Domo! Alvin Lai desu!

In the class of Technology Entrepreneurship I’m enjoying at Stanford University, I have the privilege of exploring creativity and brainstorming from Tina Seelig, the Executive Director of the Stanford Technology Ventures Program. Here’s an brief list of what I’ve garnered from the session:

• No bad ideas
• Build on ideas
• No hiearchy, but take turns
• No conformity, conventions and limits
• No best idea, don’t limit potential
• Wild ideas
• The facilitator and the honored participants
• Additional Tips
• Ending thoughts

Check out my take on creativity and brainstorming!

Domo! Alvin Lai desu!

With just 3 months left in the Valley, it’s a good time to look back.

Very different from a regular student exchange program, groups of NUS Overseas Colleges participants in Silicon Valley actually get a job working full time for a salary, get together to form households, rent full sized houses, buy their own cars, pay their own bills, you get the idea, it’s very much like settling down in America, for real.

The NUS Overseas Colleges program is quoted from its website to “infuse a spirit of enterprise into NUS education, providing NUS students with a globally-oriented educational experience.”

Indeed, that is true, with so many valuable components painstakingly pieced together over the years and only made possible with the work done by the people before us, with staff like Jupe forming strategic alliances with high technology startup companies for internships and previous batches of NOC students handing down contacts and relationships of worthy organizations and individuals.

Because of this we are very privileged to be able to have very awe-inspiring mentors like CEOs from Digg, Meebo, Google and so on.

The buddy system where the incumbent batch would be assigned to help the incoming junior batch to ease in and settle down is especially heartwarming, as it encourages the spirit of paying it forward, forming close friendships the process.

All these would never be easy for a single person starting up here alone (actually I know of just one, the CEO of Red Pod). We are so lucky to be able to benefit from the time accumulated fruits of labour!

But of course that’s pretty much what everybody enjoys in the process, are there other intangible and subtle stuff that is not immediately obvious to the onlookers?

Plenty!

Just being here with a couple of friends in this big wonderland called America with plenty things to do, I’ve become a more independent and resourceful person, constantly finding out the hows and the wheres to do new crazy exciting stuff.

I’ve done crazy hikes and scaled half dome in Yosemite National Park, planned and executed a successful and enjoyable outdoor camp trip where we slept under the stars, met up with a stranger who works in Intel to go para-gliding and many more!

Moving out of my comfort zone, charting out and venturing into previously unexplored places. Getting lost and finding your way around, being ever ready to take on challenges and conquer the unexpected.

I will return to Singapore stronger, better and ever ready to take on new challenges that come by my way.

Just a mere 3 months, and I’ll be back. Life will never be the same again

Thanks Vid!

Domo! Alvin Lai desu!
Look! Our dear Shao Shao having a wild time in the Vasquez household! Smile until sooo happi!

Here in Silicon Valley, National University of Singapore (NUS) students on the NUS Overseas Colleges program work full time at high technology startups and take courses at Stanford University in a bid to experience and do entrepreneurial things like start startups, organize events and pursue their passions (ok that was a mouthful :D).

6 of us rent a nice place called Vasquez Court and we soon became the Vasquez household. Our dear happy friend Shao Shao (Shaorong)’s a guest today and from the looks he’s so happy to be here!

Okay enough messing around, here’s what really happened.

What started out as a simple invitation for a group of GEM students became a big gathering where people invited more people and their GEM classmates, to the point it became like a big meetup. We had nice Singaporean dishes and we got to meet and make new friends!

I personally met GEM classmates who work in Google and Microsoft and even people who are really excited to pick up Ruby on Rails! How cool is that!

We should do this often man! Ok, nuff said! Pictures!

See everyone so on pose and pose! Especially Bernard damn gek seh Eugene’s like tickling Weichong’s tongue, Shao Shao posing like Farmer brand peanuts and Gavin’s forking his nose and both Zai Zhuang and our teh ping hui looking pretty.. Hmm..

Our nice Chinese friends, huan yin guang lin!

Cool dudes!

I can’t wait for the next gathering!!! :D

The Singapore American Business Association (SABA)
brings us this very interesting seminar about.. ok the blog post title is pretty self explanatory..

At the center of the limelight would be  Patrick Yam, who’s the CEO of Sensei Partners LL, a Menlo Park, CA venture capital firm, who has a pretty good history in the finance realm, check him out!

In short, this seminar would touch on:

• Validity of historical investment myths
• Return on Location (ROL) – which refutes the popular contention of the “on-hour” rule of venture capital investing

Patrick would proceed to elaborate why ROL is “an answer to better venture capital investing today and beyond”.

