Starting up in just 13 weeks!

by Quek Soo Teng (Singapore)

Reflections…

If you think that my title is kidding then you are wrong! Everyone in class has really done it. My journey started when I decided to take a module called “technology and entrepreneurship”. Not only did prof Pamela Lim make entrepreneurship sound so interesting there were other factors that affected me that made me think that entrepreneurship was the way to go.

I have friends who are entrepreneurs and I think that hanging around them does influence me to become one as well. Also it was the perfect “job” for anyone who wants to have flexibility and at the same time makes money. Having a family who owns a family business, money wasn’t an issue and life was really smooth sailing until the company was losing lots of money and eventually closed down.

Only till then that I realized the importance of having money. This also made me determined to study hard and find a good job so that my parents would not need to work so hard and enjoy life. At that point of time, I did not think of becoming an entrepreneur but just wanted to make lots of money through working.

By chance I took TWC under prof, who made class really interesting and hearing her share her experience as an entrepreneur really inspired me to start my own business.

The time when I started taking the module was the time when my entrepreneurship journey started. Our group initially came up with the idea of having a ‘sportsbank’ where people could come to our website to loan sports equipment and find them partners to play sport. It was the combination of sports as well as micro-lending. It was a really interesting idea for me till we started to work on it! I would say that it was really tough. There were many limitations for us that made want to change our idea. However, after discussing with prof and her invaluable input it just brought us to where we are today. We then later incorporated prof’s suggestion and came up with the sports profiling idea. From then our group worked on that idea and progressed to what we are today. When nearing the end of the module, our group still had many issues that we have to overcome in order to get our program running. Our major issue was when we have to deal with parents and we did not have the credibility that parent are looking for. Furthermore, it came to us that we are setting up a business for people to make money other than ourselves. Hence, after discussion our group has decided to change directions. Hence our group is now working on it.

Some thoughts about the module…

I really learnt many things from the class as well as professor during the past 13 weeks. It was really the best module in my SMU life. It is also the most hands-on class. If you are a SMU student and aspiring to become an entrepreneur this is the module that is custom made for you. Unlike in other classes where you just talk to your own group of friends this is the class where everyone would talk to one another to share their experiences. From all these sharing we do learn from each others’ mistake.

Also the class was very supportive and encouraging by giving us very useful comments and suggestions of possible areas where our group could look into.

This module has also allowed me to be exposed to what it takes to set up a business.

Other lessons learnt are that you must take action if not everything you are planning will never get realized. This is really a major lesson learnt from this module because if we did not take action we would not have achieved what we have today. In addition, nothing is impossible it just mean I’m possible. The only thing that is impossible would be something that you do not believe in. The reason being that if you have 100% faith in whatever you are doing you will definitely get it down. There is no room for even 1% of disbelieve because when one meets an obstacle that 1% of disbelief would be magnified and become the 99% to change your mind. Last but not least, never give up because whenever you overcome an obstacle you are nearer to your dream. You would never know how far or near you are to your destination.