Being a serial entrepreneur

Being a serial entrepreneur is a typical MIT/Stanford trope.

Just like kids looked up to astronauts in the ’60s and ’70s, millennials like me looked up to successful tech entrepreneurs as our heroes when we were younger. I remember back in college (in the early 2000s) there seemed to be a hackathon, a business pitch contest, or some boot camp taking place on campus every other week. Y Combinator launched at MIT — their first batch in 2005 included Reddit, Twitch, and Sam Altman (of OpenAI fame). To think that I was really on the same physical grounds when it all started.

I, however, was often alone in my room during my undergrad years, either busy proving math theorems or doing math homework, impervious to all the tech happenings around me. I did not even take a single coding class in college, let alone learn how to build apps/software. To graduate, I had to take classes from 12 different departments, but I don’t remember taking any classes that were programming-heavy (I took the famous 6.001, an intro to programming course, but dropped mid-semester).

Hence, it is quite ironic that I became a serial entrepreneur, while many of my friends from college are working at FAANG (or other tech companies), investment banks, consulting firms, and other places.

Being a serial entrepreneur might sound glamorous, but the reality is much more mundane. The life of a serial entrepreneur is a plodding journey. Exciting at times, but on most days, we work as usual just like any other office-based employees.

The tl;dr version of my entrepreneurial journey:

2007: founded Aidan Group, of which the two operating companies are ArdentEdu and AidanTech

2010: started Lot.my, an e-commerce platform

2014: started BinaMinda, a franchisee tuition center

2019: started Pandai, an online education app.

Some of the companies are still doing well, and some of them closed down. I did not mention some of the smaller ventures I dabbled in. I ventured into, among others, an online coupon platform (at the time, Groupon was the shizzle), a food trading business, an autonomous vehicle startup, and an online bookseller. These never got past the initial stage.

I want to write about my experience starting and operating these companies, but in a true procrastinator’s fashion, let’s do it on another day.

Pandai in Y Combinator (Summer 2021)

In the summer of 2021, Pandai was accepted to the Y Combinator (YC) program. For those who are not familiar with the global startup scene, getting into YC is akin to getting into an Ivy League university for your undergraduate studies. It is selective and prestigious.

(I mentioned to my team that I got hit by lightning twice, 20 years apart.)

There were lots of things that we learned from the YC program, which may be worth 5-10 blog entries. When we first got the news, we did not believe it at first, since there were more than 16,000 applicants for less than 400 slots in the batch. We felt super lucky to be admitted at our very first application, since it is common for startups to fail several times before being accepted by YC. Being the only Malaysian in the batch added to our sense of pride (initially, there was another Malaysian company, but they dropped out mid-program).

Let me share the biggest takeaways from the whole three-months program:

  1. Build and ship fast – YC (specifically Michael Seibel, our group mentor) taught us about the Product Development Cycle (PDC), a framework on how startups should develop their product. Pandai adopts the PDC framework, which makes us work on new products/features every 2 weeks and ship them as quickly as possible to our users. The idea is not about getting it right the first time (nobody does), but about getting the quickest feedback from users, even if the feedbacks are largely negative. For early-stage startups, feedbacks are breakfasts of champions.
  2. Talk to users – among the founders of Pandai, Akmal is the one most diligent in conducting user interviews regularly. I was always giving excuses — too busy, too much on my plate, too much paperwork, etc. — but the fact is, most times I was too chicken. I simply disliked making cold calls to customers, let alone asking them for feedback. This is a bad trait, and had I been a solo founder, I would have failed. Entrepreneurs might feel that the products should speak for themselves but in reality, we need to talk to customers directly to learn exactly what they want. YC hammered into us that user interviews are extremely important. The Mom Test is a comprehensive how-to book for user interviews.
  3. The proper way to fundraise – prior to YC, we attended several accelerator programs, all of which focused heavily on fundraising. Yet, due to the experience of the YC partners and mentors, and the sheer number of funding rounds closed by YC companies, the fundraising advice we got was right on the spot. We managed to close our seed round barely 2 months after YC demo day. Thanks to YC too, we had a huge funnel of investors (we talked to no less than 100 investors), which enable to play chooser instead of beggar.