Check it out from SABA’s website!

Wow! I just gottasaythatagain. WOW!

After blogging about Farzad’s session in a whole new style, I’ve received tonnes of feedback – mostly great and encouraging ones:

Great! Fresh outlook! Cute! (for the Domo-kun banner, woo!) Well done! Looking good! Direct to the point! Great style! Good humor!

Even from friends who are not from the NUSEA/NOC network! Thanks Alastair and Ah Buang!

And of course from our most lovely dear program manager Jupe!

THANKS!

It feels AWESOME to receive fan-mail! I can attest to the ego trip!

But of course there were a few thoughtful people who gave useful and interesting pointers to improve upon:

Too much self advertisement

Several links to alvinlai.com – my personal blog. An introductory post for readers to check me out, a couple of posts to illustrate my writing styles. Too much? You tell me

I think this blog is an excellent avenue for NUSEA members to be heard, why not let our readers get a good glimpse (or ogle) at who we really are, how much fun we are having while reaping a full, wholesome, and rich experience in leapfrogging hurdles and relishing the Silicon Valley entrepreneurship process?

Really? Why not?

That is why I encourage the concept of guest blogging! Everyone should take this opportunity to let our readers know you better! Where better place can you portray yourself personally along with a YOUNG VIBRANT PROFESSIONAL STUDENT ENTREPRENEURIAL organization in the world’s most renowned tech hub of innovate SILICON VALLEY CALIFORNIA!? I’m so psyched up as I’m typing this! XD

So what are you waiting for! Guest blog!

My dear friend Derek Du Wenyu has made a great headstart over everybody by submitting his thoughts on Farzad’s mentorship session! I’ve updated the post! Check it out on Mentorship Session with Farzad Naimi!

Come on guys! Don’t lose out!

An informal blogging style

An informal blogging style might not represent NUSEA in a manner that everybody would like – some prefer a more professional corporate style.

After someone told me that it would look weird to have Domo-kun splashing across the front page on the NUSEA blog, I chickened out and removed the banner. But after some good consideration, I got it back up.

WHY?

Because I believe that it doesn’t do harm. I feel that a blog is supposed to be personal, fun and interesting to read. Pictures that catches your eye definitely do well to attract readers.

What’s more the Domo-kun image serves as a striking bold introduction to a new start and a new blogger contributer – me!

That is exactly what guest blogging is about!

Who’s our target audience?

Fellow bloggers? Professionals? Entrepreneurs? NOC alumni? NUS? Singapore? California? So many! As we fondly recall our favorite person saying we are AMBASSADORS! You must always bear some AIR (Attitude Integrity Responsibility) in your head! We will never never forget that!

Is the blog nicely geared toward our target audiences? Remember that means YOU TOO!

Thoughts to keep in mind

There were also some good pointers that were floating around too, I might as well just post them here as a good reference point to fall back on should we return to them in the future:

Great motivations for blogging (I didn’t edit to preserve the full meaning the author/commenter had intended):
1. archive of lessons learnt in each session
2. new mentees will not feel unprepared when joining
3. avoid asking the same questions each time over and over again (it should be continous and progressive. not walking on the same spot each time)
4. act as resources (sounds like a rails plugin!) that we can always have a common place to share our lessons learnt.
5. this is community driven. it is collaborative efforts and we could see different perspective on that.

Interesting, personal guest blogging style or formal corporate risking readership?

Monitored content – permission from mentors to avoid potential liability issues.

Recommendations

There were a couple of recommendations on how to move this forward too:

Podcasts

So that peeps who missed the mentorship sessions don’t miss out when they read the exciting notes!

Link Exchange!

Like link up with local NOC bloggers (e27, TheDigitalMovement), of course! Always welcome!

Separate/another blog for mentorship

Someone suggested having a separate blog for mentorship, apart from the main NUSEA blog bringing total to 2 NUSEA blogs. (I’m not so sure about this, tell me!)

Did I miss out on anymore points?

Tell the world who you are and what say you!

For obvious reasons I have not identified who commented on what, but if you’d like, I think it would be excellent if you can let others know what you think for more vibrant discussions! Those with great positive constructive feedback need not shy away, in fact you should let the world know how awesome of a person you are! I can edit this post to identify you if you wish!

REMEMBER! It’s all about you!
This blog is for you! YOU YOU and only YOU! This is an excellent avenue to share your thoughts, your passions, your dreams (SO cliche, but I like XD).

The world’s your oyster.

Fire away comments!

