Colin Charles Agenda

NYT: The Thirst for Learning

YEOLSIMHI haeyo, Koreans say. Work hard. The phrase is spoken endlessly and serves both as a rallying call and a reminder that no one likes whiners. And no matter how hard a student is working, he or she can always work harder – or so goes the theory.

While I’m not a huge fan of the idea that a prep school starts at 7.40am and goes on right until 10.20pm, it is amazing to see the progress that South Korea has had in the past few decades. They’ve grown their GDP per capita almost three times over Malaysia’s, and it was only in the 80’s that they were still looking up towards Malaysia as a success story.

Remember to always take yourself and whomever is teaching you/speaking to you seriously. 

Just this week, I received feedback at a meeting and changed some slides for the next day’s presentation. The audience was impressed that I didn’t just say I’d take the feedback, but I acted on it by doing the necessary research in a limited timeframe. 

Remember to care. And be great.

FT: Time to open up at the office.

Vulnerability means opening yourself to hurt. And as hurt is something that hurts, opening yourself to it is something best avoided.

To risk getting hurt is brave. To act invulnerable is not.

The single most important difference between people who can connect and those who can’t is their willingness to be vulnerable.

Leaves me a lot to think about. I generally believe in having tall walls. Time to follow the work of Brené Brown clearly. 

Videos: The Power of Vulnerability, Listening to Shame.

Rais Yatim is at it again:

Speaking to reporters yesterday on the sidelines of an event, Dr Rais said, “We have legal redress under Section 233 and 263 of the Communications and Multimedia Act. But we would rather not use that first until and unless we get the results of what the Singaporean authorities are pursuing first.”

legal redress. i’m beginning to wonder, where does Malaysian jurisdiction fall when it comes to the Internet?

the alvivi blog was hosted on tumblr. last I checked, tumblr was not a malaysian company & has no presence in malaysia (this is quite unlike blogspot & google). tumblr is unlikely in singapore too. do malaysian or singaporean internet laws apply? can the communications & multimedia act 1998 be used just because these two are malaysian?!?

so what is alvin tan & vivian lee guilty of? recording videos of their sexual escapades. what’s wrong with that? content is king, and if they’re producing useful content, so be it. no one forces you to watch, or read, or be nosey, so you really can switch channels.

singapore isn’t jumping on this yet. they’re letting the university (nus) deal with the matter first. how is this the problem of the university? maybe its because at least one of them has a scholarship. universities shouldn’t dictate what students choose to do with their lives.

i’m not alone in thinking this is their business. after all with the billions of pages on the internet, there really isn’t much reason for people to cry afoul.

alvin is an entrepreneur at heart. i’m glad they’ve posted a response (seems vivian doesn’t do much talking).

they are after all collecting email addresses to build a mailing list. i’m old enough to remember jennicam. lifecasting is not a new idea either (iJustine, justin.tv, etc.). imagine jennicam meets kink? there’s great production value here (of course, i have to admit i’ve not seen the content as the blog has been taken offline; but to get such traction, clearly it must be good to a selection of people). alvivi can clearly become a brand. 

obscenity laws? random acts? lets not curtail on the right to freedom of expression. remember, if you don’t like it, don’t view it.

Edwin Yapp thinks about why Apple would introduce a mini iPad. The thinking for me is simple:

1. I almost exclusively use my Nexus 7 tablet now for everything. This includes surfing the Internet, reading books on the Kindle app, and more.
2. The only thing it isn’t so good for at the moment is watching movies which I do on the plane (which I tend to be on a lot). And consuming video podcasts is definitely an issue since there is no iTunes syncing.
3. The storage size isn’t so hot either – at 16GB I cannot load it up with a lot of movies like I can on my 64GB iPad.
4. It is cheap. Replacing a USD$250+ device is much easier after 2 years than replacing a USD$700+ device when the software on it becomes obsolete.

Resolution size probably plays a huge role. I lug a 15″ MacBook Pro around now, because I’ve always been using 15″ laptops since the days of the PowerBook. Its simply because of the resolution: 1440×900. Today I’m thinking about a 13″ MacBook Air because its lighter and it also supports the 1440×900 resolution. Going from 15″ -> 13″ is a smaller screen size with the same screen real estate. 

