Web 2.0 Entrepreneur

Working on Internet business while having a full-time day job

• Posted by Tengku Zahasman on June 27th, 2007 filed in Thoughts, Entrepreneurship, Financing/funding


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It is quite common nowadays for working citizens to do some kind of *side business* in order to add more value into their fixed monthly income. Thanks to all the financial gurus out there who introduced the mantra of “creating multiple-streams of income in achieving financial freedom”, we are seeing more and more of our people indulging themselves in businesses and entrepreneurship, albeit in many different ways. Some people do this by selling “curry puffs” in front of their houses every morning before they go off to work, some become part-time freelancers doing photography or video editing on weekends and on special events, some decided to do professional consultancy jobs, other more desperate people resort to MLM businesses, network marketings, direct sellings and pyramid schemes (no good!).

Web savvy users however are more likely to conduct part-time businesses online. Smart option. These people manage their own e-commerce sites and sell stuffs online, some managed to create high traffic online subscription portals, some do Internet Marketing, good writers write and sell e-books, more technical people provide Internet services like web hosting or web design, other less technical people simply write blogs and get the extra bucks out of Google AdSense, while the rest of us venture into the Web 2.0 industry providing Web services and develop social applications. The Internet business is so flexible that you can run it and manage it from anywhere as long as there’s Internet connection that it is quickly becoming a trend for people to adopt it as their side business.

Running Internet business part time…

I’ve had experience of running an Internet business without having a full-time job before (the few months after I graduated from university) and I also have the experience of running an Internet business while going off to a 9-5 work every weekdays (which is what I’m currently doing). Unless you’re very well funded, having a full-time job really helps a lot when it comes to stabilizing your finance. As a self-funded Web entrepreneur, I fund myself using the monthly salary I get out of working in an Internet security firm. My bills, loans, leisures, food and travels are all taken cared of using my salary. In fact I sometimes even use some of them for my business, I call it an “investment”. That means I don’t have to touch a single cent of my Internet income for my personal use. This is very effective for maximizing your business’ profit.

Before I had a full-time job, my business money were also my money. Separation of entities doesn’t work in this case because we also need to feed ourselves. It’s hard to grow your business this way because money will run out very fast, sometimes it’s just enough for you and your business to survive in that particular month. That’s very choking. By having a full-time job, business risk is also reduced because I know if something doesn’t turn out right with my Internet venture, at least I still have my monthly pay to back me up. Boy that’s a relief. That fact alone gives me the confidence to do risky things in my venture.. and that’s truly interesting.

The downside of having a full-time job is that you’ll be struggling to find “time” to focus on building your Internet business. Managing it is easy, but developing it is something that takes a lot of time and focus. Everyday and every weekends you’ll be pressured to allocate a few hours to focus on your Internet business, and in some situations that can be pretty frustrating.

So what happens next?

It’s every entrepreneur’s dream to start up their own company. I’m sure most entrepreneurs out there who are still working full-time have that intention of quitting their job one day to become their own boss. However, starting up a company needs capital, plan, experience, networks, and portfolio. These are the things you can gather while working on a full-time job and conducting an Internet business at the same time. People who jumpstart their company too soon always fail miserably. As I said before, unless you’re pretty well funded, don’t quit your job just because you have started an Internet business. Do that only after you can at least make a steady Internet cash flow three times larger than your monthly full-time job salary. Can you do that?

How much money do you need to start a Web 2.0 business?

