Thoughts of a newcomer to the Valley.

One of the best things of being in the Valley is the rare opportunity to interact with people, entrepreneurs who have been there/done that, on a personal level and to learn from their experiences. And in a quaint coffee shop in downtown Mountain View on a wintery March afternoon, we did just that.

Role of a Product Manager
The topic of discussion for the day was Making a Career out of Product Management: Opportunities and Best Practices. So what exactly does it mean to manage a product? Product managers are a special breed of people. Essentially, they are charged with bringing the product to life: from concept to reality. The Product Manager is intricately and intimately involved in every single detail and with that, brings with it different challenges and required skills.

Outward Looking vs Inward Looking
As product managers, one of the key challenges faced is finding a balance between the issues of dealing with external business and marketing needs and handling the engineering and creative teams. Are you a more outward looking manager that focuses heavily on the business development aspect of your product or one that builds strong relationships with the engineering team? As with many things in life, there is no best way. Product managers with different styles have succeeded in creating great products. The best product managers understand this need and embrace it completely

There’s no I in T E A M
This extremely over-used cliché rings true, especially in product management. As a product manager, you are a team leader, a consensus builder. Between the inevitable complaints from the engineers that what you want done is impossible and the requests from the marketing department for a flashier product, you need to find a middle ground. At the same time, you want to make the impossible happen: to create a product that will change the world. How exactly do you do that? Communicate, communicate, communicate. Managing your team and their expectations and most importantly, bring out the best in them. Succeeding as a team only makes success all so much sweeter.

When I first heard about the ABC 2008, I thought it would be the perfect fit for what I am trying to achieve here in the Valley - get a global perspective on successfully doing business in Asia.

It came at the end of an extremely intense period of finals, case competitions and the like. But it was well worth the trip up to Berkeley on last Saturday afternoon.

I missed the morning sessions but heard the Keynote by Stephen Pratt, CEO of Infosys Consulting, was extremely insightful. I think it would be useful to find out if transcripts or recordings of the session are available online.

The second keynote by Laura Tyson, Professor at Haas, was much more than what I expected (and I expected a lot!!). She provided an amazing analysis of how China and India are shaping as business and investment opportunities.

Some keypoints I pulled out of Dr. Tyson’s session include:

1. China vs India’s Growth
China has been a great investment opportunity not only because of their double digit growth, but the fact it has sustained this growth for close to 30 years. When compared to India, who really only started its push toward this new phase of economic development in the 1990s, it had a good 15-20 years head start.

2. Concerns with China’s Economy
Dr. Tyson pointed out that China does have some fundamental concerns related to the political situation as well as it huge over dependence on trade, and particular trade with the US.

China’s trade balance surplus with the US has been likened to each (poor) Chinese lending every (rich) American about US$4000. Now that’s something to ponder over, huh?

Check out this article that is related to it: http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200801/fallows-chinese-dollars

The currency controls also means that the Yuan is severely under valued at this point. A good opportunity to invest in the RMB, maybe?

Check out also:

- “China as a Fragile Superpower” the book by Susan Shirk

3. Cisco’s Decision to Base its “East HQ” in India

Recently, Cisco opened it’s Globalisation Center East in Bangalore, India. In discussing Cisco reasons for picking India over China to situate this state-of-the-art facility, Dr, Tyson framed nicely the competitive advantage India seems to have over India. They include:

- India being the largest free-market democracy
The fact that India transition so seamlessly through a rather unexpected elections turnout really underscored the health of democracy and socio-political climate (albeit its many other issues) in India. This truly lends for stability and investor confidence.

- large skilled & English-speaking talent pool
India’s ’subsidiary official language’ is English and the urban workforce is very proficient in the language. Coupled with the technical education of the Indian institutions makes this very appealing to tech companies like Cisco.

- reasonable IP protection system & courts that are active (to some extent)
One big draw back China had for Cisco (and other research intensive companies) is its poor IP/copyright protection infrastructure. This is a relative strength for India. Also, the judicial system and presence of courts to file for action against IP violations in India also lends to a perceived lower risk of investment

- a growing middle class of more than 100m (still not where China is though)

Challenges for India included it’s poor physical infrastructure, the fact that 70% of its population are still rural, the more pronounced poverty situation and the restrictive labour laws.

All in all, the ABC 2008 was a very engaging and enriching session with its relevant speakers and panel sessions. It is definitely an event I feel should be on NUSEA’s calendar every year.

I also picked up a prospectus for the Haas MBA…So that’s a new possibility in itself too.

Hello everyone! I am Gundeep!

Last Friday, I along with Yujun and NUS Entrepreneur Association organized garageTalk – an event meant to connect global leaders, altruists, students and entrepreneurs.

