In Conversation with Lin YuShan & Gan Ping Bing, Partners & Directors of Project NAG

This is the third installment of a series of interviews with start-ups being nurtured by the CIX programme.

1. Tell us a little about NAG: What is it in a nutshell? What is its core or definitive business or service offering? How did you come up with the name of your start-up?

Shan (left): NAG (an acronym for Noise Agenda) is a quarterly design magazine dedicated to introduce the fresh young talented artists, designers involved in art-related fields in Singapore; a guide for all arts enthusiasts, be it students with a passion for the arts, designers/musicians with a hunger for more new works or anyone with a deep interest in knowing more about the local art scene. The concept for NAG literally means to berate/bug about something, someone basically anything under the sky. It is like a persistent nagging that will leave an impression on your mind.

Ping (right): NAG also conveys a unique identity and serves as an easy directory for different genres of the Creative industry. In each issue, we feature the most interesting personalities from our areas of interest, preparing the ground for promising newcomers.

2. Why pick this industry/market? For instance, was it a leap of faith or something you are familiar with?

Shan: Apart from the fact that both of us have a design background, we saw a huge potential to start a local Magazine focusing mainly on Art and Design. As there has not been any local Magazine catering to this specific field in Singapore as yet, NAG will be in a unique position to expose Singapore’s very own arts scene to Asia and beyond. We are hoping that NAG’s quarterly magazine will provide you the readers with insightful updates on the current art/design situation locally and also to highlight issues that have an impact on designs around us.

Ping: Our conviction is that we need to have this magazine. Our Love and Care for the people and things we embrace around us and finding the angle to a story that no one else have, has been the answer to this question. We want to reach everyone who’s interested in what we’re doing, every age, every scene. We’ll let the never dying curiosity haunt us, and our doors has since open for much potential ideas to flow through.

3. Was it difficult to get your first business idea up and running? What were some of the difficulties you faced to get NAG started?

Shan: Yeah it was. There were many doubts on whether we should take a risk to get the magazine business running. We were not sure if this would work in the earlier stages of our discussions, as it is a ‘make or break’ business. As compared to markets overseas where there are demands for their local art and design magazines, a large portion of the arts magazines in Singapore are imported.

Ping: A major difficulty would be us doing everything with our effort and staying on the plan to survive.

4. What made you decide on a joint venture rather than running a solo start-up? What are the working dynamics like for the two of you?

Shan: Having two brains is better than one, don’t you agree? It takes two to tango and it would be double the solutions, concepts and fun. Being a new start up business, hiring is not in the cards for now. So it’s just the both of us juggling all the ideas, editorial and design elements for NAG. Plus the fact that both of us can learn and support each other rather than having to go solo is great.

Ping: We had the opportunity to meet each another through Johnny Lau. Both YuShan and myself compliment each another with our skills. e.g Yushan is pretty savvy with her organization skills, and I tend to put my mind in the wild for more cranky ideas. At different stages, we felt that bridging our ideas brought us closer, and that’s not easy to chance by.

5. What are the current or potential obstacles or challenges you foresee coming your way, and how would you overcome them?

Shan: The road ahead will be long but we are hopeful and will challenge any obstacles positively. In the publishing industry, it is known that there is an incubation period before a magazine transits into operational mode. Nevertheless, we would be utilising this incubation period to fully explore all possibilities and to give our readers the best we can achieve. We’re letting the contents of NAG dictate the types of advertising offers we accept. We will continue to discuss ideas among ourselves and with our talent pool before fine tune the ideas and go ahead with them. Through these processes, it will all come together for a successful business.

Ping: I would say relationships. We need to get in touch with the world as we are right now; we need to build the up our PR skills with the contributors we work with, really, and that is the most important ingredient of NAG.

6. In your opinion, what role does (or can) the National Library play to help start-ups like NAG as well as established businesses?

Ping & Shan: The National Library has been supporting NAG with resources and information that have been of tremendous help. The research team has lightened our load. Their findings are optimised for our purposes, plus the information they provide about the magazine publishing industry is current, which is valuable to entrepreneurs like us. With the information at hand, we would not repeat what others have done. The National Library has also been generous in granting us space for our brainstorming sessions and giving us their feedback and suggestions to improve our business ideas.

7. How has the CIX process (so far) benefited you as a start-up?

Ping & Shan: CIX has been an extremely informative platform for us, in learning the core business know-how. We are being equipped to analyse our target market, how unique our business proposal is, and other administrative issues pertaining to business.

In Conversation with Kelis Tham, owner of Skoop

This is the second installment of a series of interviews with start-ups being nurtured by the CIX programme.

