Archive for the 'Expert' Category
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!
Wednesday, November 7th, 2007
Looking to innovate a successful IT business? Get your hands dirty!
Recently in our shared office in SMUBIG, I had a chat with Leonard Lin, one of the key founders and drivers of Tyler Projects (already relocated elsewhere though!), who has brought us Battlestation in Facebook, and Mobile Weapons. Do check their very cool applications out! Anyhow, we discussed very briefly about the business of innovations in the IT world; A theory popped out of my head. Looking at the most successful technology companies in the world - Apple, Microsoft, Google, Oracle, and recently Facebook, they all had a very common similarity.
They all had founders who got their hands dirty.
All of these companies had founders and leaders who did everything themselves, or at least got heavily involved in the developments. Bill Gates hid in his catastrophically-sized room for months while coding; Facebook was almost singled handedly coded by the founder and current CEO Mark Zuckerberg (of course, with a little support from his buddies); Google “Wonderkids” Page and Brin both coded their PageRank algorithm and offered many companies who laughed them off, and the rest they say, is history. There are many more examples in Dell, Creative and LinkedIn. And now, the closest to heart local example whom I mentioned right in the start; Leonard and his team of developers. Now, dont kill me for stating the obvious, but this is exactly what a geek can have in advantage over many people! building a giant business on their computers. My point is, you can’t just have a great IT idea and expect some others to execute it all beautifully and perfectly for yourself. Heres 5 reasons why.
1) IP Issues. Heard of Connectu.com? Mark Zuckerberg was supposed to code this pre facebook social network for them as a paid developer. He is currently facing a lawsuit and charge that he had stolen the concept from his former employers.
2) Failure in translation. This is a classical case of vision mismatch; the CEO articulated his ideas to the CTO. The CTO builds him something. The CEO screamed and ranted. The CTO remains helpless. The programming team scratched their head. The COO shaked his head in disbelief. The designers cried their heart out after learning they had to change the whole design.
3) Lack of ownership. The programmer and his master, the visionary sit down together. The visionary promises 10% equity stake to him. The programmer must finish everything. If everything works out nicely the visionary will be CEO and the visionary will get rewarded. If everything fails, the visionary does not lose anything. The programmer wasted his time. If you are the programmer, you would probably give your all, 110%.. NOT.
4) Misalignment of vision. The developer and the CEO have different ideas and dreams. The CEO wants a cube, but the designer thinks a bubble is nicer. Would this partnership ever work out? Yes, if the CEO force his ideas on the developer, and the developer became grumpy, and finally deliver a half past six job. yay.
5) Inexperienced IT Leader. The CEO thinks technology is magic, and expects the developers to give him the world; 3 months down the road, the team gave him half of what he expected; the least important features which took more time then any other important functions.
Of course, these problems can be mitigated through counteractive measures in each of them. However, that technically-inexperienced leader should be articulative, charismatic and trusted as well. So far, I have found very few examples of such leaders in innovative IT products. Now, the innovation process is very complicated and tedious - clearly, just having an idea is not sufficient; nor does having just the technical skills. If you have a wonderful and killer innovation in mind, I urge you to either pick up the relevant IT skills yourself, or establish a clear rewarding system for your team, properly outlined.
On the first point, I recently heard that a middle aged friend is picking up Ruby On Rails. It did not surprise me a bit; That bloke has wonderful Web2.0 ideas and concepts, and probably want to build a killer web app himself. I applaud him on his efforts. On my second point, no one likes to work with nothing promised, and thus you will get nothing too. If you have some spare cash and want to outsource it, sure, do it, but make sure for your money that company understands exactly what you want, and does not steal your idea somehow. If not for these potential touchy issues, at least, getting your hands dirty will mean saving you some costs (yes yes… theres the opportunity cost… but well…. )
Finally of course, a best friend who is a geek would really help your business idea a long long way. Trust me, if not, at least trust Steve Jobs (: Start befriending one now!
Saturday, November 3rd, 2007
Searching Across Databases: Google Scholar, Meta Search or Federated Search?
As analysts/consultants/students/marketers/startup wannabes, the one thing you often rely on for reports that are truly worth evaluating and reading is a credible source of database. Many companies and academic institutions subscribe to these important databases such as Economist, ThomsonOne and Factiva.
