by Jeremy Ching (Singapore)
When I first stepped into my first Technological Entrepreneurship class, I was pretty much unsure of what to expect from the class and what I can contribute and I was surprised that after 1 hour into the class, we were asked to go and generate a business idea, which lead to the idea and formation of litbullpen.com, the first online literary website for aspiring writers. In addition, we intended to add the “Project Runway” element to it by planning to work with large publishing houses who are on the lookout of writers with potential who can be groomed to be future authors. In addition, it is a unique out of the box concept, which we expected to be something refreshing.
Subsequently in the next few weeks, I learnt mechanics of planning and building on the initial idea. I learnt how to register a company and why some companies are registered overseas. In addition, we were exposed to other mechanics of a company like having a corporate vision, and developing a marketing strategy.
Developing the concept however was a different ball game; I am fortunate to be working with a great group of individuals. Although most of us never worked together with each other all of us were proactive and strived to give constructive suggestions. Special thanks to Paul for being the driving force behind the concept and Jane for using her connections to get IT resources for us to get our website and other IT related things done.
In addition, to foster better working environment, I realized that team bonding is important to for each person to develop better working relationships. Hence, we made it a point sometimes to deviate from common corporate practices, for example, as CEO of the team, I organized occasional meetings at ice-cold beer instead of a group study room.
Another thing I learnt about being a team leader is that sometimes you have to be sporting and play along with the dynamics of the team. For example, I was kinda forced to play the bad person in the group video which I refused to, however, after much persuasion I relented and participated in the video and got it shot.
Overall, taking the class is a unique experience for me. I totally had fun during the sessions and learnt a lot in terms of business management. I find there is no better way of learning about a business than having the experience of starting one and running it yourself. As Mr. David Yim of Udders said when starting a business “Get a good partner”, in the experience of litbullpen.com I couldn’t have asked for a better team of partners to go through this journey.