• Posted by Tengku Zahasman on June 8th, 2007 filed in Web App Development, Thoughts, Entrepreneurship, Financing/funding


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There’s actually no definitive answer to how much capital you need to start a Web 2.0 business. How much you need may depend on so many factors that it can sometimes be a thousand bucks, 5 thousand bucks, 10 thousand bucks, 20 thousand bucks, or down to only a few hundred bucks. Those factors include what type of application you’re building, your own skillset, existing resources, whether you need staffs (if you need then how many of them?), whether you need an office, outsourcing, additional machines, servers and whatnot. Even though I can’t really estimate how much you need to start a Web 2.0 business, I can roughly say that if you spend more than 10 thousand bucks just to develop and launch your web application, then I think you’re overspending. And you better think of how you can mitigate your spending fast because touching that 10 thousand threshold shows that you’re spending too much on unnecessary things. Spending too much money before you even start making money is bad because that means it’ll take longer for you to be in profit. Not only that, if things doesn’t turn out the way you planned it to be, you may even go bankrupt for spending more than you need on the beginning phase.

Sometimes I find it rather disturbing when some of the new Internet startups claimed to have spent over millions of bucks just to get their Web 2.0 ideas developed and launched. That is totally unacceptable in my opinion. Even the overall cost of development, launching, marketing and maintaining of the web app should not take up to millions or even hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. Why? Because we’re on the INTERNET business. And when I say INTERNET that means things that used to be 10,000 bucks in real life can be absolutely FREE in the cyber world. Consider some of things below:

- Development tools are free (Komodo Edit, PHP+Apache+MySQL, Linux?)
- Open source scripts (which are free) can be leveraged for creating your app’s blog, forum or support center.
- Communication is free via E-mail, Skype, IRC or Instant messaging.
- Outsourcing is cheap.
- Existing programming components can be reused. Think about rapid PHP frameworks and Ajax frameworks
- Google is your library for doing researches
- Advertising can be free by leveraging search engine marketings, social networks, blog marketings, forum marketings, the good-ol “word-of-mouth” marketing. Or even if you purchase advertisings on certain websites, Google Adwords, Advertlets, or other PPCs, it won’t take up so much to kickstart the hype.

There you go. I just can’t help but wonder what have some of these companies spent on that took up millions of dollars for their web application business. Internet business is meant to be cheap but highly profitable. Let’s just keep it that way… Truemors did it with 12 thousand bucks overall. They could’ve spent way less…

Web2.0 is about technology, not money

• Posted by Tengku Zahasman on May 23rd, 2007 filed in Thoughts, Entrepreneurship


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Reading Mike Arrigton’s recent post at TechCrunch really caught my attention and sparked some thoughts:

“When I look back at the pictures from those early events, I remember good times, and no one was talking about twenty million dollar venture rounds or selling out for a cool $1.65 billion. Companies like Meebo and Sphere literally launched in my living room in front of a couple of hundred genuinely interested people…

..snip..

It’s no longer about beautiful products and genius developers. It’s about the money and the status, and hot PR chicks and marketing departments.” - Mike Arrington

It’s true what he said. I’ve been hearing so much about new Internet startups seeking million bucks of venture rounds every month that I’m starting to get sick of it. Web 2.0 startups initially sparked off from tech enthusiasts and bright developers who believes in creating unique applications of their own that they love and hoped other people will love too. Money is not the first thing that comes into the picture. It’s the idea of making a difference that comes first - using Web technology as the backbone. Startups today seems to focus more on chasing the money, getting millions of capitals, and enhance their application with the intention of selling them off to some other giant companies like Yahoo, Google or eBay. This is what I don’t get. We don’t build applications to get capitals. We don’t build applications to sell them off. We build applications because we love it. If at a later time someone chips in offering a deal, then that’s something to be dealt later.

To me, real startup entrepreneurs are those who wishes to “marry” with their idea, developing the application till late at night with their small teams who also believes in what they are doing. Forget about capitals, they don’t mind starting off using their own money and credit cards, bootstrap all the way so that they could see their dream comes true. And they are the people who will cry if they had to sell their application to someone else. Isn’t it interesting to hear people create successful apps out of their garage or apartments? Meebo is an example. These are genuine entrepreneurs. “Profit” to them is the money that comes from the invention itself, not from those venturing rounds or hoping to be bought.

I suggest that you guys read that post in TechCrunch. Some of the comments are pretty interesting read as well.

If only Malaysia could have our own Silicon Valley….