Buyer : SPH
Seller : 3 main founders, 2 smaller co-founders, 40% investor JDB.
Terms : $60M cap.
My guess?
1) 2 year earnout ala Hardwarezone and shareinvestor. But with JDB a savvy player, most likely the earnout is a proportionate one rather than a cliff.
2) 60%, 25%, 15% payout.
Analysis?
Deal makes a lot of sense for SPH. It costs a lot to set up and market a new portal and there is no guarantee they will win. See their efforts over the last 10 years on property, jobs and cars. So this way, at least the executives at SPH are sure to win for the next 3 years in the car space.
Deal makes sense for founders. A valuation of 11 times sales or 25 times PE is very good and fair. Also, the shareholding does not fully incentivize the working founders as JDB took a big chunk in the early days for a low investment of $800K.
Pitfall? Can SPH integrate and run sgcarmart well together with the all-important founding team? That is the multi-million dollar question. We will wait and see.
Payout?
Based on shareholding, gig winner JDB gets 24M pax, each key founder about 9.5M max. The 2 smaller ones less. This assumes max payout of course. Good deal all round.
======================================================================
update after getting hold of their P&L for FY 2012 and combining with SPH reports.
As expected, the deal was a fair one both ways. I was wrong on payout ratios though.
1) SPH paid 53M already. (see their latest annual report).
2) SGCM profit is 3M net on revenue about 8M give or take. So the 60M valuation is about 20 times historical PE, SPH did not overpay.
Still great deal all round but the valuation is far more reasonable and not a crazy one. So looks like the Hungrygowhere guys still the best deal in terms of valuation multiple.
Thoughts on startup scene in South East Asia. While effort is made to be accurate in terms of numbers, i may sometimes get the data wrong. My purpose is to share what i know and what i have learned over the past 23 years. Feel free to leave comments or to email me. And if you are keen to learn more about Angel Investing pls visit https://www.angelcentral.co/investors/membership
Thursday, April 18, 2013
Analysis on Asian Food Channel Sale
I do not know Hian Goh or Maria. Usually i know the players in the internet space since many are my friends or i have met with them over the years of networking. But i am a very competitive person and so when someone gets a big newspaper announcement about their exit, i am driven to find out the details of the deal. I hope to write a lot more on this topic to help readers learn how to analyze such deals and to get a more transparent market. Information is usually obtained via internet search or ACRA reports. If they are estimates, i will say so.
1) AFC made about 8M USD in revenues and lost 2M USD in FY2011. So unless 2012 improved dramatically for them, chances are AFC is a loss making entity that Scripps bought with revenues of maybe 8M USD. I discounted the contra deals they booked as revenue in 2011.
2) Scripps is a medium size american MNC with about 10B market cap. So it is a genuine good buyer. This is important since there are some bs deals that somehow get mentioned. Eg. some startup buy another startup for no cash. Scripps trades at about 4 times sales and 15 times PE. These 2 metrics are important since they determine the rough range which Scripps will pay for.
3) Mr Hian Goh owns about 550K shares of the company. Maria slightly less. Company has issued about 8.8M shares in total over the years raising some S$20M. Amazing how they managed to convince investors to invest throughout years of losses. I would not invest but i guess i am not as rich as their investors. All big names.
4) Mr Finian Tan said he got back 100% returns on vickers investment on ST article. Vickers invested a few rounds so hard to say. But first round was about US$2.5 to $3 per share. Subsequent rounds were 3.5 each. So we can safely say company was sold for about $6 to $7 USD per share? With 8.8M shares that is a sale price of about 50 to 60M usd. Or about 5 to 6 times sales. Compare to scripps market valuation of 4 times, it feels about right. No PE valuation to speak of since i do not know their profit if any.
5) Founders Hian and Maria get to exit with about 3-4M USD and maybe a good job with scripps and some potential earnouts. I think they got some share options too which should add another 1+M for them. So total exit should be from 5-6M USD. Of course if my initial estimate of 50-60M USD is wrong then it will be lower. Possible to be lower as parent company only gets 4 times on market. Anyway, good for them!
1) AFC made about 8M USD in revenues and lost 2M USD in FY2011. So unless 2012 improved dramatically for them, chances are AFC is a loss making entity that Scripps bought with revenues of maybe 8M USD. I discounted the contra deals they booked as revenue in 2011.
2) Scripps is a medium size american MNC with about 10B market cap. So it is a genuine good buyer. This is important since there are some bs deals that somehow get mentioned. Eg. some startup buy another startup for no cash. Scripps trades at about 4 times sales and 15 times PE. These 2 metrics are important since they determine the rough range which Scripps will pay for.
3) Mr Hian Goh owns about 550K shares of the company. Maria slightly less. Company has issued about 8.8M shares in total over the years raising some S$20M. Amazing how they managed to convince investors to invest throughout years of losses. I would not invest but i guess i am not as rich as their investors. All big names.
4) Mr Finian Tan said he got back 100% returns on vickers investment on ST article. Vickers invested a few rounds so hard to say. But first round was about US$2.5 to $3 per share. Subsequent rounds were 3.5 each. So we can safely say company was sold for about $6 to $7 USD per share? With 8.8M shares that is a sale price of about 50 to 60M usd. Or about 5 to 6 times sales. Compare to scripps market valuation of 4 times, it feels about right. No PE valuation to speak of since i do not know their profit if any.
5) Founders Hian and Maria get to exit with about 3-4M USD and maybe a good job with scripps and some potential earnouts. I think they got some share options too which should add another 1+M for them. So total exit should be from 5-6M USD. Of course if my initial estimate of 50-60M USD is wrong then it will be lower. Possible to be lower as parent company only gets 4 times on market. Anyway, good for them!
Creeping Ambition
I wrote this in indirect response to what i felt was unrealistic expectations on the part of MDA officials. I was actually trying to make the point that a MDA manager/Exec/deputy CEO has to be sensitive when commenting on a startup that is out there in the trenches trying to make something work. I encountered above said officials who actually made me feel that they looked down on a startup simply because it cannot scale to the magic 100M revenue figure their KPI required. And the ridiculous thing is that a dot com business that makes 5.5M can be making 2.3M in profit (eg sgcarmart). That is more profit than what the CEO and deputy CEO and managers in the IDM office of MDA make combined. Instead, I feel they should be encouraging as that is what their office is meant to do.
As for creeping ambition... unfortunately, my story as a founder ended when i sold the firm in 2011. I have learned a lot in terms of how to scale up further and how to work under a MNC structure but i no longer have a shot to build a 100M dollar company. But for my situation, i think it is the right decision. Industry is competitive and developed already.Perhaps the next business then. =================================================================
(Final post on sgentreprenuer.Posted 2009)
Resident Contributor, wonderdoggy (aka Der Shing, JobsCentral) posted a lengthy comment in response to fellow resident contributor, Aaron Chua’s article, “4 Issues With Singapore Startups”. We decided it was too good to be left sitting in the comments and have decided to republish it as an article.
Der Shing writes: Interesting article from MDA point of view. I interpret the 4 points as follows : a) instinctive business sense b) ambition & scalability c) win win partnerships d) internal capability (manpower, ops & sales) Here is my personal POV on the 4 based on my experience running a not-ambitious enough internet business :)
(A) Instinctive Business Sense We learned through trial and error what works and i learn alot by reading very widely about other businesses. Personally I read economist, INC, Wired, NYTimes, Fortune weekly. I am rather obsessive and i actually try to count the revenue of restaurants/businesses i deal with. Just as a fun exercise. I am constantly benchmarking against competitors within and outside industry. Most entrepreners i know have this tendency. I am sure for IDM guys it should be no different.
(B) Ambition & Scalability This is where I think I failed. When I started up in 2000, i told myself $1M turnover would be great. You usually feel this way when you are struggling to just sell $2-5K packages. When we hit that , we said $1M profit would be great. When we hit that, we aim to do $20M turnover and have an option to list. By the writer’s standard, i think we are damn unambitious and actually i think I agree. Problem is that we benchmark ourselves against local firms and local compensation. So earning $1+M a year profit is like any CEO already right? So not bad. But when we compare with top global or even regional internet firms, we are quite lacking. One thing to note here though…. we are creepingly getting more ambitious. Maybe once we hit $20M , we will aim for 100M, then we are in the bigger leagues? So it is possible to be lacking in ambition in the beginning and slowly gain it as you can see a clearer path to growth. So not all people need start with world beating ambitions? Likewise, I think there will be many that are content with profit of $1M year in year out. Still creating jobs, still adding value…
(C) Win-win Partnerships Yes, many people are very cautious about partnerships and letting others know too much. I think the caution is usually unfounded except when dealing with adjacent entities. Then it pays to be a little more long sighted and careful. But agree with the writer, in the first 3 years, partner all you like, its so touch and go anyway.
(D) Internal Capability (Manpower, Ops & Sales) Actually this point is similar to point c. Need to trust and bring in the right skill sets. Give/Sell them equity if need be to retain. It pays off. But make sure personality and common understanding is there, otherwise can be a recipe for conflict in future. Generally, i have met quite a few web 2.0 guys. I think the problem is tenaciousness. Few players stay in a business long enough to learn thru trial and error and to make money. Many Egos are too big too. It takes time to build a revenue stream from a new business model, so give it time and be willign to make effort and changes. See the Battlestations guys, they worked quite hard and long and experimented with so many platforms. But even then, i am curious if facebook can be big bucks. $40K a month as revenue (not profit) is not a lot. Other IDM guys with tenaciousness include Mikoishi, hungrygowhere, sgcarmart, cozycot, propertyguru and I am sure many more i missed out.
