Basic Tips and Guidelines for applying ICT Funding in Malaysia

I am just sharing my opinion here, please do not take this as guaranteed information. I considered myself to be a very LUCKY man for being able to secure the Pre seed Fund, although I did a very bad presentation but I was lucky that I brought in my partner with me which he has more experience and to cover my mistakes. From than onwards, I manage to overcome that fear after getting through the first round of interview.

Hence, I would like to share some information here that might be useful to those that are in the middle of applying the fund. No matter which funding option that you are applying for, please be aware for the few issues that I highlighted here. I don’t mind to re-mentioned the tips again.

Info 1) Understand your Business Plan from Top to Toe

I am not an expert in writing business plan, but i had everything in my mind. I am not going to elaborate on value proposition of your business, marketing plan, targeted market, competition, financial plan and technology plan, I believe you know better than me.

  1. Understand your product Niche and Uniqueness.
  2. The Win-Win situation between you and your customers. show it in your plan. show it in your presentation.
  3. Understand your competition. Strategy to tackle potential competition.
  4. Never say there is NO COMPETITION, and thats the most stupid thing to mention. No matter how niche or how unique your product is, your idea is obsolete within the 10 second when you thought of it, and there might be 1000 people already working on it.
  5. Show Facts and Figures to support your plan. Research, Research and Research. Google is your best friend.
  6. 1 Plan is not enough. A plan is just a guideline, plan changes. Thats why always have a Plan A, B and C. Put Plan A as priority.

Info 2) Filling up the Application Form correctly:

Your application form determines whether you stand a chance to present your ideas.

  1. The person to approve your form does not really care about your idea, but they care more if you have fill up the forms correctly according to their standards.
  2. Do not make assumption on filling up their application forms. Specially on the financing part. example, if the fund does not includes for marketing purpose, don’t assume and don’t be so clever to include that when filling up the form. Your application will be rejected due to your clever actions. Assume stands for making an ASS between U and ME.
  3. Call them up directly, arrange an appointment with them, or get a 1-to-1 advisory to advice you on how you should fill up your application. It’s best you fill up the application form first, then arrange an appointment, let them comment on your application, and repeat until you get your form correctly written.
  4. Don’t write grandmother stories for your applications. Be straight forward, and write in point form. Who the hell is going to read your stories where there are 100+ applicants waiting for them to approve. Concentrate on Executive Summary, the interviewers might only read that! but don’t forget the rest of the content as well. (there might be one picky one that reads all of it).
  5. The person to interviews you are the one that evaluates your ideas, and most of them don’t read your proposal, they will read the Executive Summary.
  6. Hence, Fill up your forms correctly. You don’t fill up correctly, you have eventually marked an end for your GREAT ideas.

Info 3) Get ready for Defense and Attack Game

I had my first presentation slides ready after i handed over my forms, instead of waiting for an interview, i did extra preparations by presenting the business plan to my father’s friend, which is a CEO of a financial consultancy company, and my uncle’s friend, which was also someone who holds a high position in a big corporate. Both has nothing to do with the industry within my business plan, I just want to get screw up and receive some feedbacks from someone at the top level management, and i treated them as potential VC’s. Both of them has different opinions. One of them is more picky for my presentation skills, the other wants to know how my money is earn. 2 of them guide me in on my slides, my presentation skills and the things i needed to prepare.

  1. You only got 10 Minutes to present. You need to cramp up your 30 pages business plan in 10 min. The sequence of my presentation slides: What is my product? > The niche and uniqueness > Targeted market > Market Potential > Competition > Barriers for competition > Potential Growth of the business > ROI as summary > Thank you. (Note: The sequence is just a guideline for you. Don’t follow my sequence, my sequence is based on my Business plan and my way of presentation. 10 min is considered long, i was given only less than 5 minutes to show what i have when i present to the CEO)
  2. Practice more on your presentation skills. I can’t remember how many times i have practice alone in front of the mirror. But i have presented to both of the 2 top managements at least 3 times each.
  3. Time your presentation. Practice with your business partner. Time yourself with a stop watch. Try not to exceed the time given. Go slow and Steady.
  4. Continuously refine your presentation slides until you feel that it is enough to convince the panels. example: I replaced Sales and Marketing Plan with Market Potential, is because showing the potential market is more convincing than marketing plans. Marketing strategy is important, but my objective is to convince the panel that this is a viable business, so, Market Potential tends to weight more important at this stage and time is limited for presentation.
  5. Get support letter from potential customers to strengthen your idea. Call up your potential customers or targeted markets, present to them, get feedback and get a support letter from them. We called several potential customers which includes TV3 and UNICEF. However, we only manage to present to UNICEF right in the morning before our 2nd interview with MDEC in the afternoon, we got a good feedback from UNICEF, but we did not manage to get a support letter, cause that needs a lot of process and approval from UNICEF internally.
  6. Spot the Q&A question. Write down the potential questions, and your Answers, then from the answers, what will they question again, and answer again. Bring in the piece of Q&A you written during your presentation as bullet prove vest. When one is tackling the question, the other is searching for the right answer.
  7. Get a Sales and Marketing Partner, some one who could present and up sell your ideas. Technology Geeks mostly are not good presenters, like me. Technologically you may be good, but technology is only part of the business. You need a marketing representative in your business. They may not be able to help you in developing your idea, so what, in long run, u still need someone to do the sales for you. You can sell the product yourself? Trust me, you can’t, unless you are an experience marketing guy. If you are a marketing guy, you won’t be sitting 24 by 7 in front of your pc.
  8. Wear and act professional. Get a tie, shake your hands when u meet the interviewers.

