TimothyTiah.com

Roadshow in Australia

Posted on April 13, 2016 admin

Hi Everyone

This week is a totally busy week for me. I’m in Australia the whole week for an investor roadshow. First Melbourne and then ending with our AGM in Sydney on Friday.

IMG_20160412_214658

Most of my updates are on my Dayre but checking back on my phone I did notice a couple of pictures I too that I forgot to post on Dayre.

A couple of weeks ago Shorty was telling me about this initiative started by a couple of people called Orange Sky Laundry. It’s basically a mobile laundry service (a couple of washing machines at the back of a van) that goes from area to area and lets homeless people wash their clothes.

Having a laundry service might be a small thing but homeless people need clean clothes so they can go for job interviews and maybe sometimes just to feel fresh again. Shorty thought it was a good idea and said she’s love to do that some day.

Then just yesterday right outside my hotel I saw an Orange Sky van.

IMG_20160412_172143

Behind the tree were some homeless people sitting in a circle waiting for their clothes to be washed. Talking and joking among themselves.

What an interesting sight.

The other interesting thing I saw this week was a protest.

IMG_20160413_134655

I think the protestors were telling the government to not cut education spending…. well at least that’s what I could gather from the chants.

I love it when I get to witness an open society like this where people can openly protest in groups like that. There were cops around them too but they were really there to keep the peace and ensure the safety of the protesters.

I have 3 more nights in Australia before I get to fly home. I’m chatting with Shorty now as I type this. I really miss home and I miss my family.

I miss this little boy here.

IMG_20160411_075621

This was the picture I took of him before I left. I tried to video call him earlier but he refuses to talk to me. I think he’s angry at me for leaving.

I also miss this girl here.

This one on the other hand smiled at me when she saw me on the video call. Then proceeded to kiss me many many times.

I miss my family and I can’t wait to go home.

What Maxis did wrong and what they didn’t

Posted on April 8, 2016 admin

The Maxis social media crisis is all over the news now. I won’t go over the details about what happened but if you missed out on the whole thing you can catch up on it here.

Amid all the noise on this issue, the angry mobs and the feeling of being shortchanged, it’s important to remember exactly what it is that Maxis did wrong. And what it didn’t.

Let me first start with what Maxis didn’t do wrong.

Maxis didn’t cheat or mislead us

I’ve been on Maxis for so many years I don’t even remember how long exactly but I think it’s in the range of 10-15 years. In this 10-15 years I have changed my plan with them TWICE.

Why? Every day we are bombarded with advertising on new offers that all telcos including Maxis are giving out. Sometimes those offers are even more competitive than the plan I’m on, so in two of those occasions, I did the math and just changed my plan.

The most recent time this happened was 6 months ago. I realized I was paying a lot more for data and voice calls then I should have been. That Maxis was very significantly more expensive than its competitors. With that in mind I wasn’t ready to drop Maxis completely because I did value their good network coverage, their good roaming coverage and their good customer service (I’ve only had good experiences so far).

So I structured my mobile phone plans to fit my needs.

a) I cut down my Maxis data plan from a 5GB plan to a 3GB a month one.

b) I removed all my bundled minutes from my Maxis plan.

c) I signed up with U-Mobile’s P70 for my second phone which gave me 7GB a month of data and unlimited calls. They have since bumped it up to a total of 15GB of data. I now use my U Mobile line for all my intense data stuff and all my phone calls.

My total monthly bill with these two plans? The same as what I was paying for my Maxis plan before but I now get more data and unlimited calls. So I’m happy.

The point is we enter into each mobile phone plan willingly and as educated as we can be. Before we sign a plan we do our own due diligence and we compare it with competing plans from other telcos and also from within Maxis. If things change in future (for example you use more data than voice or if there are cheaper plans outside) then we owe it to ourselves to make the switch.

Maxis or any other telco doesn’t owe us that responsibility to make sure we get the best bang for buck from them. We owe it to ourselves.