I expect that with all these HD/retina displays, you can just fit more onto a smaller screen size.

Many have assumed that iOS developers only focus on developing for 2 sizes which is untrue. 480×320, 960×640, and now 1136×640 just for the iPhones/iPod Touches. Then there’s the iPad’s at 1024×768 & 2048×1536. Why not get a third? :-)

A 7″ iPad that syncs with iTunes, has more space than 16GB (maybe 32GB is the middle ground that I should probably grab), with a good resolution – its something I could definitely consider. Have to figure out how to watch movies on a smaller screen though…

I know nothing about the African continent, having never stepped foot into it before (something I’m sure I will remedy within the next decade). I read a piece in the FT Weekend about Alan Knott Craig, Jr. (@alanknottcraig), an entrepreneur in South Africa that runs Mxit. Mxit is impressive: 750 million messages a day served, plus allowing 581 million mobile users in Africa to make electronic payments.

You have got to love Mxit’s mantra: help more Africans make more money.

This is a social entrepreneur at his best. I’ve already picked up his book titled: Mobinomics: Mxit and Africa’s Mobile Revolution, which I presume will be an interesting read.

He is also a workaholic with suggestions on how to improve his work-life balance with 3 simple rules:

1. no working after 6pm
2. no working on Sundays; and
3. no travelling for more than seven consecutive nights

I just subscribed to his blog and followed him on Twitter and am totally eager to learn more about this amazing continent.

I love competition and free markets. I read about Pirq coming to Malaysia via the webcampkl group. An interesting thread is brewing.

In Malaysia, I see three players (not including Foursquare for merchants which some establishments use to give mayor discounts, every 5th check-in, etc.): 

1. ChopChop is the pioneer in this space (bootstrapped around December 2011 by 3 passionate young entrepreneurs whom I’ve had the pleasure of meeting more than once). 
2. Shortly thereafter Voucheres came along and they picked up a nifty RM700,000 from MyEG & MDEC (newsclip, crunchbase). They’re a startup with 4 founders (January 2012), claiming 10 employees, and they seem to be relaunching 10 months into it. 
3. And the latest to the block? ChopInk (July 2012). Four young founders who were AllStars graduates (RM18,000 + mentorship for some 6-7% equity), which I’m told reliably is a pivot from a different unworkable idea. ChopInk has goals of a 1,000 merchants by year end and is supported by Cradle and possibly had some investment from Telekom Malaysia.

And today, you’ve got the fourth player: Pirq. Pirq’s take is different: you receive an immediate discount of 20-50% instantly. You don’t collect chops for later redemption. Pirq is a US-based company flush with cash – currently USD$3.2 million has been raised (yes, thats USD not Ringgit). Their first expansion country: Malaysia, then Singapore. Pirq is like collecting chops meets Groupon (20-50% discounts on a bill last I checked at most restaurants is unsustainable). 

The grapevine tells me that Pirq has four sales people on-board. From an execution perspective, I love how they focus on areas. My biggest problem with these digital loyalty card applications is that I generally never visit any of their merchants! From a tech perspective, Pirq needs work.

I see Pirq as competition with group buying sites, which is definitely seeing fatigue (in Singapore they’re dwindling; in Malaysia?). The verdict is still out there how digital loyalty is going to be managed between ChopChop, ChopInk, Voucheres. Maybe well-funded Singaporean Perx might arrive eventually.

As a consumer, while I may not have to collect loyalty cards in my wallet any longer, I’m going to be collecting smartphone apps. Good thing you have folders on iOS :)

Who’s going to win? The people that make the better product & with better execution. Not just for the consumer (location based alerts, geo-fencing, etc) but for the merchants as well (smart ad posting, etc.). 

In another post, we’ll talk about money. Foreign money is rolling into companies coming into Malaysia (Rocket Internet, now Pirq), mainly because the USD or Euro goes further in Ringgit Malaysia land. Most of the discussion at webcampkl is focused on this.

Me? I’m naturally rooting for the bootstrapped entrepreneurs – that’s ChopChop.