The event kicked off at 6:30pm with light dinner. The food area was filled with 80 people from different backgrounds and different parts of the world. Standing at the corner of the room, I felt satisfied to see old classmates meeting each other, entrepreneurs sharing ideas with budding entrepreneurs, employers meeting potential employees and like-minded people sharing ideas and inspiring each other.

Then at 7:30pm, Tom Kosnik, one of our Stanford professors for Global Entrepreneurial Marketing shared his vision of GLEAN (Global Leaders Entrepreneurs and Altruists Network) with everyone. During his talk, I realized the diversity of the in garageTalk and how each one of us could contribute to other people’s life to make world a better place. Following Tom Kosnik’s talk, we had 3 entrepreneurs, Julian, Dev Ramnane and Michael Pierantozzi talking to us about their entrepreneurial lives. They ended their talks with different challenges each one of them was facing in their respective companies. The thing that inspired me was Michael Pierantozzi’s quote, “Leaving a big company and starting your venture is like jumping out of an aeroplane and building a new one on your way down.” Indeed, starting a company is a challenge but one needs to take risks in life to be able to start next Google or Microsoft.

The event ended but the 3 challenges posed by the entrepreneurs were still roaming in my mind. I also met other like-minded people who were willing to help me for the next garageTalk.

Indeed, the event was PRICELESS for people who had come with an open mind. I could see new friendships forming and partnerships nurturing. It was great organizing such an event and meeting people of different genres.

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

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!

We recently concluded our recent RainMakers Live event, NUSEA’s biannual mixer. However, with so many mixers and panel discussions in the valley, it’s difficult for our event to stand out. We wanted to do something more than organizing an event and getting speakers. Already, NUSEA had our fair share of learning from experience of others - What we really need to do is not to just engage in passive learning - But to be involved in active learning and creativity. (Check out Mohan’s interview with Folksonomy) Therefore the main considerations we had when organizing this year’s event is:

“How can we come up with an event where participants themselves were an integral part of the show? How can we encourage active learning, rather that simply sitting down and listening to people who have “been there and done that?”

NUSEA members put their thinking caps on and came up with the idea of having an entrepreneurial game. Participants got a chance to be part of the event by actively getting involved in forming teams, brainstorming ideas and pitching ideas to other teams at the event. We further refined it by inviting a cool new startup, MINT to deliver a challenge to the participants at the event. We deliberately did not inform the participants about the challenge before the event and we wanted them to think on the spot. Participants had just over half an hour to come up with a plan for MINT. The top 3 teams will then pitch their ideas to the judges from MINT. The winning team will walk away with a $500 cash prize sponsored by MINT.

It was interesting seeing the different mixes of the teams and their dynamics. Most teams came up with elaborate sketches of their ideas, along with funky team names. The best part was that participants were actively engaged to think on the spot and interact with people they met at the event itself. We were really privileged to have Justin Ricaurte who flew down all the way from Seattle to join us!

The event was not big scale. No famous panelists. Nothing ordinary. Nothing fantastic. However, all of us had a great time at the event and we achieved what we set out to do, or more likely what we set out not to do and that is to not do “yet another panel discussion”.

NUSEA recently went to the Womens 2.0 napkin challenge, an innovative event where participants had to mail their business idea on a napkin. =)

The top 5 teams would pitch their ideas (this time with presentation slides) to a panel of VCs and industry experts, as well as a packed audience of eager entrepreneurs, excited to see the ideas.

The 5 companies that presented were:
• FindYourScene: A community website where people can find “their crowd” and post, discover, and rate social events.
• Laser-Seal: Exploits ground-breaking interaction between light physics and cell molecular biology to reduce cost and improve quality of surgical wound closure.
• QTstar: Video monetization and intermediary ad service company in China and the United States.
• O’Light: Cutting-edge OLED technology to lighting designs.
• (YOU)STYLEME: Online fashion community where men and women who have particular style needs can connect with other consumers who are style-savvy in a fun and engaging way.
All of them had solid presentations with well thought out plans. In the end, the 2 winning teams were O’Light and Laser-Seal. The audience choice award went to O’Light as well. More details on the event can be found here.

Winning Team: Laser-Seal

Winner and Audience Choice - O’Light

(Pictures courtesy of Women 2.0)

The takeaway I got from this was not so much on the ideas and how people were pitching it. I learnt that there were so many people out there who were passionate about their own ideas and willing to share it publicly to get feedback. Trust me - Coming up with an idea and making the effort to come up with plans is hard. But to pitch the idea in front of a large crowd and pitching it to a panel of critical and experienced entrepreneurs and VCs was no mean feat. That was something I believed NUSEA members and Singaporeans alike could greatly learn from. What we really need are people who are passionate about what they do and not be afraid of risking everything to go pursue it. Having an idea that is perceived as bad or “just won’t work” is fine. It’s the effort and the process of going through it that really counts. A true failure is one who never tried in the first place. In my eyes, everyone who took the effort to draw out their ideas on that little napkin and send it to the Women 2.0 team deserved a big pat on the back for making the effort and trying.

