Career choices - startup or large company?
It’s better to work for a company with a good brand name, because “if you don’t learn how to get things done, at least you learn how not to get things done.” Also, having a brand name on your resume builds a good track record when starting a company. It’s important to “raise VC funding from a position of strength,” and that is what a good track record provides. References from well-known companies, especially, have a lot of credibility.

On recruiting for startups
It’s difficult recruiting for startups. Gokul mentioned that the best people for startups are those who are willing to sacrifice cash for equity. To circumvent the problem, oursourcing is a good alternative. Though the cost of outsourcing is higher, it is offset by less time spent on managing and not having to deal with HR issues. It’s also the fastest way to get a product to market.

Speed is a vital issue. For Gokul, market research is not as important as identifying a problem and then quickly releasing a private beta to select users. Rapid iteration of the product based on feedback is a great way to get the product right.

The importance of public relations and brand-building.
Public relations are vital to the success of many great companies, including Apple and Google. In essence, it’s free advertising. Google’s various products are also launched with brand-building in mind.
On Google’s venture into offline advertising - is it a good move?
Effective advertising is based on targetting and measurement. While it is harder to target and measure in terms of traditional media, the use of digital TV is making it easier to target TV ads through set top boxes.

Radio and print is more difficult to measure and target due to the lack of interaction. However, using recording apparatus, it’s still possible to measure the reach of radio advertisements, which leads to better measurements.

Google wants to develop the tools that ad agencies use to measure ad effectiveness. As with Google Analytics which is used to make sense of traffic data to websites, similar tools can be made available to people to make sense of the data from their advertisements.

At the same time, there is still a huge opportunity for online advertising. A majority of search traffic from Google comes from outside the US.

Startup opportunity: For markets outside the US, ad networks can be built to represent international traffic on US sites. For example, an ad network in Asia can cut a deal with US-based websites to place ads for traffic coming for Asia.

What is the mindset to work at a startup?
For Gokul, it is much more important to prioritize and decide about what adds the most value. That requires a huge shift in mindset. For example, instead of having several meetings a week, Gokul cuts it down to a meeting every week instead. His advice, is to treat it like a marathon instead of a sprint - don’t burn out trying to do too much in too short a time.

Gokul also made the difference between getting things done, and doing things. At a startup with a limited budget, you have to do things yourself to get things done.

At the same time, there needs to be a process where you need to build trust with investors. Most importantly, make sure there is transparency so that if there is a change in direction for the company, the investors are fully prepared for the transition.

Social networks and advertising
Social networks have been a huge driver for time spent online, but advertising on social networks is a challenge because it is not intent-driven like search is. Creative e-commerce-focused applications will drive monetization.

On why Sun is giving away it’s software as open source

There are five reasons why making Sun’s software open source drives hardware sales, which is Sun’s core business

1. Zero barrier to entry for developers. Developers can create software for Solaris easily, which adds to the functionality and robustness of the OS.
2. Interoperability. Open source allows other software to run on Sun’s systems. For example, open source standards allows Microsoft’s .NET frameworks to be run on Sun’s servers. The increased flexibility offered by Sun’s hardware and open source software improves Sun’s product offering compared to proprietary software standards.
3. Lower R&D costs. Open sourcing it’s code allows Sun to save on software development R&D costs. Java ME, which is licensed under the GPL, would have cost Sun $2 billion to develop in house.
4. Security. Open sourcing allows for a more robust and secure code base for Sun’s software.
5. Eliminates barriers of exit for users. By using open sourcing Sun’s code, it’s easier for users to move from other platforms to SAlso, startups seldom have huge IT budgets, and using Sun’s enterprise hardware allows startups to reduce IT costs dramatically. As a result, Sun’s hardware is more cost effective for startups, which helps drive hardware sales.

With the Internet allowing information to be accessed almost anywhere in the world, the local state is increasing dangerous: the network IS the computer. And opensourcing allows Sun to tap into that trend.

On Leadership
“To grow as fast as we did, we were making mistakes left and right.”

There should always be a balance between grey hair and black hair in a startup, because experienced people are sometimes blindsided by past experiences, and make bad strategic decisions.

Decisive execution, especially when you hire people to make decisions. That means not being afraid to let people go if they are not making good decisions for the company. Never be afraid to ask prima donnas to leave the company, because “people will thank you for it.”

When bad things happen, who takes the blame for it? The key is to be open, transparent and courageous. That means owning up to mistakes, and doing things to make them right.

Create an environment where people feel trusted. People should be able to work with integrity, and not be afraid of telling the truth.

Dealing with people with a velvet glove is important. “Anger no one”, and make friends instead of enemies. That means being gentle with people whom you have to let go. When dealing with errant employees and executives, it’s important to be firm but fair. It’s better to move them to another position in the company and give them a second chance if they want to stay.

On future computing trends
Computers will be increasingly replaced by access devices. With computers becoming increasingly networked and users becoming more mobile, there will be less need for full computers. Instead, mobile computing platforms will become more prevalent.

There is no privacy. Get over it. At the same time, you can be anonymous.

