Fantastic experiences and understanding of the entrepreneurial world
Monday, June 13, 2011, 7:58 PM
The weekdays were tiring but really fun and interesting. Let's start with the first two days which were an imitation of the bigger even I was going to attend the next three days and it's organized by people in my club - Entrepreneurship Club. So it was a two day event called L.E.A.D - Leadership through Entrepreneurship achieving distinction. Don't ask me why they chose such a weird name haha.
So anyway the day itself I windup really late so I had no choice but to take the taxi (what's with me taking taxi all the time when I'm late?). When I reached there it was just nice so I went in and got briefed and everything by the seniors.I got paired up with Hyung Jon and yes, he's a Korean, though he lived in India for quite some time. So I was with him and I was really unsure of what or how our members would be. Turned out to me that I had some really quiet members (ouch). So it was really quite for the bonding time, until we merged to play bonding games with another group so it ended up being quite fun with cling cling and all that.
It was lunch then after some talks I think :X
Can't remember that much since I was so busy this weekday...
So the day ended with us going to this place called Winrigo. I had to guide the bus uncle since he didn't know the way lol...luckily I didn't get everyone lost or it'll be 45 people in the middle of NTU.
Serious branding mistake...would the hell would remember that name? Anyway, the CEO was supposed to teach the people about leadership but he ended up talking more about entrepreneurship and environment. His products are really cool though; could you imagine utensils or tumblers with wheat or coffee smell? Damn, I want the coffee tumbler so bad, the aroma is enticing.
The next day I woke up on time and the people were there, pretty fun stuff about pitching. I'm just joking. The members added me on Facebook...adorable kids lol.
The real fun starts on the Wednesday. I know I had dreaded about going to some stupid symposium that the club has devilishly set us up to...
The Youth Entrepreneurship Symposium was awesome! So the early day started with me traveling all the way to NUS Business School. Boy were their building fantastically designed, the environment was so conducive... (A little ironic, don't ya think? The art and design main block's building looked like something only a boring librarian could draw up of, it was all white, rectangular and old.)
I want to study there...
So when I went in, I found my name on this namelist on the board and registered. To my surprise my club president Zhi Min was in it too, it was unexpected that she would be in the organizing committee, I guess that was one of the reasons why they wanted us to join.
So I took the lift to room 3-2 and the rooms were clean and brightly lit with great chairs and equipment. My facilitator...a short female with a thin smile plastered over her face introduced herself to me as Mei Qi. She handed me my shirt and goodie bag and kindly requested me to change into it. The shirt was quite creative, a pseudo tie printed near the collar to look like it was a real tie and the whole thing was orange over white. 'We mean business' was printed at the back that seemed to glow with all its seriousness.
I went back, actually sat there for about 25 minutes with my facilitator going over all the admin stuff. In addition, some people were late and so bonding was really short and not sufficient. We only got a vague understanding of each other's cca and name.
Well, anyway we went and walked to the main campus for business school where the local students have the actual lessons. We went into this lecture hall which was more like an auditorium...and according to the sitting plan I was placed furthest left away from the stage. Ouch.
Oh wait, let me pause here to introduce you to some members in SC5B (Science and Tech Group 5B). First there's me, if you're reading this you would probably know me as a semi-eccentric person. Then there is Wang Qian from HC, in taekwondo...who has pretty large eyes and long eye lashes. If I were to describe her, she would be a really pretty lady from Shanghai (not that she was from there, she looked like she would). She's in J2 haha, so not like I have a single hope in that. She's pretty close to the national top A level scholar so her studies couldn't be so as that much far behind.Then there is Edward who is, well, unique. From the first moment I met, I already knew this guy was weird and he would not make good friend material with me. After all, he was too different from my kind eccentricity. He had naturally wavy hair and was lean and short. The first thing he shown to us was the book he would carry around everywhere he goes. The cover was a interconnected map listing elements of human intelligence like environment, sociability, knowledge and among other stuff. It was philosophy and that's really cool! And a bit weird, we're 16/17 after all, why would you drill so hard into such stuff? Nevertheless, a young guy engaging in deep critical thinking is unprecedented and ultimately interesting. The contents inside were just...wow. Such lengths were made into self-character improvisation that I started to understand why even though I read a lot of self-improvement books I never seem to improve myself. The reason was because I never tried to understand and digest the stuff and most importantly, put them into action. So back to the contents, one of the more striking things was things like exposure to the arts and where he could go to experience them. Location, timings and ticket prices. The second was a list of bad traits that he has, greed, lust, jealousy, reluctance to act and etc. There were at least fifty of them rated from 0-10. The third and last striking thing was a list of his friends, their birthdays, blood type, classifying of whether they were his soul-friends or his extremely good friends. He says he keeps his friends to a limited circle because he doesn't trust people. He's similar to me, I guess, but my rejection and mistrust comes subconsciously >.<. So he has like only 11 friends. I, luckily have a lot more…
I think that’s enough about Edward for a while. Other than the two of them, there are two guys from AJC. One of which is a Nan Hua Senior lol, he’s in Guitar Club, same as Perry. I asked him if he knew Perry, he denied, which left me in a dead end, there’s no common topic between the two of us. The other is also another guy in AJC, whom I didn’t talk much at all throughout the Symposium.