However, a common problem associated with these collection of journals and data repository is in finding the right one itself. It would be inefficient for that individual to search for the required information in each of these database. Shuli and I examine the different possibilities in facilitating an effective search across academic databases in a paper, which is available at http://www.keizng.com/docs/Search%20engine%20comparision.pdf using SMU as the base for the case study. The following is an excerpt from the article.
The library at Singapore Management University (SMU) subscribes to a number of academic
databases which contain collections of journal articles, conference proceedings and working papers
among other documents. These are frequently accessed by students and faculty who require the
documents in their course of their daily research and work.
Currently, the process of searching and retrieving articles is tedious as it is not possible to query
different databases at the same time. For example, documents pertinent to the topic of “Search
Engine Indexing Technologies” are present in numerous journals by different publishers who each
maintain their own database, so these relevant articles could be spread across various databases
like JSTOR, ScienceDirect and EBSCOHost. In order for a user to obtain articles from a variety of
sources, he has to access each database individually from the SMU library website and then perform
his search repeatedly, across every database that might contain relevant documents.
This method is laborious and time-consuming, and often results in users restricting their search to a
small subset of the available databases, as it would be too troublesome to repeat the search for all
the known databases.
As such, there is a high possibility that documents relevant to a user’s
research are neglected because they are found in some of the smaller or lesser known databases.
Hence the need for an integrated searching experience. After speaking to the librarians at SMU
about this problem, we understand that they are looking to alternatives to the current search process,
and have short listed a number of approaches that could address the above problem. This
document aims to describe and evaluate these approaches in order to determine the one that can
best address the needs of SMU
Quite obviously as seen in the article, the approaches being evaluated are 1)In-house search engine method (which can also be considered as Federated Search, but not for this report), 2) Google Scholar method and 3) Meta Search Method (which for the sake of the report is also considered as Federated search, though some people would consider them as radically different styles). I hope this article will somehow find its way to the desktop of the librarians, and that students will find it useful in a tip or two on Google Scholar within the report (:
Saturday, October 20th, 2007
4 Lessons for Innovative Projects Consulting
I quote the following from SMU knowledge Hub, which is an article which I posted earlier in the Voice Biometrics post featuring one of my projects and team. On closer look the writer, Low Shiping, had really articulated well whatever we were asked on in consulting projects during the interview (which we could not really translate well to words!). The following are excerpts from the article.
* In consulting projects, clients are often uncertain about what they want as the end result. The onus is therefore on the consultant to assist their clients to accurately define and understand their needs and problems. This process could require a significant investment of time, effort and patience after which the imperative is on the consultant to articulate the various possible end results as well as the means to arrive at them.
* It is vital to keep the end user in mind at every stage of the business process. Consultants must put themselves in the position of the end user and try to imagine how their proposed solutions will affect them. Ideally, the solution should be user-friendly and hassle-free, no matter how technically sophisticated. The goal is to retain the end user and attract new ones, not to put them off and drive them towards the competition.
Keith: These 2 points really emphasize the importance of having good communications skills and acute business acumen. Bear in mind, in consulting projects, clients often want to act “fools”. What I really mean here is, clients tend to allow the consultants take charge and lead the war. Thus, it is important to remember to find the right questions to ask our clients, so we could unveil some hidden business values and concerns they had in mind. Do not wait till it is too late
* Dare to innovate. Every problem has an infinite number of solutions, but finding the best ones can only be done by taking risks and facing rejection. Without innovating, there will be no forward development.
Keith: If some part of A does not work, try B. If some part of B does not work, try C. If some parts of A,B,C do not work, try A+B+C combined - who knows, it may finally work. Technology acts in a mysterious way!
* Work with a multinational team to lend a “global” perspective to the task at hand as far as possible. Solutions that need to be applied in a global context can benefit from being developed by a diverse team whose members represent different educational and cultural backgrounds. Thus, different points of views can be presented and challenged, leading to well-rounded discussions about how to deal with the tasks at hand.
