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5 myths about entrepreneurship (part 3 of 3)

Slide 12: What Is In For Me?
Now that I bursted all the myths and bubbles, why am I still running a business?  Other than I like to torture myself, here are some of the reasons.


What is in for me in entrepreneurship

Lots of Learning:
If you love to learn, this is where all the learning is.  As OffGamers grew, I noticed that none of the partners have any knowledge in financials and I decided to attend the CFA course.  Even though I didn't pass the exam, I learnt enough about financials.  I also learnt more about law and trademark after we received the first lawyer letter.

Entrepreneurship expose you to all areas of business, not just a very narrow scope as an employee in MNC.

Lots of Challenges:
Economy outlook, GST, currency, haze, etc, are all challenges.  If you don't like challenge, please stay away from entrepreneurship.

Self Discovery:
I figured that everything that didn't work in the company or business can be reflected back to me.  For example, when we can't hit sales target in Gapture, it reflects back to me not liking to sell, which goes deeper into I am afraid of wasting others' time, which then leads to my lack of acknowledgement of myself.

Roller Coster - Up's & Down's:
Entrepreneurship is the biggest roller coster ever, if you like roller coster.

Meeting People:
I get to meet people from all walks of life.

Building Culture:
I did some soul searching when running Gapture and I found out that what I wanted to do is actually to build a company that embodies all the values that I want in the country.  Core values in Gapture are Simplicity, Measurability, Integrity, Thirst of Learning and Excellence.

At Gapture, we don't care what race, religion and sexual orientation is our employee.  I requested our HR to drop the religion and race columns (which are very common in all forms in Malaysia) from our interview form.  We only ask that you perform as per job description and achieve your KPI.  We ask for excellence!

I wanted to build an excellent company that Malaysians are proud of, a role model for other companies, one that can inspire others to follow suit and bring excellence to the country.

I don't like the corruption culture in the country and I decided that Gapture is going to walk away from any business if there is a need for corruption.  This is not an easy choice as there is many businesses and companies out there operate in that manner.

Now, when you finally get to start your company, what values do you want to instil in it?  Out of all things that you have been complaining about the country, are you going to make a difference in your company?


Slide 13:
This is my favourite video about entrepreneurship.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h-KHWUq3B7I


5 myths about entrepreneurship (part 1 of 3)
5 myths about entrepreneurship (part 2 of 3)

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