2. Maxis offering a promotion to new customers is something that many other companies let alone telcos do.

Much of the anger was directed at the fact that Maxis had a special plan for East Malaysia that gave much more for much less than what the rest of us get in the rest of the country. Companies do this all time to recruit new customers when they do promotions.

Being pissed off at Maxis for doing that is like being pissed off at Uber for giving its NEW customers RM50 in free rides whereas the ones that joined for free like me got nothing.

3. “Maxis treats you better only when you want to leave.”

Forget the fact that this is human nature. That we as humans tend to appreciate something more only when we are about to lose it.

Lets look at this in a business point of view. Counter-offering customers who are about to drop out as part of a customer retention strategy isn’t something new. Heck it happens all the time in business. A law firm I’m using just counter-offered me a lower quote when I threatened to use another firm. If I didn’t threaten, I wouldn’t have gotten this offer. It’s not just my law firm. Just about every telco in Malaysia and most globally does the same thing.

When I was studying in the UK I wanted to terminate my Vodafone contract for an O2 one, I got a call from Vodafone offering me a better plan. I didn’t take offense that they didn’t offer it to me earlier on. I just reminded myself that I owe it to myself to make sure I get the most competitive deal.

Now here’s what I think Maxis DID do wrong…

Their initial response to the complaints that was posted on their Facebook page

What’s wrong with it? Well I think this article sums it up really well.

Since then the Maxis CEO has came out on their Facebook page to address this issue offering better value plans. There’s still a bit of confusion to the whole thing but essentially what they’re saying is give them time, they’ll work it out.

In conclusion here’s where I stand. Minus the PR response, I don’t think Maxis did anything the other telcos around the world don’t do. The main difference is that their plans are expensive. I personally have a threshold of how much of a premium that I’m willing to pay for its services and I think I’m in a comfortable zone right now with half my mobile usage on U Mobile and half on Maxis.

If you don’t think they’re worth your money then by all means switch and if the new telco doesn’t give you a good enough plan any time in the future then switch back. We will always have that choice.

Try not to take it out on their front end staff who manage their call centers or social media handles. No customer service ever wants to cheat its customers or intentionally treat them bad.

Entrepreneurs: How to manage a crisis like a boss

Posted on April 4, 2016 admin

The April Fools’ “crisis” that the Dayre team planned last week got me to reflect on all the crises I’ve gone through in my 10 years of business. The truth was harsh.

When the present me looks back at the younger inexperienced me and how he handled a crisis then, the present me shakes his head in disapproval. For this entry I’ve decided to pen down all my thoughts on what present me has learned about crisis management and how a leader should handle a crisis.

Keep that anger in check

When a crisis hits and when you first hear about it, you feel your heart sink. It’s a mixture of disappointment, fear and anger. Why anger? Because in almost every crisis we face at work, the reason for the crisis is that somebody screwed up.

Here’s what bad managers do. They let the anger emotion overrule everything else and take it out on the staff or team member of theirs who made that mistake (to be fair I was guilty of this on more than one occasion in my younger years).

What should you be doing then? Well that’s point number 2.

2. Take a deep breath and a few seconds to manage your emotions

Acknowledge internally that shit is happening and a buffet of emotions are running through your head now. My father always tells me NEVER to make a decision when you’re emotionally charged and that’s exactly what we are in the first few minutes of being told there is a crisis. So calm down. Acknowledge the buffet of emotions going on in your head and control them.

3) Find out what went wrong, how and why

Ask your team questions. Find out exactly how what went wrong, went wrong. Who made the mistake and why? Remember that at this point the tone and manner in which you do that probing is important. Make it clear to the team that you are NOT trying to find out who is responsible so you can take it out on that person. You’re just trying to have a better understanding of the situation you’re in.

When a boat is sinking, the last thing you want to do is start a witch hunt on the crew. The first thing you gotta do though, is to plug that leak and to do that, you need everyone fully committed to that cause. A witch hunt or scolding only distracts everyone from that. Yes, you’re going to have to deal with the person who made that mistake, but not now. Wait till the crisis has passed.

In the mean time collect information and once you’ve done that, make a call.

