Friday, October 26, 2012

I dream to have my own company - do you?

This entry is written by DBIT Year 2 student, Eng Zhaowei, who aspires to set up his own company one day.   Interested to be an entrepreneur like him too? Connect with Zhaowei at his Facebook profile, he will be happy to chat with you on this pet topic of his!



Event: Techventure 2012

Date: 18 Oct 2012

Techventure is a leading summit event in Asia for the world’s most influential investors and iconic innovators. I am very lucky to be able to join my lecturer and my friend for this year Techventure for free.

Famous entrepreneurs from different countries such as Singapore, USA, Europe, China, India and Japan flew here to attend this conference and to also speak about entrepreneurship and their experiences.



After an opening speech done by Professor Low Teck Seng, Jesse Draper, presenter of “The Valley Girl Show” led a conference with a rock star panel of famous entrepreneurs who are not only very engaging but also created much laughter and fun for the audience. 

 Jesse Draper, Adriana Gascoigne, Tan Min Liang (Razer), Gary Wang (Tudou), Joe Lonsdale.


 Jesse Draper, Presenter of “Valley Girl”

Tan Min Liang, Co-founder and CEO of Razer

Gary Wang, Founder of Tu Dou

Joe Lonsdale, Founder of Planatir Technologies

There were a number of useful tips or experience shared by them about building up their brand awareness. Most mentioned about social media. For example, Tan Min Liang, Co-founder of Razer mentioned about how, initially, they didn’t intend to be a cult for gamers. But fans from social media community helped to build up their brands as a cult for gamers! The Razer fans were so fanatic about the brand that they even created a shrine for Razer. Haha.

Another interesting question which was brought to the panel is "How do all of you come up with ideas?" Most of the entrepreneurs brought up this keyword, ’Crowd sourcing’. But what exactly is crowdsourcing?

Well from what I learned and understand, this is one of the latest ways to do things in a fast and efficient way. For example, a t-shirt design company can crowd-source ideas by putting up projects in crowdsourcing website such as www.freelancer.com or www.webcube.com for free-lance designers or companies to bid on. Companies can easily get many ideas or design within few days. In this way, it also greatly cut down the needs for companies to hire an in-house designer who can probably produce only a few designs a month. With crowdsourcing, you can have hundreds of designers with thousands of ideas!  With crowd-sourcing,  the multitude of ideas accumulated from the 'crowd' allows us to do more!

Finally, the first part of the program was coming to the end; the last question posed to the panel was “What are some tips that entrepreneurs should keep in their mind?” .

Here are 3 tips which I find useful and should be kept in our mind if we want to be an entrepreneur.
  • Be humble, there’s lot of people smarter than ourselves.
  • Know what you are doing and know what you are heading towards
  • Don’t be afraid to ask for help and resources.

 Pitching by ACM Biolabs

Another event highlight is the pitching session! 20 companies from different countries were here to pitch for funds for their research and development, sales and marketing. Such a coincidence, I saw one of my clients from my freelance work.   My boss from Pixtelz was there to pitch for funds too. Haha.


Pixtelzis a mobile apps developing company. One of their apps known as Pixtoonz is just out in the market at Apple Apps Store. Anyone with an IPad can check out more information about it and download this app for free. 


After watching the pitching done by different companies, there are some key points to creating a good pitch from what I observed.

1.      Confidence
2.      Be prepared before you pitch
3.      Make full use of your time given
4.      There is no need to mention operational details
5.      Show your prototype in picture or in physical form if there is
6.      Do not be too technical because investor may not understand
7.      Control the pace of your pitch. Should not be too fast or too slow


Overall, this is a very interesting and beneficial event. I learnt several things that will aid me to be a good entrepreneur. Plus I also caught a glimpse of the top entrepreneurs of the world. Haha I hope I will be one of them probably in 10 years time?

Last few words to encourage everyone who want to be an entrepreneur.

“Dream for it, work for it and live for it!”

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