Resident Contributor, wonderdoggy (aka Der Shing, JobsCentral) posted a lengthy comment in response to fellow resident contributor, Aaron Chua’s article, “4 Issues With Singapore Startups”. We decided it was too good to be left sitting in the comments and have decided to republish it as an article.

Der Shing writes:

Interesting article from MDA point of view. I interpret the 4 points as follows :

a) instinctive business sense
b) ambition & scalability
c) win win partnerships
d) internal capability (manpower, ops & sales)

Here is my personal POV on the 4 based on my experience running a not-ambitious enough internet business :)

(A) Instinctive Business Sense

We learned through trial and error what works and i learn alot by reading very widely about other businesses. Personally I read economist, INC, Wired, NYTimes, Fortune weekly. I am rather obsessive and i actually try to count the revenue of restaurants/businesses i deal with. Just as a fun exercise. I am constantly benchmarking against competitors within and outside industry.

Most entrepreners i know have this tendency. I am sure for IDM guys it should be no different.

(B) Ambition & Scalability

This is where I think I failed. When I started up in 2000, i told myself $1M turnover would be great. You usually feel this way when you are struggling to just sell $2-5K packages. When we hit that , we said $1M profit would be great. When we hit that, we aim to do $20M turnover and have an option to list.

By the writer’s standard, i think we are damn unambitious and actually i think I agree. Problem is that we benchmark ourselves against local firms and local compensation. So earning $1+M a year profit is like any CEO already right? So not bad. But when we compare with top global or even regional internet firms, we are quite lacking.

One thing to note here though…. we are creepingly getting more ambitious. Maybe once we hit $20M , we will aim for 100M, then we are in the bigger leagues? So it is possible to be lacking in ambition in the beginning and slowly gain it as you can see a clearer path to growth. So not all people need start with world beating ambitions? Likewise, I think there will be many that are content with profit of $1M year in year out. Still creating jobs, still adding value…

(C) Win-win Partnerships

Yes, many people are very cautious about partnerships and letting others know too much. I think the caution is usually unfounded except when dealing with adjacent entities. Then it pays to be a little more long sighted and careful. But agree with the writer, in the first 3 years, partner all you like, its so touch and go anyway.

(D) Internal Capability (Manpower, Ops & Sales)

Actually this point is similar to point c. Need to trust and bring in the right skill sets. Give/Sell them equity if need be to retain. It pays off. But make sure personality and common understanding is there, otherwise can be a recipe for conflict in future.

Generally, i have met quite a few web 2.0 guys. I think the problem is tenaciousness. Few players stay in a business long enough to learn thru trial and error and to make money. Many Egos are too big too. It takes time to build a revenue stream from a new business model, so give it time and be willign to make effort and changes. See the Battlestations guys, they worked quite hard and long and experimented with so many platforms. But even then, i am curious if facebook can be big bucks. $40K a month as revenue (not profit) is not a lot.

Other IDM guys with tenaciousness include Mikoishi, hungrygowhere, sgcarmart, cozycot, propertyguru and I am sure many more i missed out.

Photo courtesy of goa_entranced.

wonderdoggy aka Der Shing Lim is a first time entrepreneur in Singapore and is currently focused on JobsCentral. Started company after 8 months of working life as a GLC scholar. Passionate about living fully and very interested in marketing, internet, retail, F&B businesses. He believes that working sucks and entrepreneurship is just the least evil among all types of work.

Recently, Isaac Timothy T wrote an analysis of a gap in market need which current solutions have failed to provide for: online search for hotel accommodation in Singapore. Inspired by that entry, our other resident contributor, Der Shing, offers some interesting questions on how the metasearch framework can be extended to online advertising as a whole.

Contributed by Der Shing

Was inspired by a hotel meta search site I found recently thanks to a link from sgentrepreneurs blog. I am curious what readers think of meta search engines. I understand the problem they seek to face. That is to say, too many sources of information, no single site that can be a good starting point etc etc. But I have thought quite hard about this and I cannot see how meta search will work without becoming like the very search engines they seek to replace. I say so based on what I can see in the jobs classifieds space which is my area.

I know there have been quite a few meta search sites on jobs. You have recruitnet, newchinacareers, indeed, simplyhired etc. They have crawlers which visit employer and online job boards to gather jobs and post it on their site. I suppose they have some intelligence to remove duplicate postings. They are usually with a clean interface which uses AJAX in some way. All that is fine. So assuming all that is achieved, the next step is that they need to earn money.