As for creeping ambition... unfortunately, my story as a founder ended when i sold the firm in 2011. I have learned a lot in terms of how to scale up further and how to work under a MNC structure but i no longer have a shot to build a 100M dollar company. But for my situation, i think it is the right decision. Industry is competitive and developed already.Perhaps the next business then. =================================================================
(Final post on sgentreprenuer.Posted 2009)
Resident Contributor, wonderdoggy (aka Der Shing, JobsCentral) posted a lengthy comment in response to fellow resident contributor, Aaron Chua’s article, “4 Issues With Singapore Startups”. We decided it was too good to be left sitting in the comments and have decided to republish it as an article.
Der Shing writes: Interesting article from MDA point of view. I interpret the 4 points as follows : a) instinctive business sense b) ambition & scalability c) win win partnerships d) internal capability (manpower, ops & sales) Here is my personal POV on the 4 based on my experience running a not-ambitious enough internet business :)
(A) Instinctive Business Sense We learned through trial and error what works and i learn alot by reading very widely about other businesses. Personally I read economist, INC, Wired, NYTimes, Fortune weekly. I am rather obsessive and i actually try to count the revenue of restaurants/businesses i deal with. Just as a fun exercise. I am constantly benchmarking against competitors within and outside industry. Most entrepreners i know have this tendency. I am sure for IDM guys it should be no different.
(B) Ambition & Scalability This is where I think I failed. When I started up in 2000, i told myself $1M turnover would be great. You usually feel this way when you are struggling to just sell $2-5K packages. When we hit that , we said $1M profit would be great. When we hit that, we aim to do $20M turnover and have an option to list. By the writer’s standard, i think we are damn unambitious and actually i think I agree. Problem is that we benchmark ourselves against local firms and local compensation. So earning $1+M a year profit is like any CEO already right? So not bad. But when we compare with top global or even regional internet firms, we are quite lacking. One thing to note here though…. we are creepingly getting more ambitious. Maybe once we hit $20M , we will aim for 100M, then we are in the bigger leagues? So it is possible to be lacking in ambition in the beginning and slowly gain it as you can see a clearer path to growth. So not all people need start with world beating ambitions? Likewise, I think there will be many that are content with profit of $1M year in year out. Still creating jobs, still adding value…
(C) Win-win Partnerships Yes, many people are very cautious about partnerships and letting others know too much. I think the caution is usually unfounded except when dealing with adjacent entities. Then it pays to be a little more long sighted and careful. But agree with the writer, in the first 3 years, partner all you like, its so touch and go anyway.
(D) Internal Capability (Manpower, Ops & Sales) Actually this point is similar to point c. Need to trust and bring in the right skill sets. Give/Sell them equity if need be to retain. It pays off. But make sure personality and common understanding is there, otherwise can be a recipe for conflict in future. Generally, i have met quite a few web 2.0 guys. I think the problem is tenaciousness. Few players stay in a business long enough to learn thru trial and error and to make money. Many Egos are too big too. It takes time to build a revenue stream from a new business model, so give it time and be willign to make effort and changes. See the Battlestations guys, they worked quite hard and long and experimented with so many platforms. But even then, i am curious if facebook can be big bucks. $40K a month as revenue (not profit) is not a lot. Other IDM guys with tenaciousness include Mikoishi, hungrygowhere, sgcarmart, cozycot, propertyguru and I am sure many more i missed out.
Wednesday, April 17, 2013
Online Classifieds Heating up back now. Now all acquired!
Enough said. This is my industry so my comments back in 2007 almost all came through. I just feel short of mentioning that many acquisitions and investments will happen for the winners.
To update :
Real estate - Great guys at Propertyguru are SG #1. in MY it is iprop. Valuations in excess of 100M even though no total exits yet.
Jobs space - Only jobstreet left still independent. JobsCentral and JobsDB all acquired in 2010/2011. Jobs classifieds revenue probably 40-50M this year in SG alone.
Cars - Sgcarmart acquired by SPH in 2013 Buy/Sell - Mocca died due to execution issues, Ebay going strong. New ecommerce wave has commenced!
======================================================================= (Article first posted Aug 2007)
There has been a lot written on new internet businesses based on concepts like social networking, aggregation, mash ups etc. Singapore too has seen its fair share of such businesses but I think I am right to say that they are still very nascent and I do not know of any local ones with meaningful revenues. Except maybe xiaxue which is an excellent spunky site!
However, I do see a large battle coming up in the online classifieds space. See the number of online classifieds mass media ads running – ST701, Mocca, JobsDB, Jobstreet, JobsCentral, Monster etc. I predict much more to come. I have always felt this space warrants attention but so far few players have come in to do it. Online classifieds can be very profitable even in a small city like Singapore. I estimate the whole cars, jobs, real estate, buy/sell market is worth at least S$40M this year in online classifieds alone and it is poised to grow dramatically once someones figures out how to handle more than 1 vertical at a time.
Who are the players?
Real Estate – No clear player yet. So this space is wide open for someone to come in and make good$$. Jobs – 5 main players. Combined at about 15M revenue by my estimate. (monster, jobscentral, jobsdb, jobstreet, 701)
Cars – sgcarmart, onemotoring Buy/sell – Mocca, Yahoo!, EBay Personals – Fridae, Trevvy (all Gay sites though)… where is the local large personals for straight population? I think in the next 3 years, you will see lots more ads, lots more competition and the winner will start to emerge.
Ultimately, I feel newspaper classifieds should shrink as more people see the benefits of online classifieds with its unlimited space, search engines and transactional capability. So to all the readers who are keen on internet businesses, i think online classifieds will grow at about 30% per year min. With margins of 20+%, to me it is a very attractive business.
To update :
Real estate - Great guys at Propertyguru are SG #1. in MY it is iprop. Valuations in excess of 100M even though no total exits yet.
Jobs space - Only jobstreet left still independent. JobsCentral and JobsDB all acquired in 2010/2011. Jobs classifieds revenue probably 40-50M this year in SG alone.
Cars - Sgcarmart acquired by SPH in 2013 Buy/Sell - Mocca died due to execution issues, Ebay going strong. New ecommerce wave has commenced!
======================================================================= (Article first posted Aug 2007)
There has been a lot written on new internet businesses based on concepts like social networking, aggregation, mash ups etc. Singapore too has seen its fair share of such businesses but I think I am right to say that they are still very nascent and I do not know of any local ones with meaningful revenues. Except maybe xiaxue which is an excellent spunky site!
However, I do see a large battle coming up in the online classifieds space. See the number of online classifieds mass media ads running – ST701, Mocca, JobsDB, Jobstreet, JobsCentral, Monster etc. I predict much more to come. I have always felt this space warrants attention but so far few players have come in to do it. Online classifieds can be very profitable even in a small city like Singapore. I estimate the whole cars, jobs, real estate, buy/sell market is worth at least S$40M this year in online classifieds alone and it is poised to grow dramatically once someones figures out how to handle more than 1 vertical at a time.
Who are the players?
Real Estate – No clear player yet. So this space is wide open for someone to come in and make good$$. Jobs – 5 main players. Combined at about 15M revenue by my estimate. (monster, jobscentral, jobsdb, jobstreet, 701)
Cars – sgcarmart, onemotoring Buy/sell – Mocca, Yahoo!, EBay Personals – Fridae, Trevvy (all Gay sites though)… where is the local large personals for straight population? I think in the next 3 years, you will see lots more ads, lots more competition and the winner will start to emerge.
Ultimately, I feel newspaper classifieds should shrink as more people see the benefits of online classifieds with its unlimited space, search engines and transactional capability. So to all the readers who are keen on internet businesses, i think online classifieds will grow at about 30% per year min. With margins of 20+%, to me it is a very attractive business.
When will you call it a Business?
Article first posted in May 2007. Totally stand by what i wrote and in fact am validated by the current batch of startups which are all revenue oriented. And notice the names i mentioned. One got acquired for $12M by Singtel just last year!
==================================================
When will you call it a Business?
I have been having an email discussion back and forth with an NTU TIP alumnus and I realize that what we are talking about may be of interest to the wider community.
Below is a reproduction of my email in terms of what constitutes a real business. I wrote in an earlier email that many web 2.0 efforts are not real businesses (without any negative connotation) and was asked to clarify further.
“I am a little more old school in my thinking. To me a business needs to have a clear business model. A real business as I put it, simply means a business model that has been validated by the market place or at least seems close to being validated. And validated means not just revenues (cuz anyone can spend $2 to earn $1, but it will never be profitable) but clear path to profits. So using this definition, sites like ping.sg , sharedcopy are more of tools (really cool tools at that) but until they evolve to gather revenues and more impt show potential for profits, I would not call them a business. It is telling that I think they do not have a clear team running it full time which is a pre-requisite for any business. Not to say that down the road, they cannot gain so much traction (mindshare) and raise more money and have a full time team and grow it on the path to profits. Then I would say they have made the transistion from a cool tool to a business.