PS: You might wonder why I chose that bowl of something for a blog post image and what’s that. Easy. I love nice food, and images of nice food attraction attract (thanks Vincent for point pointing (walao double smack in the forehead – can u guess how psyched up I was typing that?) that out!) attention and curiosity. Now can you guess what’s that?

Domo! This is Alvin Lai, your new host for the NUSEA blog. I just took over as VP of Media and publications of NUSEA barely a week ago and this is my first blog post! I hope to learn from all you dear readers, please feel free to provide feedback and comments!

You might notice a slight change in writing style here, as I believe in writing in a very personal and candid manner, which makes for interesting reading (I hope :D). You can find out more about me, and how I view blogging and the what’s in it for both of us (dear readers and yours truly) at my blog, Alvin Lai, An Introduction.

Back to the main topic!

Today, we are very very fortunate to have Farzad Naimi, the very charismatic CEO of LiteScape for a sharing session with us. Check him out from the Litescape Executive profiles page.

Personally, I like to take down concise salient points, like after I read a very insightful Paul Graham essay or the famous Steve Jobs Stanford commencement ceremony speech. In doing so, they serve as good reminders and triggers for future reference and reflection.

The only drawback would be that it might be difficult for readers to understand the context, well don’t worry, just ask! Comment! We can make this better as we go along.

Here goes!

Leverage existing affiliations – working for VISA.

How you find the japanese call center? An existing pain point for VISA – most if not all ideas come from pain points!

Are you a tech person? How you balance tech and business?

Passion not really with engineering.

Bootstrap, slowly 20%, 30% open up to investors. want flexibility!

Success == feel good about yourself.

Finding/building right team – takes time

Expose yourself to business models, see the full chain
Had basics MBA, finance, economics - very useful.
Opportunity work with others CFO CEO

Entrepreneurship is an attitude. Failure not in vocabulary!

All humans are open, just approach them from the right angle, especially if it matters for you

Treasure people around you - They might be your lifetime mentor, take them seriously!

Pay attention to details, single flower example – employee saw pretty flower, he gave him flower, brighten up their whole day, deadline seem like nothing.

Singapore government – very rare positive approach attitude towards entrepreneurship.

View people as a resource, need examples to push forward change in Singapore.

Starting startup, plan a deadline, give yourself 2 years, see what happens then.

Starting startup – best to do it yourself, you learn best. The wave experience, go up and down, startup experience a prerequisite for joining other startups.

Bad blood relations – admit need courage, learn from it and emerge stronger, good character building, with sincerity.

Exit at pre IPO – else golden handcuff, wanna remain liquid.

Team Leadership
Loyalty, experience, they know u can do it, trust and feel good about you.

NO mediocre team, might as well not start – Farzad meant that given a choice of starting a team with lousy people, he’d rather not start at all. Thanks Alastair for pointing this out!

Tom Kosnik as advisor, 5 min coffee also good.

Crossroads, bleeding, just abandon the idea.

Some startups are chaotic in nature. Agile!

Write things down! They force you to think! Sounds familiar huh!.

This is an experimental blog post in terms of content and presentation style, tell me what you think!

*Update*

Thanks to dear Ryan for suggestions for improving the blog post:

• adding an intersting banner image to catch attention
• embolden key points for easy reading
• search engine optimizing tips

Thank you Ryan!

*Update 2*

Here’s our dear friend Derrick Du Wen Yu’s contribution and reflection of the mentorship session. Apparently he has taken away quite a bit here!

3 Shining Characteristics of Farzad that Helped Him Become a Successful Entrepreneur

Humor

Many people ignore the contribution of humor when talking about an entrepreneurs’ success. Humor can help diminish team’s stress; Humor can help glue the team members together; Humor can help build up nice relationship with contacts. And humor can help you to become a good sales person —-as an entrepreneur, you are selling every day. Analytical skills and technical skills are important for entrepreneurs, and humor can make those skills more powerful.

Pursuit for happiness

“Happiness exists in the process of pursing it” For every start up, Farzad exits at the pre-IPO stage; for him, the process of building up a new thing is more fun than getting the great finance return from the 18 month handcuff IPO.

Trust

Farad trusts his team, his friend and his partners. “I don’t believe you will do it, I don’t think you will do it; I just know you will do it; this is my language of success” quoted from Farzad. Because of the trust, his
subordinates follow him, investors bet on him and customers buy from him.

But do not trust people too easily, Farzad also has the experience of being cheated, when he bought a Ferrari from an acquaintance. However, if that happens, take it as an individual case only, not making the statement like “I will never trust Chinese/Japanese/Korean… people any more”

Awesome Derrick!