And so far the way they earn money is via google ads, or their own CPC or CPM ad system for job boards or employers. This is where the problems kick in. I could be missing something here, so do let me know.

Problems:

• 1) Why would any employer want to advertise with you if they know they can get on your portal simply by posting on the job board or company career site which you crawl anyway? If it is for better positioning and better location, then you will need a sales team to do the convincing of each employer in each country just like any job board. Not saying it cannot be done, but you need a sales team.
• 2) And if you do convince some employers to advertise on CPC or CPM basis, can it be significant? Do not forget HR are not marketing people. Getting them to post online was hard enough, but selling CPC and CPM which requires tracking on a not-that-huge an issue (online recruitment) may not be attractive.Also, what is to stop employers/job boards from blocking your crawler IP and/or sending legal cease/desist orders? If you are based in some other country, then it is not so bad, but as mentioned above, if you intend to sell, then you got to have some local presence.
• 3) Branding. A meta search engine branding will never be strong in each local market. Esp in SEA. And I think to sell well, you need a branding strategy per company. That means local presence and local marketing. Reason is that each country already has large incumbents spending money marketing.
• 4) Two groups to crawl from. Employers are not so bad but that means many SMEs are missing. But employers side, you run the risk of being sued or blocked, unless you get permission to crawl which can be done but is more tedious. On Job boards side, they will let you crawl for as long until you start to snatch meaningful direct employer revenue from them. Once this happens, IP blocks, lawsuits sure to follow. So if I were a metasearch, I have to do all crawling with permission. If I do not, I must be prepared to lose a chunk of jobs and handle legal issues.

So I think metasearch (for jobs at least to succeed in SEA will need to end up looking a lot like a regional job board. With sales and marketing offices in each country and a large budget to boot. The metasearch part becomes just like a marketing tool to perhaps be more viral is gathering job seekers but the work to ensure authenticity and non-duplication of jobs is quite intense. What do readers here think? If we replace jobs with hotels or some other word, is the above still relevant?

There has been a lot of activity in the online world from SPH, who recently started Mocca (an EBay clone) and ST701 (a search engine clone). Our resident contributor, Der Shing, one of our resident contributors and co-founder of JobsFactory, provides an overview about how the online classified battles are heating up in Singapore.

Contributed by Der Shing

There has been a lot written on new internet businesses based on concepts like social networking, aggregation, mash ups etc. Singapore too has seen its fair share of such businesses but I think I am right to say that they are still very nascent and I do not know of any local ones with meaningful revenues. Except maybe xiaxue which is an excellent spunky site!

However, I do see a large battle coming up in the online classifieds space. See the number of online classifieds mass media ads running – ST701, Mocca, JobsDB, Jobstreet, JobsCentral, Monster etc. I predict much more to come.

I have always felt this space warrants attention but so far few players have come in to do it. Online classifieds can be very profitable even in a small city like Singapore. I estimate the whole cars, jobs, real estate, buy/sell market is worth at least S$40M this year in online classifieds alone and it is poised to grow dramatically once someones figures out how to handle more than 1 vertical at a time.

Who are the players?

• Real Estate – No clear player yet. So this space is wide open for someone to come in and make good$$.
• Jobs – 5 main players. Combined at about 15M revenue by my estimate. (monster, jobscentral, jobsdb, jobstreet, 701)
• Cars – sgcarmart, onemotoring
• Buy/sell – Mocca, Yahoo!, EBay
• Personals – Fridae, Trevvy (all Gay sites though)… where is the local large personals for straight population?

I think in the next 3 years, you will see lots more ads, lots more competition and the winner will start to emerge. Ultimately, I feel newspaper classifieds should shrink as more people see the benefits of online classifieds with its unlimited space, search engines and transactional capability. So to all the readers who are keen on internet businesses, i think online classifieds will grow at about 30% per year min. With margins of 20+%, to me it is a very attractive business.

Readers, What is your take on this?

Some web 2.0 start-ups, for example, Del.icio.us and Flickr started off as hobbies before the founders decided that it was time to commercialize them. Our resident contributor, Der Shing, one of our resident contributors and a local entrepreneur, provides some perspective on when it is time to call something a business with a recent email discussion with an NTU TIP alumnus.
Contributed by Der Shing

I have been having an email discussion back and forth with an NTU TIP alumnus and I realize that what we are talking about may be of interest to the wider community. Below is a reproduction of my email in terms of what constitutes a real business. I wrote in an earlier email that many web 2.0 efforts are not real businesses (without any negative connotation) and was asked to clarify further.

