Lesser Funding from MOSTI - Bad News for Technopreneur for the Year of Tiger

BOOTSTRAP OR DIE. Its time to tighten your belts Technopreneurs, funds are limited for the year 2010. According to source theStar inTech, 2010 Budget for Grant has been cut by RM 1 Billion, leaving RM 2.7 Bil to be handed to deserving applicants. The worst news for my company, is that the eContent fund has been dry out, where animation companies like us are most needed with such fund for content development. However, surprisingly I am not feeling sad nor depress with such news. The reasons is because I have shifted my mindset previously on reducing the dependency on government grants. Apart from that, we are in discussion with broadcasters, although the response is slow, but we had a good feeling that there will be projects coming in this year after Chinese New Year.

So, Start-ups, in such tough times what will you do to prevent from extinction?

  1. Pre-Sales works for all sectors – You need not have a perfect end product to sell. Take a home delivery service offering gourmet meals as an example. A bootstrapper will not waste a cent on making meals that nobody wants, instead, he/she will first compile an interesting menu, then goes into the market to get their interest and get orders first with just only the well presented menu. Another word, sell your ideas in the air, get the money, and developed. the upside for pre-sales is where you get a confirmed sales, and you need not waste a single cent on something nobody wants. the downside is, you need extra effort to convince your clients with just an idea or an unfinished product.
  2. Cutting Down Cost the creative way – There is always another way. Creative imagination is needed to face all obstacles. For examples, instead of printing hardcopies of glossy colour brochures, you can utilized the internet to spam the market. Share your office, share your phone bills, utilized 2nd hand furniture and computers. Employing the Art of Barter,create a win win situation for all parties. You need to loose some to gain some. Every lawyer tells you that contracts must cover all possible circumstances and they charge you at a fly high cost, but you have forgotten that there is no point in suing a bootstrap business because we don’t have money to give anyone. An astute way of avoiding hefty professional fees is to invite your key contacts joining your advisory boards.
  3. Getting alternatives Financing – If you had a rich father, lure him into the business ~ lol (without his control). Banks seldom borrows to a bootstrap business, the alternatives ways can only be friends and family or governments and clients. Getting your first line of credit can take time and patients, but please provide an “excite” to the creditors, is best with a confirmed Sales Contract on-hand. Or ask your clients to advance your payments for you to kick-start.
  4. Managing that Precious Cash – Create your cash flow forecast, plan your cost, and reduce any possible unnecessary expenses. Some research and negotiation with different vendors/suppliers/services provider is needed to understand your cost in-order for you to plan your cash flow. Employ progressive payments and advance payment and spend less. Motivate and maximized your staff capabilities. (If you don’t have money for meals, eat bread and cheese everyday to get you fuel up, joking.)
  5. Marketing on Shoestring – Ignore on Market Research and Advertising on the start. You can think of a FREE Model to assist your marketing objectives. Pick a clear cut message and promote your differentiation and take advantage of today’s technology with internet marketing. Put in clear strategy and avoid to be blown in all directions.
  6. Focused Directions and Vision – Small companies tends to diversify too much in all areas in-order to survived. Taking our animation company which focused on cartoons development as example, why not we take up some advertising jobs or graphic design job in-order to sustain the company. My answer will be NO. In my own opinion, being too diversify with different areas makes your company looks unprofessional, and worst, it may even get your company to no where because you do not have a  clear objectives and directions for your company. I prefer to focused on 1 area, and be the best of that area.

Please do share with me if you had any other ways to bootstrap a business. Businesses have to help each other to ride through the tough times.

February 19, 2010 | Filed Under Entrepreneur, Financing | Leave a Comment 

A grant for Contents - MSC Malaysia ICON Grant (Unofficial Guide)

According to the source from greyreview.com (The Unofficial Guide to MSC Malaysia ICON Grant) and MSC Malaysia, our PM announced the establishment of the MSC Malaysia ICON grant programme, with the amount of RM12.86 million allocation (under the second economic stimulus plan),  to spur the creation of local online contents to support Malaysian broadband strategy. We get to know the grant 2 months ago, where our company is recommended to apply for the following grant during our application of MSC Status, where our strategy and business models are align with the objective of the grant.

