Category: entrepreneurship

Nobody Aspires to be an Over-Reaching Asshole

Founding a startup is kinda like one of humankind’s most miraculous feats, walking.

Walking, as someone puts it, is the act of constantly catching yourself from falling — which is why this action remains so elusive for robotic bi-peds.

As a business owner, we are constantly “falling” as well.

If you’re doing something disruptive or new, there is no roadmap and so the challenge every day is reading the situation & market development, and finding ways to prevent failing from happening.

Sometimes I find myself over-eager to make my case, whether it is pinging brands execs with multiple chasers, or even resorting to emailing the big boss if it looks like there is an unexplained impasse or disinterest… these are things we do NOT because we WANT to be over-reaching assholes (who in the right mind aspires to be so) but it stems from an earnest, humble desire to make things work.

If you find us annoying but passionate about our cause, imagine what we can do when we translate that energy for you, the client. But.. few think about it this way.

As an entrepreneur, we gotta try, there is no progress without rejection. I can’t expect everyone to appreciate it, but those who do, boy, do we cherish them.

Thanks so much.

20 October 2017
Why Would WatchAnish Buy a Print Magazine?

On Sunday, one of the world’s most famous and successful Instagram accounts, @WatchAnish, announced via a posting on Facebook that it was acquiring WATCH THIS magazine.

The print publication which displays both English and Swedish on its website, does not look like it had a significant social media presence, and will be re-branded as WATCHANISH Magazine, set to be launched at the upcoming BaselWorld 2017 trade event in Switzerland.

Why would an Instagram account with more than 1.7 million followers, widely known outside of the social network and in the popular mainstream, pigeon-hole itself into print media, which surely has significantly less readership (there’s no way it’ll have 1.7 million printed copies) and is facing, as an industry, dwindling ad revenues? Even the New York Times revealed recently that its ad revenues fell 16 percent in 2016, and the NYT is one of the more (most?) successful print dailies in the business. The prospects for the glossy magazines surely can’t be better.

Now, I need to establish from the start that I’m an admirer of WatchAnish. Its success, via its visuals, arose because it disrupted the space of “beautiful images” — a realm that should have been dominated by magazines with their photo spreads but social media caught traditional media by surprise. Whilst print magazines and its various vendors like modelling agencies and photographers were grappling with archaic notions of loading fees, length of exposure (limited), Instagrammers with their self-produced content moved in on that space.

It wasn’t just the watch (trade) publications, but fashion titles too faltered at the start with this. With their pants down.

Now Instagrammers rule.

Caveat: In terms of the one-photo medium. To a certain extent.

I would argue that Facebook is just as important if not more for digital publishers, especially with link shares (Seriously, nobody clicks on the “link on my profile” workaround that Instagram accounts use on their posts because the social network does not support hot links (read: clickable links to external websites)) as well as a user base that actually reads. But this is a topic for another day.

Back to WatchAnish. I love their photos, and when I met founder Anish Bhatt briefly at a Vacheron Constantin event in Singapore, I thought he was a very humble, soft-spoken guy, a surprise given the photos that his account (including his collaborators) posts were often loud, over-the-top with watch placements alongside a larger-than-life luxurious existence. That said, the sartorially-styled photo pieces I particularly loved, especially those by a certain James Cole. #LOVE #LOVELOVE Cole’s work (James, if you’re reading this, add me on Facebook, I can’t find you).

Why would New Media buy Old Media?

Well, it isn’t something new. Chris Hughes, a co-founder of Facebook had dabbled into a grand experiment acquiring The New Republic and so has Jeff Bezos of Amazon buying The Washington Post. But these are millionaires with either an expensive hobby or hitherto long term strategy that is unclear at the moment. So these are un-related equivalences.

Who’d want to be known as an Instagrammer? Isn’t it cooler to be a publisher of a print magazine?

Read this story about Vogue editors mocking bloggers here.

I kid, but this comment cuts deeper than that. As a social media persona (WatchAnish collectively), it has faced an uphill struggle alike the rest of us digital publishers (I run SENATUS.NET, a website) with advertisers and brands that we ideally would like to get revenues from, as they seemingly move towards digital.

But that shift away from print hasn’t happened fast enough. Why?

That’s because the mindset changes at the conglomerates, independent brands, as well as the retailer/distributor networks for luxury brands (including watches) have not moved with the times, even as they’re likely to read this critique online, than if it was seen on a printed material.