“I am a little more old school in my thinking. To me a business needs to have a clear business model. A real business as I put it, simply means a business model that has been validated by the market place or at least seems close to being validated. And validated means not just revenues (cuz anyone can spend $2 to earn $1, but it will never be profitable) but clear path to profits.

So using this definition, sites like ping.sg , sharedcopy are more of tools (really cool tools at that) but until they evolve to gather revenues and more impt show potential for profits, I would not call them a business. It is telling that I think they do not have a clear team running it full time which is a pre-requisite for any business. Not to say that down the road, they cannot gain so much traction (mindshare) and raise more money and have a full time team and grow it on the path to profits. Then I would say they have made the transistion from a cool tool to a business.

A good case would be facebook, myspace, youtube etc. Depending on when you looked at them, intiially they were cool tools, fun sites, hobbyist sites etc. Only when they started taking funds, building revenue and in youtube case, joining google, did a path to profitability appear. Then we consider them a real business. Whether sustainable long term is another question.

For Singapore, I see very little real business using the above definition. A lot of good ideas, hobby sites, cool tools but no real effort to monetize or even work full time on it. I think most high profile 2.0 example is this company called Velvet Puffin. Even though I do not like their stuff, but at least they got money, have a full time team, cut deals and are trying to make revenues and profits.

It is easy to build a site, have a cool idea and stay at that level hoping for mindshare and usage. But I think we should not fool ourselves and think it is a business. It becomes one only if there is an active plan for profits and revenue and if there is a full time mgmt team to do it. Whether self funded or otherwise does not matter.

That is why i mentioned Yum.sg , hungrygowhere, blurbme. At least they seem to have full time people working on it with marketing budget, sales packages to offer clients, etc etc. Everything which a real business has to have.”

Will appreciate comments and see if you guys agree.

While working on a business, an entrepreneur may have to create partnerships with other people or companies for different purposes. Our resident contributor, Der Shing, one of our resident contributors and a local entrepreneur, presents a basic guide to provide some advice on how to pick, manage and leverage partnerships.

Contributed by Lim Der Shing

Another topic that is much on my mind is the competitive nature of partnerships. In business, you will always have a chance to go into partnerships with other businesses. These businesses may be providing complementary services or may even be competitors. Many partnerships work spectacularly well and others are ho-hum while others are downright destructive and wreak havoc on a firm. So how does an entrepreneur choose partners and what should we look out for? I am basing the article on my personal experience and on what I observe from the market.

1) Choose partners who are much larger than you and who are in a clear complementary area with small likelihood of moving into your area.

Take for example a recent startup specializing in loyalty cards. Partnering with a big credit card owner would make sense. The danger of partnering equal size or smaller firms it that they will be as cost conscious as you are and not as generous when need be. See point 3 on give and take.

As for competitive firms, you will always be wary of them and of sharing. A surefire way to disaster.

2) Spell out as much detail in the partnerships as possible.

It will be painful but spell out scope of work for each partner. Spell out pricing, roles and responsibilities, termination clauses, compensation clauses, cost of partnered services, clauses for amendments etc etc. This will prevent pain later down the road when expectations of partners do not meet.

3) Give and Take

Partnerships are inherently competitive even for complementary companies. It is tempting to always just think for your side’s benefit, but if you want it to last and be mutually beneficial, you will need to give sometimes.

4) Partnerships are not meant to last forever

After some time, even in the best partnerships, there will be frays and problems. Maybe your company’s visions have gone separate ways, maybe personalities do not match. Whatever the reason, you must know when to end partnerships. It is best to end them when you are strongest as you can then find ways to replace that partnership. For example, if you have been relying on a third party for marketing, build alternate marketing channels so that the loss of the partnership is not a big deal.

Never let a partnership outlive its usefulness. You may find yourself stuck with a useless binding agreement that will only hold you back.

Of course, if you look at the top 100 brands last year in Business Week, none of the Asian ones was on the list. Branding has only just begun in Asian business culture. Our resident contributor, Der Shing, one of the winners in the Spirit of Enterprise 2006, will discuss the importance of branding for startups and how to sustain the kind of branding not just by setting up a portal alone.

