TimothyTiah.com

How I manage my time in the year 2014

My Dad always told me. Success isn’t measured by the number of digits in your bank account, or the cars you drive… the watches you wear. It’s about how you manage to find a balance in life and be happy. How we all achieve that all boils down to one thing: Time.

We’re all given the same amount of time in our lifetimes. 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 52 weeks a year. What determines where we end up in life, what impact we make and the relationships we build is how we spend this time. I’ve always struggled with allocating my time properly though. I tend to often find it sometimes too shifted to work and I think it’s something many of us find.

Then one day I joined this organization called Entrepreneur’s Organization. There we are taught that there are 3 areas that entrepreneurs need to focus on when reflecting on their lives. These 3 areas are business (or career), family and personal. As I was reflecting to myself yesterday, this is how I spend my time in these 3 areas.

Business (or career)

It’s easy to spend too much time at work and sometimes that’s not a bad thing. When I spend too little time at work sometimes I feel like I’m not working to my full potential of what I could really be. The one thing I have going for me though is that I am by nature a very efficient worker.

Untitled

When I have things to do I spend very little time procrastinating and most of my time focusing on getting the task done. By the end of the day a morning I would have finished a list of things that you’d think I would have taken a day to do. When I host and conduct meetings, I like them to be quick and to the point. Not long and draggy. I also set my meeting schedules almost back to back so it forces me to be self disciplined with my meetings. So that I’m forced to wrap my meetings up quickly and go on to the next one.

Technology helps too. Well… technology can be a distraction (time spent on FB, Twitter, Dayre etc)… but it’s also meant to be a tool for productivity. Heck 10 years ago the only way we could answer emails is in front of a computer. Now we all do it from our phones. I use technology to cut out almost every idle time I have. When I’m waiting for an elevator, waiting for someone to arrive for a meeting, or even just walking around sometimes.

With all this, I make sure that I leave the office by 5.30-7PM. If I have any work leftover I finish it at home after dinner.

Family

Family time for me is in the morning before I leave for work, night after I come back from work and weekends. The one thing I learned about family time is that it’s not really about how much time you spent. Like if I had a family dinner and all the time I spent looking at my phone, it’ll be as if I wasn’t even there in the first place. Family time is about quality. So on weekend nights after work I make it a point to talk to Shorty for half an hour or so without distractions. We have deep conversations about what we did with our days or what’s going on.

Untitled

Then I spend the same amount of time or more playing with Fighter. Again… with attention undivided and with no distractions. I call my parents at least once every two days and have weekly meetings with my brother and sister in KL.

Personal

When I first joined EO and was introduced to the concept of personal time, I was first asked what I did for my personal self in the past month and it was a question I struggled to answer. I learned later that it’s an answer a lot of people struggle to answer too. We are all too bogged down with work and family that sometimes we forget about doing things for ourselves that make us happy.

Personal time isn’t just doing things that make you happy. It’s also doing things for your personal development (like reading up on stuff) and most importantly… health. For me the two things I do is golf and cycling. Cycling for example is one of the things that hit two birds with one stone for me. I thoroughly enjoy it… and it’s good for health. I make it a point now to go cycling every weekend.

 

Untitled

As for personal development… I read a lot. Every day in fact I look around for things to read. I buy magazines … mostly Businessweek, Fortune, Forbes… not because I think that’s the only magazines I think we should read for personal development but because I so happen to have an interest in these things.  If you have an interest in photography or even cars then read up about cars. 

————

So that’s how I manage my time. I want to write this down here because in a few years I want to see if I manage it differently from how I manage it now. Do I spend more time with family in future or in work. Whatever it is… this will be my reference point… of how I used to spend my time in the year 2014.

Things Shorty & Fatty Say #327: Fighter’s Movie

#327

Shorty and I were in the cinema watching a movie. Before the movie started a trailer for the new 300 came on.

Shorty: Hey look it’s Fighter’s movie.

Me: Why is it Fighter’s movie?

Shorty: Because you know…. Maximus  (Fighter’s name is Jude Maximus Tiah).

Me: Maximus is not from 300. Maximus is from the movie Gladiator.

gladiator-2

Shorty: Ah well… seen one Greek seen them all! *waves head in the air*

Me: Except that Maximus isn’t Greek. He’s Roman.

