You Teck's Blog

The Thing About Ideas… (Part 2)

Posted by You Teck - 30/05/11 at 12:05:55 am

In the previous post, I spoke about the non-existent value of an idea if it is not follow up with an execution.

An idea is only as good as the execution.

You might probably have come across the above phrase many times and it really isn’t all too hard to understand the intention of the message.

A simple explanation would be an excellent idea is never enough if it is not followed by an excellent execution. An average idea can deliver excellent result if followed by excellent execution while an excellent idea can deliver mediocre result if followed by mediocre execution.

If you got a good idea or maybe just an idea you want to work on, do yourself a favor by picking the best teammates you could ever find. A team of 2 awesome individuals beats a team of 5 mediocre individuals anytime. Baggage are excessive burden and you don’t want them when you are moving uphill.

 

Who Will You Pick?

Posted by You Teck - 29/05/11 at 04:05:53 pm

Say you were having a conversation with someone you just met and you popped the question “So what keeps you busy in your daily life?”

Developer A: I write codes for company xyz…

Developer B: I’m building a kick-ass application with company xyz…

Can you spot the difference in the class of mindset?

Taking into the consideration that both of these developers have the same level of skill, the selection as to which developer I will pick into my team couldn’ t have been more obvious. There is clearly no substitution for working with awesome individuals.

 

The Thing About Ideas… (Part 1)

Posted by You Teck - 19/05/11 at 01:05:38 pm

Ideas are highly contagious and Victor Hugo once said that “Nothing is as powerful as an idea whose time has come“.  Ideas can be extremely viral and thus powerful but they depend on a single element call execution.

An idea will never become anything more than a thought if you don’t execute it. Having 100 ideas in your head and zero execution will never triumph someone who executed the very 1 idea he/she had. Execution creates an reaction which in turn creates a momentum to bring the idea to realization.

No one talks about the guy who thought of the idea (there could be 100 other people who thought of it as well) but the guy who executed and brought the idea to realization. I have come across many people who have some cool ideas but ultimately never brought them to life.

It’s definitely a great shame because instead of having the opportunity to reap the benefits of a potentially good idea they ended being the one on the sideway saying “Yeah, I thought of that idea way before”.

If you have an idea today which you think is great and it’s within your means to bring it to life, why not give it a go and see where it will lead you to at the end of the day?

Muffins and Business

Posted by You Teck - 16/05/11 at 03:05:05 pm

Muffins are incredibly delicious pastries which can lighten up your day. I know of a particular pastry store (SG, Chinatown Smith street) that sells the kind of muffins that makes you smile after your first bite. It’s my favorite snack store and I will hardly give it a miss if I am feeling hungry or in need of some inspiration.

It was during this conversation I had with my colleague about marketing the muffins that lead me to rethink about building business in a different perspective. While I was deep in thoughts of thinking how to balance the loss of original baker’s muffin tasting against scaling growth through machinery, I was struck by an epiphany.

Having read Small Giants years before I shouldn’t really be fixated on the thought that business has to ultimately scale and grow big. At the end of the day it boils down to the business owner’s objective and the value they intend to deliver to their customers. Take for instance the case of the muffin store owner, there would never be much need to scale her muffin business through machinery if her objective was to design and create fresh made muffins by her own hands.

Certain business models are beyond growing big as that objective does not fit into that their value proposition. More often than not it is more important to figure out the business owner’s #1 objective through it’s proposed value proposition first than to think about scaling the business. If that objective has been met and it has brought joy to the owner, why complicate things by adding more complex equation to the business?

I believe this 2 Es can “Change The World”

Posted by You Teck - 19/06/08 at 05:06:54 pm

If you’ve already made a guess on what the 2 Es are, I can assure you that “Excuses” is not one of them. I would love to share with you the perils of excuses but that would be a story for another day. So, what then are the 2 “Es” that can change the world?

Well, they are “Education” and “Entrepreneurship”. Education is highly important because it gives us the knowledge to advance, to better express ourselves and ideas, and to understand the workings of our daily life. One critical aspect of education is that it gives the learner the ability to read and write.

An individual must command a certain level of literacy if he wants to improve his standard of life. Through reading, he is introduced to a very different sort of world where his imagination is free to roam. It is also through reading that he will be able to learn many new skills which he might not have encounter during the course of his life.

Imagine the excitement and curiosity a child can generate when he gain access to an intriguing book that explains the wonder of the world. He will feel that the world has so much to offer and learn despite of whatever current situation he is in.

Getting the right early education also ensures that an individual learns the right moral values on how he should treat fellow humans or any life form of that matter. When you look at some of the unrest that are happening across the globe, they are often caused by individuals who have received the wrong kind of mindset and teaching when they were young.

If there is ever one thing that is of most importance to eliminating poverty across the world, it’s definitely education.

I’m a big believer in entrepreneurship because through entrepreneurs we are able to enjoy the many new innovations and services that make our lives better that it was yesterday. More importantly, these business built by the entrepreneurs serves as the driving force of their country’s economy.

I’m sure it’s pretty much self-explanatory when we look at the effects of the 2 Es in developed country. The shift from agriculture to industrial and from industrial to information has been lead by the likes of Henry Ford, Vinod Khosla, Sir Richard Branson, and more recently Larry and Sergey.

While foreign investments are highly important, the presence of many small and big local businesses provides a much needed balance to raise the competitive levels which will in turn provide the people with more opportunities.

Entrepreneurship shouldn’t be viewed solely in the business aspects because I believe that entrepreneurship is the power of action in its rawest form. Through a series of different action acted out by the individual, he or she will gain an additional experience in leadership, resourcefulness and many other life skills. All this experiences will definitely come in useful when they serve their local community or managing their own lives.

I’m firmly believed that the key to a better future lies in the 2 Es and this is what I’m truly passionate about.

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