In Conversation with James Seng, Technology Entrepreneur and Internet Pioneer

Alpha geeks are rare, but alpha geeks with good track records as entrepreneurs are even rarer. James Seng is one of the internet pioneers in Singapore and have a successful record of several interesting internet companies and projects, for example, i-DNS.net, TechNet, PoBox (a web-based email and forwarding service used by SPH), Heroes of the Lance (a multi-player online game) and last but not least, Tomorrow.SG (an aggregator for the Singapore blogosphere). We are honoured to have him to share with his thoughts about the evolution of the IT industry dated back from the 1990s to now, his journey as an entrepreneur and finally his frank and insightful opinions about the web 2.0, business ideas and open source movement in Singapore.

BL: Hi James, thank you for accepting the interview at SG Entrepreneurs. We understand that you are one of the early internet pioneers in Singapore. Can you tell us more about what your background and what you are currently doing?
James Seng: I started (self-taught) programming when I was 8 years old. Since as a kid, I knew computer is what I want to do with my life. The first network I played with is Fidonet (a BBS network) and I started on Internet in 1993 when I entered National University of Singapore.

A young biochemistry professor, Dr. Tan Tin Wee, found me spending a lot time in the computer lab (as he does) so we started talking. Soon Dr. Tan asked me to help him in his new assignment as Head of Technet, the first and only ISP for University and R&D centers in Singapore.

Then it is a nearly a decade of wonderful years doing all projects after projects on Internet at Technet and subsequently at Internet Research and Development Unit, doing localization (first Chinese web), PostOne (first web-based Email), InfoMap (www.sg) etc.

My research work on Internationalized Domain Names (IDN) catch attention of VCs so with 24m USD investment, I went on to do a stint as the CTO of a dotcom start-up. Beside the typical business issues of running a company across multiple countries, I was doing hardcore engineering like doing standardization of IDNs as the co-chair of the IDN Working Group at IETF to softer political stuff like evangelizing and talking about IDNs at ICANN, ITU and other Internet Governance forum.

After the dotcom burst, I joined IDA as Assistant Director of Next Generation Internet and then did more stuff relating to Internet (Anti-Spam and IP Telephony to name two) and Open Source among other things.

Currently, I am doing technology and investment advisory work.

BL: In your early career, you started your career from Technet, which subsequently became Pacific Internet with a post-IPO market cap of $1B USD on Nasdaq in 1999. How was the internet market different from now? What are the major changes that has happened in the internet industry in Singapore?
James Seng: While I was one of the early adopters of Internet in Singapore, I wasn’t the pioneer batch. The folks before me include Tommy Chen and Lim Hock Koon and those working with them are the ones who brings Internet to Singapore in 1989.

That said, the industry has change a lot over the years.

When I started in 1993, you cannot join Internet unless your company is doing R&D or you are in an education institution. Most people accessing Internet are using text-based console (kermit) and the biggest thing back then was Email and Usenet. WWW appears in late 1993 but didn’t took off until Moasic come into the scene in 1994. Even then, most cannot use Mosaic until PPP was invented.

The early days was all about building infrastructure and building core technology just to use Internet.

By 1996, the focus shifted to the new hot thing called Web and everyone is doing something relating to it, be it selling toys, pet food, secondhand goods etc etc. Portal was hot for a while then it gives way to services. It was the time of innovation and many made a lot of money but even more failed and never to be heard again.

In 2002, the dotcom crashed and wipe out all those who are either unfortunate or with just bad business model. I remember visiting friends in the silicon valley then and no one talks about starting any company and everyone looking for a job or wondering how to raise money. It was a time when friends offered to sell their company for a dollar. Oh, the hottest thing then was Napster and there were whispers of people doing peer-to-peer to download not just music but *gasp* also video.

Yet despite the dotcom crash, the Internet adoption has never slowed down. The Internet users constantly growing even though stock market tanks and companies are dying. And we hit our 1st billion Internet user somewhere during christmas 2005.

Things started to get exciting again somewhere in 2004 with the new viral thing called Social Network (frienster, linkedin) and of course Blogging. Then people started to do funny stuff with Javascript using an obscure function XMLHttpRequest() and made wonderful Web application that is now known as AJAX. People started talking about the new wave of Web and in 2005, the term Web 2.0 was coined.

We are now back in this period of time where there are massive innovations (thanks to the investment in Web 2.0) and plenty of companies forming. If history is a guide, some of these new companies would make a lot of money but most will just burn and crash. But yes, this is the time to do something.

BL: As a founder of a company and CTO of the company i-DNS.net, what made you decide to start up? What are the initial challenges and difficulties you face as an entrepreneur?
James Seng: We wanted to change the world.

Before IDNs, domain names is strictly alphanumeric and dashes only. Dr. Tan keep asking why we cannot have non-English characters in domain names. There would be a huge digital divide in Asia (such as China, Japan and Korea) if English is a pre-requisite to use Internet. Not everyone learn English as early as we do in Singapore.

So we wanted to change it.