The senior management of brands have this old-school outdated thinking that attributes a higher value on a one-page article found on page 62 of a printed magazine with 10,000 total print circulation over 1. one single Facebook or Instagram post that has 10,000 likes, or 2. a web page that has 10,000 actual pageviews.

Are you kidding me? An obscurely-placed, random page in a magazine with a ceiling of 10,000 printed copies, has a higher media value than a website article that actually received 10,000 reads? Is the readership irrelevant? How can it be? Who do you think is reading an article about grand complications, tourbillons, perpetual calendar and what leather your strap is made out of at 2 am in the morning other than an avid watch consumer?

Surely you must also know that a post on FB or IG that has 10,000 likes has had an even larger exposure to more users, in order to obtain a percentage of those as “likes”.

Another complaint about the 10,000 pageviews a web page gets is that local markets have their hands tied (so only global HQ can pull the trigger on a digital ad buy), and they do not in effect, have the spending power to subsidise exposure for other markets (same family, but not friends, if you know what I mean) by investing/advertising on a website that has a global audience. So essentially, the buck still stops at the boss’ table. The boss at the very top, I mean.

It is also rumoured that one luxury conglomerate has an internal media value calculation system that heavily favours print circulation, multiplying number of editorial pages by advertising cost per page, and other variables to come up with an inflated number that does not compare fairly against digital websites or social media accounts. What is cost of advertising per one web page/URL? That surely doesn’t make sense to equate apples with oranges. Not at all.

Old Media is easier for Bosses to understand

So no matter how many events WatchAnish (Anish or his collaborators/team) are paid to attend, or however number of Instagram posts he is sponsored to do, even with his 1.7 million IG followers, it cannot be compared to the quantum some of the printed magazines are making. The way it works is some brands do annual buyouts (number of pages, back page cover, etc.) thus ensuring the cashflow is constant, and reliable — key to any business venture’s survival.

And like I described, media value for each printed page is considered to be more important than a webpage. However many page impressions watchanish.com was ever going to serve, it’ll never be able to grow business like a print magazine, which in many ways, can add advertisers based on the same circulation. I wrote about this before: Print Magazines Have a Pay Day When There’re Many Advertisers. Online Magazines, Only When They Have More Traffic

That, and how print magazines were constantly leveraging on WatchAnish (presence, or content) to fulfil their advertisers request to make content more relevant. So instead of helping someone else make money, WA probably figured it should just do it itself.

In reality, I am going to say it now….

Brands are Artificially-Ventilating Print Magazines to keep them alive.

Keeping print magazines (who do not have a sustainable web presence) on a mechanical ventilator (ha! I also said ‘mechanical’), maintaining a zombie-like existence for an outmoded operating model in limbo between life and death (they make enough not to fold, but not enough to sustainably go on at the same overheads). In all, it paints a story of a patient induced into a coma because the spouse or parent (i.e. the brand) just doesn’t want to let go.

So I totally understand why WatchAnish is becoming WATCHANISH Magazine.

It’s where the money still is.

addendum: This post contains criticisms of business mindset, and business models, and not of the good people that work at either. #goodfolks

addendum part ii: Some brands have boldly moved forward and marginally advertise on print to maintain important relationships. #bravo

13 February 2017
SALES: Solve Your Client’s Problems, Not Sell Your Customer Products

14 July 2016
We Don’t Have to be Strangers (Even If We Don’t Work Together)

“If we don’t end up working together, we can still be friends” is a refrain that is so obvious but something I’ve felt compelled to include in conversations lately.

Maybe it’s the new age thinking of feeling that one needs to either accept or reject something, swipe left or right to say no or yes, click like or disregard as you scroll past, that compels folks today to be so binary in the way they view relationships.

In fact, we can be adversarial and still cordial.

Look at Messi and Ronaldo, they’re not scything each other down on the pitch or at awards galas.

Hillary Clinton ended up working for Obama and is now on the presidential ticket.

Life is not black or white, and I would much rather not have these awkward countenances that people have become so comfortable with these days.

22 June 2016
Founding A Startup is like Being Shipwrecked from Day One

This analogy helps if you’ve watched or read the Life of Pi.

Founding a startup is like being SHIPWRECKED from day one.

The minute you start you’re trying to survive, alongside a starving tiger no less.

The hyena & orang utan are perhaps the co-founders that bravely started that crazy journey with you.

The zebra, your trusting 1st investor, surely gets eaten at some point.