Don’t bet against bandwidth. Future applications will require more bandwidth, and infrastructure will support that.

On character and Life’s most important decisions
Stay grounded. Only by doing so, you can keep your success and failures in perspective. If you allow your ego to take control, you can make some really bad mistakes.

Marriage - “if you’re going to get married, you may as well be in love.” When people get married, they keep forgetting that nothing is perfect. A good marriage is when you can see past the flaws and love the other person.

The most important character traits of a successful person is Courage to do the right things, Intelligence and Smartness, Integrity, and Fairness. Also, you must be physically capable to do your work well.

On how to become a leader
Ask yourself, “why do you like working with someone?”, then distill the answers. Most importantly, trust your gut.

Into our humble NOC office, in walk a seasoned and accomplished VC, the Vish Mishra  to meet up with young aspiring entreprenuers. From the start of the session, all our nervousness melted away because Vish was all fired up to share the perils and joys of starting a venture.  So here began our practical lessons:

1) Venture capital activity is highest in USA concentrating in the Silicon Valley. Here are the statistics:

$28 billion in US, $5 billion in Europe, $1 billion in India, $2 billion in Israel

This is a measure of entrepreneurial activities.

2) Characteristics of an entrepreneur:

- risk taking,  wants to serve 1 set of customers very well, think global, able to build a team with complementary sets of skills

3) Some advice to succeed:

- Be passionate about an industry and do something really, really well - you need to be a deep domain expert to build your credibility as a young entrepreneur. Talk to experts and many customers of the pain that you are solving.

- Pick the  best people who know more than you do

- Big pain that is not served well = Big idea

- Bringn mentors or lawyers when you pitch

4) Before you marry with a VC, make sure you proof that there is a pain. Then write the story (business plan) then the only a VC will value your business.

5) Stay where your customers are. If they are in China, go to China.

6) It doesn’t really matter if you have low valuation, the key is to build your business. Higher valuation is a result of a good business executed. He repeated “Build your business”.

7) Common mistakes:

- Founders overbelieve their value proposition. Is the problem real?

- Ppl buy solutions, not technology. So focus on making a solution, not just a long list of useless specs of a product.

- Share.

- Getting the wrong people. Be honest and upright and you will attract similar people.

To this inspiring man, thank you .

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.

Carlos, CEO of Human Network Labs (HNL), has a knack for putting people at ease that, coupled with his rich history in entrepreneurship, which he shared with us, made for a very interesting session.
His advice to all of us was “not to embark on the entrepreneurship track” and throughout the session, he expounded his reasons.
I don’t believe in narratives, especially when it comes to learning - thus I have listed the lessons I came away with from the session with him:

-Being able to communicate with people is paramount to becoming a successful entrepreneur
–>An entrepreneur should try to serve the needs of people and provide a solution to their needs and the best way of finding out these needs is through interaction

-Start early on the path of entrepreneurship, and expect to fail
–>Use initial startups to gain experience and hone your skills

-Be an expert in what you do
–>You must have the expertize in the area of your start-up, or you might end up losing the plot

-Getting the right individuals to form the team is vital
–>A great team leads to better innovation, a greater sense of belief in the idea and better execution and chance of success

-Ensure that people you explain the idea to come away with the same vision, especially if they’re possible team members
–>Get people to tell you what they think you told them once you have explained your idea to them to ensure they are on the same page as you

-An entrepreneur leads an ‘abnormal’ lifestyle
–>Friends and family might not understand your reasons, so be prepared to lose some of them

-Don’t bother about trivials, such as name, during initial stages
–>HNL is just a temporary name for them. The initial stages should be about developing the product and getting it ready

In hindsight, I would definitely say that there is no substitute for the impact of hearing them directly from the horses’ mouth. However, I hope the lessons were useful.

Ting Zhen, our VP of Mentorship blogs!

He walks in, Blackberry in hand.

“Hi, my name is Jim…” he spoke, torso straight as a military man would.

That was my first impression of him. The “venture customer” who started many startups with early customer funding, including Cisco and GRiD Systems.

He was early; his audience was not in yet. Jiaxing, Tingzhen and I make small talks with him as we got ready for the mentorship session.

The mentorship session with Jim went well. He was very insightful when prodded with questions on his entrepreneurial experience. Top 5 key lessons which he pointed out were:

1. Hire good people and listen to them
2. Get the A team
3. Always hire people better than you
4. Watch your cashflow; you have more time to learn your lessons if you conserved cash than if you are short of it
5. Use your connection wisely, do not abuse it. This is how you build up connections.
   Pick your enemies wisely.

Jim was helpful with questions which our NOC student posted. We’re sure that future mentorship sessions would be helpful and look forward in seeing him again. There is still much to be learnt from someone known previously as one of the most connected person in the world.

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

Domo! Alvin Lai desu!

I can’t believe I’ve had the chance to step afoot in to my favourite web based IM company Meebo in Castro, Mountain View!

Imagine! Having AIM, Yahoo!, MSN, Google Talk, ICQ, Jabber all in one instant messenger program! How convenient is that!?

