Rahul Shah on “How To Sell Your Ideas”
The 24 Hour Challenge Seminar Series
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Executive Summary Workshop
The 24 Hour Challenge Seminar Series
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Amazon’s Simone Brunozzi talks Cloud Computing
The 24 Hour Challenge Seminar Series
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The 24 Hour Challenge Interviews
Interview with Associate Professor Albert Teo, NUS
What are some of the key challenges that some of the social entrepreneurs in Singapore face?
From my own conversations with social entrepreneurs, I realized that many of them are struggling because when they set up their own social enterprise, they often fail to think about what the community possesses in terms of their strengths and assets. They think that they can just import a model from another successful social enterprise. So they don’t think through quite carefully what the assets and strengths of the group are. Moreover, they are unprepared for the liabilities and the challenges that they face and they don’t have a good grasp of what are the market opportunities out there. A lot of them might set up food and beverage outlets without thinking of the market for that particular operation in this neighbourhood. They fail to think whether this group of people handle the daily running as well as the stress involved. These are things that social entrepreneurs need to think about. It’s not that easy to take someone’s idea, work with this particular community and expect it to succeed. A lot of thought is required and thinking can only come about when you spend a considerable amount of time with the community to understand their aspirations, their environment and what assets they possess.
You mentioned social businesses as a different model of social enterprise – do they face a challenge in managing profits and social responsibility?
The tension is always there. The important thing is that you should not allow mission drift to happen. As long as you are very clear that you are there to address a social problem, then you can also make sure you accumulate good surpluses, have good revenues and cover costs. But at the end of the day you must remember you are there to solve a social problem.
Do you think there are any advantages in social entrepreneurship over other forms of entrepreneurship? Does a social entrepreneur get any form of satisfaction or something different?
Definitely, if you talk to most social entrepreneurs, they will share with you that they are driven by a calling; many of them have a strong religious identification so it is a calling. Some of them have had a life transforming moment – perhaps they saw something and that really made them question: what is the purpose of my life here? Am I here to help address a social issue? To help a group of people, a community? These are typical characteristics. So they are very passionate about wanting to do good.
Of all the criteria that you have mentioned that a social entrepreneur should have, which is the most important for a person to start a social entrepreneurship business?
Being willing and able to listen and communicate with the community. Secondly being able to smell business opportunities. Thirdly being able to bring a lot of people in as partners, as part of a network. So social entrepreneurship is not a lonely one man show. It’s all about bringing people with different types of resources and harnessing the resources (stakeholder management).
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The 24 Hour Challenge Interviews
Interview with Mr. Chia Teck Yew, Executive Director Of Strategy And Marketing, Bintan Resorts Intl.
Since you’re in the hospitality and tourism industry would you like to give some tips on how a startup can compete in an industry with so many big boys like 5 star hotels and chain hotels?
I think what you have seen in Singapore is surprising. There are a lot of startups that are doing well; if you look at the boutique hotels, ten years ago you don’t see a lot of boutique hotels. There are entrepreneurs who look at something that doesn’t even look like a hotel and have a vision to turn it into a hotel. Within the Chinatown and the Tanjong Pagar area, people have spotted a lot of the opportunities and defied convention. In the old days people said unless you have 200 rooms in a hotel, you cannot make money. But there are a lot of hotels now that have between 50-70 rooms. So I think it is a lot about having the vision to say that here is an opportunity; here is a new demand, and you take experiences where for example, lawyers turned hoteliers – how did a lawyer do it? He is what I call a globetrotter – he travels around the world, he stays in a lot of the big five star hotels, big chains.. then he realizes that “this is not what I like”. So he sees an opportunity to create something that someone like himself would like. So the law in short is, you always need to look out for opportunities, you always have to be brave enough to challenge the norm. If you are just a follower by building a 200 room hotel at the same location, its very difficult.
So would you say that the market for boutique hotels is saturated in Singapore already?