Getting funded, which gets all the sexy press, is like hitting a jackpot of flying fish — it just delays what could be the inevitability of a lonely death in the high seas.

But boy, it is indeed as exciting as seeing a luminescent pool of fish at night.

Being “successful” though, is finally discovering a bountiful island to get off your boat.

16 April 2016
“Precision Beats Power. Timing Beats Speed” – Conor McGregor

Those were the words spoken by Irish MMA fighter Conor McGregor in his post-match interview in the Octagon after defeating defending Brazilian Featherweight Champion Jose Aldo in UFC #194.

Just how good was Aldo? In the ten years from 26 November 2005 until 26 November 2015, Aldo never lost an MMA fight, thus marking an entire decade of invincibility, with 5 years ruling as a world champion (18 fights, 10 title fights, 9 title defences).

In the title unification fight held on 12 December 2015, McGregor registered the UFC’s fastest knockout win in its history.

13 seconds was all it took.

And with that, and all of the Irishman’s confident trash talking, history was made as he became the new undefeated champion. Now, watch that punch in slow-mo, and the post-match interview below…

It doesn’t matter if you’re not a fan of Mixed Martial Arts, what McGregor gave us with his famed lethal left-handed strike was a quote applicable to so many of the things we do.

Running a startup, I’ve always said that in order to beat the big boys, you’ve got to draw your competitors to where his numbers count for nothing.

In my previous writing, I advocated being swifter and more nimble: Fight the big guy in a small, confined space. Move faster where he’s slower.

Now, McGregor’s words have added another layer of complexity to this strategy: What if your opponent moves quicker and punches harder than you?

You don’t fight strength with more strength, if you don’t have it. If you can’t do continuous upgrades of your platform, don’t. But do so in a targeted manner.

You don’t fight speed with more speed, if you don’t have it. If you can’t quickly address issues and deficiencies, don’t. But do so with meaningful upgrades at the opportune moments.

What you’d have to do is execute with accuracy, and to time these efforts to maximum effect.

Precision Beats Power. Timing Beats Speed.

Never better said.

14 December 2015
The Toruk Never Looks Up; Neither Does Your Biggest Competitor

So many of us are working on our own startup and fledging businesses, cognizant of who the biggest players are in our market.

For quite a number of you, the approach has been to take small steps to establish a foothold and expand carefully and meaningfully without stirring the attention of the big giant on the block, lest it comes knocking on your door and squeezing you out of the business, whether it’s through predatory pricing or offering the same promotions.

In the movie “Avatar”, if you recall, Jake Sulley (played by Aussie actor Sam Worthington) decides to capture the Toruk with cunning simplicity. Acknowledging that the Toruk — the big red bird of prey feared by all the Na’Vi (natives) of the planet Pandora — which sits at the top of the “fear chain”, so to speak, Jake Sulley attacks it from above, knowing that the Toruk would never expect anyone else to threaten it from that direction.

I recommend this bold strategy for all those who have been initially conservative.

Go after your competitor from where he expects it least.

It is the only way for you to succeed, and perhaps your best chance of survival too.

[highlight]The author of this note realizes not all have watched the movie Avatar and advises friends not to literally jump on your competitor’s back at the next conference.[/highlight]

8 January 2014
Take Pride In What You Do & Maintain High Standards

I was at the press conference of the World Gourmet Summit today and the key stakeholders were talking about the difficulty in hiring service staff in Singapore and also the inability to meet (high) service standards.

Reasons given included the low unemployment rate amongst Singaporeans, resulting in us not willing to do service level jobs, another was the perception that a service job in F&B business was just not prestigious.

Of course, Singaporeans defending themselves will immediately say the jobs in themselves don’t pay well enough otherwise we would all want to be restaurant managers. This seems to be the de-facto no-brainer response to this kind of topic these days.

I surmise somebody out there is going to say they pay restaurant managers $10,000/month in some Scandinavian country. Good for them.

So it shouldn’t be surprising that…

Nobody Wants To Be A Waiter

… And then we came to the punchline of the discussion, that the F&B industry does need foreign labour (waiters, cooks, managers) and foreign talent (Michelin-star quality chefs) to fill this void that Singaporeans cannot fulfil.

Low cost for lower skilled but integral labour. High cost to buy prestige factor and expertise.

Now I don’t have a solution for labour shortage, nor do I know how to deal with foreign labour restrictions and I definitely don’t have any idea how you can make your restaurant business viable.