YC’s motto is “Make Something People Want”. Make Something relates to point 1 above, and People Want relates to point 2. At the beginning of the program, they mailed us a YC-branded mug with the motto printed on it. It is still on my work desk at home, as a constant reminder to keep building and keep delighting our users.

Memory Lane – Bucharest, Romania (1999)

The photo was taken in 1999. I was in Bucharest, Romania, for the International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO). It was my first IMO, my first trip abroad that was not with family members, and my second ever trip abroad (I went to Umrah in 1994 with my grandparents and my sister Nurul).

There were 6 students on the Malaysian team, all high schoolers. I was in Form 5 at MRSM Jasin. The team was led by Prof. Abu Osman Md Tap (UKM) and Assoc. Prof. Dr. Mat Rofa Ismail (UPM), both representing the national mathematics association. The 6 of us were selected due to our stellar (cheh… konon) performance in the national mathematical olympiad and in the subsequent training camps.

Three of the team members were repeats; they went to IMO 1998 so they had some experience. It was my first ever IMO, so I learned a lot from my team members and the coaches. All my math knowledge pre-IMO could be filled inside an SPM textbook, so I had a LOT to learn to prepare for the IMO.

Competition-wise, the team did not do very well. Our olympiad training back then was rudimentary since we did not have the materials and expertise (and there was not much material on the dial-up internet, believe it or not. Not like today when you can learn practically anything online). But the trip itself is memorable. None of us won an award at the IMO. I could not even solve a single problem, although I managed to get 5 points (out of 7) for the first problem, a slot traditionally reserved for the easiest problem in the paper. The first medal for Malaysia in IMO would come at IMO 2000, a year later.

At the time, the Romanian people were still recovering from the Nicolae Ceaușescu years. Even though Ceaușescu was toppled from power 10 years before (in a violent uprising – there is film footage of the execution of Ceaușescu and his wife), the damage he did to the Romanian economy was so extensive that the country was still reeling in poverty. The country was in transition from hardline communism to a market economy, but people were poor, and material things were hard to come by. Crime was high: I got robbed in broad daylight while walking on the street of Bucharest. Our team guide Nicoleta – a very smart student who later went on to get PhD in statistics from Zurich – was visibly upset and embarrassed about the incident, but I told her that at least I was not physically injured and the robbers did not take my passport (they took my camera and money). Not a big deal.

We stayed at the Politehnica University of Bucharest and wrote the IMO contest papers in the lecture halls and classrooms there. Although our accommodation was spartan, the academic side of the competition is of very high quality, reflecting the long tradition of academic competitions/olympiads in Romania. In fact, Romania was the founder of the whole global math olympiad movement when they organized the first IMO back in 1959 when it was joined only by Eastern Bloc countries. IMO 1999 was the 40th IMO so it was apt to have the IMO back in the land of its origin.

(If you do the math carefully, then IMO 1999 should be the 41st instead of the 40th, but I think they skipped one year of IMO in the early 1980s, perhaps due to some Cold War shenanigans).

Places we went to:

  1. Romanian Parliament – at the time it was one of the largest buildings in the world by floor area (second after the Pentagon). It was a stark reminder of the excesses during the Ceausescu years. An impressive building, with high ceilings, marble statues, ornate trimmings, the whole shebang. We went there for the closing ceremony.
  2. Bran Castle – famous for being the residence of Count Dracula in fiction. Despite popular belief, it has nothing to do with Vlad the Impaler, the real-life inspiration for the Dracula character. Dr. Mat Rofa injured his leg at the castle, and he talked about the incident in a ceramah on the history of Vlad the Impaler and the Ottoman Empire – you can look it up on Youtube.
  3. Sinaia – honestly I don’t remember anything about the place except the name. Perhaps we visited a castle there, or was it a museum? I only remember one thing: during lunchtime, the Malaysian team had an outdoor picnic in a garden. Some of us were dismayed that the packed lunch provided by the organizers contained food that we could not eat. So we had the idea of exchanging our lunchboxes with a bunch of gypsies who happened to be traveling on a caravan nearby. The gypsies accepted our food happily and they gave us a bag of berries in exchange.

(I know gypsy is considered a racial slur, and I am supposed to call them Romani or Zigan or something. But nobody who reads this will be offended, so gypsy stays. One of my favorite 70s songs is “Gypsys, Tramps & Thieves” by Cher.)

