that has courage and conviction all ready to mentor and fund fledging start-ups. He also highlighted the importance of access to a chain of funding (from pre-seed, seed, series funding, bridge financing to an eventual IPO). Availability of a chain of financing will ensure start-ups continue to put efforts in growing, instead of worrying over cashflows. The reason he chose to establish office in Silicon Valley was primarily due to access to VCs and to allow VC to gain access to him. 

There are many ideas but execution is the key. What is the cost to test the hypothesis? How high is the risk that the hypothesis fail? The strategy is to challenge the hypothesis and prove it is wrong at the lowest possible cost, as such:

V = N(PsVp – Ce), V is net value, Ps is probability of success, Vp is value, Ce is cost of enterprise.

One way to start is to form a hypothesis which is going to be important in the future, e.g. for effective R&D efforts to transfer to enterprises, countries need to groom “soft companies”.

The other importance of a start-up is the team. Dr Turner gave an analogy of the game "Angry bird". Different people with different skills required to win the game. 

"What was the toughest decision you have made during your journey as a technopreneur?" "Many… To start a company and to keep going."

Solemnization ~ ROM ~ the day I became Mrs Ro

That's me, before my hairstyling.

I wonder what triggered our reaction to be so dramatic. 

I find this picture comical as my hunny looked busy while I posed for pictures.

 

My close friends and I. Jasmine and Qiyue have been my friends since 1997.

My mother-in-law looks so young.

Solemnizer Dr Baey Lian Peck

RoNeo 1st family time together

Sungsoo's parents arrived late at night on 6th Mar. Initially, I thought of the taxi ride would be on AYE, which would showcase the fantastic nightview of Marina Bay area. But the hotel was near Novena, hence the taxi took the PIE route from Changi. The journey was kind of dark with nothing much to see and it failed to make any wonderful first impression.

The next day, we brought Sungsoo's parents to Orchard Road and Gardens By the Bay. When we were at ION, my cute 어머님 skipped around and commented "The city is where I belong." We also brought them to have Ding Tai Fung. They liked the Xiao Long Bao, Dou Miao and Dumpling soup most.

Finally after walking for the whole day, Sungsoo's parents met up with my family. Unfortunately, we didn't have a full RoNeo family photo. I must say that Sungsoo's Dad made my dad really very happy. There were like long lost brothers. Language was no barrier for them. :)