Last but not least, this is just an opinion, hope it is useful. Good luck to your application.

July 17, 2008 | Filed Under Entrepreneur 

Comments

10 Responses to “Basic Tips and Guidelines for applying ICT Funding in Malaysia”

  1. yeongjie on July 17th, 2008 9:53 am

    i totally agree with your suggestion. BTW, i have another suggesstion for you. Perhaps, you can compile all this and sell it as Ebook. :-)
    Potential? hehe

  2. tianteck on July 17th, 2008 11:22 am

    Wow, you do go approach TV3 and UNICEFF. This is extremely good idea! I think this is the part we miss in our preparation. This is a really convincing point! Can you share some real tough/tricky or important questions that you face during the presentation (either MDEC, your father’s friends or UNICEFF)?

  3. admin on July 17th, 2008 12:11 pm

    TianTeck, I can’t really tell you what will the panel asked cause it varies on the panel that interviews you and the information you presented.

    The toughest question i encounter from mdec was “Since your idea is so good, your plan is so good, why aren’t your competitors doing it?”.

    btw, UNICEF was nice, they didn’t had any though questions for us, its maybe because the way we structured our presentation with UNICEF differently. (We have a different slides for UNICEF, because different objectives. e.g UNICEF don’t want to hear your market potential or marketing plan, they want to hear how you could benefits them) So when u approach potential customers, use a different slides base on the objective.

    Father’s friend asked “Show me your product!”, and sad to say, i don’t have it, i am just presenting the concept. I am screwed.

  4. terrytsang on July 28th, 2008 2:10 pm

    wow… it’s a good article about MDEC Pre-Seed Fund, it’s useful for me, cheers! All the best to you…

  5. LC Goh on September 10th, 2008 10:35 am

    Hi Chee Hoong,

    Delighted to see your sharing. I am applying and I want to be careful about the financial part. Appreciate if you could advise the following:

    (a) When MDec releases the fund quarterly, do they verify/question the variances between the actual spending and the planned spending of previuos quarter?

    (b) Do you need to bring along the Secondary applicant in the progress updates/presentation? I need to factor in the travelling expenses.

  6. blackcrowe on September 11th, 2008 11:03 am

    hmmm…reading your stuff up there really give me some insights of thing that i will face for this preceed money..been working all my life and im working on my own now..this preceed thing will surely comes in handy,,thx dude for sharing this..may u succeed in whatever u going for..

  7. kk on September 21st, 2008 4:57 pm

    thx for your sharing.
    I’m working on this funding as well, could u share with us how to draft out all those finance statement, p&l … etc as it requires projection of few yrs.
    AND, is there any place to get guidance to fill up the whole biz proposal?

  8. admin on September 23rd, 2008 3:43 am

    LCGoh, i have replied you through email. Hope you get my message.

  9. admin on September 23rd, 2008 4:01 am

    kk, I can’t really guide you on this, cause its too subjective. You need to look for a friend in doing accounts will be the best. before that, you need to draft out the followings:

    1. Cost of your product/services.
    2. Selling price of your product/services.
    3. Estimate percentage growth of your market every year.
    4. Estimate your yearly expenses, such as Human resources, office expenditure and etc.

    with these “few” info, your accountant will know how to guide you through it. anyway, it is just an estimation but “BE LOGIC”.

  10. LC Goh on September 28th, 2008 4:04 pm

    Thanks Chee Hoong. I’ve got your reply. My gmail has not been working fine. My apologies again.

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    Life is interesting, its all about experimenting, trial and errors and self improvments. This blog is all about my personal experience. I am full with ideas, and i will achieve every one of them step by step.

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