In the lecture theatre, we sat down and it was the opening speech. Major boring stuff so I was looking through Edward’s book while the Guest of Honour mumbled some stuff.
After that passed, some serious entrepreneurs started to give their talks. I was still in my mind set “This symposium is boring.” when the talks started. The first is some guy called Stuart who is the partner of Adam Khoo, which, if you have read enough newspaper you will know he’s a major motivation speaker and gets paid doing it. So he spoke about his story doing all this business and how they got together. It was really interesting, listening to someone talk about their life story and how they eventually got successful through all the ups and downs of life.
Starting a business was not easy, but surely the reward was great, I could feel it, his voice had the essence of success and confidence. And humour, never forget that.
The next guy was a teacher in teaching people about the FOREX market. His school had some IPO that claimed to be the first to get it. His business wasn’t important, just a normal business school. What was special was his background, having been kicked out and transferred of four secondary schools, got out into some polytechnic course and kicked out. Worked somewhere, and kicked out again. It was apparent he was not a person who would follow rules, not to mention people’s orders. Well, what’s the thing you could do if you were in his situation? He started an F&B bar, and it nearly failed, nearly leaving him bankrupt.
He started to invest in the FOREX market and earned him enough to open up a company to start teaching. He’s currently learning commercial law, interesting now that he’s going through the education he never had!
The third was the CEO of $1.99 shop. Ah I remember the throngs of crowd in those shops. The smell of the perfumes and scented leaves, the metal boxes they kept the items in. Ah, memories.
Too bad it had crashed. She was talking about what she learned and how she kept optimistic…
So the talks ended with Q&A which was pretty funny and entertaining. I was, well, hungry though. So I ended up going for lunch really quick, the queue was epic long.
Eventually it was my turn and guess what, their utensils are provided by Winrigo, how cool! I smelt them because they were aromatic (some plant).
The food was alright. I ate until I was full and it was time for factory visits. I was going to Big Fish Golf, a tech company. When we reached there, it was a little isolated, you had to climb stairs, turn into a corner to find it.
It was a small company, but never in my imagination that such a small company could achieve such impossible things and actually be so well furbished.
When we went in, the CEO of the company was a generally soft-spoken person. He introduced to us about what his business was about. It was a professional customization service on golf. Of course, his clients were all rich people who played golf. Christopher Lee was briefly mentioned about being a customer.
He was really interesting. I really enjoyed it. His talk was rather educational about the real world and how the business scene in Singapore is like and how it was different from the other countries. It was things that you would never learn from a textbook, and in a way, it was like gaining advice from a wise man. We left really late at 6pm, even though the event was supposed to end at 5 that day, we stayed because he was truly captivating.
I wished I could have learnt more things from him…
Anyway, I went home and crapped things and slept.
The next day, I woke up at the same time, wore my formal wear. I was really excited because everyone who arrived wore really professionally and sharp. The shirt and pants I wore was a far cry from the organising committee’s, they wore the full suit and looked like they really were there for business >.< I loved it~ Motivation for me to become a white collar worker/boss so I can wear suits haha.
