Archive for July, 2008

Wednesday, July 30th, 2008

Review of panel discussion: What are the next investing opportunities in new media?

Something very funny happened before Damon, my trusted sidekick, and myself headed to Swissotel for the iJam networking session (announcing launch of iMatch) yesterday. We happily walked towards Raffles City and go up to the ballroom in Swissotel. What followed was a series of confused hotel staffs not having a clue of any IDA event when we couldnt spot nor sniff a single clue of any IT geeks. It turned out we were at the wrong Swissotel (as Damon put it,”Oh there are more than 1 Swissotel!” and to which I replied,”*gasp*”). We were supposed to be at Swissotel, Merchant Court. Nice.

Ok so lets move on to discuss more serious “Series” - Series A, B, etc funding. These are terms use for different stage of fundings for startups by Venture Capitalists (sometimes jokingly nicked Vulture Capitalist - credit to my portfolio management professor, whose identity i shall not divulge :). First of all, I must say that it was a fruitful talk which was worth all the hassle Damon and I experienced prior to it. The panel boasts of a excellent concotion of local and international VCs and Technology experts - notable attendees: Ms Lauren Liang, Mr Pierre Hennes, Ms Ong Siu Leng. While they offer some pointers which many of us would have already known, they reinforce some beliefs in myself and offer new perspectives to what VCs want to see in young startups.

Some important takeaways buried deep in my head:

1) Early stage VCs look not just for a great idea. The assessment team plays an important part.

• How creative is the team?
• How is the synergy and energy of the team?
• The character of the team: Are they determined enough to walk the talk throughout? (without falling for the temptation of bigger money and job elsewhere?)
• Keith: An academia pointed out in a research that a trait of successful startups is that it has more than 1 founder, between 2 to 5, while 3 is the optimal number.

2) Localisation or Globalisation? The panel is quite divided on this. However, they all agree that it is important to focus on a segment of consumers on whatever choice you make. More importantly, get your first dollar in quickly, at least to assure your backers.

• Keith: Bear in mind Singaporeans being Singaporeans, we are a very unique breed of citizens compared to many others in the world (just hear our accent, our English, our love for durian, our loyalty to the ruling party :P). E.g. We can largely generalise consumer habits of Malaysians and Indonesians, or Taiwanese and Japanese, but what works in an already small Singapore market more often than not will not work for many other countries. Be prepared to customize radically when scaling abroad.
  

3) Be prepared to sacrifice, even if it means you being the CEO. When big brother wants to bring in someone more qualified and experienced to be the CEO, you should let go.

• Keith: Which is why, please hedge yourself with an MBA education (:

4) VCs require that the team has enough stakes nonetheless, so to ensure they remain motivated and responsible for their gains and losses.

5) Cold Calling the VCs may work, but networking would speed things up to establish a relationship between the VC and the Startup team. No one said it better than Mr Pierres when he said it is “like a life long marriage”. Relationships, or guan xi always work like a charm.

• Keith: I have to admit that I’ve never enjoyed networking, so I always go in with a mindset of making friends for learning, rather than other tangible benefit. It helps.

6) LIVE: One of the panelist said a rule of thumb of a successful product encompass the following attributes: Lively, Interactive, Visual, Experiential.

7) Me-Too Products - VCs generally do not require startups to be a from-scratch-innovation based company. Me-Too products can equally be, if not, more successful and astute investments for them.

8.) Are Singaporeans really that un-creative and un-innovative? Mr Douglas Abrams from Expara disagreed, and had seen his fair share of innovative local start-ups. Singapore, while not comparable to Silicon Valley at the moment in terms of the eco-system of funding, has good potential with our good infrastructure, supporting government schemes and growing amount of wealth (especially private) in Asia.

• Keith: I suppose the link to how growing wealth in Asia equates investing in Singapore startup is this: 1. Singapore being a financial hub for Asia 2. It is easier to manage startups in Singapore if the money comes to Singapore 3. Thus, with 1 and 2, go for local startups.

9) The question of IPO came up when a gentlemen asked what are the other exit points other than IPO and M&A? I didnt really get the answer other than a brief remark on convertible debt aka convertible bond (which I don’t think have to be these 2 exit points anyway), a panelist cautioned startups not to be overly confident and declare “I will be IPO-ing in 2 years”. No one can guarantee an IPO.

10) This has to be the best advice all day: You will always need more money and time than you think. So plan carefully and do not overspend. The worst mistake that can occur to a startup is to hold multiple series for extra funding when they realised they do not have enough. A business should be focused on the product, and not funding at all times.

Please feel free to comment on any points (:

Sunday, July 20th, 2008

Doing it right the first time .. or does IT matter?

When releasing a product (especially innovative ones) in the IT domain, just how important is it to do it right the first time?

The experts are divided on this: Some would advocate the importance of showing others something that works and impresses, and emerge from your dark garage with a huge big impact that gets everybody’s jaw open - at the expense of time/effort and perhaps lost ground to competitors.