Keith: This was a team with 1 Burmese, 1 Indian, 2 Indonesians, and 1 Singaporean. Our China friend Huang Liang left for his master’s education in CMU; otherwise it would have been an even further amazing combination. The synergy, creativity, and dynamics - amazing stuff. Singaporeans indeed have a lot to learn from our counterparts, since we are brought up in an education system that have already been destroyed and revamp - one which do not encourage us to think out of the box, think creatively. Surely, our efficiencies alone won’t bring us too far in this dog eat dog work, but once “sprinkled with the different flavors” of the world, we can excel and ride the waves together in this globalized economy. A diversified environment definitely works for me, and is a hell lot of fun too!
Saturday, October 20th, 2007
Article Review: The Faceted Navigation & Search Revolution by Steve Papa
This was an assignment that was fulfilled by Yu Shuli and myself, and we were to review Steve Papa’s “Faceted Navigation & Search Revolution” article. In summary, faceted means having many “faces” - you know, like some Gods and Devils in religions and mythology. Every matter or content in the world has a set of distinct values - for e.g. you may have eyes that are brown, and hair that are black. It is these characteristics which define us. Similarly, contents like this post too has facets: Its genre is in Technology, while it is being authored by a Singaporean.
These are the unique qualities which ease the typical user’s life, without being necessarily interlinked. He is able to search articles which have been “faceted classified” using “faceted navigation”, without having to know too much about what he wants to look for. In the case of using a person as a content, you can think a matchmaking content browsing system this way: You may want a wife who is a teacher, stays near you, and has long hair. It does not matter which one you specify first - at the end of the day, you can list your criteria in any order, and the matchmaker’s IT system should just narrow down for you - it just makes sure the list of results meet your needs. Most importantly, this will save a lot of the end user’s time in formulating a search.
Faceted Navigation is not just about doing advanced search. It is also about defining facets for contents like a “wife”, and allowing others to search a whole massive repository of content through clicking on these facets and nodes within it. You can visit the below link to see what I really mean.
Hierarchical Navigation:
http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/nobelprize_facts.html
Faceted Navigation:
http://orange.sims.berkeley.edu/cgi-bin/flamenco.cgi/nobel/Flamenco
Clearly, browsing the 2nd page(faceted navigation) is much easier. You are no longer required to clutter down a list in a hierarchical manner, which requires you to know the very “top” and “root” quality of a certain person. Now, this may seem to be a simple and real idiot proof concept, but this idea of bringing down a taxonomy with faceted navigation is only beginning to sink in to the heads of many enterprises. Indeed, this looks pretty much to be the future, as IT continues to power business and media needs.
I will end off this post with 3 deliverables: The link of North Caroline Library which recently implemented Faceted Navigation - http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/browsesubjects. It is touted as one of the best library interfaces ever by several critics. Don’t believe me? Take a look at other library sites - such as National Library of Singapore. Due to copyright issues, I will not be posting up this article itself. However, I have uploaded 2 files - respectively the presentation slides and the script that is used and which should be useful if you want more information on the article’s content itself. Have fun looking browsing!
*ps* Im kinda shooting myself in the foot writing about all the wonders of Faceted Navigation, because my blog doesnt even support that! 
Or maybe it does, i just didnt know yet. Please leave me a comment if you know something I don’t!
Friday, October 5th, 2007
Voice Biometrics - The future is near
I had the opportunity to work on a Voice Biometrics related project for almost a year in which my team had to evaluate the feasibility and usability, and to implement a work flow to incorporate the use of it in a banking environment. As it appears, there are several vendors from different parts of the world - UK, Germany, Australia, Etc. ABN AMRO has since introduced the technology for their customers in Netherlands (Read More here) and Here (from Ars Technica).
In a summary, ABN AMRO requires customer to first register their voice by saying their preferred PIN 3 times, and thus, they will be required to say the same string later on if they have to be authenticated. This analog phrase is than converted into gibberish numbers and alphabets like this “243ddf333480w-4443043kk0l….” through certain algorithms, and are called voiceprints. The conversion takes into account nasal cavity, soft palette, vocal chords, diaphragm and thus each voiceprint will be unique, just like thumbprints.
Im sure you have got at least one of the burning questions below.
1) Does the technology really works?
2) What if I had a sore throat or the place is noisy?
3) What if someone plays a tape recorder with the string?
4) Is it even reliable and credible?