A good case would be facebook, myspace, youtube etc. Depending on when you looked at them, intiially they were cool tools, fun sites, hobbyist sites etc. Only when they started taking funds, building revenue and in youtube case, joining google, did a path to profitability appear. Then we consider them a real business. Whether sustainable long term is another question.
For Singapore, I see very little real business using the above definition. A lot of good ideas, hobby sites, cool tools but no real effort to monetize or even work full time on it. I think most high profile 2.0 example is this company called Velvet Puffin. Even though I do not like their stuff, but at least they got money, have a full time team, cut deals and are trying to make revenues and profits. It is easy to build a site, have a cool idea and stay at that level hoping for mindshare and usage. But I think we should not fool ourselves and think it is a business. It becomes one only if there is an active plan for profits and revenue and if there is a full time mgmt team to do it. Whether self funded or otherwise does not matter. That is why i mentioned Yum.sg , hungrygowhere, blurbme. At least they seem to have full time people working on it with marketing budget, sales packages to offer clients, etc etc. Everything which a real business has to have.”
==================================================
When will you call it a Business?
I have been having an email discussion back and forth with an NTU TIP alumnus and I realize that what we are talking about may be of interest to the wider community.
Below is a reproduction of my email in terms of what constitutes a real business. I wrote in an earlier email that many web 2.0 efforts are not real businesses (without any negative connotation) and was asked to clarify further.
“I am a little more old school in my thinking. To me a business needs to have a clear business model. A real business as I put it, simply means a business model that has been validated by the market place or at least seems close to being validated. And validated means not just revenues (cuz anyone can spend $2 to earn $1, but it will never be profitable) but clear path to profits. So using this definition, sites like ping.sg , sharedcopy are more of tools (really cool tools at that) but until they evolve to gather revenues and more impt show potential for profits, I would not call them a business. It is telling that I think they do not have a clear team running it full time which is a pre-requisite for any business. Not to say that down the road, they cannot gain so much traction (mindshare) and raise more money and have a full time team and grow it on the path to profits. Then I would say they have made the transistion from a cool tool to a business.
A good case would be facebook, myspace, youtube etc. Depending on when you looked at them, intiially they were cool tools, fun sites, hobbyist sites etc. Only when they started taking funds, building revenue and in youtube case, joining google, did a path to profitability appear. Then we consider them a real business. Whether sustainable long term is another question.
For Singapore, I see very little real business using the above definition. A lot of good ideas, hobby sites, cool tools but no real effort to monetize or even work full time on it. I think most high profile 2.0 example is this company called Velvet Puffin. Even though I do not like their stuff, but at least they got money, have a full time team, cut deals and are trying to make revenues and profits. It is easy to build a site, have a cool idea and stay at that level hoping for mindshare and usage. But I think we should not fool ourselves and think it is a business. It becomes one only if there is an active plan for profits and revenue and if there is a full time mgmt team to do it. Whether self funded or otherwise does not matter. That is why i mentioned Yum.sg , hungrygowhere, blurbme. At least they seem to have full time people working on it with marketing budget, sales packages to offer clients, etc etc. Everything which a real business has to have.”
Contract Work for Key Clients & Partners
This is the age old issue of making "feed the company" money while trying to build up your core product. I think quite a fair bit has been said about this. I stand by what i wrote 7 years ago esp if your business is a pure bootstrapped type which has no Other Peoples Money. Sometimes, we just need to make ends meet and so taking on a few projects is nothing to be ashamed of.
Some good examples :
1) My own company. We used to do HR software for SMEs. Each year about $100-200K to help pay the bills while we focused on growing our own core job portal and media businesses. We got pretty good at it , so much so we ended up doing almost 0.5M of this many years ago. Then we made a decision to scale back as our core business was growing and such contracts became distracting.
2) More recently, i met with 2 other internet companies who are doing the same. One is at the 500-1M revenue stage of which about 200-300K are consultancy service which the founder is providing to MNCs. Nothing wrong so long as it is clear in future, this area will scale down as it is too unscalable and obviously tied to founder being the account manager.
The other example is a more famous one owned by Singtel in the mobile arena. Now they seem to be pureplay service provider when originally the idea is to build a product and scale up.
To be clear, those of us who take this route need to understand what we are doing. There is nothing wrong with becoming a software house or SI. In SG, SME software houses which do not productize can do up to 5-10M in revenue if done well and can make 20% margins. However, it is a different business for building a platform or product that scales. And usually the valuation afforded to pureplay software solution houses is weaker since recurring revenue is lower.
============================================================================ (Article first published on sgentrepreneur Jan 2007)
Thought I will share my experience about branding and the importance of building your own brand. In hindsight and for some of you, this may seem to be very obvious. However, I think for startups struggling to make ends meet, having revenue perhaps matters more than having your brand but low revenue. Let me elaborate.
I notice that quite a lot of service firms in Singapore leverage on their partner/client’s brands to deliver what is essentially their product. For example, magazine industry has lots of contract magazine publishers who will do the artwork, editorial, sales, printing etc for a big brand. They get paid a fixed fee and a variable depending on sales. They may even get to keep all sales and no fixed fee. However end of the day, the brand is not theirs. So all effort put into building it goes to naught. Krisflyer, AA magazine, AlumNUS etc, anyone knows who actually does all the work?
A similar situation can be found in dot commers. Many dot commers get distracted. They start with a great idea. Job Portal, Food Review, some Web2.0 stuff, but when they built their prototype, it takes a long time to grow it. Along comes an appreciative client who asks them to customize something and build and maintain it for them. Most startups will take it, cuz it generates some $$. But as time goes by, the client’s site and brand is the one who grows strong. And all efforts spent improving it goes to the client not yours. What I am driving at is that while it is important to do adhoc work and skills related work (design, editorial, IT contracting), never lose sight of your core business plan. Of course, unless your business is to be a contract service provider! At the first chance, use all revenue to grow your brand and strengthen your own position.
A good example is Shareinvestor.com. Their clients came to them to do online IR pages. They made it into a core service and integrated it with their forum and investor information offerings. Now they are pretty dominant in Singapore in their niche market worth easily 3-4M a year.
Some good examples :
1) My own company. We used to do HR software for SMEs. Each year about $100-200K to help pay the bills while we focused on growing our own core job portal and media businesses. We got pretty good at it , so much so we ended up doing almost 0.5M of this many years ago. Then we made a decision to scale back as our core business was growing and such contracts became distracting.
2) More recently, i met with 2 other internet companies who are doing the same. One is at the 500-1M revenue stage of which about 200-300K are consultancy service which the founder is providing to MNCs. Nothing wrong so long as it is clear in future, this area will scale down as it is too unscalable and obviously tied to founder being the account manager.
The other example is a more famous one owned by Singtel in the mobile arena. Now they seem to be pureplay service provider when originally the idea is to build a product and scale up.
To be clear, those of us who take this route need to understand what we are doing. There is nothing wrong with becoming a software house or SI. In SG, SME software houses which do not productize can do up to 5-10M in revenue if done well and can make 20% margins. However, it is a different business for building a platform or product that scales. And usually the valuation afforded to pureplay software solution houses is weaker since recurring revenue is lower.
============================================================================ (Article first published on sgentrepreneur Jan 2007)
Thought I will share my experience about branding and the importance of building your own brand. In hindsight and for some of you, this may seem to be very obvious. However, I think for startups struggling to make ends meet, having revenue perhaps matters more than having your brand but low revenue. Let me elaborate.
I notice that quite a lot of service firms in Singapore leverage on their partner/client’s brands to deliver what is essentially their product. For example, magazine industry has lots of contract magazine publishers who will do the artwork, editorial, sales, printing etc for a big brand. They get paid a fixed fee and a variable depending on sales. They may even get to keep all sales and no fixed fee. However end of the day, the brand is not theirs. So all effort put into building it goes to naught. Krisflyer, AA magazine, AlumNUS etc, anyone knows who actually does all the work?
A similar situation can be found in dot commers. Many dot commers get distracted. They start with a great idea. Job Portal, Food Review, some Web2.0 stuff, but when they built their prototype, it takes a long time to grow it. Along comes an appreciative client who asks them to customize something and build and maintain it for them. Most startups will take it, cuz it generates some $$. But as time goes by, the client’s site and brand is the one who grows strong. And all efforts spent improving it goes to the client not yours. What I am driving at is that while it is important to do adhoc work and skills related work (design, editorial, IT contracting), never lose sight of your core business plan. Of course, unless your business is to be a contract service provider! At the first chance, use all revenue to grow your brand and strengthen your own position.
A good example is Shareinvestor.com. Their clients came to them to do online IR pages. They made it into a core service and integrated it with their forum and investor information offerings. Now they are pretty dominant in Singapore in their niche market worth easily 3-4M a year.
Commentary about Singapore's prospects
Hey... i am quite prescient if i may say so. Predicted very accurately the following :
1) Widening income gap. So bad it has become an election issue.
2) Accelerating income of top tier. Top 1% of wage earners now have median wage of 700K vs just 60K or so for middle wage earner.
3) Property market went crazy from 2007 to 2013. Many properties doubled in value or more. And now middle class housing and condos exceed 1000psf routinely.