No I think it is about finding your niche. It is about finding the right location and the right type of clients. So you always start with “who do I want to attract?” Define that market, define what that segment wants, how much they are willing to pay and whether they would like to stay. There are many definitions of boutique hotels. I mean you can take a hotel like hotel 81 and call it a boutique hotel right? It serves a different purpose. You can take the old Metro pole and how it has been converted – that is another high end boutique hotel. So I don’t think the market itself is saturated – the key is how you penetrate the market with the right offering to the right people.
What about in the tourism industry – how would you advise a startup to be able to package something for tourists who come to Singapore?
First of all you have to define what is tourism industry – the tourism industry is very broad. It could include Changi Airport. It is a tourism player when it receives the tourists. It could include any of the shops in Changi Airport, it could include the hotels where they stay, restaurants, theme parks, the whole lot. So you have to decide which component you want to play in. That’s your first step. Tourism is neither about hotels or theme parks alone – it is about making sure the tourists have the right experience, and in having the right experience actually spend money. That’s what this whole business is about.
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aQuoaInnova Interview
1. How was the experience at the 2011 Intel Global Challenge? What did you learn from it?
We witnessed the process of turning innovation into business by listening to all the best practices from several entrepreneurs and technological experts who were decisive enough to follow their dreams and later became successful in their careers. Our company benefited greatly from these valuable insights and also from exchanging ideas , opinions and listening to all suggestions from successful business persons, skilled venture capitalists, experienced entrepreneurs, Intel fellows, and also from other participants during the event.
2. How has your participation at the S@S business plan competition helped you on your journey?
Participation at S@S has brought us in contact with technological and business experts from Singapore. We also gained strong business connections in our meetings with lots of potential investors and customers during the S@S event. In addition, winning the S@S business plan competition has opened up many great opportunities for our business, especially the invitation to join the Inter Global Challenge, at UC Berkeley, California.
3. What are aQuaInnova’s future plans?
We have improved parts of our business plan based on suggestions from Business Competitions. We also plan to further our business according to the prior milestones. Our intention is to put all our efforts into making our business successful and sustainable in the long run. We hope that, in time, customers can minimize their loss in shrimp farms and generate better income just by using our products. Our action plan for near future is to find business partners to co-develop and extend our product pipelines (reagents for other species) and be ready for expansion into other markets and make Genovex (our product) a true platform for multi-purpose applications.
4. What encouragement do you have for aspiring entrepreneurs out there?
Most of the time, great innovations are left on the shelf and never have the chance to create value to anyone. We deeply regret this fact. However, with business plan competitions that offer business opportunity, the true value of product and technology can be realized. And that’s the path we followed with our product, “Genovex: shrimp viral detection device. We hope that we can be an example to encourage anyone out there to think differently and to follow your dream.
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Entrepreneurs Unplugged
Interview with Mr. Ben Tan, CEO and Principle Designer, Hauslab
QN: Can you tell us more about all the businesses that you deal with?
Ben: Well, let me put it this way. We have interest in the F&B business; we have interest in property mortgage; we also have interest in design and build for property as well as IT development, and then from there we have a group, then under the group we will have different sub companies doing different parts of the businesses.
QN: I noticed that these areas that you just mentioned are all very diverse and specialized in their own niche areas. How do you manage all these alone?
Ben: Ahh, it is never done alone! I don’t believe that any one person can get it done. If he thinks that he can, and then I will say good luck to him. It will never happen. It has been always a team, the management team that is very important. As you can see, at the top of every organization, there is a head. E.g. CEO/Chairman. The top person gives the vision, the direction. Then below them, you always need a very organized management team that will help you run. If one person thinks he can get all these done, then no way. So for different companies, what we have is, each will have one group of management team that is put in place to run their organization. Of course, collectively, they are all owned by the holding company.
QN: Bringing it back to context for younger people like us, who might want to start-up a new company–we will always have to start small. Do you have any advice for us, such as how to select the best team to start-up a business with?