4) Let your team handle it. Do not micromanage them.

This is the part I personally find hardest to do because at a time of crisis I tend to want to solve the problem myself. The truth is though, that’s NOT what a good leader or manager does.

A good leader recognizes that in every crisis there is an opportunity and the most obvious opportunity present is the opportunity for your team to learn how to handle crisis and overcome their own mistakes. So tell your team what to do, give them guidance then let them do their work.

Yes there may be a role for you as the leader to solve that problem, like maybe you talking to the client might carry more weight so do it but do that and just that. Leave the rest to your team.

5) Think about how this crisis has made you stronger

A crisis ALWAYS makes you and your team stronger. The many crises that Netccentric has had as a company has made us much stronger. We’ve had tech crisis in the past where we got hacked and these crisis exposed weaknesses that we no longer have today. We have crises that have tested us as leaders and pushed us to the limits but once we overcame it, we became better leaders, better people and a better company.

As the saying goes, “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.”

So once the crisis has passed, reflect on how the crisis has made everyone stronger and when you get the chance to… share it.

Watching the highest grossing movie in China

Posted on March 29, 2016 admin

I was reading a lot about this movie called The Mermaid that broke box office records in China and pulled in $543 million in the box office. That is crazy.

I watched some of the trailers and I wasn’t overly drawn in on it because the excessive CGI looked really fake. However after I watched this trailer… I thought it was hilarious so I decided to watch it.

And the verdict was… Shorty thinks it’s 90 minutes of her life she’ll never get back but I enjoyed it. Haha it was fun. Sure some of the jokes were lame but I liked some of the other jokes.

The CGI was excessive and not great. There were some scenes I felt they didn’t even need to do in front of a green screen (like outside the Mermaid’s house) and just find somewhere with scenery but it’s almost like they wanted to do it so they could film from the comfort of the studio.

I did however think about how this would change the China movie industry. Already there is so much money being poured into movies in China given the size of the box office. Today in terms of special effects they’re really far behind Hollywood but with the amount of investment going in, I think it’s going to be a really short time before they catch up with hollywood.

I think it will be a short time, maybe 3 years.. and we’ll start seeing local Chinese movies with kickass special effects like we saw in Avatar, or San Andreas or The Revenant where a CGI bear looked just like a real bear.

On The Mermaid… watch it if you like slapstick kind of comedy. I’m not particularly into slapstick so much but I still found their humor funny. Like the scene in the trailer above with the policeman sketch artist. I found that hilarious… although I gotta admit it was funnier in the trailer than it was in the actual movie.

When the toddlers left the nest

Posted on March 26, 2016 admin

This weekend Shorty and I are in Singapore while our kids are in Penang with their grandparents. Let me back up a little and tell you why. Some months ago I agreed to attend my friend Derrick’s wedding in Singapore. At first I was thinking of bringing the kids along but then I later realized that my mom had planned her early birthday celebration that weekend. So we decided to send the kids back to Penang to spend time with my parents while Shorty and I flew down to Singapore. We were going to be away from the kids for a couple of days

This morning Shorty and I woke up and played with both the kids. While we would normally do our own things in the morning while the kids played on their own, this morning we sat with them and played because we knew they were going to leave by late morning. I repeatedly told Fighter that mommy and I will be going away and he’ll be going to Penang to see the rest of his cousins and relatives. I told Penny too… but only once because I wasn’t sure she would understand what I was saying anyway. While Fighter would normally whine and cry if we even mentioned going away, this morning he took it really well and just acknowledged it with a sharp “NGH”.

Late morning came and it was time for them to leave. We loaded them all up into the car and with FIghter strapped into his seat I gave him a kiss on his forehead. Once again I told him that he was leaving us behind and he still didn’t cry. I gave Penny a kiss too as we strapped her on to her seat and then watched as the van pulled away from us.