Am i happy with Singapore as it is now? I think we face some really challenging issues and our current political leaders (PAP and WP) have talked about it a lot. I believe if we stay true to our goal of building a nation, we will get through this fine. Key is to think long term while still making sure short term issues are resolved. Sort of like running a company. ====================================================================== (article first posted on sgentrepreneur Oct 2006)
Want to share my thinking on Singapore’s prospects. I actually feel very positive about Singapore for the next 3 years. I started my business in 1999 and went through some really down times all the way until 2004. And for 04,05,06, I could sense Singapore riding a huge wave of growth and optimism. I believe this wave will continue until end 2008 or 2009 at the very least. Here are the everyday signs.
1. Property market surging on high end and select areas. I think over next 2 years, we will see trickle down to middle class housing and condos.
2. Stock market at all time highs about to breach 3000.
3. Go to any mall or shopping centre. People are buying and they are all very crowded.
4. Employment market very tight. Bonuses and wages will be higher this year.
Personally, I know most SMEs who are service line or high tech are doing very well. At least 30-50% growth this year with strong projections for next year. And going forward, here are the factors which will continue to drive this momentum.
1. Trickle down effect not in full force yet.
2. IRs and a construction and property boom with even more trickle down effect.
3. Singapore’s reasonably successful move to diversify our economy. Our firms are doing better overseas now.
4. Continued boom in high end service/product. Singapore’s cementing as a private wealth hub.
The downsides?
a) Disparity between rich and poor will only widen.
b) Disparity between middle class (sandwich group) and top earners will only widen.
c) We must ensure that as we pursue $$ and growth, we do not disenfranchise our less educated and less fortunate citizens. Otherwise, not only is it ethically wrong, we are creating future social and political problems.
Case in point, I know a early 30s year old who is riding the entrepreneurship wave, his family earns a yearly income of $400-500K. Same as any IB friend or admin service friends of his. His peers who did not ride the wave are still doing decently. They are professionals/ graduates who have worked 6-7 years. Their families earn $100K a year. Those friends will naturally seriously have some envy issues. But that is still ok, since all are doing well.
How about his cohort peers who are not educated (O levels, ITEs) and working in manufacturing lines. Their families are earning 30K annually. Not much saving here already. Go one step down to those who for some reason could not complete studies, and the picture becomes dismal. I know the government is acutely aware of this issue and is moving to do more even as they encourage the growth of the high end side. But sometimes I think the trickle down effect is very slow and perceptions need to be managed very well. My two cents.
Comments from anyone
1) Widening income gap. So bad it has become an election issue.
2) Accelerating income of top tier. Top 1% of wage earners now have median wage of 700K vs just 60K or so for middle wage earner.
3) Property market went crazy from 2007 to 2013. Many properties doubled in value or more. And now middle class housing and condos exceed 1000psf routinely.
Am i happy with Singapore as it is now? I think we face some really challenging issues and our current political leaders (PAP and WP) have talked about it a lot. I believe if we stay true to our goal of building a nation, we will get through this fine. Key is to think long term while still making sure short term issues are resolved. Sort of like running a company. ====================================================================== (article first posted on sgentrepreneur Oct 2006)
Want to share my thinking on Singapore’s prospects. I actually feel very positive about Singapore for the next 3 years. I started my business in 1999 and went through some really down times all the way until 2004. And for 04,05,06, I could sense Singapore riding a huge wave of growth and optimism. I believe this wave will continue until end 2008 or 2009 at the very least. Here are the everyday signs.
1. Property market surging on high end and select areas. I think over next 2 years, we will see trickle down to middle class housing and condos.
2. Stock market at all time highs about to breach 3000.
3. Go to any mall or shopping centre. People are buying and they are all very crowded.
4. Employment market very tight. Bonuses and wages will be higher this year.
Personally, I know most SMEs who are service line or high tech are doing very well. At least 30-50% growth this year with strong projections for next year. And going forward, here are the factors which will continue to drive this momentum.
1. Trickle down effect not in full force yet.
2. IRs and a construction and property boom with even more trickle down effect.
3. Singapore’s reasonably successful move to diversify our economy. Our firms are doing better overseas now.
4. Continued boom in high end service/product. Singapore’s cementing as a private wealth hub.
The downsides?
a) Disparity between rich and poor will only widen.
b) Disparity between middle class (sandwich group) and top earners will only widen.
c) We must ensure that as we pursue $$ and growth, we do not disenfranchise our less educated and less fortunate citizens. Otherwise, not only is it ethically wrong, we are creating future social and political problems.
Case in point, I know a early 30s year old who is riding the entrepreneurship wave, his family earns a yearly income of $400-500K. Same as any IB friend or admin service friends of his. His peers who did not ride the wave are still doing decently. They are professionals/ graduates who have worked 6-7 years. Their families earn $100K a year. Those friends will naturally seriously have some envy issues. But that is still ok, since all are doing well.
How about his cohort peers who are not educated (O levels, ITEs) and working in manufacturing lines. Their families are earning 30K annually. Not much saving here already. Go one step down to those who for some reason could not complete studies, and the picture becomes dismal. I know the government is acutely aware of this issue and is moving to do more even as they encourage the growth of the high end side. But sometimes I think the trickle down effect is very slow and perceptions need to be managed very well. My two cents.
Comments from anyone
7 years on and still no YouTube in SG?
Looks like i was quite right back then to say that the environment conspires to ensure that our startups do not scale into the You Tubes of the world. Things are improving with recent exits and higher valuation rounds. But we are still stuck at the 10-100M valuation and exit area. The geographical constraint and market size is really a major determining factor. And with some many other startups operating in their home country in bigger markets, it is hard for SG based one to win in say China or USA or Europe.
And i still stand by the good university statement. In fact the recent bunch of funded startups in Singapore are all from good schools and are founded by academically smart people. ======================================================================== (Article First posted on sgentrepreneurs Oct 2006)
I have been reading with interest about the recent debate in Singapore about whether we will ever produce our own YouTube type of company. Here is my take of the issue. I will confine my discussion to just dotcom type of companies since that is the area I believe I am qualified to comment on. To be brief, I believe it is difficult but not impossible for a local startup to duplicate what YouTube has done. That is to say, gather tremendous momentum over a relatively short few years and sell out to a larger firm for a world class payout. That means companies like my own – JobsFactory, Hardwarezone, Shareinvestor are all out of our league. 7.1M give or take 5M is not a world class, attention grabbing payout.
Here are some factors I believe are most important. Many have been debated before.
1) Size of market and relevance of local content.
Sad to say, this is a very real problem. Singapore market is way too small and SE Asia is too non-homogenous for effective economies of scale, even online. The way I see it, this is the major obstacle for any wannabe YouTube based in Singapore. Even the big names that succeed in USA find it tough to penetrate a non-english market easily even with cash and brand. Ebay failed in Japan, Google is losing to Baidu in China etc. Even between USA and Europe, there is difficulty. So I believe for a firm to succeed in Singapore, the concept has to be deceptively simple. Ala google style such that is does not require too much localization across the regions and more importantly, it has to be built for the big markets like USA or China. And you will probably need to start with one or the other since language and styles are so different. Chinese sites are messy with loads of flashing banners which US visitors hate.
A good local example is wholivesnearyou.com. I think it is a wonderful local site with great traffic. I estimate they are doing 5-10M page views per month which is very decent for a local site. They are very web 2.0 and very community led. However, it looks too local to me and obviously is focusing on local market.
2) Lack of vision or rather a different vision for local startups
Most entrepreneurs in Singapore do not have a vision to be a YouTube. I think our vision is to grow a good business, impact people in a good way and make good money. It is not to change the entire world. Again, I think most people in the world are like that. Americans, China PRCs are different, by default of their market size and population, doing well in their market, means conquering half the world already. Frankly, I feel there is nothing wrong with being happy and contented with what we have. One other observation I have is that many who do have world beating dreams are usually very very young startups who seriously have not done anything significant with their company. Once their company has some success, I think the environment conspires to reduce the scope of their dreams. We have exceptions of course, Ron Sim, Sim Wong Hoo, Wong Peng Kin are good cases to learn from.
3) Lack of access to good quality funds.
Even if a firm overcomes the above two and has a great product or service which is global in outlook focusing on one of the major markets that has scale. And the firm has a strong founding team with brains, strategic prowess and management depth, they will still need money to make it all work. Now, frankly if a company has such traction in a major overseas market, then I believe they will get funding from valley investors rather than local ones.
The above 3 factors to me are the most pertinant in the discussion. There are of course others I am sure.
So does that mean we have no hope? On the contrary I believe we do have hope, it is just that we are against a gradient. So if any company does succeed, I truly applaud them. Some examples which I think can have hope? The characteristics I venture to guess will be as follows : Built with a larger market in mind. Either China or USA. But business can be based in Singapore for development, taxation, IP etc purposes. Web 2.0 community led concept. Spread like wildfire across the targeted market. May not even be known in Singapore. Probably focused on young. Esp since young are slightly more homogenous across the world thanks to cross cultural influences. Simple software and at least American standard designs and branding. Many local sites (mine included) are not up to standard still. We have basic grammatical errors, branding not looked into etc.
World class credentials from management team. Sorry guys, but I do not think a couple of fresh graduates will make it unless they are from Stanford, MIT or harvard, or maybe IIT, Bei Da, Oxbridge. Pedigree attracts pedigree. It’s a fact. There are exceptions of course, but I am taking an educated projection here. Funding from similarly well known firms. Perkin, Sequoia etc.
