A Dialogue with Jesse Ting, Founder of IConnectE

Lately, online social networks and web 2.0 are moving in high gears around Singapore. Last Wednesday, through a post from E27, I attended a successful party launch of a new social network, IConnectE in the Ministry of Sound. During the party, I met the founder of IconnectE, Mr Jesse Ting. In the process, he is kind to accept our interview and speak to us about his thoughts as an entrepreneur and how he ended up starting this new enterprise.

BL: Hi, Jesse, we appreciate that you are joining us for this interview. Tell us about your background and what motivated you in setting up IConnectE?
Jesse Ting: Thank you for inviting me to this interview. I graduated from Simon Fraser University in Canada with a bachelor degree in Marketing. I started my career in Vancouver as a Marketing Manager for a boutique design agency and returned to Singapore where I was trained to be a Franchise & Business Consultant for small local enterprises. I moved on to join a global Brand Consultancy firm – Enterprise IG in London and was sent to Hong Kong to pioneer their market entry into Asia. I have since worked in other global agencies like Ogilvy in Germany and George P Johnson in Australia. I also started my own Marketing and Business Development firm in Berlin, and a boutique Brand Consulting firm when I returned to Singapore, right before launching lconnectE.com

As a small enterprise owner, I was very unhappy with how my business website was working for me as an online marketing tool. After having spoken to other business owners like me, I soon discovered that most, if not all, share the same frustration and doubts about the effectiveness of a business website. Firstly, it is not easy to update or upload new information onto my site without having to pay more money to a designer or a techie to do it for me. Secondly, we are not able to track who our visitors were. I also find myself losing patience when visiting other’s websites because most are outdated or do not have the information that I need to make a meaningful connection with them.

That’s when I decided to take on the mission to help small business owners and independent service providers find a better solution to leverage the Internet more effectively. After consulted a few trusted friends who are also small business owners with my ideas, I was encouraged to develop and realize the IconnectE concept.

BL: Are there any initial difficulties in getting your portal setup? How did you manage to overcome them to reach your product launch?
Jesse Ting: I am quite particular with the people I choose to work with, and took a bit of time to finding and building my existing team. The most challenging part in the development was to get the programmers to fully envision the concept as I didn’t have any example for benchmarking. Another challenge was managing the design of our identity and the overall look and feel of the portal at the same time. I wanted elements of the logo to be carried out throughout the portal to give it a stronger identity. I also had many debates with my IT consultants over the development platform options. After considering all pros and cons, we finally decided on .Net but underestimated the public’s passion for Firefox browsers in Singapore. We are now working tirelessly to make our system compatible to browsers like Firefox, Mozilla and Safari.

Like any start-up, one of our biggest difficulties is our limited resources. Right now, it’s just me and Ethan managing the marketing, plus an external consultant retained to assist in the product development and management. We are in the constant look-out for excellent people to join our marketing team.

BL: During the launch (where I was there), you mentioned that one of the purposes of IConnectE is to help entrepreneurs in the small-medium enterprises or working professionals to connect with each other. Why have you decided that this is the market that you want to reach?
Jesse Ting: My business career in the international arena has made me realized the one common thread that binds all businesses is their need to market themselves and develop new business effectively. I read somewhere that only 10% of new start-ups will survive in the long run, the rest will fail. I remember being saddened by that, and since then have developed a respect for entrepreneurs and inner wish for them to succeed.

I believe that the Internet has opened a world of possibilities and most are missing out, or not making the most out of it. I want to help SME’s to leverage the Internet to effectively reach their business objectives. My idea was to design a more effective online marketing tool other than the business website, which results in the E-Profile. The E-Profile helps to communicate succinctly one’s business and objectives. It comes with interactive features and useful Internet tools such as web banners, made easy for them to use. In addition, it also has a customizable Homepage with its unique URL based on their Username to showcase the E-Profile. They can also submit their meta-tags to ensure Search Engine Optimization.

The E-Profile is simple and can also be used by individual professionals to build their professional or personal reputation – which I believe is the cornerstone to building a successful career. It doesn’t matter whether an individual is self-employed or an employee, the E-Profile succinctly communicates its business objectives and what they have to offer as a professional.

BL: How do you see your product for being different with known professional online social networks such as LinkedIn (US) or E-Academy (UK)?
Jesse Ting: First of all, we don’t see us a mere networking portal, we aim to help our members to be able to generate more business opportunities.

We offer both context and content that is focused on marketing and business development, networking is only a component. We don’t believe that members should have to pay to view another’s E-Profile, nor do they have to pay to obtain special privileges to make contact with others. We offer this free because we believe it is essential for our members to interact so they can build meaningful relationships, not by mere growing a network of online contacts through 6-degrees connections.

Most importantly, our E-Profile is unique and takes eminence within our site. When one conducts a search, clicking on an E-Profile on the search result list to review does not cause one to lose the list.

And because our E-Profile is structured, members can conduct more precise searches, and our system generates E-Profile match recommendations. We will extend this unique feature to allow members to customize their own E-Profile matches.

We offer product and market trend reports to stimulate discussions and also allow members to share and contribute content such as case studies, best practices for the community. A fun way to gather collective knowledge is to conduct Polls and we also allow members to submit polls to help them obtains answers from our community.

We are currently developing an Event enhancement and management module which will further differentiate IconnectE from any other social networking portals.

BL: What are the key features in IConnectE that you would like people who go and check it out look at?
Jesse Ting: Check out our E-Profile, its customizable E-Profile Homepage, Visitors and feedback tracking system. We’ve made it very easy and simple for business professionals to have a powerful online marketing presence using the E-Profile and enabling them to track their visitors so to not miss any biz opportunity. We have made communication less formal for businesses to facilitate interaction.

It takes little time to build a compelling E-Profile, and anytime you can update content, upload images, make announcements, upload articles and Press Releases, and add web links, blog (this will be available soon)…at no costs!

Oh, another fun thing – you can participate and submit your POLLS in every section of our portal, and see the Poll result instantly – this is my personal favorite feature! ;-)

BL: I should give that poll thing a try then. Now, our favourite question, if a young entrepreneur will to seek your advice in becoming an entrepreneur, what are the three important lessons that you will tell him?
Jesse Ting: Oh dear, ask me this question again when we become successful, can?

BL: That’s an innovative answer for a change. Now, the difficult question, most entrepreneurs tend to react aggressively against criticism of their product. Interestingly, you have responded in a direct, frank and courteous manner with the feedback from E27. What is your trade secret to engage both good and bad feedback?
Jesse Ting: We want to be a company that delivers what we promise – we must be able to ‘walk the talk’.

Our Values Statement states ‘Inspire one another with integrity, creativity and humanity’ – so be always kind to one another is very important. Our mission also states to ‘Evolve through continual innovation’. IconnectE is an open platform for interaction and exchange, and we can’t be closed to criticisms – they are essential to our growth.

BL: Where do you see IConnectE going in the next two years?
Jesse Ting: IconnectE plans to expand into the Asia region through licensing. We hope to gain support from local business associations to help increase market awareness and grow our member base across the Asia region.

BL: Jesse, thank you for an interesting and charming interview. We wish you and IConnect all the best for the future.

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