I also don’t know how you can make a waitering job more attractive. Perhaps restaurant owners can actually split the service charge they impose on customers.

Screw The Service, The Food Is Awful!

But what I want to say is, in spite of this need (from whom I don’t know) to boost the F&B industry in Singapore, with new eateries sprouting up everywhere, that the quality of food is actually dropping regardless of the service standards, which I didn’t expect to be high in the first place.

Those pictures of food on Instagram hashtagged #foodporn in Singapore might look good, but in general, the food is crap. French, American, Moroccan, Indian, Chinese, local hawker fare, you name it.

American Diner-inspired cafes offer up cute-looking pancakes costing $30 that taste nothing like iHop. Laksa served in food courts looks like noodles swimming in orange/red water. Steak-frites is not really just a piece of beef and french fries, you know? Mushroom soup shouldn’t taste worse than if I just microwaved a can of Campbell’s. You really don’t have any business starting a sushi joint if you didn’t know Salmon Don came with vinegared rice. And don’t get me started on the coconut rice plus everything that you call “nasi lemak”.

What the F&B industry faces is really a larger problem across Singapore society: A dilution of quality.

What’s funny is the foreign talent coming to Singapore end up assimilating our worst trait — Complaining.

Complain about government. Complain about people. Complain about staff. Complain about customers. Complain about suppliers.

You think a French or English chef is sexy with his accent? Hear him complain and he’ll sound just like a Singaporean. Singapore has become a melting pot afterall.

Honestly, we should have a national campaign to have PRIDE in what we do, whatever job we do.

Don’t do it well for someone else, do it well for your own goodness sake.

STANDARDS. There you have it.

[highlight]Have you ever eaten in Chinatown in New York City? Boy, those waiters are grouchy. But nobody cares because the food is cheap and good. [/highlight]

7 March 2013
Pivot Your Impending Failure Into “Accidental Genius”

There’s a little known fact outside the medical world: Viagra, Pfizer’s game-changing solution to erectile dysfunction, was originally conceived as sildenafil, aimed at treating chest pain caused by heart disease.

Administered 3 times a day during a trial, the drug had a side effect, causing erections in the male subjects.

With that and in not so many words, Viagra was born.

How This Applies to the Entrepreneur

Are you working on something that hasn’t seen the success you’d like it to have? Are you focused on the platform while missing the potential of one of your features?

Oftentimes, as founders of startups, we are so fixated on the vision of what we want to achieve, as we should, that we fail to realize when we have accidentally stumbled upon “genius”.

There are many of such “accidental genius” creations in human history, ranging from the mechanical clock, which was initially intended to regulate monastic prayers to the phonograph, originally meant to be record phone conversations.

How It Happened to Me

When I initially rolled out SENATUS.NET, my vision was to create a gated online community, with authenticated login required to access private information.

I launched it here in Singapore during 2008/2009, just when the popularity of Facebook finally hit the populace. The comparisons between SENATUS and Facebook were inevitable, even though the business models and the intended use cases were starkly different.

[box]In fact, Facebook was itself also launched as a private network at first, with invitations given only to students of Harvard, then Ivy League schools, and colleges nationwide, before being open to public users. The rest is history[/box]

Some of the members who registered on my network were expecting the experience to be the same on Facebook, the number of users to be in the millions, the interactivity including the presence of third party apps (games) to provide similar R&R time.

The reality is that the average user is not going to take the time to understand why your product is different — user behavior is primitive and instinctive — Just look at the number of times people pick something up and start using it without looking at the instruction manual. Or simply just watch an iPhone user try out an Android smartphone.

Not everybody gets a chance to demonstrate their innovation at CES (the famed consumer electronics tradeshow in Las Vegas), nor has the budget to do a press junket for media and tech bloggers (and for them to subsequently explain to readers what you do).

During that particularly “dark” year in 2009, I literally role-played the restaurant owner sitting in my empty eatery, waiting for customers to come through the door, i.e. waiting for members to register on my network. Few did, and on hindsight I knew why: They couldn’t see inside the website (which was the point) and their curiosity wasn’t piqued enough for them to make the effort to register.

From Wilderness to Openness

SENATUS was built on Python/Django, an incredibly powerful content management system, and I had used it to not only add social networking features but also a rather simplistic magazine at the time.

And in that wilderness, I had what I call my ‘Hansel & Gretel’ moment.