1. Tell us a little about Skoop: What is it in a nutshell? What is its core or definitive business or service offering? How did you come up with the name of your start-up?

Skoop is a platform that offers dedicated talent management to unique creatives from the design, media and arts. We lead our talents to excel and nurture their potentials with devotion. In journalistic jargon, getting a ‘scoop’ means having exclusive publication first hand. Applying this concept onto our talents, Skoop makes them stand out exclusively in the creative industry as iconic specialists.

2. Why pick this industry/market? For instance, was it a leap of faith or something you are familiar with?

As the saying goes, ‘no man is an island’. An arrow thrown can travel a great distance, but an arrow shot from a bow can travel a whole lot more with accuracy. Being a designer myself back then, I was never guided. I simply accepted jobs that were available to me. Have you ever imagined how much time an individual can save, how much faster he can realise his potentials, and how meaningful his career can advance, if he were to have strategic career planning and professional guidance? This is the motivation that developed Skoop into what it is today – to uncover these talents, to avail the opportunities, and to make dreams come true.

3. Was it difficult to get your first business idea up and running? What were some of the difficulties you faced to get Skoop started?

Let’s be frank: It was harder than it looked. Putting aside all the hard work that was required, one needs to have a clear mind in order to channel all his efforts in the correct direction. Imagine a sailor who survived through a huge storm, but ended up at the shore where he started? Imagine a hiker who reached the peak of one of the highest mountains, but ended up realizing that he climbed the wrong one? One of the biggest difficulties Skoop faced was its positioning. It took numerous failures to get Skoop to where it is now, and no doubt that it will continue to face hardships in future for it to evolve and harness.

4. What are the current or potential obstacles or challenges you foresee coming your way, and how would you overcome them?

One of the biggest challenges we face is the build up of Skoop’s track record. Without impressive achievements to showcase, it is difficult to establish our brand further. Failure to make decent accomplishments over time could lead to talents losing faith in us – one of the situations we would definitely need to overcome. I think it is at an advantage for Skoop to collaborate with mutually-benefiting SMEs that share the same concern and help one another.

5. In your opinion, what role does (or can) the National Library play to help start-ups like Skoop as well as established businesses?

I see the National Library as a treasure mountain of knowledge and information. Knowledge is power, and only the arrogant would succumb to complacency. Individuals (especially entrepreneurs) need to constantly upgrade themselves to advance with this ever-changing world, and National Library is in the perfect position to offer assistance in various forms of research and reading recommendations. Besides this, the National Library could organize events or seminars for business entrepreneurs to gather. Through these gatherings, not only can established businesses share their experiences with start-up companies, there may also be potential opportunities for fruitful collaborations.

6. How has the CIX process (so far) benefited you as a start-up?

CIX has prompted us for a change in our perception, uncovered solutions to difficult problems Skoop was facing, and has provided the necessary research information for progress. CIX sessions are excellent in educating us professional knowledge in the most creative and efficient ways. The results have influenced Skoop greatly and have open up many new dimensions to our business. Skoop has gotten to meet a handful of start-up businesses and is venturing into a future with exciting collaborating opportunities.

In Conversation with Lap Xuan, CEO & owner of Libellule Pte Ltd

Editor’s note: This is the first installment of a series of interviews with start-ups being nurtured by the CIX programme.

1.Tell us a little about Libellule: What is it in a nutshell? What is its core or definitive business or service offering? How did you come up with the name of your start-up?
Libellule is all about celebrating what we love to do in life. Book publishing is our main area of business. We want to encourage book lovers to self-publish their own books, and we do that by offering them our convenient and affordable services, such as publishing and printing. At the same time, we also establish programs to support young talents in launching their careers. We wanted a free-spirited and a happy atmosphere, and it seems to us that our dragonfly mascot embodies just that. ‘Libellule’ then, is the French word for that. Once you get used to it, it kind of just rolls off the tongue (as I think French tends to do), no?

2.Why pick this industry/market? For instance, was it a leap of faith or something you are familiar with?
I’ve always been very interested in the publishing industry. That gave me a lot of faith in my ideas, and courage to try them out in the real world. Really, nowadays I don’t think we can get by without publications in some form or other, can we? It’s become a necessity, it’s become a great source of pleasure to us too. Well we don’t have to be passive and wait for the next issue/instalment- now, when we too can share our thoughts with the world, who knows what could happen?