When we started, everyone said it cannot be done. So we ignored them and we developed the basic technology as a proof of concept. Then we brought that technology and did a trial across Asia-Pacific including China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Thailand and Singapore.

We brought it to Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) and that went crazy. I remember folks coming to me to shake my hand and asked me to be brave or just telling me I am crazy. We got our working group eventually. Then we spend a lot of time in various Internet forums educating policy makers and government people on IDNs and bring awareness to it.

So even though i-DNS.net, the company did not make it, the idea of what we set out to do succeeded. Today, IDN is an Internet Standard (RFC 3490) and you can now register non-English domain names under .com, .cn, .jp, .kr, .sg to name a few, based on the work we done on those few years.

BL: Eventually, i-DNS.net managed to expand its presence world-wide with offices in over 7 countries. How difficult is it to bring your company overseas?
James Seng: We were lucky in that fund raising was not too much a problem for us. We have a wonderful storyline. Sadly, the wonderful storyline is also the biggest problem because it creates a lot of hype. And when hypes dies and reality set in, customers wasn’t too happy.

The other challenges we had is people. We expanded too fast so we brought in the wrong kind of people in the company, without thinking if the people fit into the company culture we want to build. And we didn’t fire fast enough when we realized we got the wrong people.

BL: As a geek contributing to the Open Source movement as a hobby, what are your thoughts about the open source industry in Singapore?
James Seng: Not too difficult for us as everyone is eager to work with us.

The problem we have then is finding the right and trustworthy local people to work with. Particularly “trustworthy” is a very expensive lesson. The moment we step out of Singapore, business and deals are done totally differently especially in this part of the world.

There are some small companies trying to do open source and many individuals (folks like Harish Pillay) who work for many years to promote open source in Singapore. There are also contributors from Singapore back to the open source community.

But open source as an industry is almost non-existence in Singapore.

Many blame the government for that, saying that the government is not responsive to accepting open source solution. That is a half-truth because there are project using open soruce and there are projects that don’t.

But more importantly, this behavior is something we see across the whole Singapore, not just the Singapore government. I have a friend who runs a mid-size SI company across the region. He see clients asking for open source solutions all the time, be it China, India, Malaysia, Thailand, Cambodia, Indonesia but surprisingly little from the local Singapore companies. In fact, his largest open source customers in Singapore is some of the government Ministry.

I think Singapore embrace IT very early so we are a victim of our own success. We are at a stage where we want stability and consistency and thus less likely to take on additional technical risks to use open source solution.

BL: You have recently written about Singapore’s readiness towards web 2.0, lamenting that we are short of talent in the technological aspect. Do you have any thoughts on how we can help to increase the pool of technological talent for this new frontier?
James Seng: Singapore is an island of 4m people. The number of geeks produce per year is therefore limited. Every in batch computer science/engineering graduates, I would be surprised to find more than a handful of alpha-geeks.

So like it or not, Singapore has to use foreign talents. The question is how to position Singapore to be an attractive place to start your next big Web 2.0 company.

BL: If a young entrepreneur wants to do a startup, what are the three most important lessons that you will preach to him?
James Seng: If anyone asked for my advice on his idea for a startup, regardless how bad the idea is, my word is always the same: Just do it. You learn a lot from doing bad startup then not doing at all. Even for the best startups, entrepreneurs always have naysayers from their friends and relatives.

Second, get a partner. Find a partner who compliments your capability. You are either strong in technical or strong in business or marketing or internal operation but not all of them.

Third, hire slowly, fire quickly. Hire slowly because in the initial stage when your startup is new, the corporate culture isn’t set, you want to bring in the people not just with the right capability but also the right mindset and work attitude. And when the person obviously doesn’t match, fire quickly. Don’t hesitate. This is my greatest mistake.

BL: As an entrepreneur who has managed to raise $24M USD investments from General Altantic Partners and Network Solutions/Verisign for your own startup, what are the traits that investors look for in a startup company?
James Seng:

• 1. The Idea – the story must make sense and viable. Different investors have different ideas of what appeal to them. If one investor obviously dont buy your idea, dont waste your and their time. Move on and look for another investor.
• 2. The Team – the best idea without the right execution team is useless. Put together a strong team that covers all aspect of the business: technology, business strategy, marketing, operation and financial.
• 3. The Returns – investors give you money so you make more money for them. Show them how you going to make them money, esp. the exit strategy.
• 4. Homework – your knowledge on the industry. Do you know your competitors? whats their strength & weakness? how are you position differently from others? Investors often do broad scanning across multiple industry so their knowledge is not deep. If they knows more than you do, then it is a bad sign.

BL: Finally, you have recently started a small section in your blog about business ideas. What do you think constitute as a good business idea?
James Seng: There is no bad business idea.

A bad business idea rehash from a decade ago may be the brilliant business model in this decade.

For example, a business idea to “to build the largest global search engine encompassing all human knowledge” is sound like science fiction in the 70s. Today, Google is a billion dollar business.

BL: James, thank you once again for this interview, and we wish you all the best in your future endeavours.

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