I have not been to Romania since then, but I am pretty sure A LOT has changed. Hope to go there again one day.

Back in 2007

Just sharing this historical photo (historical for me) taken in 2007 at Tasik Kenyir, Terengganu. It was during the Asian Renaissance program, a five-day retreat aimed at young people from various political and civil society backgrounds.

I emceed a talk given by Saudara Anwar (how we were instructed to address him during the program – so socialist 🙂 ). At the time, he had just been released from prison and was in the process of rebuilding PKR. If I remember correctly, PKR had only 1 seat in parliament, and even then it was a near-miss: Wan Azizah won Permatang Pauh in the 2004 General Election with a very slim majority after five rounds of vote-counting. PKR reversed its fortune during the 2008 GE and since then has moved from strength to strength. A truly Malaysian comeback story.

One thing I remembered was Anwar asking me to “kirim salam” to Dato’ Azman Mokhtar (now Tan Sri). Dato’ Azman was the head of Khazanah Nasional at the time, i.e., my boss’s boss – I was a junior exec at Khazanah. Both of them were schoolmates at MCKK. I had never kirim the salam since I went to the event senyap2 without my employer’s knowledge, let alone consent. Politics were very different back then.

Life is too short

I remember reading years ago in a book — was it in “Indiscrete Thoughts” by mathematician Gian-Carlo Rota? — that there are two distinct phases in one’s life: the first phase is when you are the youngest person in the room, and the second phase is when you’re the oldest. I am safely in the second camp. Although I am not that old (just celebrated my 41st last week), more often than not I work with younger and much younger people in my daily life.

Which led me to realize, I am almost exactly halfway through my working years. There are as many years from when I started working until now, as there are years from now until the usual retirement age. Yes, the retirement threshold might be higher in the future (than the usual 55 in the Malaysian civil service) due to better healthcare, longer life expectancy, and general economic necessities, but I am at the place in my career where I should be thinking seriously about what else to do.

There are many things that everyone wishes they would’ve done more, whether in personal or professional life, and it is better to at least make some effort to not make these future regrets.

Like me, there are many things I wish I would’ve done earlier, such as:

  • learn another language and be conversant in it;
  • be more capable technologically;
  • save more money;
  • learn more things (some of the things I regretted not learning earlier are neuroscience, i.e., how the brain functions, and statistics. I know a bit of statistics and have passed several courses on the subject, but I still feel I do not have the statistical chops to see scattered data and make truly insightful analysis, like those possessed by some friends I envy. Some statistician-writers I admire are Michael Kaplan, Scott Alexander & Nate Silver);
  • write more and share my ideas with the world.

All those regrets (about not starting earlier) aside, these are not really out of reach. I am still relatively young, and my mind is still nimble to learn new things. My daily life is not so busy that I do have time to do things I really want to do. My kids are getting older and thus need less attention. So let me start 2024 by sharing with you a modest list of things I want to do in the year. This is not a resolution, simply a to-do list for the next 12 months:

  • write more and share ideas, however imperfect and un-fully baked they might be;
  • talk to more people and learn more;
  • allot time for formal learning;
  • read a lot more (like in the years pre-2018, before my eldest kid was born);
  • think more.

The last one needs some explaining: by “thinking,” I mean to actually sit down and do nothing else but think, for which I need to allot a “thinking time” for the day, which is separate from the time for reading, researching, learning, browsing the internet, etc. It is being in silent mode and thinking about something really hard. The only tools allowed are pen and paper to record my thinking process. Even 15 minutes a day thinking truly hard about something is enough. I plan to do this more, perhaps every day, throughout the year.

Boring, I know.

Happy New Year!

The compulsory MCO update

It is a bit embarrassing that a few entries ago, I mentioned wanting to write every day. I failed that, obviously, but again nobody should care, least of all me. This is the kind of fake-goals that we set to make ourselves feel good.

At the beginning of the COVID-19 lockdown (it is a lockdown practically, despite the mouthful terminology used by the government), I came up with a list of personal goals: to finish a book every X days, to finish Y online courses, to complete Z number of projects. I was ambitious and wanted the lockdown to be productive.

