In Conversation with Paddy Tan, co-founder from BAK2u

Sometime back, a Singaporean based company by the name of BAK2u have made it as a service help consumers keep track of their gadgets in CNN news. So after a couple of gatherings (from Ping.SG party to a couple of twitters and chat), BL sat down with Paddy Tan, the co-founder from BAK2u for an email interview to tell us more about what the company does in the realm of security, his personal trials and tribulations and how he sees the future of his company.

BL: Hi Paddy, thank you for taking the time to speak to us in SG Entrepreneurs. Let’s start off with your background before you started BAK2u.

Paddy Tan: I joined a contract manufacturing company in Year 2000 after I completed my National Service. I was a business development engineer with the new business division where we take care of designing and manufacturing 3rd parties accessories for Palm PDA.

From that job, I traveled a fair bit between the States and various other countries in Europe and Asia and along the way extended my exposure on how corporate clients use PDA devices to work and function.

Left the job about 2 years later, when I was headhunted to run an office here in Singapore for a Hong Kong Wireless Solution company. The team pioneered several interesting cutting edge wireless solutions for Field Service Agents, Sales Force Agents using PDA phones. That was when the asia telecommunication market started to pick up making use of 2.5 and 3G network integrating into their business processes.

During the SARs period, like many other companies it was affected and that was when I decided to try my hands on running my own businesses. A close friend of mine started a BPO (Business Processing Outsourcing) company here in Singapore where we handle automotive and technology related companies linking them to European companies. We become their arms and legs in Europe for the Singapore clients here. With the company moving a notch up, stabilizing overtime within 2 years I decided to step back and pursue something else, BAK2u came into the picture.

BL: What got you motivated to start up BAK2u? What’s the story behind that?
Paddy Tan: My friend Chris Chan and I started BAK2u Pte Ltd in Year 2005 together. It was a setup that was bound to happen as I met Chris when I was a country manager for the Hong Kong company, and he was rather new having just joined the partner’s company too. We hit it off sharing a lot of business ideas about running our own businesses and from one conversation, where I brought it up about losing items when traveling and it be great to have a simpler way to get it back.

Overtime, he and I got together to discuss more and he came up with the name ‘BAK2u’ as in ‘Back to you’ – ‘returning the lost items back to the owner’. The name was created in the Delifrance in Bugis Junction around late 2004.

The company BAK2u Pte Ltd was established in May, Year 2005.

BL: What were the initial difficulties and challenges you faced in this industry, given that the mobile market is pretty competitive? How did you overcome them?
Paddy Tan: BAK2u started with only 1 single product, that is label.

BAK2u’s uniquely coded labels are specifically designed to help the owner to get their lost valuable items back quickly.

Every BAK2u Identification Number is unique – no two are alike. The BAK2u number allows us to know who owns the item, and lets the owner avoid revealing any personal information just by simply pasting it on the items and registering it at our website.

If lost and found (usually in public places like airports, restaurants, public transports etc), anyone that contacted us, we will retrieve the found items and return to the owner.

No one was doing that here in Singapore so basically we faced not much challenges from any other competitors but the biggest challenge is not from competitors but more of the potential customers themselves. Corporate clients see the value in protecting their companies assets like USB thumbdrives, ext hdd, phones etc with strong belief but not so much from the consumers as some do not believe others will return any found items with a strong belief that men in general are not honest.

It was only in mid 2006 that we decided to move up from just ‘proactive’ to more ‘reactive’. And to do that, the first anti-theft software PhoneBAK for Microsoft Powered PDA phone was born. It was launched almost exactly a year after BAK2u was established. (See the two screenshots below provided by Paddy on a PDA Phone)

BL: Can you tell more about the product offerings that your company offer, for example, BAK2u Labels or Verey I? What made you decide to integrate Twitter into Verey I?
Paddy Tan: My partner Chris left the company in Oct for personal reasons and from then I decided to turn the focus into technology based solution, anti-theft softwares to help solve the problem, to increase the chances of recovery aiding owners to get back their items giving the owner peace of mind.In May 2006, PhoneBAK PDA was launched.
In Dec 2006, PhoneBAK Mobilephone for Symbian Powered phones was launched.
In May 2007, Verey I was launched together with Club 21 iShop as our exclusive partner.

Verey I is a simple and ingenious anti-theft software that helps keep track of Mac laptops and computers globally. It works by detecting the IP addresses including wired and nearby wireless network, machine serial number, MAC hardware Address, and even a video capture if stolen and access by an unauthorized user. All these information will be captured and send to any pre-defined email addresses.

In Aug 2007, Verey I + Twitter service was launched again together with Club 21 iShop here in Singapore.

Twitter is for staying in touch and keeping up with friends no matter where you are or what you’re doing. For some friends you might want instant mobile updates—for others, you can just check the web. Invite your friends to Twitter and decide how connected you want you to be.

