Lesson on Entrepreneurship

What if someone comes to you today and says, 'I have a business that can earn $40 a month. Do you think you would want to do it?'

I was thinking, like the majority of people would, 'Bloody hell. Who would want to do something like this? I can't even feed myself with it!'

Suppose that the income is only from a SINGLE unit of the business, and there is minimal set-up cost, would you want to do it now?

This person that came up with this idea has 1400 units of the same business, hence making 1400 x $40 = $56000/mth, without coming up with a single cent upfront!

The story is like this.....

Person A recognized that there is a need in the market to provide telecom service to millions of village workers coming to big cities to work. These workers would normally be spending most of their time after work in the countless warung (equivalent of mamak stalls in M'sia), having meals and chatting there. Now, to provide this service to them, there are actually many ways of doing it, but most, however, require high start up costs.

A did his research and thought that since all the workers are having meals in the warungs, where better than to put the equipments right at the places that they are hanging out in? He then contacted the warung owners, negotiating deals that would split the income in 1/2, but the owners would have to come up with the capital for the telecom equipment that cost around $350/set. A return of about $40/mth to them would be much more than what the banks could offer, & many of the owners approached were more than keen to sign up for the plan. Hence, his small telecom empire was born; He set up a business that virtually cost nothing to run, because the only expense incurred was to hire runners to go & collect the money from the warung owners after they take out their portion of the profits.


Now this is what I call entrepreneurship.


When people say that times are rough these days & it's harder to make a living, always remember that it only takes a spark of creativity to set up the first business, sometimes at no cost. Using marketing terms, all it takes is to identify a 'latent need', that is, needs that not even the users realize, and capitalize on it. Take the opportunity fast when that happens, because some chances will disintegrate over time when the market condition changes.

Also remember that it's never too late for you to discover your creativity streak. I've heard of someone who was leading a poor life all along, & he finally set up his shipping company when he was 48 years old; He hasn't looked back since and now owns one of the biggest shipping fleets in Singapore & South East Asia, with over 1000 metal tankers in operation, all in the duration of about 20 years.

It never ceases to amaze me how chinese Indos, especially those on Java provinces, always have this entrepreneur spirit instilled in them. They could always find niche in the world dominated by giant MNCs and as a result create many rags to riches stories. There is a statistic recently compiled by UBS Singapore that says there is a total of around 55000 people in Singapore who own at least 1 million USD, outside their own residential properties. What is even more amazing is that more than a third of them are of indonesian parentage, which means that there is a good chance one in about eight indos you know in Singapore would be a millionaire. Add that with tens of thousands of indos living in Singapore who don't have citizenship or PR status, and the statistic would change to about 1 in 5.

One of the respected venture capitalist firm owner recently commented on the possibility of a YouTube case in Singapore:

Q: Is there a possibility of setting up a start up with the success of YouTube in Singapore?
A: It's possible, but I have 2 advices to give to the potential aspirants: Think big, & think global (mass market)

This is exactly the lesson to be learned: anything that can be mass-marketed is gonna be successful. So think big next time, & think of the demographics in your respective markets when your next new bright idea comes springing up!