But if there is anything that this global pandemic taught us, it’s this: your goals don’t matter much. By all means, set goals to force yourself out of the bed at 6.30am and to actually do something useful throughout the day. But at the end of the day, the amount of work that actually gets done matters very little. So why not do things that you enjoy, at a rate which is enjoyable to you, not to keep score.

In the grand scheme of things, more powerful forces are at work making the world go round. You can plan this and that and do a lot of busywork, yet if everything is at a standstill, nothing can move forward that much. Imagine putting a fish in a closed fishtank, and throwing the tank into the ocean. You are now that fish.

I’ve heard some businesspeople complaining that they completed a major project, but the counterparty (normally the government) is not operating as usual and comes up with plenty of bullshit excuses like we can only accept the delivery of the project in a face-to-face meeting, we cannot get the approval by this and that officer since they are working from home, we cannot deploy the system remotely, Zoom is insecure, and so on. So the entrepreneurs can’t get paid. So much for planning and executing.

I feel guilty sometimes for enjoying this MCO “vacation” because I am having a great time, yet many people are in fear of losing their livelihood, and for some, the ability to provide basic necessities to their families. I sympathize with those who suffer, I really do. I help where I can.

But let me just say that this lockdown (or Perintah Kawalan Pergerakan) period has been pleasant for me.

I am a natural introvert so there’s not much difference between my life before and during MCO. Playtime with my boy toddler, reading a good book with a hot mug of Darjeeling tea on the side, simple lunch and dinner every day, are all I need to have a good time. Yes, I am that boring.

I do watch Netflix every now and then (every Tuesday I restlessly wait for the newest episode of Better Call Saul to be available) but digital content is not necessary for contentment at home. Screen time is a distraction if not done for work or some useful ends. Going online does not equal entertainment; there are other ways to amuse yourself other than grinning all day at a piece of metal covered in a plastic case, while it basks your face in blue lights.

If I let myself be bombarded and awed by every shiny new viral meme funneh fake news social media online-phenom, I am no better than a snotty teenager (with all due respect to teenagers). Adults should learn how to sit tight and do nothing. And that’s how I’ve spent my days at home: a lot of contemplation, reading, thinking, writing, daydreaming and doing nothing.

What a good life, indeed.

Shout out to our great heroes: the medical frontliners, the police and armed services, and the people along the supply chain who ensure that the basic needs of people (food, telco, water, power, cash & medicine) are met.

I was right

Refer to my previous entry: Will there be WW3?

Finally, common sense prevails. The US and Iranian leadership chose the right path: immediate de-escalation. Leaders from both sides have given tough-sounding but conciliatory statements. Even Trump sounded magnanimous.

Crisis averted for the time being.

Iranian admitted that the Ukranian flight was shot down by their own missiles, which mistook it for a military aircraft. Sucks for everyone involved, but at least the incident will be resolved through the normal channel, rather than devolving into a casus belli.

The Iranian leadership gave a strong signal with their bombings of American targets in Iraq. It was purposely made to avoid any Iraqi and American casualties, only to give the message that they have the capability to inflict mass casualties and destruction to nearby enemies. Enough to make some Gulf countries shaking in their boots, and stand up in respect whenever Iran is mentioned.

Yesterday, Iran made a statement that the bombings were sufficient retaliation for the earlier American attack towards General Soleymani. PR-wise, the statement was a brilliant move. With one stroke, they managed to assuage their supporters at home who were baying for blood, while putting fear in the hearts of their Middle Eastern rivals, and, at the same time, reconcile with the US. Wins all around.

One thing for sure: Iran is blessed with highly rational leadership, a fact known for many decades to Israeli politicians and intelligence agencies. Watch the 2012 interview with Meir Dagan, the legendary head of Mossad, on the American news show 60 Minutes. Dagan explained that all his calculations in the Middle East were made with the assumption that Iran is led by a “rational regime”, and that attacking Iran (which Benjamin Netanyahu called for at the time) was a really stupid idea.

I am sure the American letter agencies (CIA, NSA, etc.) came to the same conclusion.

The clerical class and hardcore Islamists in Iran seem to have this fanatical obsession with Islamic eschatology. Even us Sunnis are a bit weirded out with how fanatical they seem, but that’s how the Shias roll. But we should not let these appearances of external piety cloud our geopolitical judgment. The Iranian leadership is intelligent and rational, not crazy.

