Swimming with Asian Sharks - Business Secrets from the Pacific Rim

Not Everyone Should Do a Start-Up

The next day, Mr. Princeton and I went to a cafe at 8:30 a.m. We reviewed what had taken place the day before, chatting about the topics we covered and the opportunity we uncovered. After tea, we went to have breakfast with a man called Mr. ExMarketing, who worked for the company before he was either fired or quit. 

He was thinking of doing his own Point of Sale (POS) distribution system, and planned to go around selling them store to store.  Basically, he was trying to get into a saturated industry with no advantage, his growth would be slow and he would have to make sales one at a time until he built enough traction. Looking at his presentation and business model, there were some criticisms. First, how was he going to stand out among the hundreds of systems that are already in Hong Kong?  These other companies are already well established in both customer base and reputation. Next, looking at the business plan, there was no cash flow or financial model.  Finally, the presentation was not professionally prepared.  Mr. Princeton gave him the following advice: push the limits to be unique, have a plan for a bigger play, something that allows people to place orders in advance, either online or from their mobile.  Have these orders queue up on the POS automatically … Something, anything to stand out from the existing POS crowd.  The meeting with Mr. ExMarketing showed me that the entrepreneurial spirit is alive and well in Hong Kong.  It is more alive there, in my experience, than in Canada. Ultimately, Mr. ExMarketing did not  start the business, which is probably good because at the end of the day, if you create a business that doesn’t have value, then you’re not only wasting everybody’s time, you’re also wasting the time that you could be working on something more productive. Ray ended up working in a marketing company; he was already in this field so it was a natural fit.