Teknopreneur

Bancheto has always been a case study to me.

If you don’t know what it is, you should check it out Friday nights until about early dawn on Saturday. It’s located near Strata 200 in Ortigas Center. Don’t ask me how to know where it is. You WILL know where it is from a street a far.

Basically, Bancheto is your night market. Only, you don’t buy tiange clothes. You’ll find foods. Lots of foods. Not cheap, as you may think about tiange. Still hundreds, and probably thousands flock just to eat. It has even become a tourist attraction. The last time we went there, I saw Koreans, Americans, and I guess even European tourists.

The concept is such a hit that I wrote several observations while waiting for my wife as she gets her favorite “Crepe”.

Here’s why I think Bancheto is such a hit:

1. It meets a basic need. Food is a basic need. They offer simply … food. They didn’t try to be everything. They don’t sell clothes. When you talk about bancheto, you’re talking about food.

2. Draws a crowd. They placed everything in one street so people will flock. Crowd attracts a crowd.

3. It happens not every time, only once a week. If they are going to do it every night, I’m not sure if it’s going to be such a hit as it is today. They chose Friday as their strategic night.

4. Word of mouth advertisement. The experience is extraordinary, you can’t help but talk about it with your friends. The moment a friend of us brought us there, I’ve talked about it with several other friends. So the advertisement multiplied through word of mouth.

What can we learn from the Bancheto principles in as far as technopreneurship is concerned?

Do you think bullies only exist in schools? Think again.

Bullies are in your workplaces. They think they can play boss because they are close to the boss. Or that they spread rumors about you and think they can get away with it.

Bullies are in your small circle of friends. Oh, the guy who’s very good at manipulating your emotions, making you submit to his or her every demand.

And yes, bullies also exist in the business world. The big businesses who tries to threaten those small entrepreneurs with law suits because they think their bullying will shake their principles. Believe me, I know what I’m talking about.

People like these have a “high school hang-up syndrome”. They think everyday is high school, but no, apparently this is now the real world. Where people are learned. Stronger. Confident. Principled.

I believe that bullies will not exist if we all refuse to be bullied. Stand your ground. Stand by your principles. Even if it will make some few broken relationships. Or broken business deals. Or broken meals.

As author Ellen White says, “The world needs men who will stand for the right though the heavens fall”.

After 10 years, we feel like we’re starting all over again.

In a lot of ways, we are. New focus. New methodologies. New tools. New approach to business.

In the next couple of weeks, we’re going to come up with huge changes. Actually, the change started to happen a year ago during the US recession. For the past 8 years, our target has been oursourcing our services to North American market. When the recession happens, we realized that as small a company that we are, we cannot sustain our operation under the same approach. So, we’re changing gears.

1. We’re relaunching TeamSparrow as an SaaS company. We’re still doing outsourced services, but in the next couple of years, our goal is to launch web applications that will cater to business operations and church services. With that, we’re going to relaunch our website, put up some social networking campaign through Facebook and Twitter. Happening really soon.

2. We’re outsourcing out marketing efforts in the Philippines. For the longest time, we maintained a local marketing team. This year, I encouraged our marketing manager to put up a marketing company of her own — and we are her first clients. The approach allows us to focus on what we do best — development, and at the same time encourages my marketing manager — who was with us for almost 7 years, to be an entrepreneur herself. So, having said that, we’re also free to partner with anyone or any company who wants to sell our services. Contact me if you’re interested.

Exciting and bumpy road ahead!

What do you get when your favorite restaurant becomes your client and then you create their web presence? FUN!

When I was bidding for this project, all I can think of is free meals. World Chicken is one of my family’s favorite weekend, after-church destination. So when our designer started working on the mock designs, I couldn’t contain myself and be hungry just looking at the pictures.

World Chicken’s website is a simple, straight-forward yet graphically enticing “web brochure”. It takes you to their menus, their locations and some information about franchising.

