the Key lesson

Surprisingly, the main lesson I learned last night when 6 entrepreneurs shared their experience

Amazingly the main lesson that I have learned from a night of sharing from 6 different entrepreneurs covering 6 different sectors ( underscoring the point that entrepreneurship is the one of the toughest challenge one can embark in his Life ) is from a lady named Simran who was Ash's wife.

Prior to the talk, I was feeling quite confused and angsty, partially due to the fact that the project is not going as well as planned (bad stuff happens, and I just have to suck it up). Hence I was there, sucking it up along with the lingering effects of a fever that I am recovering from. Fortunately, I am always a person for stories, especially one which people shared with their heart and passion, which enamored me. Hearing about the battle feats, the ups and the down rejuvenated me - in the sense that as I empathizes with the entrepreneur's darkest hours, resolve and aspiration, I began to feel beyond myself and larger than Life. It is sometimes others, which made me feel inadequate in giving, in loving and in doing, but more often that not, in a warped state of mind, it my faithlessness that is playing tricks with me.

I mused at my 10000th realisation as I checked with my inner self of what do I really wanted to do in Life and it was always clear. I realised again that I cherished Life, the people (around me) and the gratification of growth and raising up to challenges. As each entrepreneur took me through their journey, I felt increasingly sure that a Life of spirited play is what I am really after ( which mean I am a sucker for challenges XP)!.

Few of the important lessons that I took away:
- Tong: Having a cap on their salary. Offering employees different portfolio. Serving a need, or remedying a pain that already exist in the market.
- Ash: Sales solves everything. And I really love his focus on building the culture of his company, that i something that I would also put as my priority!

However, my main lesson was very simple. I asked Simran how did she maintain focus and balance with all the work, adrenaline and stress and she told me one thing:

"Be clear on the 3 main things that you want to do each day fulfill them. "

Then, it hit me! Yup, it's that simple and it is something that I have always been looking for. (=

Afterthoughts and Insights from the Conversation with Mr Ong Peng Tsin

I thought I could do a post from this event since I have glean quite a few insights from Mr Ong, who is to me a true blue, passionate and serial entrepreneur (profile below). It is insightful to have engaged him in a conversational Question and Answer session: some of his remarks has poked at my paradigms and forced me to reconsider what I took for granted as reality.

Clarity -  This is perhaps Mr Ong's strongest point and what I needed most. is to know what you want and why and to be clear on one's thought processes. It really happens to see reality for what it is rather than through a veil of idealistic denial (oh, it could get better~! I tend to stray into this track sometimes as I have an idealistic take on things) or a fog of ignorance. It pays to reflect upon my Life and question my principles and beliefs for it helps me understand myself, which therefore allows me to live a Life that is true to myself. Clarity also comes from being honest with oneself, taking feedback and being rigorous in one's thought processes.

Balance - The caveat to success and high performance is that one would live an unbalanced Life. Hmm... I do not quite agree to this statement, although I see some through in it. Superficially, I could argue that, it's because Life is always in disequilibrium, especially those who causes more ripples (in the process of doing more and wanting to live Life to the fullest), hence Life is always unbalanced.

Ultimately, rhetorics would only provide one with a clearer picture and a grasp on the subject matter. It is really what a person believes in that determines one's course of action and the execution that instantiates the intent. I believe that I should strive for balance in my Life between physical, mental, social and spiritual dimensions. They might go out of balance, and I might over extent in times like now, but I would like to development myself wholesomely and experience the fullest of what each dimension has to offer. Surely, learning is much different from completing a dance which is different from having a deep conversation with a friend. (= I strive for balance.

Some other lessons and thoughts in points:

"A start up has to be done in such a way that you would not regret when it blows a whole in a ground!" - Yep, we had fun and paid for the lesson... moving on.

A good self check is this question "Is this the best way I am spending my time right now?"- which draws a parallel to Steve Job's comment that we should ask ourselves every morning in the mirror, "If this the last day for me to live, am I going to do, what I am going to do?" - My answer - hell, yes~! At least I would think though and decided that I am going to live a "Hell, yes~!" day. =D

Technical points which are invaluable to me:

How to get fast failures and fast prototyping own in biotech start ups? (Recently, I am doing my own survey at the capital/expenditure value of the Life science market which is (not) surprisingly diverse)

High IP translate into high margin.


Mr Ong's profile:

Mr Ong Peng Tsin founded Encentuate in 2002 to address the need to provide enterprises with strong and usable digital identity systems. Encentuate was acquired by IBM in March 2008.

Prior to founding Encentuate, Mr Ong was the founder and chairman of Interwoven, Inc., the leading provider of content infrastructure. He was the president and CEO of Interwoven through 1997, and its chairman through 2002. During his tenure at Interwoven he led the company to a successful IPO (NASDAQ: IWOV). For his leadership in building Interwoven into the world's leading provider of enterprise-class content infrastructure software, in 2002 Mr Ong was awarded the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign College of Engineering's Alumni Award for Distinguished Service.

Before Interwoven, Mr Ong was co-founder and chief architect of Electric Classifieds, Inc.—the creators of Match.com. He has also held various engineering and management roles at Illustra (now IBM Informix), Sybase Inc., and Gensym Corporation.

Mr Ong co-authored numerous patents for technologies developed at Electric Classifieds, Interwoven, and Encentuate.

More recently in 2002, Mr Ong served as one of the twenty members of Singapore's Economic Review Committee. The ERC was a high-level committee whose task was to review the economic plans for the future of Singapore. He serves on the board of the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore. He is a founding member of the Majulah Connection and contributes to the Action Committee for Entrepreneurship. Peng chairs the InfoComm Investment Pte Ltd (IIPL) fund which promotes innovative information & communication technology businesses in Singapore.

Mr Ong graduated from the University of Texas at Austin with a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering and received his Masters of Science in Computer Science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.