Tag: network

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
When Liking A Facebook Page Means More Than Just That

I’ll admit it, to me, the act of “liking” a Facebook page is never just what it is at face-value — it is neither trivial nor flippant, especially given FB wants pages to advertise to get fans.

In fact, FB no longer allows fans to “invite” their friends to like a page — they can only “share” a link — and only administrators are left with the friend invitation tool. By doing so, FB has killed/crippled the innate “virality” of FB pages, thus driving page admins to pay into the system to grow their fanbase.

Like Or Not Like?

Believe it or not, I’ve received requests from folks asking me to share their page to our fans — to help them grow — only to realize that these goodwill requestors did not even like our page in the first place. In my humble opinion, such behaviour lacks good faith and doesn’t exactly inspire reciprocality.

Of course, there are those (myself included) who deliberately do not like a page or choose to un-fan ourselves out of objection, disinterest, competition, protest or a myriad of other motivations.

To me, liking an FB page that you’ve been invited to by a friend or associate shows whether you support what that person is doing, and whether that person supports what you are doing.

Have Your Missed An Invitation?

When a friend invites you to like a page he/she has set up, you receive a notification and the way FB has set it up, it is all too easy to miss them.

To that end, I realized I hadn’t been able to previously track invitations to become a fan until I stumbled upon this URL where you can find a listing of previous requests from friends: https://m.facebook.com/pages?source=mobile_page_suggestions_on_liking&__user=[your_username OR user_id_number] OR on the right hand column on https://www.facebook.com/pages

If it seemed like I previously didn’t support your project, I apologize. Now I am able to finally do so at that link.

[highlight]Then again, we shouldn’t take things too seriously. Well, at least I shouldn’t. Look at the friends who send you Candy Crush requests, their feelings don’t get hurt easily. They die only to live again. [/highlight]

6 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