Ben: I am going to assume that when you start-up, it is going to be with a group of classmates together with certain ideas. You will automatically see a few things happening. The natural leaders will automatically rise up. It’s in them. Then the automatic followers will just follow. They will have no problems following. But make sure that everyone will have a role to play. There is no free lunch. No one is going to be sitting around and wait for something to happen. But make sure that the person who is leading is not bulldozing over other people’s ideas. Everyone must be light-minded. And everybody must agree who is to lead. If there is a disagreement as to who is to lead, then you all got to solve it internally. Because no one is going to follow a leader who they don’t agree he should be the leader. Don’t try to be the leader if you don’t have the quality, knowledge. Some people do it for ego reasons. Taking at a young age, it will look impressionable. So you all really have to know each other. So you all could be studying together for 2-3 years in university. Form your teams correctly. It is better that a group of 3 or 4 fellows who has been always been hanging out together, studying together taking courses, who really understands each other. So that like one just said, “When tough times comes, you will look beyond problems.” At the end of the day, it is the relationships that are also very important. I have sacrificed relationships over the years. Not love relationships. I am referring to friend relationships to start. And then from that friend relationship, you build it from there. And then within the team, let the team dynamics play out on its own. Automatically, they will be some leaders, 2 or 3. Clashing views might occur, and then it is for the whole team to sort it out. And of course, everyone have to be gracious about it. If you are not, would you be the leader? It is always about a group, or what I call a company. Everybody will have to be in there, for the benefit of the company, as a whole, not as an individual.
QN: Adding on to the previous question, how did you get involved with so many businesses? Was it by chance, or your pursuit of interest?
Ben: It is by chance, opportunity and also foresight. As I said again, these companies are between me and my business partner. His name is Bryan Wong. So it is a 50-50. He has got his certain interests. I have got my certain interests. Each of us is where each of us will excel in. And we always support one another. So for whatever we do, like for example when I wanted to start a design and build business, and he says why not? He says: “If this is what you enjoy doing, and it is in the area that you will do well..” and then he backs me up. When I wanted to do the food business, he supported me. He on the other hand, has a neck for IT development. He always felt that need to move forward and catch the next wave in advance. So that is how we ended up going into cutting edge stuff. And that is his interests, and that is how he manages it. So he got his own port-folio, I got my own port-folio. But when we put it all together, it does look like it is quite diverse. But that’s where our babies are. Like me going down to the restaurants talking to the staff, and taking charge of all the creative work, and Bryan will take care of all the tech stuffs.
INTERVIEWER: Thank you for your time and advice! (:
Interview by Gary and Weiyi
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Struggles & Rewards
Entrepreneurship: The Road Less Travelled
Ever wondered what runs in the blood of young, driven and successful entrepreneurs? What are the many difficulties they faced during their initial business start-up phase and how they overcame them? What was most rewarding in establishing a start-up? The answers were given on 6th October 2011, as the 13th Startup@SG Business Plan Competition was officially launched at the Hon Sui Sen Auditorium in spectacular fashion, graced with the presence of superstars in Singapore’s entrepreneurship scene.
We had, in the panel, Mr Teo Ser Luck (Minister of State, Ministry of Trade and Industry), Mr Karl Chong (Founder of Beeconomic and now CEO of Groupon Singapore), Mr Edward Chia, (Founder, Timbre Group) and Mr Alan Phua (Founder, Soyato and 11th S@S winner), to share their experiences with us.
“Blood, sweat and tears.” These were the exact words used by Karl to describe his initial start-up experience. Nonetheless, the end results turned out to be sweet. Since young, Karl possessed an entrepreneurship spirit in him. He shared stories of how he displayed his entrepreneurship abilities while he was in college. Once, he bought cold drinks in bulk and brought it to the school field, selling them for a profit. To him, start-ups provide the sense of independence and freedom that he desires.