-Mohan Belani

A new year has begun and what better way to celebrate it than the usual traditional Chinese 8 course dinner feast. The Lunar New Year Celebration dinner this year was co-organized by NUSEA, SABA and SGConnect at the Dynasty Restaurant in Cupertino. Held at a classy Chinese restaurant, the night was set for good food, great company, and an excellent line-up of entertainment.

NUSEA’s role was to encourage and rally Singaporean student bodies from colleges around the bay area, to join in this celebration and participate in the programs for the evening. We coordinated the programs for the evening and hosted the entire show. The night began with a well choreographed Fashion Show which featured clothes of oriental design, by Lan Vie, and shoes from our very own Singaporean Designer Nora Haron. Modeling and also a guest for the evening was Miss Asian American Queen, Jennifer Fields. Throughout the evening we had performances from the Stanford, Berkeley and NUSEA students in a mini Talent Competition. From NUSEA, Bernard and Sophia played and sang 关怀方式 <Guan Huai Fang Shi>, to the 450 strong turn-out.

The dinner not only allowed us to see the greater Singaporean community at large, but also allowed us to savor traditional Chinese dishes only served during the Chinese New Year. We even had Yu Sheng! It all ended well with an enthusiastic lion dance, much to the amusement of the many kids present. It was indeed an evening to remember.

-Harville Tan

It was my second day in Silicon Valley and off I went to visit Logitech, one of the premier companies in personal peripherals for computers. Guerrino De Luca, CEO of Logitech shared with us the company’s business and personal experiences as a CEO.

He told us about some of the key factors a company should keep in mind before venturing into a new business were firstly, to understand customers’ needs and secondly, to have one’s own cost-saving model to face competition. He illustrated it with one of the key challenges Logitech faced in 1998-2000 in the scanner market with the launch of hand scanners. The popularity of standard printer-like scanners which were cheaper than Logitech’s hand scanners increased tremendously. And henceforth, Logitech felt that they should have known the market well and been ready to face competition at that time. He even shared with us the new fields Logitech is exploring into which are mainly digital music and home. He said that the success of the company depends on having right people at the right places and all of them from engineers to marketers should participate in the innovation of the product.

Being an Italian himself, upon being asked he told us that being Singaporeans, we all have a high success rate in setting up companies or finding a job in global environment of Silicon Valley because of our ability to speak two languages. This skill enables us to think deeply in various matters and gives us an edge over Americans who know just one language.

With insightful questions and answers the visit ended with a group photo with the CEO. There was a lot more to the trip and those who missed can actually see a broadcast which would be posted on NUSEA’s site soon. That’s all from my side. This is Gundeep saying Chao!!

Upon reaching the Sun Microsystems headquarters, we saw many interesting new technologies that were show casing around us. Fred, the Senior Group Manager and Strategic Account Development for Asia Pacific Sun Microsystems brought us to the briefing room and gave us a welcome speech. Next, Andrew Barty, the Finance IT Director, gave us some insight about Sun’s Corporate Vision and Strategy. He wants this to be an interactive session and many of us asked him interesting questions regarding Sun’s strategy and business model. I was particularly interested in how Sun Microsystems make money by giving away free software. When Vipul Gupta, the Distinguished Engineer in Sun Microsystems explained and demonstrated to us the upcoming technologies of Sun, it intrigued many technology enthusiasts among our NUSEA members and caught all our attention.

A loud applause followed when Scott McNealy, dressed in casual jeans and a shirt, entered the discussion room. It was amazing to get to see Scott McNealy, someone whom we studied in our Global Entrepreneurial Leadership course at Stanford in person.

Scott wanted the topic to be of interest to the audience, and he chose not to give a talk but to conduct an interactive Q&A session. I learnt from him how insecurity could lead someone to work hard and not let our goals stop us as our goals would change over time.

I have learned that very good ideas are controversial but correct. They are controversial so that not many people could think of it and differentiation leads to price difference. Instead of crushing the competitors, we saw how Sun could benefit by partnering with them instead.

He then shared with us his involvement in the Global Education and Learning Community (GELC). Curriki, a non-profit organization, aims to provide open source textbook and classroom experience to poor families who were not able to afford K-12 education for their kids. It was an awesome discussion and at the end of the session, we gave Scott a souvenir from Singapore, as a token of sincere appreciation for his passion and willingness to share with us.