And i still stand by the good university statement. In fact the recent bunch of funded startups in Singapore are all from good schools and are founded by academically smart people. ======================================================================== (Article First posted on sgentrepreneurs Oct 2006)
I have been reading with interest about the recent debate in Singapore about whether we will ever produce our own YouTube type of company. Here is my take of the issue. I will confine my discussion to just dotcom type of companies since that is the area I believe I am qualified to comment on. To be brief, I believe it is difficult but not impossible for a local startup to duplicate what YouTube has done. That is to say, gather tremendous momentum over a relatively short few years and sell out to a larger firm for a world class payout. That means companies like my own – JobsFactory, Hardwarezone, Shareinvestor are all out of our league. 7.1M give or take 5M is not a world class, attention grabbing payout.
Here are some factors I believe are most important. Many have been debated before.
1) Size of market and relevance of local content.
Sad to say, this is a very real problem. Singapore market is way too small and SE Asia is too non-homogenous for effective economies of scale, even online. The way I see it, this is the major obstacle for any wannabe YouTube based in Singapore. Even the big names that succeed in USA find it tough to penetrate a non-english market easily even with cash and brand. Ebay failed in Japan, Google is losing to Baidu in China etc. Even between USA and Europe, there is difficulty. So I believe for a firm to succeed in Singapore, the concept has to be deceptively simple. Ala google style such that is does not require too much localization across the regions and more importantly, it has to be built for the big markets like USA or China. And you will probably need to start with one or the other since language and styles are so different. Chinese sites are messy with loads of flashing banners which US visitors hate.
A good local example is wholivesnearyou.com. I think it is a wonderful local site with great traffic. I estimate they are doing 5-10M page views per month which is very decent for a local site. They are very web 2.0 and very community led. However, it looks too local to me and obviously is focusing on local market.
2) Lack of vision or rather a different vision for local startups
Most entrepreneurs in Singapore do not have a vision to be a YouTube. I think our vision is to grow a good business, impact people in a good way and make good money. It is not to change the entire world. Again, I think most people in the world are like that. Americans, China PRCs are different, by default of their market size and population, doing well in their market, means conquering half the world already. Frankly, I feel there is nothing wrong with being happy and contented with what we have. One other observation I have is that many who do have world beating dreams are usually very very young startups who seriously have not done anything significant with their company. Once their company has some success, I think the environment conspires to reduce the scope of their dreams. We have exceptions of course, Ron Sim, Sim Wong Hoo, Wong Peng Kin are good cases to learn from.
3) Lack of access to good quality funds.
Even if a firm overcomes the above two and has a great product or service which is global in outlook focusing on one of the major markets that has scale. And the firm has a strong founding team with brains, strategic prowess and management depth, they will still need money to make it all work. Now, frankly if a company has such traction in a major overseas market, then I believe they will get funding from valley investors rather than local ones.
The above 3 factors to me are the most pertinant in the discussion. There are of course others I am sure.
So does that mean we have no hope? On the contrary I believe we do have hope, it is just that we are against a gradient. So if any company does succeed, I truly applaud them. Some examples which I think can have hope? The characteristics I venture to guess will be as follows : Built with a larger market in mind. Either China or USA. But business can be based in Singapore for development, taxation, IP etc purposes. Web 2.0 community led concept. Spread like wildfire across the targeted market. May not even be known in Singapore. Probably focused on young. Esp since young are slightly more homogenous across the world thanks to cross cultural influences. Simple software and at least American standard designs and branding. Many local sites (mine included) are not up to standard still. We have basic grammatical errors, branding not looked into etc.
World class credentials from management team. Sorry guys, but I do not think a couple of fresh graduates will make it unless they are from Stanford, MIT or harvard, or maybe IIT, Bei Da, Oxbridge. Pedigree attracts pedigree. It’s a fact. There are exceptions of course, but I am taking an educated projection here. Funding from similarly well known firms. Perkin, Sequoia etc.
When to move office?
To carry on the story below. We grew from the 21 staff to current to close to 100. And we stayed at the science park place for 5 years before moving to the current IBP place that is about 4700 sqft. My thinking has not changed much on this. I feel rental in Singapore is so expensive. As startups we definitely want to watch our costs. So we have always only added office space when we are exploding from the current place. And we totally believe in just adding extra office units next door or next floor. That way we keep rental costs to under 2% of revenue at all times which makes sense for a company like mine.
I hate visiting firms that have huge office space. It just feels so wasteful to me. The current saga about Blk 71 really shows how startups in SG now have a much better deal. Even in golden mile i was paying about $2 psf. Now it is double that. I heard that in Blk 71, people are paying $1+!!! This is a fantastically good deal for startups who are occupying that space. It is a clear cut case of government money subsidizing the industry. No wonder MDA is considering to move tenants around. It cannot be subsidizing the same companies for such an extended period. Some food for thought for those of us who cannot understand why MDA wants to move long staying tenants out of Blk 71. In this context, i think it makes sense right?
=====================================================
(Article posted at sgentrepreneur Oct 2006)
Once you have stablized the first phase of your startup, you will need to look for a proper office. Our resident contributor, Der Shing draws his experience about moving the company office from place to place and shares his thoughts about the value of matching office environment to company growth. When I started out, two of us worked out of my room. I felt no compulsion to wake up on time and probably worked about 4 hours a day. Fortunately, this phase lasted only 6 months and I knew we had to go to a proper office. So home office is not something that works for me.
Next office was in Golden Mile Complex. For those in the know, this is one of the crappiest place with red light district downstairs and regular robberies and murders. We lasted 1 year there and increased from 2-man show to 6-man show. But secretly, we were amazed whenever a new person joined us as we cannot conceive why a young degree/dip grad would want to join us. Maybe we were very persuasive :) Anyway, during this phase of startup, we had DIY PCs and hand-me-down furnishing too. Personally, I was extremely motivated and the less-than-ideal surroundings made me feel even more determined to crawl out of it. However for staff, it was a tough place to be. No one likes to say they work in an old buiiding with prostitutes downstairs.
Next office was at phase z.ro tech park, a bright yellow colour container place. We thought it was heaven. We stayed 5 years and it saw us grow from 6-man team to 18-man team, taking more office space as we grew. Still a very scrappy environment. Miles ahead of golden mile but still not a proper office in most sense of the word. Clients and interviewees would joke that we work in containers, so we took to saying it first. My people were happier here though none were from the golden mile days. Personally, i still felt very “startup” and the lack of facilities and leaky roof and floor made us feel more determined to do well. Last month, we moved to Science park. We now have 21 staff and intend to grow past 40 staff here. Finally a normal office with recept area. And guess what, I noticed that my colleagues seem happier here and it is more professional feeling. So a nicer office does make a difference! But for me, I feel as though more things are expected of us now. The scrappy feeling is diminished and we now actually have our own meeting room and storage rooms. Feeling more corporate and more part of the scene.
Next step? If we grow past our 40 staff and hence $5M mark, then I think a even larger office is in order. What next? A city office with a view? What will we be doing then? Probably more HR, Strategy, Finance stuff. No more feeling like an underdog. I wonder…
I hate visiting firms that have huge office space. It just feels so wasteful to me. The current saga about Blk 71 really shows how startups in SG now have a much better deal. Even in golden mile i was paying about $2 psf. Now it is double that. I heard that in Blk 71, people are paying $1+!!! This is a fantastically good deal for startups who are occupying that space. It is a clear cut case of government money subsidizing the industry. No wonder MDA is considering to move tenants around. It cannot be subsidizing the same companies for such an extended period. Some food for thought for those of us who cannot understand why MDA wants to move long staying tenants out of Blk 71. In this context, i think it makes sense right?
=====================================================
(Article posted at sgentrepreneur Oct 2006)
Once you have stablized the first phase of your startup, you will need to look for a proper office. Our resident contributor, Der Shing draws his experience about moving the company office from place to place and shares his thoughts about the value of matching office environment to company growth. When I started out, two of us worked out of my room. I felt no compulsion to wake up on time and probably worked about 4 hours a day. Fortunately, this phase lasted only 6 months and I knew we had to go to a proper office. So home office is not something that works for me.
Next office was in Golden Mile Complex. For those in the know, this is one of the crappiest place with red light district downstairs and regular robberies and murders. We lasted 1 year there and increased from 2-man show to 6-man show. But secretly, we were amazed whenever a new person joined us as we cannot conceive why a young degree/dip grad would want to join us. Maybe we were very persuasive :) Anyway, during this phase of startup, we had DIY PCs and hand-me-down furnishing too. Personally, I was extremely motivated and the less-than-ideal surroundings made me feel even more determined to crawl out of it. However for staff, it was a tough place to be. No one likes to say they work in an old buiiding with prostitutes downstairs.
Next office was at phase z.ro tech park, a bright yellow colour container place. We thought it was heaven. We stayed 5 years and it saw us grow from 6-man team to 18-man team, taking more office space as we grew. Still a very scrappy environment. Miles ahead of golden mile but still not a proper office in most sense of the word. Clients and interviewees would joke that we work in containers, so we took to saying it first. My people were happier here though none were from the golden mile days. Personally, i still felt very “startup” and the lack of facilities and leaky roof and floor made us feel more determined to do well. Last month, we moved to Science park. We now have 21 staff and intend to grow past 40 staff here. Finally a normal office with recept area. And guess what, I noticed that my colleagues seem happier here and it is more professional feeling. So a nicer office does make a difference! But for me, I feel as though more things are expected of us now. The scrappy feeling is diminished and we now actually have our own meeting room and storage rooms. Feeling more corporate and more part of the scene.