Others would tell you to build a community with a beta launch early, get their feedback and consistently improve. The latter situation helps you gain a first mover advantage, gain some sort of credibility as a company that delivers gradually, assures your VCs, but as you would have guessed, the wow effect would have been subsided. In terms of branding, your company is gauged accordingly to that buggy beta launch you have. In terms of marketing, you could miss out on the advantage of viral marketing (my reasoning is that if you potentially lose part of your community with a less than perfect application and miss out leveraging on their “word of mouth”)

I do not believe dude-my-solution-works-for-you-and-all exists. As usual, I listed down some guidelines that will help a startup determine its strategy, and end off with a possible solution startups can consider.

1) Can you foresee competitors that are already working on something similar?
If you do, you probably should release your application in iterations, even if it its less than perfect. First mover advantage has so much benefits that you simply can’t miss out in the fast moving IT world, and building a community with your beta can lock them into your application. Releasing early iterations also place pressure on competitors, forcing them to show their hands with less than perfect applications. You are better off than ignoring them and run the risk of competing with a even better application which the world saw earlier than yours.

2) Can you decide well enough what is good for the community? (Do you even know em?)
One of the best lesson I have learned in many years is from the trendsetting guru, Mr Steve Jobs, who quipped that focus groups are useless because most of the time, your customers does not know what they want. However, if you feel pretty inadequate in deciding what THEY want, you are better off releasing your early versions of your ugly application to them. Who knows, they may be more than happy with that! Also, if you are still unsure about your target market, an early release may help you decide. It is common in every business to evolve and adapt to the market pays you more.

3) Do you have enough engine and dolli?
The later you release, the less confidence your investors will show in your company, and so will you to your corporate bank statements. Slow release may also result in demotivated staffs who have been waiting to capitalize on their equity stakes. You run the risk of your best programmer quitting you for another company just because the work they do don’t seem to see daylight as the days dragged on with another of your “Oh I think it will be great to add this function!”. At the same time, releasing your application gives potential new talents a preview of what great idea you have, thus attracting them towards you.

In a nutshell, the 3 questions above in fact are point to the same rhetorical question: Just how important is your product coming in with a BIG BANG? (Kaboom and Cracklings)? If it is a matter of life and death (which is implied from your answers from above posers), and yet the disadvantages bother you all the time, you can consider what I call a ring-fence launch.

In a ring-fence launch, you ensure that competitors and general public are not able to access the application. Get only friends (preferably close ones) to see your application, as well as reiterate to them the importance of keeping to themselves. Explain to them your motive, and ensure that this is far from being the final product, and that their word-of-mouth help is critical to success when you eventually do the final launch. This is helpful because you do not want them to ignore your fiinal product due to boredom and lack of excitement.

Personally, I would chose to launch something that is 50% completed - with quite a different look to the final look and feel. I would even use a slightly diff name for this application in my url ,e.g. such as myproduct_beta such as as myproduct. This is to illustrate the key difference in both releases to the test community.

In my next post, I will discuss the different kind of beta launch and more strategies in doing so. Please feel free to comment on this post!

Saturday, July 19th, 2008

10 Reasons why Mac over PC for me forever (and why I’m never going back!)

Before you gogoo “Not another Mac vs PC arguement”, I need to state upfront I am writing only to to glorify my choice. I’m truly grateful that I made the switch over to Mac 3 months ago - my x41 IBM was close to dying of slowdom then. Speaking of which, I had to admit I was stupid in installing Vista in Bootcamp, because there really is no use for it. (If you really want to run a windows environment, I suggest you use a simulator tool like VirtualBox).

Though I really miss the 1.2kg weight of that little machine x41, my heavy MBP made sure I had not carried the extra 1.5 kg everyday in vain because:

1) Expose is really fun for me to change windows, and I sometimes do it for fun. And I like going to desktop with a single quick movement.

2) Front Row shows me latest theatrical trailers - nice! & I can play with Apple Remote.

3) Audium and Growl notification are so pretty.

4) I can do 2 finger scrolling. Trust me on this one, it does not get better than this.

5) I can switch tabs while browsing with swiping using MultiClutch, and back/forward with rotating. MultiTouch is more useful than I originally thought.

6) Photoshop and Illustrator loads very very very quickly.

7) Girls notice me a little bit more in Starbucks (I think).

8.) I am encouraged to use Terminal to do my work. And talking about work, you can only develop iPhone applications on Mac because Apple says so. (SDK only works in MAC OS)

9) My Mac has crashed just once in the 3 months despite my rough approach in installing stuffs.

10) Overall productivity increase by about 10-20% for me, since I can multitask better now because of many reasons cited above.

Alot of people “thinks” others buy Mac to show that they are really cool, fashionable and even stupid. I have to agree partly - many individuals I know buy Mac because they are attracted to the interface and designs, but as a business owner, getting Mac for the whole IT department saves much trouble in IT issues such as virus outbreak or hdd crash. (My MBP auto defrags all the time). From another perspective, there are so many Mac OSX developers that you have a good chance of getting some applications you fancy in Windows already.

I have to do virtual meetings over the net and my partner and I work through iChat with remote desktop presentations as well - thus we do not have to invest in other software. Thus economically, Macbooks make alot of sense too.

If you disagree with any of my reasons, comment and let me know now!