The sense of ownership over a business is exceptionally rewarding, and especially when it brings in lots of wealth. However, not all success stories heard out there come by easily. Before joining the Parliament as a Minster of State, Minister Teo explained of how he went into 10 business ventures, of which, only two were successful.
However, he still urges young Singaporeans out there to step out of their comfort zone and set up businesses if they have a good idea in mind. He explains that the sense of ownership and pride of successfully implementing your idea is definitely worthwhile. As Minister Teo puts it, “Once you make it work, you can proudly say that it is the coolest thing ever, and I own it”.
One must be able to withstand rejections in the initial stages of a start-up. It is immensely difficult to instill confidence to clients when you first start up. Karl mentioned all the rejections he had to face initially, when he could not get any brands to take part in Beeconomic.
However, with his relentless drive and determination, he persevered and finally achieved success. He went on to talk about the merits of hard work, and that anyone in the pursuit of a successful start-up must be prepared to forgo social life and sleep. He also explained how his parents expected him to be an investment banker or doctor, and how he had to go against their decisions. He was “prepared to lose everything”, in order to become what he is today.
Being a young entrepreneur, Alan also shared with us the struggles he currently encounters while managing his new start-up. He faces tremendous stress regarding decision making—such as the dilemma of selling a majority of his company’s current stakes to bigger companies keen on buying them. He went on to discuss the difficulties in finding trustworthy working partners and how background checks on people are necessary in order to ensure the credibility of his partners. Furthermore, he agreed with Karl’s words that ‘it is all about hiring the correct people with the correct skill set’.
Edward also gave various useful insights on how a business should be managed. He mentioned that the main intention of a business is crucial. A good business idea should be one that can “fill up gaps in society”. In order to increase his business scale in today’s dynamic and fast paced entrepreneurship scene, he often pushes himself beyond his limits and keeps innovating. When asked for advice that he would offer to the young boss-wannabes out there, he suavely summed it up with three words, “Just Do It!”
The number of Singaporean entrepreneurs has been on the rise. Despite this, it is still a road less travelled by most, due to the risk-adverse culture here. However, Minister Teo hopes to curb that mentality by providing more platforms, such as a resource hub for start-up companies, to support young entrepreneurs, encouraging self-reliance and promote independence. He said, “Follow your heart and go with the flow…you will never know if you will succeed until you have tried.”
How true! He concludes the memorable evening with “Step forward, so that you will have great stories to tell, and no one can ever take that away from you!”
So what are you waiting for? Step forward!
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Interview with Mr Karl Chong of Beeconomic Singapore Pte Ltd
This interview was conducted during the Official Launch of 13th S@S on 6th of October 2011.What was the most difficult problem which you faced when you were starting up?
First of all, this is very unchartered territory. When I moved over from New York City to Singapore, I only knew one friend, a university friend. That friend helped me register the business. Once the legality was signed, the next problem was how I’m going to tackle a market that is completely unaware of this group buying concept. The lack of credibility that I had was a huge barrier. No one had heard of Beeconomic, I had no brand that had any recognition. I didn’t even have a website I was up, and any history. I knew I had to break through that barrier, that mental block, I just went out and used my personal experience such as my credibility as an investment banker, put that in my powerpoint slides and that gave me credibility when I spoke to merchants – I’m not just a guy off the street, I’m someone who used to work at this huge investment banks and now I’m coming to Singapore with an excellent idea. That was a big challenge. Basically the big challenge was how do I educate the market, how do I get that first deal signed (because you face a ton of rejections). And of course from a personal soft side, when you face those rejections you wonder, what have I done? Have I taken the right risk? I had to quit my job to do this and my brother took a year off university to help set up Beeconomic. After numerous rejections we were wondering what have we done to ourselves. It was lucky that we kept on persevering.
Do you feel some sort of regret, or happiness, when Groupon acquried Beeconomic?