3.Was it difficult to get your first business idea up and running? What were some of the difficulties you faced to get Libellule started?
It’s unpredictable. It all started, as ideas do, with a question I had: ‘What if I wanted to publish my own creation?’ Then I researched, did some basic plans. More questions led to more research, more thinking. And slowly my idea grew and took on more solid form. I quickly realised I had to think about pragmatic stuff too: materials and machinery, legality issues, finding capital to get things started, costs, licenses… things a design student like me just never really thought about before. This is why I think it’s important to be a quick learner, and to fully utilise all of your valuable experiences and resources at your disposal. The ultimate goal: to organise the book-publishing experience into a simple one, for my customers. A fun, joyful experience. That’s what shapes Libellule‘s business.

4.What are the current or potential obstacles or challenges you foresee coming your way, and how would you overcome them?
We believe that it’s a continuous process- learning from our experiences, keeping up-to-date with industry developments, adapting and refining our system, all so that our customers will always benefit. At the same time, we also generate a large part of our revenue by providing quality printing services to big corporations. In turn, we can then direct this into our publishing and youth programs! I won’t lie: getting things rolling, surviving, standing out from the crowd; as a small start-up company, it’s not an easy thing. This is why we need to prove ourselves and gain a lot of support, credibility, trustworthiness.

5.In your opinion, what role does (or can) the National Library (NLB) play to help start-ups like Libellule as well as established businesses?
The NLB has been a great source of support and encouragement to us beginner-entrepreneurs. For example, the research team has assisted us greatly in finding information and answers that we needed in developing Libellule. In addition, perhaps some kind of dynamic seminars or workshops could be held, where established companies would share their experiences with the start-ups, and help them to further develop their budding ideas? The more established businesses might well identify start-ups with high potential there, which could then lead to mutually beneficial co-operations.

6.How has the CIX process (so far) benefited you as a start-up?
CIX has encouraged us to seriously explore our ideas, and has guided me to taking them off paper, and into practice. Being in such an organization also gave us invaluable opportunities to improve by learning from others, and supporting each other.

CIX Startup workshop – session 4

OBJECTIVE: To analyse a Business Case Study

For this session, the participants were led to develop their Analytical skills in terms of being able to study and dissect a business or an industry. To accomplish this, the participants were given a case study of Furniture Group and there were asked to study the condition and circumstances of that business from a short to mid to long term perspective. In particular, the participants were asked:

1. If the Furniture Group positioned themselves correctly within the industry?
2. What their views were on the group’s retail and production strategy?
3. What they thought of the group’s amount of research on their competitors?
4. What they thought of the group’s operation setup?
5. Whether the group’s projection was realistic and what the participants though of their projection on profitability?
6. Whether the furniture group was a solid business or was it at risk of failing?

The participants were expected to study the case and to provide succinct answers to the questions posed above…

CIX Startup – session 3

OBJECIVE: – To prepare a one-page Business proposal

On one sheet of paper, the participants were asked to consolidate what they have done so far. The proposal was meant to include:

Product/ Service Cost

Retail Price

Standard Service Charge

Estimated revene per Month on average.

Estimated Annual revenue on average

The simple formula they were asked to apply was:

Monthly Expense {Product Cost- how many t-shirt or magazine printed + Maintenance cost of website (if any) + Salary or fee (if any) + Misc cost}

Multiply it by 12 months= Yearly Expenses

Annual Revenue – Annual Expenses must have a PROFIT of 10%.

The purpose of this exercise was to get the participants to start thinking about their own business model, to apply the rigour of having a sound approach through on-the-ground research as well as getting feedback from potential vendors as well as distributors. This exercise was also conducted to allow the participants to access if their idea is realistic in terms of expectations as well as appeal.

CIX Startup – session 2

OBJECTIVE:

• For the Virtual Directors (VDs) to present their finalised ideas and improvements for the company they are taking charge of.
• To put into practice, the computation of Costs of Operation & Expenses

The VDs presented on behalf of the 4 start-ups were:

Kelis presented for Artschool (owner: Faisal), which is in the fashion apparel business:

Faisal represented for NAG (owners: Yushan & Ping), which is considering a publication:

Yushan presented for Libellule (owner: Xuan), which is in the field of publishing:

Xuan presented for Skoop (owner: Kelis), which is venturing into human resource management

Each VD’s presentation was critiqued by the floor, and in an interesting twist, business owners were not allowed to respond directly to difficult questions unless the VD presenting their cases opted to use the 3 ‘help lines’.

Johnny concluded the session by offering words of advice and proposing the possibility of the 4 business amalgamating into an integrated services firm.

One follow up from this session was the research assistance rendered to the business owners by Reference Librarians from the Lee Kong Chian Reference Library.

CIX Startup – session 1

Highlights:

The groups came together and presented their original proposals to each other.

Comments and feedback gathered from main facilitator (Johnny), researcher (NLB rep) and from each other

The groups were paired up with each other to cross-pollinate ideas and to share findings

Support system was formed for each group in the form of a Virtual Director