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Last year was a hectic year for me. With a lot of testing moments that I hope I can appreciate in the coming years ahead of me. Like the late Steve Jobs say, you can only connect the dots when you look back. I’m hoping whatever experience I have for 2011 will be the foundation for a better future.

Goodbye the year of the Rabbit. Hello year of the Dragon. Wishing everyone i know a great year ahead. 龍馬精神 & Gong Xi Fatt Chai

I have been in the tech circle and the entrepreneurship circle for a number of years in Malaysia. I have always regard Silicon Valley as a very special place, some sort of Mecca for entrepreneurs. My visit there was a mind boggling experience and it is a place where i would like to stay longer. Maybe to do a start-up of my own

After being there, talking to VCs, angel investors and visiting the tech giants around. I came into one conclusion. IMHO, Malaysia with its plans to emulate Silicon Valley has still a long way to go. Silicon Valley is special because of the soft aspect – people. Not its infrastructure, it is something that more Government officials need to realise.

Signing off from Dubai, in a 8 hour long transit.

Happy Chinese New Year!

Recently I completed my speech #8 in D’utama Toastmaster club, I got many good feedback on my speech and many have asked that I share my slides.

While I like to take credit for the insights I have presented, but really, I got most of my material and insights from this great book “Presentation Zen”. This book will change the way you think about making presentations with PowerPoint. It has help me along the path to simpler, more effective presentations.I’m sure you will find it useful too.

I purchased the kindle version of the  Presentation Zen from Amazon. If you prefer the physical copy, you can always buy it from Kinokuniya or MPH.

Hope you enjoy the book and my slides. Tell me what you think about it too.

These days whenever I have free time, I will browse through all the interesting TED talk to get some inspiration. I have seen this video before but it still does inspire me. While Bono did not talk about entrepreneurship per say, but his changing the world attitude is one that any individual can learn from.

I am particular intrigue with one particular quote in the video.

Idealism detached from action is just a dream.

Don’t wait for the ideal business plan to come out. Don’t want for the the ideal partners to start. Entrepreneurs wannabe should start taking small little steps to kick start their venture (Writing business plans do not count). Go talk to prospective customers, start building the site. Do something purposeful. Because, when everything is certain, someone has already made their millions. NOT you.

I was browsing through TED’s video and found this video of Malcolm Gladwell’s talk. Being a fan of Malcolm Gladwell writings (I have all his books), I want to see what insights he has to share.

He did not disappoint. His talk was titled “What can we learn from spaghetti sauce”. It tells a tale of how the food industry was obsessed in finding the “perfect” sauce and how a man came to change the industry’s view.

I find his delivery to be engaging and funny at times. but more importantly within his speech there are underlying insights that every entrepreneurs can learn from:

Making complex things simple to understand

This lesson was not in the content of his talk but on how they way he delivers the talk. He manage to explain what can be a boring academic research into something easy to understand. His usage of analogies and his story telling style of presenting kept me captivated. This skill is very important especially to entrepreneurs who wants to pitch for funding.

I’ve been into many pitching sessions where entrepreneurs either bore the judges to death or confusing the judges with too many jargons. What they should do is to relate the product offerings to something that the audiences can relate to. Telling a story the problems a consumer/user face and how your product can solve it is a better pitch.

Ask the right questions

No matter how efficient a person digs, there is no way he will find treasure if he’s digging at the wrong place. Asking the right questions is akin to providing the right solution. In the talk, the food industry was asking the wrong question all along, wasting millions of dollars in producing products that does not fulfill people’s need. Having a rebel attitude that challenges the core belief and status quo might just create the right solution to an underlying problem.

Consumers do not know what they want

Revolutionary product that creates new market do not come from market research and focus groups. Consumer just do not know what they want. Think of the IPhone. What do you think the answer would be , if a consumer was asked whether he/she would like to buy a phone that has no multi-tasking, no copy & paste for a premium price?

If people were to survey on whether I would want to buy a tablet that acts almost like the IPhone, I would say no. But now I’m happily proven wrong as I can’t keep my hands off my IPad.

Check out the video.

If anyone were to ask me a couple of years back whether I’ll become an author, I will most probably laugh until my stomach ache. But, things really work unexpectedly, in early 2010 I was actually working on a book on Social Media.

When I was tapping Oon Yeoh’s brains on social media for my MBA dissertation, he asked me whether I would like to write a book about Facebook and Twitter with him. Even though I don’t see myself as an author and have no experience doing it, I jumped at the opportunity as it seems to be a fun thing to do.

So that’s the start of an exciting and hectic journey especially with Facebook ever changing features and user interface. Finally on July 2010, the book “Like Me, Follow Me” was in MPH stores.

I learnt a lot from the experience and even got an interview slot in BFM with Oon Yeoh. Check out the podcast attached. If I sound nervous in the podcast, it is because I really am.

P.S: I was hysterical when the book was in the 2nd place of local best sellers (non-fiction, Aug 2010).

I was at echelon 2010 in Singapore and attended the Dave McClure’s keynote presentation where Dave McClure shared his thoughts on the future of internet start-ups (which is getting better and better) and why large VCs are not suitable for internet start-ups. Here are his slides.

The most intriguing points about his presentation are what an entrepreneur should avoid and focus on in his/her venture. Here are good points that I’ve picked up:

• Design and marketing skills are often lacking – Hire someone if your team do not have the skills.
• Focus on user experience and distributing your product/services
• Less is more – Focus on what your customer wants and use that as a basis to get feedback.
• Early market validation – don’t wait for a year before you introduce your product to your customer.
• Frequent customer feedback – have short development cycle to get frequent customer feedback

The detailed summary of the presentation is published here.

I saw this great video from my friend’s blog – Sybreon Ones Nought. I find it very true and want to share it.

There are some things success is not.
Its not fame.
Its not money or power.
Success is waking up in the morning so excited about what you have to do that you literally fly out the door.
Its getting to work with people you love.
Success is connecting with the world and making people feel. Its finding a way to bind together people who have nothing in common but a dream.
Its falling asleep at night knowing you did the best job you could.
Success is joy and freedom and friendship.
And success is Love.

This are all important points for you to consider when you want to venture to business. Many entrepreneurs are successful because they love what they do. They are fulfilled and enjoy all the work that comes along with the business.

Are you excited with what you are doing?

A friend of mine, Bugs Tan has a great way for inventors and entrepreneurs to evaluate good business ideas. Bugs Tan is an award winning inventor who is very passionate in the field of innovation and entrepreneurship.

Based on his experience, he came out with a practical series of questions to help entrepreneurs and inventors to evaluate their ideas. I like these questions as it provides a very good perspective on how an entrepreneur should review the viability of their idea.

Do also check out Bugs’s blog to tap his thoughts on innovation.

A friend of mine, Eliza Nordin is a VC and have recently did a great presentation on the subject “Factors that attract venture capitalist to new ventures”. Here are the slides to her presentation.

Follow her on Twitter to tap into her thoughts: elizanoordin

Overview of Teak Capital

Teak Capital is a venture capital management company based in Malaysia. Teak Capital currently manages   Teak Ventures Sdn. Bhd.’s funds and is also an appointed partner of MAVCAP under its Outsource Partners Programme (OSP) in July 2008.