  1. Purpose of grant: Hooraay~~~ Malaysian will enjoy high speed broadband in the near future!! However, the authorities are afraid that the broadband penetration rate will still remain low after the implementation. Hence, the objective of this grant is to generate more local contents to encourage the nation broadband penetration. Hence, your proposal and business model must be able to align with their strategy in promoting broadband uptake in Malaysia. In actual, with or without the grant, with high speed broadband, i see a lot of opportunities ahead for businesses such as IPTV and etc.
  2. Amount of grant: RM100,000
  3. Duration: 8 months
  4. Application Flow: The application flow for ICON grant is rather different from  PRE-SEED. For Pre-seed, after submission of application, you will need to present your ideas to the panels yourself. However, for ICON, after submission, you will be assigned with a representative from the ICON community, and you will present to your representative, and your representative will present on behalf of you to the panels. There is a possibility that you will also need to do the presentation yourself if the panels has doubts and they need further information or better understanding from you.
  5. Disbursement method: I hope I did not interpret this wrongly from MDEC. If I do, please do correct me. PRE-SEED disbursement will be given upfront by MDEC in quarterly basis. However, ICON will be rather different. The phases are structured in 2/3/3 format. which means 2 months + 3 months + 3 months = 8 months. If I did not interpret wrongly from the community, the first 2 months, 20% of the requested amount will be given upfront from MDEC, but the remaining quarter, you will need to fork out your money first, and claimed back as proposed. In another word, if you are requesting for max RM100k, you need to have extra RM40k to survived the first 5 months after 20k has been disbursed.
  6. Type of Programme Supported: Please read the following links = (ICONapps, ICONedu, ICONity, ICONex)
  7. Forms and Application: Please contact them via their email to obtain the forms and application.
  8. More details please contact them personally via their email. Please download the infopack
November 13, 2009 | Filed Under Business Thoughts, Entrepreneur, Financing, Grant, MDEC | Leave a Comment 

More Fun with Funds from SMIDEC

Great news for those that are categorized as SME or SMI. Disregard of any industry, whether you are in the manufacturing, services or ICT line, SMIDEC is here to help you through the provision of advisory services, fiscal and financial assistance, infrastructure facilities, market access and other supporting programmes. (To define yourself as SME or SMI, click here.)

There are various of incentives, grants and soft loans provided by SMIDEC and their agencies to assists and promote Malaysia’s SME and SMI. Imagine at the interest rate of 2% for a soft loans with range from RM 50k to RM 3 Million, as compared with the banks, you can earn more even if you save it in a fixed deposit. (of course, there are terms and condition applies, please do check out their sites for more information). Apart from that, there are schemes for Franchise Developments, Marketing, Office Rental Subsidized, Office Equipments and etc. So, why wait. Hurry up, make your call.

Money always the first priority, I will leave the other supports and services provided by SMIDEC for you to explore, I will mainly focus to provides links that are Money related.

November 7, 2008 | Filed Under Financing, Grant | 1 Comment 

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, Financing, Grant | 42 Comments 

Funding for Malaysian ICT Entrepreneurs

Attention to all Malaysian ICT Entrepreneurs, If you have any great ideas, which you think is unique, it will be a hit in the market, or its the next big thing; here is the chance for you to fulfill your dreams. Get funded for your ideas! The government had allocated RM80 million under the Ninth Malaysia Plan for funding as part of the effort to nurture home-grown technologies and talent pools.

These are the few options that you could get funded from:

1) Cradle Investment Programme (RM50,000 - RM150,000)

CIPCIP, a RM 100 million fund managed by Cradle Fund Sdn Bhd, under the auspices of the Ministry of Finance (MOF). Cradle Fund Sdn Bhd is a subsidiary wholly owned by MAVCAP (Malaysia Venture Capital Management Bhd). A conditional fund for RM 50,000 - RM 150,000 for groups of innovative individuals with technology-oriented ideas, who are 18 years of age and older, and permanently residing in Malaysia can apply. Each application form must have a minimum of 2 applicants and a maximum of 5 applicants. Read their FAQ to understand more about them and how you could apply for the fund.

2) MIRC - MCA ICT Resource Centre

MIRCA RM5mil fund to IT entrepreneurs in Malaysia. This is a partnerships between MCA’s Technopreneur Venture Fund with venture capital organizations. There is not much detail on the MIRC site, is best for you to contact them directly at +603-2161 1618 for more details on the fund. This may be their first fund. So, be the pioneer for the first batch, you may get a lot of publicity if you manage to secure the fund. I wonder if this fund will be a conditional funding or it acts as a VC funding? since it is partnering with the venture capital organizations, will it have any of the VC’s restrictions occurs?

3) MDEC Technopreneur Pre Seed Fund

MDECA RM 150,000 conditional fund which was introduced by MDEC to develop your viable business plan into commercially focused ICT project for venture funding and commercialization. Apart having the advantage of its mentoring services and the facilities provided by MDEC, approved applicants has a chance to apply for MSC status during the development of prototype. The fund is open to all Malaysian Individuals who doesn’t owns a business. Application Form download here. FAQ download here.

Last but not least, some other sites that mentioned on Funding in Malaysia:

  1. http://www.it-sideways.com/2007/05/funding-for-technopreneurs.html
  2. http://www.edwinwang.com/Cradle-investment-Programme-MSC-TDF-National-Incub.shtml
  3. http://web2.0entrepreneur.com/6/how-to-get-funded-for-malaysian-startup-entrepreneurs.html
  4. http://www.mobileworld.com.my/v2/index.php/20071105394/Mobile_Industry/Articles/Who_said_there_is_no_funding_.html
  5. http://www.mscmalaysia.my/topic/MSC+Malaysia+Status+Funding
  6. http://hatchlings.wordpress.com/2007/01/05/funding-options-for-a-malaysian-entrepreneur/

Don’t wait when there is a chance.

July 15, 2008 | Filed Under Entrepreneur, Grant | 5 Comments 

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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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