Next step? If we grow past our 40 staff and hence $5M mark, then I think a even larger office is in order. What next? A city office with a view? What will we be doing then? Probably more HR, Strategy, Finance stuff. No more feeling like an underdog. I wonder…
Making enough to retire at 35?
Wow! This is like reading a letter from myself written 7 years ago. How things have changed :
1)I did that half marathon. In fact, i did a full marathon the year after. Felt great to complete the marathon. Definitely one of the more memorable experiences in my life.
2) I was 1 year late. I sold my company in 2011 age 36. And yes, i collected enough immediately to have an option to retire at my standard of living. But of course, i did not retire and am still happily running the company i founded.
3) I failed totally in being less competitive. In fact, from 2006 to 2010 was my most competitive period of life. I would compare myself obsessively with other people in terms of achievements. I think that is what spurs me on. Today? I am somewhere inbetween. Still very competitive but now i try to compete on being happy and not just numbers.
4) Trip. I made many in these 7 years. Some with kids, some without. I am very blessed. been to Bhutan, Europe x 3 times, China x 3 times, Japan x 2 times, USA x 2 times, Phuket/bali/koh samui many many times etc
So do i feel i am an entrepreneur? It is a definite yes! Because I cannot imagine not running and owning a company if i am to work long term till i am in 50s. I may take breaks, I may do a corporate stint for couple of years but i will always be involved in startup scene as investor/director/advisor etc. Now i realize that entrepreneurship is part of life, it is not everything but it is very important to me. Only things more important is my family , wife, kids and mental/physical health.
===================================================================== (Article first appeared on sgentrepreneurs - July 2006)
Recently, it seems that God is trying to tell me something. I was a speaker and career panelist for Confluence 06 (for overseas students to speak to Teo Chee Hian and others) and had to speak to 200+ undergraduates on my experience in business and my aspirations. My company is helping EDB with a web site called Aspirations which is focused on providing career information to students. In both, the word “Aspirations” kept hitting me and got me thinking about what I wanted to do in life. I think most people would agree with me that we do not want to settle for a life less than exciting.
As entrepreneurs, people sometimes think that all we want to do is grow our business. For me personally, that is definitely not true by now. In fact, I see my “aspiration” as one whereby I am challenged daily but in a way that is not just mental but also physical and spiritual. And yet at the same time, I do not want to always be challenged. Sometimes, I just want to kick back, chill out and play with my kids, wife or just laze. Other times, I am so inspired by nature, I want to scuba dive the pacific islands or walk the appalachian trails. I wonder how other entreprenuers who are above 40 can plug away at the same task for a lifetime. Sheer one-dimensional passion? Lack of imagination of another type of life? What is the motivating factor that drives and more importantly satisfies? I examine some that I know thrill me.
Intellectual challenge.
This has always been fun for me. Whether it is the satisfaction of thinking of good work flow, business model, sales pitch etc. But when I compare it to the intellectual completeness of academic thought and the wit and beauty of literary and philosophical thought, then the intellectual challenge of running a business is so much more limited in scope and untidy. Physical challenge. There is an intrinsic beauty to being fit and being physically energized and challenged. I used to windsurf a lot and scuba dive. I still do a little but I think running your own business kind of occupies so much time that there is no time for the quietness that I used to enjoy with such sports.
Spiritual Challenge.
Entreprenuership fails even more on this count. To me to play the game of running a company is to play the game of capitalism. So it is always cost benefit in the long term that matters. And frankly there is little spiritual about commerce and money. So where do I go from here? As usual, the tedium of life will drag us down and remind us of the responsibilities we have to clients, staff and family. That is why subconsciously, I have always known I am not a true entreprenuer. I am like a pretend person, performing the role adequately but always aspiring for a deeper life. I know all about enjoying the journey while getting to the goals but it is tough to always focus when it is a fact that life as a business person is quite demanding in terms of time and energy.
Some key stuff I aspire for that will alleviate this sense of “ennui” or boredom/emptiness.
Run a half marathon (full is too much for me).
Make enough money to have option to quit by 35.
Be less competitive and not benchmark material acqusitions to much with others.
Need to sneak a trip (without kids) to some nature haven. Nepal? Tibet? …
Well.. this is the inner musing of an entrepreneur. I believe man are quite common in this respect. Some can articulate their inner thoughts, others cannot. But I would love to hear from others how each deals with this essential question.
1)I did that half marathon. In fact, i did a full marathon the year after. Felt great to complete the marathon. Definitely one of the more memorable experiences in my life.
2) I was 1 year late. I sold my company in 2011 age 36. And yes, i collected enough immediately to have an option to retire at my standard of living. But of course, i did not retire and am still happily running the company i founded.
3) I failed totally in being less competitive. In fact, from 2006 to 2010 was my most competitive period of life. I would compare myself obsessively with other people in terms of achievements. I think that is what spurs me on. Today? I am somewhere inbetween. Still very competitive but now i try to compete on being happy and not just numbers.
4) Trip. I made many in these 7 years. Some with kids, some without. I am very blessed. been to Bhutan, Europe x 3 times, China x 3 times, Japan x 2 times, USA x 2 times, Phuket/bali/koh samui many many times etc
So do i feel i am an entrepreneur? It is a definite yes! Because I cannot imagine not running and owning a company if i am to work long term till i am in 50s. I may take breaks, I may do a corporate stint for couple of years but i will always be involved in startup scene as investor/director/advisor etc. Now i realize that entrepreneurship is part of life, it is not everything but it is very important to me. Only things more important is my family , wife, kids and mental/physical health.
===================================================================== (Article first appeared on sgentrepreneurs - July 2006)
Recently, it seems that God is trying to tell me something. I was a speaker and career panelist for Confluence 06 (for overseas students to speak to Teo Chee Hian and others) and had to speak to 200+ undergraduates on my experience in business and my aspirations. My company is helping EDB with a web site called Aspirations which is focused on providing career information to students. In both, the word “Aspirations” kept hitting me and got me thinking about what I wanted to do in life. I think most people would agree with me that we do not want to settle for a life less than exciting.
As entrepreneurs, people sometimes think that all we want to do is grow our business. For me personally, that is definitely not true by now. In fact, I see my “aspiration” as one whereby I am challenged daily but in a way that is not just mental but also physical and spiritual. And yet at the same time, I do not want to always be challenged. Sometimes, I just want to kick back, chill out and play with my kids, wife or just laze. Other times, I am so inspired by nature, I want to scuba dive the pacific islands or walk the appalachian trails. I wonder how other entreprenuers who are above 40 can plug away at the same task for a lifetime. Sheer one-dimensional passion? Lack of imagination of another type of life? What is the motivating factor that drives and more importantly satisfies? I examine some that I know thrill me.
Intellectual challenge.
This has always been fun for me. Whether it is the satisfaction of thinking of good work flow, business model, sales pitch etc. But when I compare it to the intellectual completeness of academic thought and the wit and beauty of literary and philosophical thought, then the intellectual challenge of running a business is so much more limited in scope and untidy. Physical challenge. There is an intrinsic beauty to being fit and being physically energized and challenged. I used to windsurf a lot and scuba dive. I still do a little but I think running your own business kind of occupies so much time that there is no time for the quietness that I used to enjoy with such sports.
Spiritual Challenge.
Entreprenuership fails even more on this count. To me to play the game of running a company is to play the game of capitalism. So it is always cost benefit in the long term that matters. And frankly there is little spiritual about commerce and money. So where do I go from here? As usual, the tedium of life will drag us down and remind us of the responsibilities we have to clients, staff and family. That is why subconsciously, I have always known I am not a true entreprenuer. I am like a pretend person, performing the role adequately but always aspiring for a deeper life. I know all about enjoying the journey while getting to the goals but it is tough to always focus when it is a fact that life as a business person is quite demanding in terms of time and energy.
Some key stuff I aspire for that will alleviate this sense of “ennui” or boredom/emptiness.
Run a half marathon (full is too much for me).
Make enough money to have option to quit by 35.
Be less competitive and not benchmark material acqusitions to much with others.
Need to sneak a trip (without kids) to some nature haven. Nepal? Tibet? …
Well.. this is the inner musing of an entrepreneur. I believe man are quite common in this respect. Some can articulate their inner thoughts, others cannot. But I would love to hear from others how each deals with this essential question.
Changing Expectations - Update
Haha... this is something only a young idealistic person would need to grapple with. Currently, for self motivated people, we let them operate on KPIs and deliverables. For less self driven people, we hold them on a tight leash and micromanage more. Over longer term, i prefer to work only with self motivated ones at least as direct reportees. The key for any hire is to figure out quickly their level of self motivation.
Environment still the same . Very open concept and merit based. Workflows and processes are super important and quite a lot of my people's time is spent on streamlining and coming up with better processes as our functions are subdivided and our staff become more and more specialist. ============================================================================================== (Article first posted on sgentrepreneur - Jul 2006)
Reading some article lately in Harvard Business Review and it got me thinking that over the past 6 years of entreprenuerial journey I have changed my mindset and expectations quite dramatically. Here are some core changes I have observed. May be useful to compare notes.
1) Expectations of staff working hours.