Contributed by Lim Der Shing

Thought I will share my experience about branding and the importance of building your own brand. In hindsight and for some of you, this may seem to be very obvious. However, I think for startups struggling to make ends meet, having revenue perhaps matters more than having your brand but low revenue. Let me elaborate.

I notice that quite a lot of service firms in Singapore leverage on their partner/client’s brands to deliver what is essentially their product. For example, magazine industry has lots of contract magazine publishers who will do the artwork, editorial, sales, printing etc for a big brand. They get paid a fixed fee and a variable depending on sales. They may even get to keep all sales and no fixed fee. However end of the day, the brand is not theirs. So all effort put into building it goes to naught. Krisflyer, AA magazine, AlumNUS etc, anyone knows who actually does all the work?

A similar situation can be found in dot commers. Many dot commers get distracted. They start with a great idea. Job Portal, Food Review, some Web2.0 stuff, but when they built their prototype, it takes a long time to grow it. Along comes an appreciative client who asks them to customize something and build and maintain it for them. Most startups will take it, cuz it generates some $$. But as time goes by, the client’s site and brand is the one who grows strong. And all efforts spent improving it goes to the client not yours.

What I am driving at is that while it is important to do adhoc work and skills related work (design, editorial, IT contracting), never lose sight of your core business plan. Of course, unless your business is to be a contract service provider! At the first chance, use all revenue to grow your brand and strengthen your own position.

A good example is Shareinvestor.com. Their clients came to them to do online IR pages. They made it into a core service and integrated it with their forum and investor information offerings. Now they are pretty dominant in Singapore in their niche market worth easily 3-4M a year.

The Singapore economy is moving back to the boom phase again. How does a real life entrepreneur view Singapore’s prospects in the next few years? Der Shing, our resident contributor and a real-life entrepreneur, discusses his thoughts on Singapore’s prospects as the year 2006 draws to a close.

Want to share my thinking on Singapore’s prospects. I actually feel very positive about Singapore for the next 3 years. I started my business in 1999 and went through some really down times all the way until 2004. And for 04,05,06, I could sense Singapore riding a huge wave of growth and optimism. I believe this wave will continue until end 2008 or 2009 at the very least. Here are the everyday signs.

1. 1. Property market surging on high end and select areas. I think over next 2 years, we will see trickle down to middle class housing and condos.
2. 2. Stock market at all time highs about to breach 3000.
3. 3. Go to any mall or shopping centre. People are buying and they are all very crowded.
4. 4. Employment market very tight. Bonuses and wages will be higher this year.

Personally, I know most SMEs who are service line or high tech are doing very well. At least 30-50% growth this year with strong projections for next year.

And going forward, here are the factors which will continue to drive this momentum.

1. 1. Trickle down effect not in full force yet.
2. 2. IRs and a construction and property boom with even more trickle down effect.
3. 3. Singapore’s reasonably successful move to diversify our economy. Our firms are doing better overseas now.
4. 4. Continued boom in high end service/product. Singapore’s cementing as a private wealth hub.

The downsides?

1. a) Disparity between rich and poor will only widen.
2. b) Disparity between middle class (sandwich group) and top earners will only widen.
3. c) We must ensure that as we pursue $$ and growth, we do not disenfranchise our less educated and less fortunate citizens. Otherwise, not only is it ethically wrong, we are creating future social and political problems.

Case in point, I know a early 30s year old who is riding the entrepreneurship wave, his family earns a yearly income of $400-500K. Same as any IB friend or admin service friends of his. His peers who did not ride the wave are still doing decently. They are professionals/ graduates who have worked 6-7 years. Their families earn $100K a year. Those friends will naturally seriously have some envy issues. But that is still ok, since all are doing well.

How about his cohort peers who are not educated (O levels, ITEs) and working in manufacturing lines. Their families are earning 30K annually. Not much saving here already. Go one step down to those who for some reason could not complete studies, and the picture becomes dismal.

I know the government is acutely aware of this issue and is moving to do more even as they encourage the growth of the high end side. But sometimes I think the trickle down effect is very slow and perceptions need to be managed very well. My two cents. Comments from anyone?

We hear the success stories of YouTube and HardwareZone recently in the mainstream media. It also raises the debate on whether Singaporeans are capable of creating our own YouTube. Our resident contributor, Der Shing will examine three key pertinent features that are required for building a successful, innovative and sustainable company like YouTube.