As we opened the door back into our apartment we began to feel emptiness. Our home was still crowded with all the furniture we use every day, its kitchen cabinets and fridge stocked with food and the TV still warm. Yet the silence felt odd. There were no toddlers fighting for toys on the play mat, no Penny trying to climb up the staircase boldly on her own and no Disney Junior music blasting in the background. I felt I missed them already. Then my mind went back to just 3 years ago. Just 3 years ago, we didn’t yet have Fighter and Penny. It was just Shorty and me at home and the house felt complete. Back then I couldn’t imagine what it was like to have kids running around the house. Now I don’t want to ever imagine not having them run around the house.

I held Shorty in one arm and I told her she will enjoy these two days. That once in a while it’s good to have some time alone and focus not on being a mom, but on being a person.That’s the odd thing about having kids. When they’re around we feel obligated to spend as much time as we can with them. We plan our own schedules around their nap or school times and we get used to interrupted personal time whenever they’re awake. As parents we embrace these new responsibilities and the new realities of life but sometimes it helps to get away. It helps to unwind, to have a meal without worrying about feeding the kids, to walk around a mall without worrying about any of them missing their nap time and to have conversations without being interrupted with a “mommy mommy mommy”.

When the kids left, something hit me. Fighter who would normally cry buckets when we left took it very well. He didn’t shed one tear. It’s almost as if he felt he needed some time away from mommy and daddy too. That made us a little sad at first, some sort of an empty nest feeling but perhaps he needs his space too, even at a young age.

I think this weekend is really going to pass by real quick. I think my full time mom of a wife is going to enjoy it but the best part of all is that I know when we reunite in a couple of days, my little family will be really happy to see one another.

After 10 years of Mac, I went back to Windows again and this is how it felt

Posted on March 22, 2016 admin

I remember when I bought my first Mac almost 10 years ago. This was a picture I took with it then. My younger self.

It was a leap of faith from an OS that I was comfortable with at the time (Windows) to one that I had to learn from scratch again. As a first time Mac user I had a bit of a learning curve, like trying to figure out why all my photos were under iPhoto and where were the original photos I could just take out and save on a hard drive.

I’ve been an avid Mac user ever since. Well apart from my home Windows based PC that I use mostly for games. Work wise though it’s been Mac all the way for me.

In the past year though I’ve been paying a lot more attention to Microsoft. I gotta admit that the hype behind Satya Nadella taking over as CEO did have an effect on that. Then I started reading about Windows 10 which many tech journalists say was the best Windows in a decade.

Just about that time, Microsoft Malaysia reached out to me. They knew I was a Mac user but they didn’t want to sell me anything or get me to promote them. They only wanted me to try the new Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office 365 and if I liked it, then they would collaborate with me.

If not then we shake hands and go our own way. That approach rang well with me because I only like really promoting products that I believe in.

Here’s how my first week went: It was PAINFUL!

Remember that learning curve I had 9 years ago when I shifted from Windows to Mac? Well I experienced that learning curve once again. It wasn’t as bad because Windows is fairly straight forward, but there were things that I knew how to do on Mac in the blink of an eye but had to Google up how to do it on Windows.
I had also had problems with Outlook. I couldn’t send out emails for some reason. My Surface Pro spent half a day with my tech team before we ended up being able to solve that problem but right after that I had another problem….
I ran into a problem where I couldn’t visit any Google sites. Not Google, not Gmail, not YouTube. I never realised how much I depended on Google sites. I Googled the Google problem (Lol) and I realised the problem was that my PC’s clock wasn’t in sync. So I corrected it and problem solved.

I gotta admit that I think after the pain I had in the first week, most people might have considered giving up but I pushed on and I’m glad I did it.

After the first week: JOY!

Once I had got to the point where I started feeling at home with Windows again, here’s how I felt:

Windows 10 really is awesome. It’s quick, intuitive and there were many little things that used to annoy me with the old Windows that have been fixed. For example, in the previous versions of Windows the search bar is practically useless. Type a term in there and it’ll take an hour before it completes its search. Now it’s a live search. Really like Spotlight in Mac.
Office 365 works better on Windows. Microsoft’s mission is to advocate you using Office 365 on whatever OS you’re on so I use Office 365 on Mac too but the experience somehow feels better to me on Windows.
Outlook is finally great. There used to be a time when I wouldn’t use Outlook even on my Windows PC. It was slow, crashed a lot and just really complicated to use. The new Outlook works much better and I now use it as my primary email client on my PC.

