Archive for the 'Entrepreneurship' Category

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Work with a partner or go solo in your Internet venture?

PartnershipPeople say that “two heads are better than one”. I say it’s true, but ONLY IF the other person is also as passionate as you are in whatever you’re venturing in. Getting the right partner can boost your business’ productivity to the max but be careful not to hook up with the wrong one as they will give you more headaches compared to working solo. I am currently not running my venture with anyone else. I work out everything by myself. I am the planner, I am the developer, I am the marketer and I am the technical support. That’s one of the obvious benefit of the Internet business - it allows you to run your business on your own because when it comes to the Internet, many things can be automated.

Is it cool working solo?

While I’m already comfortable working as a one-man-show, I realized that this should not continue on forever. I thought how great it is to have a partner (or co-founder if you wanna call it) who is as passionate as I am and having that person to work with me in making the business a success. Being able to share ideas together would be fun and energizing. Knowing that someone else is also working hard on your projects can be a stress reliever as you’re assured that something is being taken care of. The reason why I’m still working solo is not because I don’t want a partner, but because I have yet to find the perfect one. Finding the right partner is not as easy as finding the right staff. Finding a staff means you look into their skills and personality and offer them money. But for a partner, you want them to be as close as to your own clone. You have to be at the right place at the right time, with the right person. That’s why it’s hard to find the right partner. But it’s also not impossible. It’s a lot easier if you already have a close friend who shares the same passion with you in venturing in the Internet business and becoming a successful Internet entrepreneur.

What’s my recommendation?

If you ask me whether you should find a partner or just work on your own, I’ll have to ask you how huge and how far do you want your business to go. If you only want to be a work-at-home mom/daddy and get thousands of dollars a month out of blogging, then you can do it solo (your siblings or your spouse can be your partner if you ever need one). But if you’re aiming in building a huge business one day, developing international web applications, getting tenth to hundreds of thousands of dollars a month, getting an office with a few staffs or maybe even build your own skyscrapers (woah!), meeting people and making your own business travels, then you better find ‘the right’ partner soon. Be smart. Wink

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How to get funded for Malaysian startup entrepreneurs

Internet startups in the Silicon Valley are used to getting funded by the many Venture Capitals and Angel Investors they have over there. That’s why Internet Startup companies in Silicon Valley blooms up like mushrooms after a rain. Unfortunately, we don’t have the same luxury here in Malaysia. You can’t easily find a VC to fund your startup… and most of our parents or friends are still pretty clueless/critical about Internet ventures to be your angel investor. But fret not, the Malaysian government does have allocation for the Malaysian Internet startups to get initial capital and start their businesses to boost the ICT industry in Malaysia. And there are also Malaysian companies that does businesses in Venture Capitals.

1. Technopreneur Pre-Seed Fund Programme

Multimedia Development CorporationThis fund is introduced by MDEC (Multimedia Development Corporation, Malaysia). In this programme, your startup business can get a conditional fund of up to RM150,000 that you can use to develop your IT business plan into commercial projects. The good news is that apart from the money, you will also get the benefit of their mentoring services and use their MSC status shared lab facilities.

Take note that ONLY INDIVIDUALS are eligible to apply. You can’t apply under a business name. In other words, you’re not eligible apply this fund if your business already has an established Sdn Bhd company name. You may read more information about this on their website.

- Download Guidelines and Application Form
- Download FAQ

2. Cradle Investment Programme

Cradle Investment ProgrammeThis programme offers RM50,000 of fund that you may use for the development of your project’s prototype, proof of concept or business plan. Same like the pre-seed programme above, this fund is also only for individuals, not companies. Their focus is to give entrepreneurs a headstart in realizing their unique ideas (sounds a lot like you?). You can make application online. Visit their website for more thorough and detailed explanation on this fund.

- Read Application Guide here

Before making an application to any of these funding options, be sure to have a strong business plan document to present them and to get their attention, besides avoiding yourself from looking foolish. Be confident of your project. Also be sure to do enough research about a certain funding programme so that you know what you’re dealing with. The question is… should you apply? Do you really need them? I’ll talk about that sometime later Sealed

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Credit to webwatch for providing such useful information

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Web2.0 Entrepreneurs… the time is now

ClockSeriously, there’s never been a better time to start a Web2.0 bussiness than today. Maybe people have been saying this since last year during the Web2.0 bubble burst, but if I were to compare between last year and now, I personally think that the current year is the better time to venture yourself in this field. Here are some of the reasons why:

Many Web2.0 sites has emerged - More Web2.0 sites out there means more experiences and examples to be learned from. We hear Web2.0 sites that rises and falls. They had their stories mentioned everywhere, in many places such as TechCrunch, in Web2.0 portals and startup communities, even on their own WebApp blogs. They give you hints on what you should or should not do when venturing in the Web business. These are all valuable lessons to be used as a guide for us in building our own business. Maybe some of you think that more Web2.0 sites means more competition. I doubt it. The way I see it, you can leverage those Web2.0 sites for your benefits. Think social networks and social media.

Hardware costs are way too cheap - For a development PC, you don’t need the latest processor and the latest operating system. An XP on Pentium IV with 512MB RAM would be more than enough to comfortably and efficiently write programs or do design works. That kind of specs will only cost you around RM1500 (USD410) per machine today, maybe even less. Add a flat panel LCD monitor (which now costs only half-a-thousand) and you’ll be more than energized to start developing your web app. But then again most of you already have a good machine to work with so you probably not need to worry so much about PCs. What you may need to worry a bit is the cost of getting your own dedicated server and the cost of an office space if you ever need one.

Availability of many development frameworks - A few years back everyone writes their applications from scratch. Programmers wrote the same repetitive codings again and again and this has wasted a hell lot of time. But worry no more! Today, there are many stable rapid web development frameworks to choose from. We’ve heard of the successful Ruby on Rails. If you’re more of a PHP developer, frameworks like symfony, CodeIgniter or CakePHP gives you a great base to start off writing your applications in no time. For AJAX, we have scriptaculous and JQuery to save the day.

Availability of many development tools - Again, IDEs for PHP suck a few years back. Today, there are Komodo Edit (which I use most often), ZendStudio, PHPEdit and so many other cool IDEs out there complete with their autocomplete features, collapsing of codes, good formatting, nice syntax highlighting, files management, etc etc etc. Some of them are even free! Image-editing softwares has also improved so much that you can do more stuffs with less work.

Availability of multiple resources - AJAX scripts, CSS layouts, framework tutorials, you name it. Everything is out there on the web. You only need to use them. Open source applications can speed up your development. No longer do you need to reinvent the wheel. If you’re stuck with some weird problems, just type the error in Google and there’s a 99% chance that you’ll find a solution.

Blog numbers have quadrupled - There are gazillions of blogs out there ready to talk about your WebApp and do the advertising for you. There is Google Adwords to help you advertise with very little cost. And in desperate moments, PayPerPost is there to quickly bring you to fame.

Social sites are getting too popular - It’s very easy to create a hype around your WebApp nowadays by utilizing the many different social networks available. You only need to have a cool appearance and ideas and your WebApp will go boom.

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