25
Some say that turning twenty-five is the point in life when we encounter a quarter-life crisis. Young people (fresh graduates especially) face the issue of finding a job or career they are passionate in, and more often than not, we start to compare ourselves with friends we deem more successful than we are.
“It might be a quarter life crisis; either way I wonder sometimes about the outcome of a still verdict-less life”
– John Mayer, Why Georgia
Looking back at life in University, I found that the real lessons I learnt were not inside the classrooms or within my sectional classes. Contrary to the conventional belief that “grades are everything”, it is in fact the side hustle(s), projects, and what-not(s) that played an instrumental role in shaping who I am today. This piece will highlight three of the most salient lessons I’ve learnt in the past four years.
Always be learning
An education is first and foremost where one learns, and not just get schooled (in the full sense of the definition). I confess, I spent the first two years in University chasing grades. It was only when I was inducted into Residential College 4, I focused my efforts to set up the Coffee Academy. There, Dylan and I learnt how to properly negotiate with key stakeholders within and outside of the College to achieve our objective of training residents with the theory and practical know-how for all things coffee.
When I decided to do a six-month stint with Eunoia Pte. Ltd. under my NUS Overseas Colleges (Singapore) Programme, I was pensive if I’d make a good intern. I guess I took it in my stride; now I’m equipped with a basic knowledge of front-end coding (HTML/CSS), User Experience Design (UXD), and implemented various specific Sales and Marketing processes.
The learning never stops; In July, I served as one of 24 facilitators for the NUS Enterprise Summer Programme on Entrepreneurship. I had the opportunity to meet some of the brightest and sharpest individuals from Austria, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Pakistan, Russia, Thailand, and many other countries as well. The programme was designed to ease the participants into Singapore in the first week before getting into the nitty-gritty details of entrepreneurship itself in the second week. It was truly an enjoyable experience with Clan 6 / 2gr82innov8, and the rest of the participants, facilitators, assistants, and staff. I wish they’d stayed longer though.
Build relationships, not connections
Understandably, something’s gotta give. While I was fully immersed in the familial and thoroughly engaging culture in Residential College 4, I may have neglected the School of Business community; for a close friend of mine always tells me:
“It’s not about who you know, it’s about who knows you.”
It is important to manage relationships in a manner that is not just — for a lack of a better word — transactional. It’s more common than we think it isn’t, when someone uses you to get what they want — but it’s never a zero-sum game.
We ought to be mutually supportive in ways that we can, and where we can add value others, others need to be willing to pass that on to another, and another, and so on — cooperative games, if you will, instead of game theory which are games in pure conflict.
Move fast, break things, and learn from it
Last Friday (August 6, 2018), I had the opportunity to share a panel at the Imagine Conference 2018 with three established entrepreneurs in their fields of work: Zera Ong, Founder of Zelta Technologies, Ray Poh, Founder of Artisan Green, and Haoming Lee, Founder of Invade. The panel was moderated by Henry Chew, Partnerships and Operations at the Adam Smith Center.
We shared our personal experiences in our respective entrepreneurial journeys, and common themes that came up were along the lines of staying resilient, running along with the regulations set by the government, and how the future of entrepreneurship looks promising given the right team and attitude.
Over the last year of running Pitchspot however, See Ting, and I have broadly categorised four main characteristics that entrepreneurs (should) possess when they do embark on their entrepreneurial journey:
- Drive. What is the underlying passion or motivation behind why one is doing this? What is the vision, mission, objective, and aims of one’s venture? On a deeper, more personal level, what is it that makes you tick / what truly drives you / what gets you up in the morning?
- Intellect. See Ting often talks about the three categories that EntrepreneurFirst uses to categorise potential candidates in EF: Product, Domain, and Technical expertise. Personally speaking, it’s either you’re book-smart, or street-smart, and if you’re a rare pokémon, you’ve both smarts. Generally speaking, individuals who are book-smart know how something works, what to do if something isn’t working the way it should be. People equipped with street-smarts are able to adapt more quickly than others, and they know the quick-and-dirty way to solve immediate problems; the question is: which one are you?
- Coachability. How willing are you to take in advice from mentors, investors, and peers? Are you able to lower your ego, and employ one of Stephen Covey’s — seek first to understand, then to be understood?
- Humility. I spoke with one of our potential investors recently and he was sharing with me how humility is essential for startups especially — it’s one thing to be idealistic, but another to have your head up in the clouds all the time.
At the end of the panel discussion, we were asked of what we thought of the future of entrepreneurship (see notable quotes by panellists here); I shared with the audience that 9 in 10 startups fail, but it’s alright to fail — what’s crucial is that you’ve done all that you can for the venture — and in the process of doing so — move fast, break things, and most importantly, learn from it.