I vacillated a lot on this one. At first, I felt that one should be objective oriented. As long as key objectives are achieved, it doesn’t matter how late you work or how late you come in. Then after 2 years, I switched over to the thinking that your working hours show how “on” and serious you are. Precipitated by a bunch of really quite not-too-engaged staff. So as management, we found overseas more squeezed towards watching hours and micro-managing. Fortunately, we had a major firing/exodus exercise and this allowed us to start afresh. Now, I am ina more moderate and enlightened mode.We have some rules and expectations of working hours but we are also objective and performance oriented. You may work late but if you do not work smart, I much rather prefer the guy who works smart. I have staff who leave at 5pm sharp each day and we do not judge them based on that. It sounds very simple, but it took us 4 years to figure it out and adopt it as a real mindset and culture of the company.
2)Dot com dream environment
Funny thing was that when I started the firm, I read a lot of management books and was very inspired by american dot coms. I believed in working smart, good collaboration, high motivation, fun atmostphere etc. So we worked 9 to 5, had an open office concept, minimal hierachy etc After 3-4 years, I looked and realized that we are just like any other SME. Only thing is that we work 9 to 5 :) Now after 6 years, I still do believe in all that brillant people with brillant people to make magic idea but it is very tempered with realism. And perhaps it is something for more boutique super high value consulting/IB firms and huge MNCs. For us, I am happy to have a fair working environment with good people who work well together.
3) Workflows and systems
When I started I used to laugh at systems and workflows. Being an almost fresh graduate, I thought it was very silly to have such things. It is so old economy. So you can imagine our company was pretty chaotic in our way things ran. Fast forward to now, I now still hate systems and workflows esp if I have to follow them but I now acknowledge the need for it. So as we grow we become more and more like the firms I laughed at…. Quite ironic. We just created a Human Resource (HR) handbook this year. Thats all I can think of for now. Will add in more items as I go along. Do feel free to add in your own changes
Environment still the same . Very open concept and merit based. Workflows and processes are super important and quite a lot of my people's time is spent on streamlining and coming up with better processes as our functions are subdivided and our staff become more and more specialist. ============================================================================================== (Article first posted on sgentrepreneur - Jul 2006)
Reading some article lately in Harvard Business Review and it got me thinking that over the past 6 years of entreprenuerial journey I have changed my mindset and expectations quite dramatically. Here are some core changes I have observed. May be useful to compare notes.
1) Expectations of staff working hours.
I vacillated a lot on this one. At first, I felt that one should be objective oriented. As long as key objectives are achieved, it doesn’t matter how late you work or how late you come in. Then after 2 years, I switched over to the thinking that your working hours show how “on” and serious you are. Precipitated by a bunch of really quite not-too-engaged staff. So as management, we found overseas more squeezed towards watching hours and micro-managing. Fortunately, we had a major firing/exodus exercise and this allowed us to start afresh. Now, I am ina more moderate and enlightened mode.We have some rules and expectations of working hours but we are also objective and performance oriented. You may work late but if you do not work smart, I much rather prefer the guy who works smart. I have staff who leave at 5pm sharp each day and we do not judge them based on that. It sounds very simple, but it took us 4 years to figure it out and adopt it as a real mindset and culture of the company.
2)Dot com dream environment
Funny thing was that when I started the firm, I read a lot of management books and was very inspired by american dot coms. I believed in working smart, good collaboration, high motivation, fun atmostphere etc. So we worked 9 to 5, had an open office concept, minimal hierachy etc After 3-4 years, I looked and realized that we are just like any other SME. Only thing is that we work 9 to 5 :) Now after 6 years, I still do believe in all that brillant people with brillant people to make magic idea but it is very tempered with realism. And perhaps it is something for more boutique super high value consulting/IB firms and huge MNCs. For us, I am happy to have a fair working environment with good people who work well together.
3) Workflows and systems
When I started I used to laugh at systems and workflows. Being an almost fresh graduate, I thought it was very silly to have such things. It is so old economy. So you can imagine our company was pretty chaotic in our way things ran. Fast forward to now, I now still hate systems and workflows esp if I have to follow them but I now acknowledge the need for it. So as we grow we become more and more like the firms I laughed at…. Quite ironic. We just created a Human Resource (HR) handbook this year. Thats all I can think of for now. Will add in more items as I go along. Do feel free to add in your own changes
Those good old memories... read this if you want to understand the old 2000 dot com thinking.
This is cute. So i am looking back at an article i wrote. And in that article i was looking back another 5 years. The major difference between now and then is that today, the startups are having to make a lot more sense before we can raise money. In addition, the business models are a lot more developed and targeted and definitely there is a lot more talent available in the market compared to 2000. Interestingly, the idea of doing side software or service projects to make ends meet still applies esp for more bootstrapped outfits.
And even better, some names still exist! Catcha is now back in the game as the originator of iProperty, dealmates, icarasia... Kudos to Patrick and team from Malaysia. Job portals still strong as ever and i believe we are still the most profitable of internet plays. Hardwarezone and Shareinvestor both sold to SPH already. I will analyze those sales in another posting. ================================================================================================ (Article first published in sgentrepreneurs back in 2006)
Sharing my own experience on the topic written before as it got me thinking a fair bit more. JobsFactory was started as a job portal back in 1999. During that time, there were lots of start ups in Singapore which were in dot com. It was our own dot com boom. Companies like Interauct, Commontown, Wizoffice, eJazz, Nececity, Myscissors, asiastockwatch, catcha, zingasia, earth9, surfgold etc etc all raised lots of money and were advertising like crazy in mass media just to get “eyeballs”. The idea was that we got lots of traffic first and IPO. We can figure out the revenue side later. It was really a fun period as there was a strong buzz and young fellas under 30 were sitting in board rooms making contra deals that inflated each others revenues while adding no actual cash flow. Its damn funny now looking back.
We attended quite a few parties and opening ceremonies and they spent so much money on the marketing and image and yet spent so little resource thinking about sales and business model. A typical consequence of cheap money. My list above is for pure dot coms, i am not including players who closed like MPHonline, asiaone.com etc. These have parentage and roots in profitable businesses. Fast forward to 2001 in the aftermath of the dot com crash. Funding all dried up and very quickly those without a revenue stream crashed and closed down. The survivors tended to be those who :
1) Moved into corporate market by tweaking their C2C or B2C software into a purely software vendor for large firms in specialized fields. Example :
a) Surfgold – from online currency type consumer model to loyalty and CRM software vendor for large MNCs. Doing very well now if I may add.
b) Earth9 – from some community C2C site to a CRM software provider for Starhub and others. Doing quite okay too. This company cute, their CEO used to be called DNA.
c) Commontown – Still around. They were some C2C community too and now are software providers for web sites which revolve around community. But i think this one not doing that well.
d) Of course, you got the suppliers of software like Adroit Innovations, managed to list but also died as nobody wanted to build expensive web sites after 2000. Can’t think of others. That is how few survivors there were.
The other category that survived and doing quite well are those that were in B2C or C2C and went deep into media area within their area of expertise. This group all making $2M – $10M range.
1) Hardwarezone – From just a site, to magazines and events and regional.
2) Catcha – From a yahoo wannabe, gave up online, moved to Malaysia too and now a decent sized publisher of magazines. Juice, Stuff, etc.
3) Shareinvestor – from community of investors to community + investor relations software provider + magazine publisher (new one).
4) Jobsdb, Jobstreet, JobsFactory – Job portal is a proven business model. So still job portal but branched into running events, magazines etc. So if I do some projection.
Fast forward to 2008, I believe the 2 models will still be there. One as specialist software vendors, the other as media companies who are rooted in online mediums but who also cross synergize with events and print and maybe even TV production (I know catcha is doing this). In a sense group 2 are doing web 2.0, cuz they will be forced to be ever more interactive in their chosen channels.
For my side, job portals which increasing allow users to feedback and interact among themselves about companies and jobs? Or to allow them to search for referrals (ala social networking sites) ? These are all possibilities. One thing for sure, all the surviving companies listed above are profitable already. Sharing my experience. Make your own conclusions
And even better, some names still exist! Catcha is now back in the game as the originator of iProperty, dealmates, icarasia... Kudos to Patrick and team from Malaysia. Job portals still strong as ever and i believe we are still the most profitable of internet plays. Hardwarezone and Shareinvestor both sold to SPH already. I will analyze those sales in another posting. ================================================================================================ (Article first published in sgentrepreneurs back in 2006)
Sharing my own experience on the topic written before as it got me thinking a fair bit more. JobsFactory was started as a job portal back in 1999. During that time, there were lots of start ups in Singapore which were in dot com. It was our own dot com boom. Companies like Interauct, Commontown, Wizoffice, eJazz, Nececity, Myscissors, asiastockwatch, catcha, zingasia, earth9, surfgold etc etc all raised lots of money and were advertising like crazy in mass media just to get “eyeballs”. The idea was that we got lots of traffic first and IPO. We can figure out the revenue side later. It was really a fun period as there was a strong buzz and young fellas under 30 were sitting in board rooms making contra deals that inflated each others revenues while adding no actual cash flow. Its damn funny now looking back.