Shorty: Ah whatever! *waves hand again*

5 Things you May not know about the Startup scene in Malaysia and Singapore

I give a lot of talks at colleges and universities these days and every so often I have students coming up to me telling me how they want to start a business. When I ask them what they have in mind and it’s often tech related. It’s not difficult to see why. I mean just this week we had news about WhatsApp being bought out for $16 billion, before that Snapchat was offered $3 billion and who could forget Tumblr for $1.1 billion.

My current thoughts are that we’re yet to see many real Malaysian or Singaporean companies that came out of our local ecosystem that has had a huge exit (exit means you IPO or you sell the company so you can cash out though in this article I refer more to acquisitions). Yes there’s Jobstreet, but Jobstreet is a 16 year old company and is as much a brick and mortar job-matching business as it is a tech business. It also happens to do RM50 or RM60 million in annual net profit. It’s a big company.

So based on the 7 years I’ve been in the tech industry in SouthEast Asia, I’ve learned some things and I thought I share my thoughts. Now note that these are my thoughts… every internet entrepreneur you meet probably has a different point of view or different thoughts too. Anyway here goes:

1) There is a lot of seed funding in Malaysia and Singapore. But beyond that your funding options are limited. 

Take a good look at the venture capitalists we have in Malaysia and Singapore. With the NRF, Singapore has quite a few more but they’re all largely seed funds. When I say seed I mean $5 million or $10 million funds. So a $10 million fund can probably make 20 $500,000 investments into 20 different startups. They can’t or won’t… make an investment of $5 million into your own startup even if they really love your startup. Because they’ll be putting all their eggs in one basket.

So if you’re a startup that is hoping to raise $500,000 to gain some traction then you’ll have plenty of options. But once your company passes the seed stage and hits the growth stage, you will probably need more money. That’s when you’ll find it more difficult to raise more money from Malaysia or Singapore. You need to start looking abroad. Whether in VCs abroad or IPOs abroad. Some entrepreneurs here have done super well with this… like Patrick Grove. 

Why though? Why are VC funds in Malaysia and Singapore so small? A part of this is because of my next point.

2) Tech Startup Exits In Malaysia and Singapore are Small.

We haven’t had a really big exit. Sure there was Viki but as much as it was branded a Singaporean based company, it wasn’t a company that was bred out of the Singaporean ecosystem. Most their backers are Silicon Valley based  VCs (who have the ability to put in tens of millions) and none of them (to my knowledge) are actually Malaysian or Singaporean VCs. It’s all part of the ecosystem right. If one VC had a big exit that would mean they had more money to reinvest into other startups. 

So what exits do we have left?

We have the group buying sites that the foreign players like Groupon, Living Social and all came to buy everyone out. The group buying site in Singapore was bought out for a fairly decent amount. In Malaysia I hear the deal sizes weren’t particularly big at RM1.5 million or so plus an earn-out.

We have sites like Hungrygowhere in Singapore that were bought out for S$12 million and iBilik for RM15 million. Decent amounts but it’s not enough to arm the VCs with loads of money for their future investments. It’s also not enough to make the entrepreneurs behind these startups super rich so they can start angel investing heavily.

Think about it, say I have a company and I sell it for RM15 million. I don’t get all that RM15 million because most of the time I have partners and other investors. So maybe I end up getting RM6 million of that. It’s $2 million, decent amount of money but not super rich. On top of that what happens is you’re bonded to work with the company that acquires you for the next number of years.

We build good startups, but they don’t get acquired for a lot and we don’t end up owning a lot of them by the time they exit. But why don’t we? This brings me to my next point.

3) VCs in Malaysia and Singapore are less generous with valuations

I spent some time in Silicon Valley two years ago. We were pursuing a pet project called Imotiv. It was a mobile app which started a few months ago, with 50,000 users and no revenue and no plans to have any revenue. After talking to some VCs in Silicon Valley we ended up with a term sheet on our table valuing Imotiv at $4 million. We didn’t do the deal in the end and Imotiv was put in a back-burner because we had another project that was gaining much better traction. Still…. a few month old mobile app with a small team and no revenue had a valuation of $4 million.