Contributed by Lim Der Shing

I have been reading with interest about the recent debate in Singapore about whether we will ever produce our own YouTube type of company. Here is my take of the issue. I will confine my discussion to just dotcom type of companies since that is the area I believe I am qualified to comment on.

To be brief, I believe it is difficult but not impossible for a local startup to duplicate what YouTube has done. That is to say, gather tremendous momentum over a relatively short few years and sell out to a larger firm for a world class payout. That means companies like my own – JobsFactory, Hardwarezone, Shareinvestor are all out of our league. 7.1M give or take 5M is not a world class, attention grabbing payout.

Here are some factors I believe are most important. Many have been debated before.

1) Size of market and relevance of local content.

Sad to say, this is a very real problem. Singapore market is way too small and SE Asia is too non-homogenous for effective economies of scale, even online. The way I see it, this is the major obstacle for any wannabe YouTube based in Singapore. Even the big names that succeed in USA find it tough to penetrate a non-english market easily even with cash and brand. Ebay failed in Japan, Google is losing to Baidu in China etc. Even between USA and Europe, there is difficulty.

So I believe for a firm to succeed in Singapore, the concept has to be deceptively simple. Ala google style such that is does not require too much localization across the regions and more importantly, it has to be built for the big markets like USA or China. And you will probably need to start with one or the other since language and styles are so different. Chinese sites are messy with loads of flashing banners which US visitors hate.

A good local example is wholivesnearyou.com. I think it is a wonderful local site with great traffic. I estimate they are doing 5-10M page views per month which is very decent for a local site. They are very web 2.0 and very community led. However, it looks too local to me and obviously is focusing on local market.

2) Lack of vision or rather a different vision for local startups

Most entrepreneurs in Singapore do not have a vision to be a YouTube. I think our vision is to grow a good business, impact people in a good way and make good money. It is not to change the entire world. Again, I think most people in the world are like that. Americans, China PRCs are different, by default of their market size and population, doing well in their market, means conquering half the world already. Frankly, I feel there is nothing wrong with being happy and contented with what we have.

One other observation I have is that many who do have world beating dreams are usually very very young startups who seriously have not done anything significant with their company. Once their company has some success, I think the environment conspires to reduce the scope of their dreams.

We have exceptions of course, Ron Sim, Sim Wong Hoo, Wong Peng Kin are good cases to learn from.

3) Lack of access to good quality funds.

Even if a firm overcomes the above two and has a great product or service which is global in outlook focusing on one of the major markets that has scale. And the firm has a strong founding team with brains, strategic prowess and management depth, they will still need money to make it all work. Now, frankly if a company has such traction in a major overseas market, then I believe they will get funding from valley investors rather than local ones.

The above 3 factors to me are the most pertinant in the discussion. There are of course others I am sure. So does that mean we have no hope? On the contrary I believe we do have hope, it is just that we are against a gradient. So if any company does succeed, I truly applaud them.

Some examples which I think can have hope? The characteristics I venture to guess will be as follows :

• Built with a larger market in mind. Either China or USA. But business can be based in Singapore for development, taxation, IP etc purposes.
• Web 2.0 community led concept. Spread like wildfire across the targeted market. May not even be known in Singapore. Probably focused on young. Esp since young are slightly more homogenous across the world thanks to cross cultural influences.
• Simple software and at least American standard designs and branding. Many local sites (mine included) are not up to standard still. We have basic grammatical errors, branding not looked into etc.
• World class credentials from management team. Sorry guys, but I do not think a couple of fresh graduates will make it unless they are from Stanford, MIT or harvard, or maybe IIT, Bei Da, Oxbridge. Pedigree attracts pedigree. It’s a fact. There are exceptions of course, but I am taking an educated projection here.
• Funding from similarly well known firms. Perkin, Sequoia etc.

Comments?

Once you have stablized the first phase of your startup, you will need to look for a proper office. Our resident contributor, Der Shing draws his experience about moving the company office from place to place and shares his thoughts about the value of matching office environment to company growth.

When I started out, two of us worked out of my room. I felt no compulsion to wake up on time and probably worked about 4 hours a day. Fortunately, this phase lasted only 6 months and I knew we had to go to a proper office. So home office is not something that works for me.

Next office was in Golden Mile Complex. For those in the know, this is one of the crappiest place with red light district downstairs and regular robberies and murders. We lasted 1 year there and increased from 2-man show to 6-man show. But secretly, we were amazed whenever a new person joined us as we cannot conceive why a young degree/dip grad would want to join us. Maybe we were very persuasive :) Anyway, during this phase of startup, we had DIY PCs and hand-me-down furnishing too.