The breadcrumbs of content I had left public were in fact what readers were responding to. It was as though through it, they finally understood the premium positioning that I wanted my network to have.

With that moment of Eureka, I poured my resources into fleshing out the magazine component of our website. Our luxury and lifestyle magazine went ‘live’ in 2010, and we quickly went on to win Gold Award in Best Online Magazine at the Asian Digital Media Award, emerging best against entries from media conglomerates from Asia Pacific to the Middle East. In 2012, after a further upgrading effort, we won the Silver Award.

The networking components of my website continue to exist, deployed for registered members but also intelligently used to make our editorial content “come alive”, allowing interactions with our team of editors, writers and photographers, facilitating discussions that can incorporate multi-media visual resources from across the Internet to create an all-encompassing experience.

[box]That is what I consider the Future of Magazines. You are welcome to take a look here: http://senatus.net/community and request an account if you’d like access. Yahoo, through Melissa Mayer, becomes only the second portal after us, to adopt an in-house newsfeed for its content.[/box]

I still believe in my core product — the network — but I have evolved my platform in order to continue doing what I do.

[highlight]Are you sitting on an “Accidental Genius”? Perhaps it’s time to take stock of the treasures you’ve already unearthed.[/highlight]

22 February 2013
Lessons from FC Barcelona for the Entrepreneur: Do the Dirty Work
Everyone who plays soccer knows this: FC Barcelona led by World Player of the Year Lionel Messi, is one of the most followed and idolized teams in the modern era.

Yet almost all the recreational players who celebrate the successes of the team and watch their games week in and week out, don’t play anywhere like them, don’t apply any of the tiki-taka philosophy to their teamplay, don’t overwhelm their opposition, no matter how individually talented each player is.

Why?

I surmise it’s because fans just focus on the glamorous bits of the game, the masterful dribbling, the scoring highlights and the spectacular video bites that engage the short attention span of the viewer.

In many ways, it’s the same malaise that bugs entrepreneurs who decide to start a new venture. They pour through magazine coverage, blog posts, and autobiographies of successful businessmen, unconsciously culling out what the appealing parts are, adopting marketing cliches and punchlines as mottos, and in doing so, inevitably miss the woods for the trees.

In reality, there’s a whole lot of dirty work that FCB players do that brings them success. These critical components of their games aren’t sexy, don’t make the news, and certainly don’t sell football shoes. High court pressing, passing, self-sacrificing cover runs, supporting teammates and providing a passing option – these are the most boring yet quintessential parts of FCB’s game.

How This Applies to the Entrepreneur

The equivalent lessons for the founder of a startup are pretty straightforward and I shall limit my discourse on digital platforms, where my experience lies — focus on unit testing, user experience and site layout, growth, distribution, hiring, branding, marketing, profitability and most important of all, efficiency of effort.

I’ve observed many founders spending an inordinate amount of time networking, believing that rubbing shoulders with peers in the business, can somehow bring them success but those who oftentimes don’t make (enough) traction are the ones who aren’t efficient about their networking efforts.

Networking isn’t about having a beer with fellow founders, developers, venture capitalists and chit-chatting about why your own startup is great (or going to be) — that’s the kind of conversation you have with a client you want to win business from.

No one’s really listening when you talk about how you just hired 10 into your staff, that you’re getting $5 million funding, when your TV commercial is going to run, or the number of downloads your app has on iTunes.

Let’s face it: Unless you’re selling life insurance policies specifically for entreprenuers, fellow founders aren’t your target market either. Read: The 20 folks you met aren’t going to be the ones who provide that magical catalyst for you. The reality is they’re busy with their own business.

My advice is to leave the seemingly-glamorous parts aside and focus.

Efficient Networking

A founder needs to be pragmatic about how she spends her time, especially if that’s time spent away from developing the product — Know who your counterpart is, understand what value that person can bring to what you do, explore and hopefully strike up key partnerships that make sense, invest in shared intelligence that can reap you insights into what you’re doing.

[unordered_list style=”arrow”]
- What have you done with that stack of business cards?
- Does that Venture Capital firm even invest in your industry?
- Is that developer someone you can hire, poach, or propose to become your partner?
[/unordered_list]

The point is simple: Focus on the dirty work | Be efficient with your play.

Good luck.

[highlight]The author in no way suggests you should be anti-social and calculative with the time you spend with friends and family. But if it’s work, then make sure it pays off .[/highlight]
1 February 2013