That unfortunately is rarely the case in Malaysia and Singapore.

Malaysian and Singaporean VCs tend to look at tech companies in the old school way. They look at profit and revenue mulitples. And when they look at profit multiples they don’t look at 20 times earnings (even if tech companies listed on the Malaysian stock exchange are trading above that). Even if you’re at a pre-IPO level, they look at trying to buy into your company at 10 times earnings in the hope that they can flip it or so at 20 times earnings. It’s business, they want to make money… but if you’re not desperate for money, why would you do a deal like that?

It’s almost as if VCs here don’t invest in you purely because they believe in you or your startup or what your startup will be worth in future. They try to invest in you at a discount of what you are worth. Though the good news is that not ALL VCs in Malaysia and Singapore are like that. I’ve met good ones that are willing to invest in the entrepreneur and the future value of the company. Not the current.

Another point to note also though is that at the seed funding stage though when profit and revenues aren’t significant yet though… you might be able to get away with being valued on revenues or profit multiples.

4) Exits often come with strings attached.

Some time back it was in the news that SPH had acquired SGCarMart for $48 million. I was like WOW… finally… a big exit from a startup bred out of our local ecosystem. Then I happened to be in Singapore one weekend talking to some VCs and industry insiders. I was talking about how I’m really impressed at the deal. The insiders said “Nah… it’s not $48 million. It’s UP TO $48 million… but in order to get that they have to achieve certain miletones… like profit guarantees or revenue guarantees. The deal size is much smaller. I was disappointed… but hey even if the base price is half (and that I would consider extreme)… it’s still a lot of money and a really good exit.

5) Internet companies in Malaysia and Singapore don’t really make a lot of money.

There are some that do make good money like MOL, Jobstreet, MyEG (if you’d count that) and a few more. The rest of the tech startups here even the well funded ones in the ecommerce space don’t make a lot of money (yet at least). On the flip side I have friends like Bryan Loo who came out and started a purely brick and mortar business Chatime in Malaysia and he makes tons of money.

I guess my point of this article is to share my thoughts. I haven’t taken the effort to link sources for numbers quoted here because well I don’t intend for this to be a news article. It’s just my thoughts on my personal blog. You can however Google and do a fact check and if you find something that I got wrong then correct me. Some of the other stuff I’ve shared are from what industry insiders have shared but take it with a pinch of salt too.

My partings thoughts is that the startup scene in Malaysia and Singapore is a place where a generation of young people have made their initial wealth. It has certainly been an industry where I have personally made everything I have today. So I’m not saying that it’s something you should avoid like a plague and go work in a bank instead. I’m just trying to say that in my experience, this is what it’s really like right now but I’m hoping that things will change. That our exits will get larger and our ecosystem be able to support great new tech startups out of Malaysia and Singapore.

Things Shorty & Fatty Say #326: You like it right?

#326

Shorty and I have this game that we play in the car. We always try to find songs we’ve either forgotten about or haven’t heard in a long time and then see if the other person likes it. If she finds a song that I like she’ll be all smug about it and all… and vice versa.

So this one time…

Me: *plays this song*

Me: HEHEHE… nice leh!! You like this song don’t you?

Shorty: Eh what song is this ah?

Me: A song you like…. right? HEHEHE.

Shorty: Who is it by?

Me: Gym Class Heroes. You like it right?

Shorty: Is it a remake or are they the original singers?

Me: Don’t know. You like it right?

Shorty: I heard it before a long time ago.

Me: HELLO. Was that my question? Did I ask you “When was the last time you heard this song?”…. Was that my question?

Shorty: No…

Me: Then what was my question?

Shorty: You asked me if I like it.

Me: And…?

Shorty: YES LAH… aiyo so annoying!

Things Shorty & Fatty Say #325: How I got chased by a pack of dogs

#325

Me: *walks into room panting* Shorts… you won’t believe what just happened to me.

Shorty: What what?

Me: Ok so I was cycling around this neighborhood and minding my own business when suddenly I heard the sound of some dog barks. To the corner of my eye I saw a pack of dogs spot me and start a chase on me. Now normally when I get chased by stray dogs I just stand my ground and chase them back. Otherwise if they know you’re afraid and you run, they’ll chase you and you’ll never outrun them. But this time I was on a bicycle… and there were 3 of them… so I did whatever I thought I could do. I cycled as fast as I can.