I wasn’t the only one to experience all this of course. Microsoft got me and another 25 colleagues of mine on to Office 365. The thing that I liked the most was this:

With the smartphone today we start doing more and more things on our phones. We chat with friends on our phones, we take photos and yes we increasingly do more and more work on our phones.

Work on the phone is often a fragmented experience because while we can view Office documents on the go, we can’t edit them. Why? Because our phones didn’t have Microsoft Office on them. The licenses we bought were all for PCs.

I thought this was one of the biggest opportunities in technology. Understanding that people now connect to the internet not through one device anymore but through multiple devices. Once we understand that, doesn’t it make sense that our software licenses shouldn’t be tied to a device anymore but tied to a person?

That’s what Office 365 does

I have been on Office 365 for 2-3 weeks now at the time of writing and it has deeply changed the way I work (I also happened to move the blog you’re reading now to Microsoft’s new Cloud Service called Azure and it’s been great).

Let me break my working on devices into two categories (and I would imagine most of us have similar experiences):

1) Reading and communicating

This is done mostly on my mobile phone. I check emails, reply them and have work conversations on the phone or on some chat apps.

Some emails come with Office files that I think needs correcting but I can’t do it because without Office on my phone, I can only view but not edit. So what I do is I make a mental note to edit that file when I get back to a computer. With a limit on how much I can do on my phone, I don’t maximize my productivity on the times that I work on my mobile.

2) Reading and doing

This is when I get back to the computer and a flush of work comes in at the same time. This is work that has piled up on me from the things that I saw on my phone earlier that I couldn’t act on then to new emails coming in that need attention.

The thing about Office 365 is that I have on license now that gives me access to Office on ALL my devices. So I can do 1) and 2) irregardless of which devices I’m from. This increases the capacity in which I can work at all times and hence my productivity.

Let me give you a real life scenario.

I’m in the car on the way to a client presentation. I have my phone open going through the slides, mentally rehearsing what I need to present when I see a spelling mistake in the slide. It’s a tiny mistake but tiny mistakes like this make the entire slide look unprofessional. So in order to edit it, I have to message one of my colleagues to ask him or her to change that slide and then send me the revised version again.

With Office 365 though, all I do is open up the slide on my phone’s Powerpoint App. And then change it there and then. Save it on to the cloud (One Drive or whatever you use although it makes sense to use One Drive since it comes with Office 365) and done.

Now that I have Office 365 on all my computers, I can avoid bringing a laptop to the office and home. At the office I can just work on my laptop and then save it there. When I get home I turn on my desktop and pick up where I left off.

The thing that Office 365 gives me is that it solves the fragmentation problem of multiple devices when it comes to work. What it gives my team is deeper collaboration with the cloud storage that comes with it (One Drive), conference call tools like Skype for Business and Calendar syncing like Outlook.

If you’re a business owner or are looking for a very fluid experience at work, I’d give Office 365 a shot. I do know however that business owners are bound to have some questions so I’m going to answer them with my own experiences in the next entry.

In the mean time if you haven’t already upgraded your Windows to Windows 10, quickly go claim your free upgrade before the offer ends in July 2016. I’m on Windows 10 and it’s awesome. Small things like in the older Windows, in order to search for something your OS would have to index it all. Now it searches instantly when you type it in the search bar. There’s even an innovation when it comes to unlocking your laptop or device called Windows Hello. Just look at the camera and Windows recognizes you and signs you in.

I gotta admit that with Satya Nadella coming in as the new CEO of Microsoft, I’ve seen a whole wave of change. Not just in the quality of the products that have rolled out since but the way in which Microsoft approaches things. How often did you see Microsoft giving away free upgrades in the past?