Oh very happy! I was just telling someone just now that money is a good thing once you get acquired, but the second thing is that you get to grow business beyond any scale that you can ever imagine. When I was at Beeconomic, I had only 8 people working with me. When Groupon contacted me, on the first day they say you need 30 people, and you need to move out first. So I moved out of my living room, hired 30 people, and then before we knew we exploded in growth again. And so I moved to harbourfront and hired another 40 people. Every day when I come into work I see 70 people, sitting in their seats, having jobs, calling merchants, dealing with customer queries, updating their social media facebook, fan page, going out there closing deals, finding and sourcing ideas for cool things to do in Singapore. My brother and I have created this from scratch! It gives you a huge amount of enjoyment, huge amount of pride that you’ve created this from scratch. I’ve created 80 jobs from this one concept and then another 80 jobs in Philippines.
Through the panel interview, we understand that you’re very strong in pitching your sales and marketing. Do you think you used that skill of yours to get your company acquired by Groupon?
When you present, it’s about the confidence, demeanour, but of course there’s the internal credibility. The credibility I brought to Groupon when I got acquired was that I had experience in these banks, I had experienced with these really well-known banks. I had the education from UNSW where I did a communications & law degree, I went to INSEAD as well. I also built a couple of business from scratch, dealing with exclusive brands, and I hired a very strong senior management team for it. And of course, presentation skills came in very handy, I applied the skills I learnt from investment banking, to build a very strong powerpoint. It was basically a train of competitors meeting Groupon to pitch why they should be acquired. So it was extremely competitive but I felt that I had the confidence and the know-how to align my interest with theirs.
So for entrepreneurs who don’t have the knowledge, background or contacts, do you think other sales and marketing platforms such as Facebook are equally useful to help them push their ideas?
Absolutely. When we started Beeconomic, we had a very limited budget. So what we did was we use facebook, we built up a facebook fan page, we had competitions, we had a scheme whereby if you added 50 friends on our fan page, it will give you a reward of a free spa package. The free spa package was sponsored by the spa that we’ve signed with. We were able to meet new merchants and sign up top brands, promising them huge amount of PR. So when we launched Beeconomic we will mention your name in the press release. That gave immediate value to these merchants who signed up with Beeconomic.
You mentioned that you have worked as an investment banker before. So what made you inspired to leave your job and going into a new venture which was filled with uncertainties?
When I was in high school growing up, I always knew that I wanted to be a business owner. I had set up different businesses in university, for example the business of selling massage chairs that I started up in Sydney. There was some success in that because I saw that I do have the energy, the courage to go out there and try to close deal with merchants and to sell pitches. But when I graduated, frankly speaking, I didn’t have any great ideas to launch. So I thought I’m going to do this stereotypical thing and use my law degree, my finance degree, to get me a decent job. I did like an internship with different investment banks, like I worked at UBS as a trader in the summer internship. Then I joined the Proctor and Gamble worked with them for a year as an analyst. I later joined Macquarie Bank and worked in their graduate programme. All the time I had known inside that one day, I want to start up my own business. But in the meantime I was buying time and doing it very constructively because these names gave me a lot of trainings like the skill set that I build from working with P&G was amazing. From Proctor and Gamble experience, I learnt the art of marketing shampoo. That in itself was huge when it came to me marketing Beeconomic. Then when I moved to investment bank it helped me understand how businesses are valued, how cash flows have to be forecasted, before you can really venture out and acquire new business. So it is very fortunate in that sense for me to have that array of skills. I did that for about four years, working in the private sector. The real trigger point for me to leave my job and start Beeconomic was the global financial crisis, and that Groupon email that entered my inbox.
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Interview with Professor Tom Kosnik
Interview begins…
QN: Do you think that anybody can be an entrepreneur? Like just anyone on the street? Is everyone cut out to be one?
Ans: The skill and motivation to be an entrepreneur are unevenly distributed in the population—just like some people are taller, and some have more intelligence. So I don’t think just anyone can be an entrepreneur. But I do think that no matter what your basic competence and passion for entrepreneurship is, that level can be raised. So if you’re a pretty good entrepreneur you can grow to be a very good entrepreneur.