And we’ve got to chat with the Meebo CEO Seth Sternberg! Woo!

And here’s what I gathered:

Meet get to know people who have complementary skills to yours! In school, we tended mix around with peers who are very much like us, and as we think the similar thoughts, I reckon there probably was little out of the box thinking.. Get to know people who have skills that complement yours and that can probably improve on your weakness!

Seth isn’t really a techie person, but he got to know his techie friends’ friends and together he started a company with them! Awesome isn’t it?

Autonomy from Venture Capitalist is great to have, imagine the flexibility to make strategic decisions that could make or break the business!

Launch first, do what you yourself want first, without thinking what others say, get some traffic then get advice and comments! Otherwise you might just never get started!

Be clear of what you want and be prepared before opportunities come your way!

You NEED VCs because you need them to hire people!

Revenge is the wrong answer. STOP. Cut losses early. Ask! Why do you feel that way?

Respect people and have intellectual conversations.

Approach job interviews like a conversation, it’s just conversation about business!

He joined IBM and learnt a whole lot about business – his advice to us is to join a startup or a business before starting our own, because there are so many aspects of a business to learn about, a little contrary to what Farzad saying that the best way to learn is to do your own startup. As they say, there are many ways to get to the final destination!

Startups!

• Be really flexible, let chaos and ambiguity be the norm!
• Be a self starter, just do stuff that helps!
• The less time you need to be managed, the more you’re actually helping and doing things!

Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook is smart and he surrounds himself with smart people.

Got more to add? Fire away with comments!

When I went into the café, I saw Farzad seating in the café, patiently waiting. He was extremely punctual even though he had a busy schedule for the week. I got some cappuccino and the mentorship session started and shared with Farzad about an project where I spent a lot of time and effort on, but the results did not turn up well.

The incident had upset me quite a little and my confidence hit a new low during my days here in the Silicon Valley. Farzad shared with us how he nearly lost a startup which he spent a few years of his life working on because the VCs pulled out their funding just after the 9/11 incident. As a result, the business could not afford to pay so many employees and he was forced to layoff some of his employees.

His advice was to not look back, but to do whatever it takes to get through the barriers that are hindering us. We can either detour around the barrier, or to even cut a hole through the barrier if circumstances force us to.

What Farzad did was enlightening. He not only explained to every single person whom he layoff - He also found jobs for most of these employees. When the CEO truly cares for his employees and let them know that whatever decision he makes is for their benefit, he is likely to gain the trust and respect of his employees. I am sure that if Farzad is going to ask these employees back to work for him, they would gladly do that anytime.

I felt the setback that I had experienced paled in comparison to what he had went through. In fact, there is no failure in life, there are only results and feedback to whatever we do.

As more mentees joined the mentorship session, Farzad decided to ring his friend to hold the session in a conference room in a shop along University Ave. We moved out of Starbucks and continued to ask him questions as we walked towards his friend’s shop.

I asked Farzad how an individual can build his manager’s trust in him. His reply was to constantly meet deadlines and to ask for more work when you have the ability to do so. Eventually the manager would be convinced by your sincerity. Also frequent communication with your manager such as through lunch meetings implies that one had made the effort to build a good relationship with his employer.

His tips were particularly relevant to us as we are all interning in startup companies in the Valley. Farzad always made sure that he got to know all the people who are working in his starup and he spends time to truly understand his employees in LiteScape.

He found it particularly important that employees enjoy working in the company because they spend a huge portion of our time working. If an employee is not passionate about his work, he is likely to be unhappy in his life. As a founder of a company which has gone IPO, Farzad is so sincere and humble. In my mind, he is someone who gives without expecting something in return, a man of true greatness and integrity. I certainly look forward to the next mentorship session with Farzad.

I am surprised when I entered Meebo’s office which is situated along Castro Street in Mountain View. At 7.30pm, the Meebo team is still working in the office. Immediately, I asked myself this question. What motivates the team? Where does all the drive and passion of the people come from? Later, the NUSEA members and Seth Sternberg, the CEO of Meebo, gathered around the room and the mentorship session began. The conversation went on and many of us were so keen in asking Seth questions.

We have learnt the importance of getting a strong team of people which can work well with one another, getting a product ready at the beta level even before we get VC funding. In addition, it seemed like people work late in Meebo because the work in the startup is fun and the team has a strong bonding.

Seth also talked about the importance of hiring based on technical skills and cultural fit. What surprised me is that Meebo was started only with US$6,000, the amount was mainly used to maintain the servers in the company.

The founders of Meebo were really busy during the first 2 months when Meebo was setup. The key to handling such immense pressure would be learning to control what is happening, focusing on what is important and what really doesn’t matter. The mood of “no time for people” is not really a good state of mind to be in. All in all, I have learnt a lot from Seth, both as an entrepreneur and as a normal human being.

Seth spent 2 hours and 20 minutes with us and we left his office at 9.50pm. We were all struck by his humility and his amazing willingness to help the next generation of entrepreneurs. What a guy!