I’m glad I stepped out of my comfort zone to try out the full Office 365 experience. As entrepreneurs or business owners we gotta do that sometimes. Step out of our comfort zones to try something different so we can stay ahead. I’m not saying throw away the Mac (heck I still use my Mac every now and then), what I’m saying though is try things.

If you’d like to try out Office 365 you can go here and sign up. Free trials are available so you can try it out before you pay for it.

Kyoto

Posted on March 17, 2016 admin

Hello everyone

You haven’t seen much updates this week in this space because I’m in Kyoto for a family holiday. When I’m traveling I find that something like Dayre or Snapchat seems to capture the day a bit better than on my blog here so I don’t have much to update.

So allow me to rest this week and enjoy Kyoto. It’s been a wonderful week so far (not one entirely without work) with the family. I love Kyoto. It’s such a beautiful place. I told my Dad that we should make this trip every year as long as we can.

Anyway check out my Dayre here for more updates on Kyoto. And my videos from Snapchat that I upload on my YouTube channel.

Until then have a great day ahead.

How to Experience Car Racing in KL Without Getting in Trouble

Posted on March 14, 2016 admin

This article is in collaboration with Shell

I think Formula 1 racing is so popular because it combines two things that men (and some women) love. Speed and competition. That’s why every time, after we walk out of the cinema from watching Fast & Furious, we sit in our car and daydream of what could be.

Unfortunately, not everyone has the opportunity to own a fast car. Some of us have budgets that we have to keep within or some have bigger considerations when buying a car. Like, whether or not it can fit a baby chair or whether or not the wife would approve of it.

The good news is that there are other safer ways to experience the speed, adrenaline and energy that comes with racing (no, I’m not talking about night racing) .

1) Rent a Ferrari

As a kid growing up, I’ve always wanted to own a Ferrari. I never really understood the difference between owning and driving. The benefits of driving one was clear. There’s the sound of the engine, the speed or just how damned good you look in one.

Owning on the other hand is something else altogether. As an adult, I learned that owning something doesn’t mean just enjoying it. Owning comes with the burden of taking care of it. Keeping it clean, servicing it and sending it to the workshop if something breaks down. Oh, and did I mention the hefty bill that comes with every workshop visit?

There is another way. You can rent one.

A few years ago I went to an Extreme Racing circuit in Las Vegas. There I got to drive a number of cars around a race track; a Ferrari 458 and a Lamborghini Gallardo to name a couple. I got to push some of the fastest road cars to its limit on the race track and I learned that the 458 handles much, much better than the Gallardo.

In KL, there are a few services that let you do similar things. Yep, you can really rent a Ferrari in KL for a day. To name a couple of companies that do that, check out here and here. Or you can check out Red Ribbon Days for them too.

They typically cost RM6-7K per day, which is a lot more expensive than what I paid for in the US, but I guess it’s because it’s cheaper to run on the race track than to go out on the road. Plus the fact that the cars are a lot more expensive in Malaysia than in the US.

2) Go for a drifting experience

One of the other things I did at the Extreme Racing circuit in Las Vegas was to get into a car with a professional drifter. My first impressions were poor. He was driving me in some beat up Corvette and I thought come on… how quick can this go?

Then he revved up and the following 2 minutes felt like 20 minutes to me. As the car attacked turn after turn, I was swung from side-to-side and if I wasn’t so busy scared of hitting a wall, I would’ve felt the urge to projectile vomit.

It felt like a roller coaster… but in a car. Again, you can get this from Ken Leong’s Drift School or Speed City in KL. If you want to take it a step further, you can even take a drifting class and learn how to do it yourself, starting at RM60 per driver.

3) Go for extreme driving lessons

In KL, there is this thing called extreme driving lessons where they teach you how to drive in extreme situations. Rather than just racing, it actually teachers you how to be a better driver and avoid accidents.

You can find out more details in courses like this at the School of Advanced Motoring Principles.

4) Bring your own car to Sepang for Track Day

I have a couple of friends that regularly bring their cars to Sepang to race around the track. It typically costs RM300 per session, but it’s subject to availability because they get a lot of demand.