I arrived promptly at 9pm and sat down. It was bitterly painful to see that only one guy who I was not close with that turned up, and he was going to leave before the pitching (aka promoting business idea). So it was me and him, churning out ideas. I had two, one was a maze alarm clock and the other was an app that would alarm you before you reached the destination so you would not oversleep on public transport. He had an idea about a vending machine to exchange currency, I thought it was ingenious.Luckily, Mei Qi informed me that Edward and Wang Qian were coming but they were late instead. Wang Qian arrived first and we sat down and decided on an idea. We were out of time but we had a list of ideas to choose from. They were all varied and somewhat interesting. Wang Qian’s idea was a dumpling restaurant or of some sort. I can’t really remember as my memory is fading fast when it requires sleep (It’s 12.34am).
I was brainstorming which ideas were really good, which ones could get us into the finals. It was then something struck me. Why not create a dumpling vending machine?
It was great! The team immediately decided on it. That was about all the time we had as we moved on to the next segment of parallel sessions.
Basically, all of us were split up into different rooms in which there were different speakers that would each talk about a topic that was their own forte and we could choose which ones we were interested in. I went for room B for the first session and C for the second (there was a break in between for you to switch rooms). The speakers for the room B were late. I had pen and paper, and worked on the pitch we would be going to say. It was still a template but it was good enough in my opinion.
The speakers arrived, a male and a female as a team. They did not say much about their business but immediately got down into their topic. “How to make money doing something you like/ hobby at little or no start-up cost”
They talked about internet business and it being an affordable platform. They strongly recommended creating digital content in which people would buy. They were simple instructions but made a lot of sense. I was frustrated, I had hobbies but I am not proficient in any of those things and hence, had a lack of substance and skill to write and create an e-book about my hobby. Neither do I possess skills or talent in anything. Videos, books, lessons, blogs!
I guess I could work on my blog. Seriously though, I think my life is pretty boring to people to come regularly to read and so my revenue would be totally…empty as homeless man’s bank account.
I thought they were interesting, and learned at least some few things. Good enough for me. I began to proceed to move to the next round of parallel sessions.
The next guy talked about his business in the F&B, while at the same time helps promote musicians at their bars and café. Their business currently stands at 18 million dollars of worth. They have quite a handful of outlets. Being a professional guitarist that plays in a band in Australia, he saw how developed the art culture was in the big kangaroo land as compared to the urban jungle of Singapore. Singaporeans looked down on musicians and never considered them to be a viable career path, in which I fully agree with his view. So he started this bar to have bands play in them and it started up really nicely.
Their location was kind of isolated so they had interesting ways of getting customers and a name for themselves. First of all, they had publications to help publicize their restaurant (They expanded to cafes and bars later). Secondly, they had bands from NTU (or was it SMU?) to play at their restaurant every Monday. It was through the word of mouth and recognition before they got to here today with about 3300 unique customers every week. Wow.
+ The band thing? Well it had become such a trend in NTU to actually propose in their restaurant. How absolutely romantic!
The speaker talked to us about how passion was the most important thing that an entrepreneur would need, because if you are there only for the money you would give up when you have to face a small hurdle. I guess, that was also the only thing I learned from him lol.
Lunch was next and not again. Queues are so annoying. There needs to be a robot who would queue and take orders for you…
I received a SMS from Mei Qi saying that our pitch session was going to start in 20 minutes. WTF. I only started eating and we have to pitch soon?
Hurriedly I chowed down my food, got a drawing block and used my marker to roughly draw out a vending machine.
I then called Wang Qian (group leader) and she was still eating. She was eating…dumplings. How expected, I guess she likes dumplings really a lot. We were in a rush so she offered me some dumplings; I managed to squeeze in two really fast and made our way to our pitching room.
When we reached there, Edward was there too. There was some delay in the pitching session so we actually had time to fully materialize our idea and get the nitty gritty bits down. When it was time to pitch, I had my surprise as I saw Mr Adrian Tan (Sec 2 Geog teacher) there.
I pitched the whole thing myself since I wrote the script. I don’t know why but I think, mainly of under-preparedness, I was mumbling as I was nervous. Our idea was eventually better than the other group and we proceeded to the second round.Since we were the first groups out of many to pitch we had some time to work on the second round. We worked on improving the speech and drawing a new vending machine.
The next few talks were pretty interesting. There was this person who went into the funeral service industry at age of 16 because his L1R5 was 38. Ouch, through all the hardship and all that, he eventually brought his company to a million dollar business. He had quite a few dead jokes like “Sorry I can’t give you vouchers” and stuff like that.