URL: www.worldchicken.com.ph

Being an entrepreneur is not in my blood. I don’t have a Chinese blood — I’m half Pinoy and half Bicolano. Ok, if you didn’t get the joke, never mind. My parents weren’t engaged in any business. I learned about business in college. But being an accounting student, I learned only half of it — half management and half numbers.

And so when I started Team Sparrow, Inc. in 2001, I’m clueless of what I was doing. There were times when I hit the wall and didn’t know what to do — no one is mentoring me, nothing is available in the books — I just do whatever sounds logical to me. And so there were mistakes, huge ones. Needless to say, I learned a lot from those mistakes. The painful way. After 7 years, after the ups and downs, I feel like this is the only time where I can say I’m ready to do business.

If you’re a budding entreprenuer, you don’t have to commit these mistakes. Learn from these and avoid the pains. Let me share some of the mistakes I committed in the past 7 years and hoping that, by writing about it, these mistakes will stare at me whenever I’m confronted with the same thing and therefore, avoid committing the same stupid things:

1. Keep the operation cost as low as possible. We started well. Cash is present. The first mistake: launch a web product extravagantly — like, in a hotel — in the hopes that there will be media attention. There was time that earnings are good, so we moved from one “better” office space to another, treated employees during their birthdays, purchased computers even if it’s not needed (yet). While I cherish those birthday parties (and never regret that, it’s my way of loving my employees), I wished I had chopped the cost down. We could have stayed to the same office space as long as possible. We could have used what is available. We could have maintained just one internet connection. Bring down the cost as low as possible. It definitely is a way to survive the crunch time.

2. Less is more – I thought hiring more employees when I’m capable of is a sign of success. So I did. I thought too many projects is the way to go. So we tried to squeeze in as many projects as possible. I thought the more diverse our services are, the better it is for us. So we offered not just web development and designing, we tried web hosting, email hosting, even logo designs and calling cards.

The problem: I realized that for some tasks, 3 staff working can be accomplished by 1 really good programmer or designer. The key is to find a top notch team — dedicated and passionate about what they are doing. We tried to acquire jobs that are not really in our core competency. The key is to focus on what you are good and and do it well. Less is more. Focus is the key.

3. Be hands on – I tried to automate everything — from accounting to task management to employee log in/log out. Automation is good. In fact, it should be the right thing to do IF you’re not going to actually eliminate yourself as the real, physical person overseeing the operation. In my hope to lessen my workload, I took refuge in automating things. In task management, for instance. I assumed that when I have tasks on queue on my automated task management system, the team will run with less supervision. Wrong. The reality is, even if they see they have tasks on queue, very few will pick those tasks up on their own. They still need someone to direct them and give them tasks to follow.
Automation is good. But don’t make it as an excuse to being lazy.

4. Do not avoid hard conversations – I’d like to see myself as a people person. And because of that, I hate to offend people. The first resignation I had broke my heart. I love my people and I hate to see them leave.

But — what if you have guys who are incompetent, comes in early — for lunch, proud and unteachable? Should you stick? Should you avoid being offensive? The quick answer is – no. Be the boss that you are and make that hard conversation. Fire him if it’s needed. That’s easier said than done, though. After 7 years, I’m still working on that.

Those are just a few. I’ll try to add some more in the coming days. I hope you learned something from my mistakes.

In a world full of distractions, one word stands out: Focus.

In family, if you want to be fruitful as a parent or a spouse, focus. There’s a lot of things that needs to be done. But learn how to give importance to what’s important and learn how to disregard the less important.

In business, I’m a firm believer of focus. While some may say that diversification is the way to go, I’d say focus on your core business and everything else follows. I know of a client that invested a lot in a project, only to abandon it because he got distracted by his other businesses.

And hey, I’m in a web application software business — notice the trend? We’re seeing simple, focused software over-powering the Microsoft-ish, “full featured” ones.
Here’s the principle: Do more by doing less. Focus on what’s important and useful. Applicable to all aspects of life, eh!?