You can check out the Sepang Circuit Official Website for more info.

One thing to take note is that they often tell me that every time they go, they find the need to completely change all their tires. So prepare for that bill at the end of that thrill.

5) You could pump up your car with Formula 1 fuel

Shell, with its 120 scientists and specialists around the world, has a high-quality fuel from its performance segment called Shell V-Power Racing. This top performance fuel was made from Shell’s learnings on the Formula 1 race track with Shell V-Power race fuel, which contains 99% of the compounds typically used in Shell V-Power Racing. The fuel is developed with its Technical Partners at Scuderia Ferrari and delivers maximum performance and protection benefits such as its Friction Modifier Technology (FMT). FMT is used in race fuel for Formula 1 cars and is designed to reduce friction by introducing a surface coating component, which protects critical engine parts. This makes for a more efficient energy transfer from the fuel to the wheels.

Although Formula 1 fuel is one of the most tightly controlled fuels in the world, you can now get a feel of it in your car with Shell V-Power Racing. It is actual Formula 1 fuel and this is something many people don’t realize about Shell V-Power Racing even though it has been in the market for over 10 years now.

I’ve used Shell V-Power Racing for my Audi TTS and it feels noticeably different. The car accelerates much quicker and smoother. And if you drive a performance car, some people have told me that the only fuel you should be pumping is Shell V-Power Racing because it takes better care of your engine. In any case, performance car or not, if you’re looking for a better driving experience in your car, you can find it in a better fuel like Shell V-Power. For more details about the fuel, read more about it here or check out the full list of stations offering Shell V-Power Racing and try it out for yourself.

The Tiah Family photoshoot with One Way Tix

Posted on March 11, 2016 admin

Last week Shorty organized a photoshoot for the family with One Way Tix.

One Way Tix is this great photographer that sponsored our pre-wedding shoot and offered to do a family photo shoot for us. The best thing about One Way Tix is their ability to find the props needed to fit whatever theme we wanted. They did it so well for our wedding photos and now with our family photo shoot you’ll see the great job they did.

Here are some of my favorite photos they took that day.

Credit to my wife. I would never remember to plan a family photoshoot and sometimes I dread photoshoots but I’m glad she did.

Shorty also has a video of our family photo shoot so you can check it out here.

3 Tech Giants that cannibalized themselves before someone else did

Posted on March 8, 2016 admin

This article is in collaboration with Microsoft and this blog is hosted on Microsoft Azure.

One of Steve Jobs’ most famous quote was “If you don’t cannibalize yourself, someone else will“. In line with this thought, he released the iPhone knowing full well that it might cannibalize the sales of the iPod or the iPad knowing that it might cannibalize the sales of their Macbooks.

I thought this was a really powerful thought but a thought that is harder to execute than it looks for various reasons. The biggest reason of all though is fear. The fear that we might cannibalize an already profitable revenue stream for a new one that has an unknown outcome.

With this in mind I looked around for other tech giants apart from Apple that have cannibalized themselves and I managed to find it in 3 companies.

Netflix

Netflix first started in 1997 as a mail order DVD business. It did away with the traditional pay-per-rental model and introduced a monthly subscription concept in 1999 that allowed customers unlimited rentals with no due dates or late fees.

The company had done well and in 2000 offered itself for sale to DVD rental giant Blockbuster for $50 million. An offer that Blockbuster declined.

By 25th February 2007, Netflix had grown to deliver its billionth DVD. With the emergence of the internet, Netflix foresaw the opening of a new horizon for its DVD rental business that came in the form of online video streaming.

The company in 2008 decided to pursue the streaming business model and by 2010 had reached a five-year deal worth almost a billion dollars to stream films from major Hollywood studios Paramount Pictures, Lions Gate Entertainment and MGM,

Today we all know Netflix not as a mail order DVD rental company, but as the largest video streaming service for movies and TV shows.

Netflix today has 75 million subscribers globally. The effect on its DVD rental business can be seen from this one chart from their company report.

