Today was an exciting day. Having taken the CP2201 module, Journey of the Innovator, today was the first 2 talks by self-made entrepreneurs and businessmen, Steve Melhuish from PropertyGuru and Samuel Lim from Reebonz.
The entire session focused on how they built their business from scratch and the hurdles they went through.
Several important points were highlighted throughout the session, such as:
- For an entrepreneur, his focus should be on innovation.
- Having a solid business model is crucial. The growth in online traffic (for web/mobile based businesses) helps to convert losses to profits.
- Think big, and expand big.
- Professionalize your business and scale appropriately.
- Invest in a good team with good leaders (CFO, CTO, CEO etc.).
- With the best content and most traffic you can make it to be #1 in the market.
Firstly, to summarise my learning from PropertyGuru:
The idea of PropertyGuru was to allow transparency of information in the property market by placing the entire market online to solve a real-world issue: Everyone needs a home!
Several growth tactics were used to leverage on the growing population in emerging countries, rising smartphone and broadband penetration rates and increasing trend of online marketplaces and online transactions.
- It is crucial to ensure that there is ongoing PR to keep the publicity going with the media, so that people are aware of you and your business.
- Pick the ideal investor who is not only interested in the money made by the business, but rather willing to support the business with growth and opportunities. A strategic investor should bring intelligent information to provide insight on the current situation of the market.
- Size and Valuation
- Pitch Documents: Keep some documents ready at hand, both a 2-page document and a 20-page version, to pitch to others.
- Competitive tension: If many investors are interested, we can potentially increase the valuation of the business. Get as many parties interested as possible.
- A good M&A lawyer: It is important to have a good Mergers & Acquisition (M&A) lawyer to prevent ‘unwanted’ takeovers.
A business today will face challenges on different levels, such as:
- Scaling (Revenue & Costs involved)
- Increasing levels of competition: No longer limited to the local scale, but rather we are competing on a regional or even global scale.
- Staying nimble
Some great quotes I found during the presentation:
“Good companies meet needs, Great companies create markets”
“As an entrepreneur always be paranoid of competitors and them taking away your market!”
The second part of the presentation was focused on Reebonz:
Important points for aspiring entrepreneurs:
- Little cash/capital is no longer a worry today. Innovation is largely valued and ideas can be executed with web/mobile apps which have minimal costs.
- Focus on market adoption. Even if your ideas are novel and you have your product ready, the market must be ready to adopt it.
- For a business to survive in the long run, we need to adapt to the market landscape.
- Focus on cutting loss. Ideas may need to change, don’t fall in love with your idea.
- Growth is dependent on cash/capital. Find and learn to manage venture capital.
- Stay true to your core beliefs and idea. Build the business model around this idea.
- Adopt niche areas, where you can differentiate from other businesses.
- Value and invest in customer relationships. This will help in gaining faster adoption and long-term customers.
- Maximise existing resources to create value.
Some great quotes from the second-half of the session:
“You don’t need the best team, but the right team”
“The hardest about evolving a business model is keeping true to your core brand idea”
“Instead of finding places where there is already competition, find niche areas where you can dominate the business”
“See opportunities in problems”
“Get a MVP, or beta model and launch it. Only then you will receive feedback on what the market wants.”
“Only the paranoid survives” – Quoted from Andrew Grove, Co-Founder of Intel
All in all, a very fruitful session that stirred up the entrepreneur within me. The world needs change, and only innovation can drive that change. And entrepreneurs can lead that innovation. In that regard, I am motivated to become an entrepreneur myself to help make a positive difference in the world.
Cheers,
Harish
harish v 