It was inspiration …just shows you the potential to change the world you live in by just starting a business that will benefit everyone. There is also the chance you can get rich while doing it. :P
Then it came to the second round of pitching. This time, I was more prepared and gave a pretty good speech. Our opponents were pretty good with their ideas too. It was during the argument sessions that we didn’t do so well as Edward kind of gotten the idea of the vending machine wrong. Couldn’t blame him, we had so little time to prepare.
The last segment…you guessed it. More speeches! This time there was this guy who was age 26 and claimed he has “lived his dream” which was true. He could afford all the things he could want, after all, being a multi-millionaire. You could guess, what’s next after you lived your dreams?
He said this “I want to make a mark on the world. Even if it is only one person, that one person that will remember me even after I have died, that is the mark I have left on this world.” Crazy as it sounds; I think I have this “godly” title just pasted all over him.
His business was not easy to start up. Being a new advertising consultant (or something along those lines), he didn’t have any customers. Not until one day an old business man gave him and his partner this opportunity, though he had one condition: The charge is free.
They agreed and they did a good job. The old businessman spread their company’s name around and soon they had business. It was soon though, that his partner kicked his ass and left, bringing a huge sum of money with him. His company was ruined. The image of his company was now corrupted and what how do climb up after being given a bad name?
He didn’t explicitly tell us what he did to recover his company image, but it must have been really tough, no doubt. He spoke of big problems in the world like poverty and etc. Ah, how I wish my life was like his…
Maybe I would have my chance in the future…I would start my own company. :D
After his inspiration talk, we had to leave xP. It was already pretty late into the night, 7:30pm. So I left NUS business school to the bus stop to make my way back to clementi with the crowd-favourite 183. I was crossing the road when I saw this yellow sports car looking immensely ferocious and uberly cool. HOLY SHIT A LAMBORGHINI? Oh wait, it’s a FERRARI. I was like wtf…first time getting so close to a Ferrari sports car.
The asshole inside though, drove off with his max torque when the light turned green. I think he stepped really hard on the gas pedal just to show off to the group of 17-18 year olds hogging at the bus stop, which was us lol. It was bliss listening to the engine sound though, it was deafening, sure, but it so aggressive as hell. >.<
Next goal in life: 1. Start a business that I like. 2. Buy a Lamborghini.
The next day was an hour earlier than usual as sakae buffet people couldn’t provide us the meal an hour earlier. We had mass game, kind of like selling stuff and buying materials. It was crazy and tiring, I was very tired so I didn’t do much. In the end, Edward came with me telling “After cooperating with you, I don’t think I can be friends with you.” And he promptly left. Fine with me, I didn’t care very much.
The lunch was freagging long. 2.5 hours of just sitting doing nothing. So much for my group, we dispersed like a mimosa in the wind, fluttering and chatting with other mimosa seeds drifting beside.
I had time to spend getting close with my phone, how, social. All of a sudden it was time for the final pitching sessions, they were all very good but they had some weak points that were pointed out. Plus, they all weren’t very innovative ideas, except for one. That one was customizable nail paint. This, sadly, is chemically impossible since each colour requires different pigments in different solvents. Unless all of your pigments could dissolve in the same solvents, you wouldn’t get a very nice mix of colours.
One of the teams had a similar idea to my first one. Remember the wake up app? They had a wake up machine. Fuck, my idea was even better…
When the thing was all over, it was already late enough for the prize presentation and the closing ceremony. Our neighbour group had won. We did a very dirty move, I admit, we pooled our earnings together to get number one. :X
The prizes were enough to be give everyone something though.
With obvious certainty, closing ceremony was very boring. Not to mention the last speaker, who I’ve already heard the same speech in another event, dragged the thing down to plain boredom like a pizza with no toppings.
The dinner was interesting. I had time to go around talking to entrepreneurs with my friends in TJ and it was refreshing to talk to them. I learned a lot haha and collected the first few name cards in my life. The last person I spoke to was Mr Tan, I asked him about how he knew what he wanted to do in life. He gave me great advice and I appreciated it. Kudos to him.
The event ended and I think it’s really inspirational and awesome. There were a lot of things I can’t personally put them in words as they are very deep, and really requires you to be there at that time to appreciate and truly understand how it felt. That’s all and thanks for reading all four thousand words. <3