Shorty: Hahah then?

Me: I cycled away at full speed and I was actually outrunning them and then I realized something. Right in front of me was a hill. That was bound to slow me down… but with the dogs right behind me and I just cycled as fast as I could up the hill anyway. I’ve never cycled uphill so fast before. Then to make matters worse… I saw a speed bump ahead. Again with no chance of slowing down I took the speed bump at a high speed and fortunately my bicycle took it well. Eventually the dogs stopped chasing me.

Shorty: HAHAHA.

Me: Now I’m kinda scared to go cycling around there again. In case I get chased by some stray dogs.

A few days later we were driving in a car up that very same hill.

Me: Shorts… this was the hill I was telling you about the other day. The one I had to cycle up being chased by dogs.

Shorty: Hill? What hill?

Me: Ohhh… talk big huh this Short person. You try cycle up here and see.

Shorty: HAHAHA.

——-

On a final note if you’re looking for a movie to watch these few days check out Cuak. It’s a Malaysian movie produced by one of my friends Michael Chen. It’s directed by 5 different directors 5 different scenes.

Happy Valentine’s Day

It’s Valentine’s Day and truth be told, Shorty and I didn’t do anything special. This morning I woke up early and headed off for some meetings. I had back to back meetings all the way till 6.30PM. Right after my meeting I had to head over to the Curve for a family dinner. Shorty was going to meet me there.

What was in my way though was the most epic traffic I’ve seen all year. I guess it’s Friday jam coupled with everyone else rushing to go out for their Valentine’s Day date but my goodness that was some glorious jam. I finally reached the curve an hour later… or actually maybe even more than an hour later.

Shorty was waiting there with Fighter and we had dinner. I was hoping Fighter would be happy to see me after a long day but I think he was angry at me. He was happily smiling at other people but when I looked at him he would look away.

Untitled

I was like “C’mon Fighter… Daddy had to go work and earn money to support you ok?”.

He then gave me a glance and turned away again.

A typical family dinner of mine takes 2-3 hours so by the time I was done it was 10.30PM… then I had to fight a small traffic jam back home (I guess everyone by now had finished their dates and were rushing to go home too) and well… I got home, showered and here I am. Fresh out of my shower and blogging on my laptop while sitting on my bed.

I guess it’s no biggie. Shorty and I don’t really celebrate Valentine’s Day. We find it too expensive to go out and too difficult to get a reservation. If we do get it, most fancy restaurants force you to go with their set menu and I’m really picky when it comes to food so there’s always something I don’t like about set menus. Heck it’s almost the end of Valentine’s Day and I just realized that I didn’t even take a picture with Shorty today.

I did however take the picture above of Fighter today. Speaking of Fighter, I saw this news article on Fighter’s Dayre this afternoon. Heh.

Screen shot 2014-02-14 at 11.29.41 PM

Ah anyway. I have 28 minutes left to Valentine’s Day now. Fighter is asleep and Shorty is finally out of the shower so I’m going to spend whatever is left of Valentine’s Day with Shorty. See you guys. Hope you guys had a wondeful Vday.

Things Shorty & Fatty Say #323, #324: Shaver

First and foremost, today is Shorty’s birthday. So let me say… HAPPY BIRTHDAY SHORTY!!! 

#323

Shorty and I are in the car. We come across this narrow road where cars are double parked on both sides turning two lanes into one.

Untitled

Me: So inconsiderate these double-parkers!! Now it’s all jammed up.

Shorty: Yalah!

Me: I wish the cops will just come and issue summons for them all!

Shorty: I wish lightning will just zap them all.

Me: Wah that’s kinda extreme isn’t it Shorty?

Shorty: Fine then I wish there would just be nails on the sides of these roads. So you want to illegally park there… park there forever!!!

#324

We’re at a mall…

Me: Ahh I just remembered I left my shaver in Penang.

Shorty: So?

Me: Maybe I should go buy another shaver.

Shorty: Ok.