We attended quite a few parties and opening ceremonies and they spent so much money on the marketing and image and yet spent so little resource thinking about sales and business model. A typical consequence of cheap money. My list above is for pure dot coms, i am not including players who closed like MPHonline, asiaone.com etc. These have parentage and roots in profitable businesses. Fast forward to 2001 in the aftermath of the dot com crash. Funding all dried up and very quickly those without a revenue stream crashed and closed down. The survivors tended to be those who :
1) Moved into corporate market by tweaking their C2C or B2C software into a purely software vendor for large firms in specialized fields. Example :
a) Surfgold – from online currency type consumer model to loyalty and CRM software vendor for large MNCs. Doing very well now if I may add.
b) Earth9 – from some community C2C site to a CRM software provider for Starhub and others. Doing quite okay too. This company cute, their CEO used to be called DNA.
c) Commontown – Still around. They were some C2C community too and now are software providers for web sites which revolve around community. But i think this one not doing that well.
d) Of course, you got the suppliers of software like Adroit Innovations, managed to list but also died as nobody wanted to build expensive web sites after 2000. Can’t think of others. That is how few survivors there were.
The other category that survived and doing quite well are those that were in B2C or C2C and went deep into media area within their area of expertise. This group all making $2M – $10M range.
1) Hardwarezone – From just a site, to magazines and events and regional.
2) Catcha – From a yahoo wannabe, gave up online, moved to Malaysia too and now a decent sized publisher of magazines. Juice, Stuff, etc.
3) Shareinvestor – from community of investors to community + investor relations software provider + magazine publisher (new one).
4) Jobsdb, Jobstreet, JobsFactory – Job portal is a proven business model. So still job portal but branched into running events, magazines etc. So if I do some projection.
Fast forward to 2008, I believe the 2 models will still be there. One as specialist software vendors, the other as media companies who are rooted in online mediums but who also cross synergize with events and print and maybe even TV production (I know catcha is doing this). In a sense group 2 are doing web 2.0, cuz they will be forced to be ever more interactive in their chosen channels.
For my side, job portals which increasing allow users to feedback and interact among themselves about companies and jobs? Or to allow them to search for referrals (ala social networking sites) ? These are all possibilities. One thing for sure, all the surviving companies listed above are profitable already. Sharing my experience. Make your own conclusions
Start Up Journey - First 6 years summary.
Reading what i wrote back then about 7 years ago. Agree with most of it. Except the bit about Mentors. What i learned from networking is that fellow entrepreneurs (whatever the industry) are the best people to learn from. They can give us benchmarks and they can share what they did before and how it worked for them. In terms of specific functional knowledge, the best way is to just hire the right talent who has done it before. You will learn a lot just watching them work. As for bootstrapping, i think still very relevant today even with a much easier funding environment.
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(Article below first posted on www.sgentrepreneurs.sg back in June 2006!)
After reading the various experiences of so many others, I thought I would share my own journey and lessons learned as an entrepreneur. Before writing about what I have learned, a quick overview. I graduated from NYPS, CHS, HCJC, OCS and then got a scholarship with a GLC to study EEE in the USA. Graduated with equivalent of 1st class honours and returned to work in the GLC for all of 8 months. I am a typical product of our rather elitist system. Quit and started JobsFactory in 2000. Aim was to be a job portal. By 2001 we knew we were beat and switched plan and focused on our current mission of providing effective career channels for students and professionals.
Over the past 6 years, we have grown from a 2 man show to a 20 man show. From just $20K capital to over 2M turnover. Here are some key lessons I have learned. Some are observations, others are business experiences.
1. Bootstrapping a business is good for you My partners and I started with just $20K as a startup capital. We paid ourselves S$200 a month salary for 6 months and worked out from my room. It was a very painful time. Even when some revenue flowed, our first office was at Golden Mile Complex. Up to today, I am amazed and grateful that our first few employees were willing to work there. What this tough beginning means is that we are extremely cautious with spending and watched our finances like a hawk. We also do not believe in spending unless the product or service has revenues coming in. This idea of bootstrapping to launch new services has helped us conserve our limited resources and ensured that we could survive through the downturn and SARs in 2003.
2) People, People, People For a service firm like mine, our people matter the most. From our staff to my management partners, the most important thing is that they are fulfilled and aligned with company objectives. Ego has little role to play in a startup. This is a common mantra of all businesses but few people actually do something about it. We do. We work 9 to 6pm latest Mon to Fri and we have implemented quarterly company outings. We also created a performance development system with a fixed review and bonus process. In addition, we have just started to institute training budgets for staff. We want our staff to love working here. I am also lucky to have a good team of management partners.
3) Mentors & Benchmarking The first years until 2003, we were blind and could not see how we can grow. But fortunately we had an incident which allowed us to be guided through a proper strategic planning process. I learned to look beyond my company and see what others are doing. This spurred my team to be more strategic in approach. With a vision and mission and objectives, we knew where we wanted to go and nothing was going to stop us. Now, we spend a lot more time benchmarking our performance with industry peers and alot more time planning ahead with proper budgeting and controls. A good source of benchmarking data is to buy them from bizfile. Buy your competitors annual audited accounts and learn from them. Mentors are harder to find. But speak to more experienced people and see if you can listen well and learn a thing or two.
4) Scholars Make Bad Business People This is a generalization. But being a scholar myself, I realize we are too sure in our thinking and too clear headed. Being intellectually correct has little meaning if your market depends on emotional purchases or when there are emotional variables at play. Or on a smaller scale, winning an argument during a management meeting may feel good but offending your key partner in the process over a small matter perhaps is a dumb thing to do. Esp if you are a scholar who has worked to the end of your bond. In the government , you are probably Deputy Director level or perhaps even a member of the admin service. You are in charge of a department and everywhere you go, people pay attention to you. What’s more you deal with smart people and vendors send their best to present to you. Someone like that would have hard a time putting down his pride and starting from scratch. Can be done I guess but tough
After reading the various experiences of so many others, I thought I would share my own journey and lessons learned as an entrepreneur. Before writing about what I have learned, a quick overview. I graduated from NYPS, CHS, HCJC, OCS and then got a scholarship with a GLC to study EEE in the USA. Graduated with equivalent of 1st class honours and returned to work in the GLC for all of 8 months. I am a typical product of our rather elitist system. Quit and started JobsFactory in 2000. Aim was to be a job portal. By 2001 we knew we were beat and switched plan and focused on our current mission of providing effective career channels for students and professionals.
Over the past 6 years, we have grown from a 2 man show to a 20 man show. From just $20K capital to over 2M turnover. Here are some key lessons I have learned. Some are observations, others are business experiences.
1. Bootstrapping a business is good for you My partners and I started with just $20K as a startup capital. We paid ourselves S$200 a month salary for 6 months and worked out from my room. It was a very painful time. Even when some revenue flowed, our first office was at Golden Mile Complex. Up to today, I am amazed and grateful that our first few employees were willing to work there. What this tough beginning means is that we are extremely cautious with spending and watched our finances like a hawk. We also do not believe in spending unless the product or service has revenues coming in. This idea of bootstrapping to launch new services has helped us conserve our limited resources and ensured that we could survive through the downturn and SARs in 2003.
2) People, People, People For a service firm like mine, our people matter the most. From our staff to my management partners, the most important thing is that they are fulfilled and aligned with company objectives. Ego has little role to play in a startup. This is a common mantra of all businesses but few people actually do something about it. We do. We work 9 to 6pm latest Mon to Fri and we have implemented quarterly company outings. We also created a performance development system with a fixed review and bonus process. In addition, we have just started to institute training budgets for staff. We want our staff to love working here. I am also lucky to have a good team of management partners.
3) Mentors & Benchmarking The first years until 2003, we were blind and could not see how we can grow. But fortunately we had an incident which allowed us to be guided through a proper strategic planning process. I learned to look beyond my company and see what others are doing. This spurred my team to be more strategic in approach. With a vision and mission and objectives, we knew where we wanted to go and nothing was going to stop us. Now, we spend a lot more time benchmarking our performance with industry peers and alot more time planning ahead with proper budgeting and controls. A good source of benchmarking data is to buy them from bizfile. Buy your competitors annual audited accounts and learn from them. Mentors are harder to find. But speak to more experienced people and see if you can listen well and learn a thing or two.
4) Scholars Make Bad Business People This is a generalization. But being a scholar myself, I realize we are too sure in our thinking and too clear headed. Being intellectually correct has little meaning if your market depends on emotional purchases or when there are emotional variables at play. Or on a smaller scale, winning an argument during a management meeting may feel good but offending your key partner in the process over a small matter perhaps is a dumb thing to do. Esp if you are a scholar who has worked to the end of your bond. In the government , you are probably Deputy Director level or perhaps even a member of the admin service. You are in charge of a department and everywhere you go, people pay attention to you. What’s more you deal with smart people and vendors send their best to present to you. Someone like that would have hard a time putting down his pride and starting from scratch. Can be done I guess but tough
Reflecting on my past thoughts on the Entrepreneurial Journey + MORE!
I just gave a talk at Hwa Chong about my last 12 years journey and I realize that i have changed so much during these 12 years. Both as a person and as an entrepreneur. So i resolve to do 3 things.
1) I will collate all my past articles written and post them into this blog as a central store. I will give an updated commentary on what i think now compared to what i think then.
2) There have been more exits of late. I will start a series of articles analyzing each exit since i find that most news channels do not really analyze and just repeat key points from the press releases given to them.
3) I will attempt to publicize the articles i write above. Not sure if there will be any results but it will fun as an experiment. I always wondered if i can run an active blog.
So there.
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