Iran has been waging a silent but highly successful campaign for Middle Eastern supremacy in the past two decades. Foreign affairs pundits used to joke that Dick Cheney was an Iranian agent: the American wars in Afghanistan and Iraq benefit none other than Iran.

Iran has never been in direct conflict since the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s, yet the Iranian circle of influence in the Middle East has grown steadily since 2001: now Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, Iraq are part of the Shia crescent. Every destabilizing events in the Middle East: Iraq war, ISIS, Saudi-Yemen war, etc., seem to strengthen Iran. All these without a single drop of blood spilled in direct conflict.

Now that Iran has become quite the contender for the top dog in the Middle East, they are not going to blow all the advantages away in a haphazard attack towards a military superpower, despite the vague allusion by their clerics that Shiite victory and supremacy will bring closer the End of Days and the arrival of the Islamic Messiah. They learnt their lesson from the Iran-Iraq war, where they lost millions of their people in what seemed like a pointless war. No, Iran needs to play smart. Support the proxies, choose the battles wisely, and when the heat is too much, retreat while saving face, as what they did with the US recently.

Iran is playing the long game.

Write long, write daily

I love writing, but I am not good at it.

This blog is the only place where I write.

Writing is hard, even for something which not many people will read.

Putting ideas into words is difficult.

Finding the right words takes time. I believe in an extreme rule of writing: there is such a thing as the correct word for each occasion. A thesaurus may give synonyms of a word, but in my belief, there is a platonically perfect word for every usage. Finding this perfect word is tough. Context is a bitch. To be a good writer, you need a good ear. Great writers have perfect pitch.

Making a piece of writing flow smoothly takes even more time: you have to scan your piece from the beginning, and to register all logical gaps and pieces that do not fit together and clunky constructions. And then, fix them one by one. Grammarly only makes your task slightly easier by catching obvious mistakes; it does not catch tone, flow, semantics, and voice.

I resolve to not suck at writing. Perhaps, one day, to be good at it.

There is only one way for me to do it: write more and read more.

I do much less reading nowadays — too much work and too little free time which I spend not sleeping or watching Netflix.

So I have to write more.

Therefore I will update this blog daily. And every entry will be long-ish. No short updates. I am living life on hard mode. And unlike my previous blog, no memes or jokes or funny pictures that you can find at places like Reddit. Only serious attempts at writing, daily. I don’t do gimmicks like clickbait titles and all the SEO nonsense. This blog is not optimized for anyone. It is what it is, a record of my thought on various topics, with some updates on my personal and professional life. Nothing more.

Why I don’t have a FB page

Today, someone asked me why I don’t have a Facebook page.

I do. In fact, I have more FB pages than most people:

These are the projects and companies in which I play an active role, so I consider their Facebook pages to be mine as well.

Of course, I understand what she was actually asking: why don’t I have a personal Facebook page?

The answer is simple: I value privacy and tranquility in my personal life. I do not miss much by not being on Facebook: anything on Facebook worth reading I will still hear about, either through my friends or my wife. The rest I do not bother.

Will there be WW3?

As far as geopolitics goes, today is a day of crazy (the Ukranian plane crash, the attacks on the US bases in Iraq, saber-rattling by the top leadership).

However, I believe that things will de-escalate soon. An actual war at this time does not serve any side of the conflict well. None of the players are stupid, as much as people like to think of Trump as an idiot. Iran is a nuclear power, and an all-out war with Iran will only benefit those who sit this one out, namely China, and perhaps Russia.

Islamic countries will make noises as usual, but when push comes to shove, none will side with Iran to face the US, except maybe the Iranian satellite states (the “Shia Crescent”), and grudgingly at that. However incompetent they may be in domestic politics, the American leadership is not crazy enough to think that ground invasion of a nuclear power is possible.

I think there won’t be a WW3. There is no reason to believe that if a war breaks out, it will take place on any theater beyond the Middle East. It would be better for all parties to work on de-escalation: stage bullshit attacks with no casualty, announce some sort of PR victory to save face, do the “Death to America” song-and-dance half-assedly for the home crowds, and open a backchannel to discuss ways to stop things from getting worse. And throw out some Dollars while you’re at it. Obama threw billions to Iran and there was no escalation during his presidency.

I am an optimist, but in case I am wrong, may Allah save all of us.