Personally, I was extremely motivated and the less-than-ideal surroundings made me feel even more determined to crawl out of it. However for staff, it was a tough place to be. No one likes to say they work in an old buiiding with prostitutes downstairs.

Next office was at phase z.ro tech park, a bright yellow colour container place. We thought it was heaven. We stayed 5 years and it saw us grow from 6-man team to 18-man team, taking more office space as we grew. Still a very scrappy environment. Miles ahead of golden mile but still not a proper office in most sense of the word. Clients and interviewees would joke that we work in containers, so we took to saying it first.

My people were happier here though none were from the golden mile days. Personally, i still felt very “startup” and the lack of facilities and leaky roof and floor made us feel more determined to do well.

Last month, we moved to Science park. We now have 21 staff and intend to grow past 40 staff here. Finally a normal office with recept area. And guess what, I noticed that my colleagues seem happier here and it is more professional feeling. So a nicer office does make a difference! But for me, I feel as though more things are expected of us now. The scrappy feeling is diminished and we now actually have our own meeting room and storage rooms. Feeling more corporate and more part of the scene.

Next step? If we grow past our 40 staff and hence $5M mark, then I think a even larger office is in order. What next? A city office with a view? What will we be doing then? Probably more HR, Strategy, Finance stuff. No more feeling like an underdog. I wonder…

What are the aspirations of an entrepreneur? Drawing from the experiences from his recent stint in a local conference, our resident contributor, Der Shing discusses about his aspirations and what he looks for as a challenge as an entrepreneur.

Recently, it seems that God is trying to tell me something.

1. I was a speaker and career panelist for Confluence 06 (for overseas students to speak to Teo Chee Hian and others) and had to speak to 200+ undergraduates on my experience in business and my aspirations.
2. My company is helping EDB with a web site called Aspirations which is focused on providing career information to students.

In both, the word “Aspirations” kept hitting me and got me thinking about what I wanted to do in life. I think most people would agree with me that we do not want to settle for a life less than exciting.

As entrepreneurs, people sometimes think that all we want to do is grow our business. For me personally, that is definitely not true by now. In fact, I see my “aspiration” as one whereby I am challenged daily but in a way that is not just mental but also physical and spiritual. And yet at the same time, I do not want to always be challenged. Sometimes, I just want to kick back, chill out and play with my kids, wife or just laze. Other times, I am so inspired by nature, I want to scuba dive the pacific islands or walk the appalachian trails.

I wonder how other entreprenuers who are above 40 can plug away at the same task for a lifetime. Sheer one-dimensional passion? Lack of imagination of another type of life? What is the motivating factor that drives and more importantly satisfies? I examine some that I know thrill me.

1. Intellectual challenge. This has always been fun for me. Whether it is the satisfaction of thinking of good work flow, business model, sales pitch etc. But when I compare it to the intellectual completeness of academic thought and the wit and beauty of literary and philosophical thought, then the intellectual challenge of running a business is so much more limited in scope and untidy.
2. Physical challenge. There is an intrinsic beauty to being fit and being physically energized and challenged. I used to windsurf a lot and scuba dive. I still do a little but I think running your own business kind of occupies so much time that there is no time for the quietness that I used to enjoy with such sports.
3. Spiritual Challenge. Entreprenuership fails even more on this count. To me to play the game of running a company is to play the game of capitalism. So it is always cost benefit in the long term that matters. And frankly there is little spiritual about commerce and money.

So where do I go from here? As usual, the tedium of life will drag us down and remind us of the responsibilities we have to clients, staff and family. That is why subconsciously, I have always known I am not a true entreprenuer. I am like a pretend person, performing the role adequately but always aspiring for a deeper life. I know all about enjoying the journey while getting to the goals but it is tough to always focus when it is a fact that life as a business person is quite demanding in terms of time and energy.

Some key stuff I aspire for that will alleviate this sense of “ennui” or boredom/emptiness.

• Run a half marathon (full is too much for me).
• Make enough money to have option to quit by 35.
• Be less competitive and not benchmark material acqusitions to much with others.
• Need to sneak a trip (without kids) to some nature haven. Nepal? Tibet? …

Well.. this is the inner musing of an entrepreneur. I believe man are quite common in this respect. Some can articulate their inner thoughts, others cannot. But I would love to hear from others how each deals with this essential question.