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?

It seems that the mentorship department is doing pretty well. At the Roads to Innovation Conference last Saturday - He approached Guerrino De Luca, the CEO of Logitech and managed to fix a 90 min appointment at his office next year for NUSEA members.

Well Done Wee Li!!

I have already made some foray into redesigning the skin of this blog. The design of the blog is far from complete, but I want the colour scheme of our blog to conform to the colours we present. Orange and Blue (or Cyan). It’s part of our branding exercise.

The next question that comes about is the relevance of the old NUSEA logo. I have discussed with the people around me about the idea of changing the NUSEA logo.

The old logo didn’t really fit into the image I want to project about NUSEA - Young, Vibrant, Passionate. Almost everyone I talked to likes Brian’s design of the new NUSEA logo.

David and Valerie brought out a good point. Even though the new logo is aesthetically pleasing, are we showing disrespect for what the alumni has set up for us so far? Something as important as to the logo should not be changed so frivolously by the ascension of a new committee. The point of view I take is - If our existing logo does not bring out the image I want to portray - Does it justify my changing of the NUSEA logo?

Just heard news from Prashant to indicate our interest in being mentored by Garrett Camp from Stumbleupon.com. Well-done Prashant! I remember the days before reddit where my only source of entertainment comes mainly from Stumbleupon. The whole concept of Stumbleupon is just amazing.

As an aspiring entrepreneur, my mind is usually plagued with hundreds of doubts. These are issues that any other aspiring entrepreneurs can easily relate to. It’s as if the decision to turn towards entrepreneurship, as opposed to a regular corporate life, wasn’t hard enough; we now bear the burden of a million harder decisions. Sometimes, questions like what to start, when to start and how to start, can get so overwhelming that we begin to question our initial decision to start something in the first place!

These doubts had kept my mind whirling until I had a chance to meet Gokul Rajaram a few days back at a mentorship session organized by NUSEA. Gokul is the Product Development Director for Google Adsense and also a mentor for NUSEA (refer below for further details on Gokul Rajaram). The points that Gokul mentioned over the course of our discussion seemed to instantly clear my cloudy vision of the future and put things in place. These are some of the things he spoke about:

Choose a space

Gokul said that the first step for an aspiring entrepreneur to take is to choose a space. A space is a broad industry or technology area. Mobile phone software, for example, is a space. Gokul emphasized that it is essential to focus your efforts to a particular area, even before the brainstorming stage. This would help the aspiring entrepreneur focus on understanding the market trends and customer needs of a particular area and thus avoid being overwhelmed with information about other areas. This made a lot of sense to me. I have been trying to brainstorm on a number of ideas for a startup lately and all these ideas are from diverse fields. And what I have realized is that, while evaluating these ideas, there are too many factors in the equation and these can keep you from approaching a single idea in a decisive manner. Factors like your interest and proficiency in the area come into the picture. On the other hand, if you chose a space based on your passion and expertise, you can begin to concentrate on other aspects like technology, market demands and customer needs.

Passion over fashion

Another point that is closely related to the previous one is the importance of passion. Gokul recalled his experience as soon as he graduated from MIT. He noted that ‘optical networks’ was the ‘hottest’ field in those days and he decided to work at an optical networking company solely for that reason. Within a few months, he realized that this was clearly not his passion. While he was able to do his job proficiently and smartly, he was perhaps not performing up to his potential. He decided to quit and go into computer software, which was his forte. And he never regretted that decision. Gokul simplified this idea to one single question that everyone must ask themselves before starting a company or taking up a job – ‘Every morning, as I get up, will I be excited to head off to work and do that particular job?’ If not, Gokul said, don’t do it. Even as we spoke, Gokul had a number of offers from VC firms to join them as a venture capitalist. “But I just can’t imagine going to work everyday to read business plans!” Gokul said.

Mohan, one of Gokul’s mentees, had this to say after meeting him:

Many a times, we reach crossroads in life where important decisions have to be made as they will affect what we do in future and in turn, shape who we are. I believe most of the time, these decisions are made based on market trends, potential gain factors and even parental and peer pressure. When was the last time you were advised to follow your heart and take the unorthodox path? When was the last time you actually took it?

Meeting Gokul Rajaram, product management director for Google Adsense, and being advised to follow your heart was a refreshing change. He inspired us to live our lives by following our hearts and making decisions based on what we truly feel passionate about. Passion is the fuel for the mind.

Following this, Gokul highlighted some of the key issues that an aspiring entrepreneur has to keep in mind once he/she gets the ball rolling and actually starts a company. These include staying lean, choosing and building a key differentiator, time to market and the equally important art of accepting defeat. I will cover these in detail in the next part of this series. So stay tuned!

penned by Prashant Sarkar.

GOKUL RAJARAM
As Product Development Director of Google Adsense, Gokul Rajaram designs and implements the product strategy for Adsense, the heart of Google’s revenue model. In this role, Gokul defines new features and then works with the Google engineers to implement them. Prior to this, Gokul has taken up various software engineering as well as product management roles at Juno Online, Sun Microsystems and Onetta.
As a mentor for NUSEA, Gokul meets up regularly with the NUSEA students to speak on a wide variety of topics ranging from entrepreneurship to advertising.