In retrospect though, Netflix cannibalized its DVD rental business but is as a whole a much larger business (with a market cap of $40 billion) than it was before. It’s once largest competitor in the DVD rental business Blockbuster is on the other hand closing stores at a fast rate.

2. Tencent

In December 2010, Tencent was already one of the most valuable internet companies in the world. Its QQ messenger had almost 650 million users making it the largest platforms in the world at the time. By 2011, the CEO and founder Pony Ma had launched what might potentially kill its own successful messenger app.

QQ messenger was the equivalent of MSN messenger at the time. It was a staple for all China internet users but there was one problem: It was desktop based in a world that was moving to mobile. Tencent quickly launched WeChat, its mobile focused chat app with so much success that it eventually led to internal struggles between the two apps for resources.

By 2015, WeChat had grown to the number one chat app in China with over 600 million monthly active users. The interesting part about this story is that QQ’s growth didn’t decline. It reported over 829 million active QQ accounts in 2015.

3. Microsoft

It’s amazing to think that Microsoft that was founded in 1975 will be 41 years old this year. The company Bill Gates has founded today has annual revenues of over $95 billion and a market cap of almost $400 billion, making it still one of the largest tech companies in the world.

Microsoft is a software company and for most of its life it sold software the old fashion way. By selling individual licenses tied to a computer or a device. For the first time in its 41 year history though, the world around it is changing to more cloud based software and Microsoft is embracing that change.

Satya Nadella became Microsoft CEO in 2014 and has since led the company to change from top to bottom. Here’s what he has done:

i) Focusing on the consumer

Satya realized that customers use products that they love so in order for people to use Microsoft products, they had to make products people would love. The result of that can be seen in Windows 10 which most tech journalists have reviewed and said it is the best Windows in a long long time. I personally use Windows 10 on my home desktop and it really feels like what you wished Windows always was.

ii) Making peace with rivals

For much of its history, Microsoft was a very competitive company. Competitive to the extent that it often saw competitors as a threat than as potential collaborators. CEO Satya brought in a different view. He believes that today’s business environment favours cooperation with rivals like Apple and Google.

Since then he has released Office for the iPad and Android devices as well as free Outlook for both of these competing platforms. To take it a step further, at a Microsoft hosted developer conference in 2014, Grant Peterson used an iPhone to showcase an iPhone document-signing app that runs on Microsoft’s cloud: Azure. (The cloud service that my blog is also hosted on now).

I love this quote from this Business Insider article on Satya.

Nadella has been making the point that using another company’s technology, even in public, shouldn’t matter. He wants Microsoft to build software, development tools, and cloud services that work with all the popular devices, iOS and Android included.

That’s a big shift in Microsoft’s culture, and a smart one.

iii) Microsoft changed the revenue model of Office 365 from selling licenses per device to selling them per user

Coming back to the point of this article, this is where I believe Microsoft risks cannibalizing itself. Microsoft’s old business model was to sell software licenses tied to devices. Considering that we live in a world where we no longer have just one device but many (our PCs, laptops, tablets and phones) it would be a great opportunity for Microsoft to sell more licenses right?

That’s not what Microsoft has done with Office 365. Focusing again on the user experience, Microsoft knows that users want to pay one fee for software and use it on whatever device they want to. They know that if a user has Office 365 on his laptop but not on his phone, he doesn’t have a full Office 365 experience. He has a very fragmented and limited one that limits productivity.

I’m not sure how this gamble will pay off for Microsoft as a company when it comes to profitability but as a user I love it. I’ve been on Office 365 now for a month and it’s great to be able to use Office on my Windows 10 PC/Surface, my MacBook and even my Huawei Android phone. I am now able to do things I never could do before, like edit a Powerpoint on my phone slide while on the way to a meeting.

I think we’re seeing a whole new Microsoft now and I’m looking forward to the products this new Microsoft will introduce to us in the coming years.

Timothy Tiah – Co-Founder of Colony, Kuala Lumpur Co-Working Space

Subscribe to the mailing list to get updates on new articles and giveaways that I may get from brands. I promise no spam!