Me: Or maybe I’ll just ask my brother to bring it back for me. Don’t want to waste money buy another shaver. What would I do with two shavers anyway.

Shorty: Fine…

Me: Or should I buy a shaver ah?

Shorty: Make up your mind lah!

Me: Umm…

Shorty: How are you shaving now? Plucking ah?

Me: Har har .. very funny.

Things Shorty & Fatty Say #322: Shandy

#322

Over Chinese New Year celebrations Shorty and I have been a little left out. You see Shorty doesn’t really drink and I… well I drink sometimes but most of the time when I’m just trying to relax I don’t. All around us though we had relatives and friends all drinking around us.

So one night before a family dinner, our brothers were getting all the bottles of wine and whiskey ready for dinner. When Shorty and I….

Me: Yo Shorty…. wanna go get some shandy?

Shorty: Oooh… now?

Me: Yeah we just drive off to a 7-11 and go get some.

Shorty: OOoohh badass.. Okay lets go!

10 minutes later our car is parked outside a 7-11 with Shorty just stepping in with 4 cans of Shandy in her arms.

Shorty: Alright I got it!

Me: We gonna get drunk tonight!

Shorty: HAHA… why we so loser wan.

Me: Whatever… we like Shandy.

Shorty: HAHAHA!! How much do we have to drink to get drunk?

Me: *checks label* Well it says there is less than 1% of alcohol content in this can of Shandy. So I’m guessing… a lot.

Shorty: HAHAHA.

Untitled

At the dinner, friends and relatives were all pouring glasses of whiskey and wine.

Me: Shorts… wanna get drunk on some Shandy?

Shorty: Oooh.. ok lets do it!

Me: Two shandies… coming right up…. *pours too glasses*

Shorty: *excited*

Me: Yam seng Shorty… yam seng…

My Form 5 School Magazine Photo of my Class in 2001

Someone posted this picture of our class photos in our school magazine back when I was Form 5 in St Xaviers Institution in Penang. I’m the 1st guy on the left “Tiah Ewe Tiam”.

Untitled

Looking at the faces of my ex classmates really brought back a lot of memories for me. My class was truly 1 Malaysia. We had students from all different ethnic backgrounds and we all got along really well. Some of whom I still keep in touch with a lot.

There was Samuel Loh and Francis. Both of whom I constantly compete with for the Top 3 positions in the class.

There was Rajiv…. who I always remember told the teacher that the reason why he didn’t do his homework was because a ghost came and ate it (and this was in Form 5).

There was Teh Oon Khye who was one of my first friends in St Xavier’s when I first moved there from Sri Inai. People used to bully him in class because he was short…. today hes’ working at Fedex and he’s one of the few friends from class 5A1 that I still see regularly and keep in touch with.

Another guy I still keep in touch with off and on is Matthew who used to work at Maxis and is now a property agent.

In this next picture were the rest of them.

Untitled

There was Jin Siang who was known as the tai kor or the gangster in the school. You know how sometimes there would be gang fights planned after school and a lot of people from both gangs will meet up for the fight after school. But at the actual fight itself, only 2-3 guys will be fighting, the rest of the henchmen will pretend to be useful by holding everyone else back. Well Jin Siang would be the 2-3 guys who would be fighting.

Then there’s Chia Chuien. I remembered his face but I didn’t remember his name and it was only later that I remembered the reason why was because nobody called him by his name Chia Chuien. Everyone referred to him as “Cacing”… cuz his name sounded some sort like that (the nicknames we call each other in school).

There there was Chin Lai, who was really into WWF wrestling and would love to wrestle in school then imitate the Rock’s eyebrow lift after each fight.

There’s Robert Low… who I remember used to be really good in math. He’s on my Facebook now and I constantly see him promoting property in Penang for sale.. so he’s a property agent I think.

Looking at these faces brought back so many memories for me. The things we used to do, the people I used to hang out with and the different backgrounds we all came from. It’s this diversity that reminds me why I would love for Fighter to go to a government school and not a private one (though Shorty and I are still debating the pros and cons).

Today these friends of mine have grown up. Most of them are married… and all of them have good jobs and provide well for their families. We came from different backgrounds and ended up with different path in our lives… but the one thing we share in common is that we’re all Xaverians.