My colleague came out with this idea to integrate Twitter in it and from a value added feature standing, when the owner loses his laptop he does not have to rush home or to any internet cafe to wait for the captured information to be sent to him. Instead if the thief is to use the laptop, the necessary information can still be sent to the owner via SMS, IM, email and the web too. Also, the information can also be shared to those followers of this twitter user too, worldwide.

BL: We see that you move beyond the mobile phones and started providing security for computers, and why do you decide to move into the security market for Mac?
Paddy Tan: The movement is not entirely moving away, away from mobile phones to another market but more of expanding our coverage to more gadgets. I myself am a gadget freak and I look forward to the day whenever someone gets a new gadget, the first thing on their mind is to how to protect this investment and BAK2u comes into the picture.

Being a Mac supporter myself and almost the entire gang in the company, we look forward to covering whatever is coming out in the market too.

BL: That’s pretty cool since I am also a fellow mac user. Presumably Singapore is a small market for your products. What other markets are you currently targetting and why? Do you need a big community to have a locked-in effect for your product?
Paddy Tan: Frankly, BAK2u was never known in Singapore market. It is not that we do not want to start here but somehow from many walls we hit, many local companies themselves do not believe in us. Not because of the products but because it is a Singapore company and yes even if they are a local company also.

We started very much in Europe and other parts of the world as the softwares work worldwide too. Probably the time wasn’t ripe yet but we are not giving it up so we look outside first but always tilt our heads back to look for opportunities again back in Singapore.

Our first break came when we were featured in Springwise.com under their Life-hack category as the ‘Lost and Found in the 21st century’. From there we expanded to other countries in europe and also to africa and USA market too. As long as anyone that uses mobile phones, PDA phones, Mac laptops they can be our customers.

*Springwise scans the globe for the most promising business ventures, ideas and concepts ready for regional or international adaptation, expansion, partnering, investments or cooperation. Ferociously tracking more than 400 global offline and online business resources, as well as taking to the streets of world cities, digital cameras at hand.

Early this year, I second guessed that it may probably be a good time to be back to Singapore as the noises start to pick up from the local internet scene, especially the blogsphere where our products are mentioned by some customers that managed to get back their stolen items.

We are still trying but the chances of establishing ourselves as a Singapore company should be getting closer, and thankfully to the great support and strong belief in us from Club 21 iShop they guide us along the way for the local market.

BL: We heard that your company has recently been featured on CNN. A lot of us are wondering how you managed to get yourself on international news. Interested in sharing your story?

Paddy Tan: Most likely it was from the month, May when we launched our Verey I (brochure on the product, provided by BAK2u) for Mac. It created quite a stir in the Mac communities and there were some interviews and reviews on the software too.

Maybe that was how our name popped up again and caught the attention of Mr Steve Mollman again.

Mr Steve Mollman interviewed us back in September 2005 under The Asian Wall Street Journal on an article about ‘A Safey Net for Lost Gadgets’. A customer of ours was interviewed when he lost his thumb drive and we managed to find it back for him through our service.

He contacted us in late May 2007 regarding an article that he is writing about keeping track on gadgets, and he found a customer of BAK2u that wrote in to Straits Times Forum in May also that our standalone anti-theft software PhoneBAK helped her got back her stolen Nokia N70 from a thief.

BL: What are the three important lessons you believe that young entrepreneurs of today should learn through your experience?
Paddy Tan: I am still learning here from everyone since my experience are not that much too. I believe 3 of the more important lessons will be;

• 1. You must have fun in the company that you are running. Without that ‘fun’ factor in the day to day running, it be no different running it like a salaried job. (except that you don’t expect to pay yourself anything even if the company starts to make money in the growing stage)
• 2. A strong supportive families and friends can make you go the extra miles. When I first started BAK2u, there were no questions asked by my wife and parents. They just told me to go try it out, hit the walls and the ground a few times, something is bound to work. Whenever I am down with all the problems heavy on the shoulders, I just need to look at them to give me strength and confident to move an inch closer.Appreciate them along the way, it makes the journey filled with hopes and more enjoyable.
• 3. Not only you need to ‘multi-task’ but also ‘multi-skilled’, there is no sales, marketing, logistic, programming departments. You have to be everything; ‘Jack of all trades and try to be master of some’ too.There is no such thing as ‘the school didnt teach me this or that’, therefore I do not know how to do it. Either you learn to swim or you learn to hold your breath longer.

BL: Do you see BAK2u as a security company? What are the market trends you foresee will happen in the next two years?
Paddy Tan: I see BAK2u more of a company that tries to ease the anxiety of a owner that lost his/her gadget, putting a smile back on them. Not a security company, not a development house but more of a service provider in protecting owner’s gadgets with interesting and fun software.

BL: Once again, Paddy, thank you for the interview. We wish you all the best for the future.

Related Links:
You can read more about the recent developments of BAK2u in their blog.

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