QN: Should an entrepreneur prioritize profit first or product first?
ANS: I do not think that profit should come first. I think of a triple bottom line—profit for shareholders, social capital for the community that it serves, and then some good for the environment. It could be just not polluting or something better than that, like something constructive such as making the world a better place. Now, a product is a way to accomplish all 3 of those; a product or service or whatever it is. You can’t have great profits if you don’t have a team that can create great products. If you think of a product as being a vehicle not only to make money but also to do good for the community and do good for the natural world, your products are going to wind up being much better than it would be if you just worried about making money with your products.
QN: Nowadays we have a lot of products available and we have more platforms, such as the internet, do you think that all these things make entrepreneurship more difficult or has it made it easier?
ANS: I think that the online ability to communicate with customers to create things that are valuable to people digital has created many more opportunities for entrepreneurs. It makes it easier to transcend distance for example. Like if you had had a digital product or you’re trying to communicate around the world, the fact that we have facebook and skype and the internet, it makes things a whole lot easier –to either interact as a team or to reach customers.
QN: I’ve spoken to people who say that, you know, entrepreneurship is so difficult now because whatever idea I think of now has already been done? Is entrepreneurship more difficult to practice in that sense?
ANS: No, I think that has always been the case. It’s just that we didn’t know it until we had the internet! Any time you got something that you think will be a really good idea, somebody somewhere else is thinking the same thing. They may have got a head start on you or they may not. I think by getting frustrated because everything you’ve come up with is already been done—either you are not thinking hard enough to generate more ideas, or you’re not saying: “Well ok, it’s already been done, but I can really do it well. I can do it so much better than everybody else who’s already doing it, that people will want my version of it.”
QN: What is an advice you would give to an aspiring or first-time entrepreneur in a sentence?
ANS: Can I do 2? *laughs* So the first is that you have to think the unthinkable before you can do the impossible. Our brains are the biggest prison of all of us. It is not our parents or peers or laws of man. Often we are constrained by our own lack of belief in the fact that we can do something. So think the unthinkable, which means to get out of the mental box you’re in, in order to do a product is so amazing that people say wow! You know, when you first tell people about your idea, they may say it’s impossible, you’re never able to do it! And then 2 years later they’re going, “oh my you were right!”
The second advice is—laughter is the key that unlocks a closed mind. Whether or not it’s a team mate or working for somebody, or with customers, if you have a sense of humour, and appreciate that funny things happen in business and in life, and if you create an environment where there is a lot of laughter, the laughter will unlock things. I don’t know how to put it exactly, but once people have a good laugh, they will be more open to a new idea. So use that as a way to get people who say no to say yes.
QN: So what are few things that will lead to a sure downfall of an entrepreneur?
ANS: The first is being very proud leader, and giving up easily. It’s like saying “I’m really good, but if this doesn’t work the first try, I’m gonna go do something else”. You need to be humble and have a fierce resolve to keep going even when things get tough. That’s one thing that I think will lead to a failure, because you got to have the persistence and you gotta realize that it’s not just about you, but also about the team working together to get stuff done.
The second thing is dishonesty in all of its forms. It’s like not telling somebody the bad news you need to tell them. It’s actually making stuff up. If you’re a leader and you’re telling the team “oh things are going to be great” when you realize they’re not. So any form of dishonesty, once uncovered, people just don’t trust you. Trust is very hard to rebuild once people think you’re a liar. And especially if they think you’re lying so that you can get ahead of them. The idea of being dishonest, using others and not caring about people is a very deadly combination once people catch you. Well some people are really good at it, you know, at lying and getting away with it. But most of us are not that skillful. So, honesty is a better path then!
QN: Could we wrap this up with some of your encouragement for our NES community?
ANS: Well, it’s a great organization! And I think what I want to be able to do over the course of the next year, is learn about your successes and celebrate them with you. So I hope you’ll invite me to your facebook page!
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