Menulis artikel / post di FB

Fun / 2 years ago
18 jan

Pengguna internet, terutamanya pengguna smartphone kebiasaannya hanya “scan” konten yang disajikan di newsfeed/blog dan mencari keyword-keyword penting untuk meneruskan minat membaca.

Jadi sekiranya mereka nampak perenggan yang tiada spacing seperti perenggan ini, ada peluang mereka tidak akan baca (melainkan mereka minat betul dengan penulisnya).

Perenggan yang tiada spacing juga nampak sibuk dan kelam kabut. Saya sendiri pening baca perenggan ni. Kalau saya nampak perenggan macam ini di FB saya tidak akan baca haha.

Rugilah kalau perenggan kita panjang dan tiada spacing macam ini. Rasa macam tembok. Hmm.

Sebaiknya artikel / post mempunyai perenggan yang pendek.

Mungkin satu ke dua ayat sahaja. Macam ini.

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Sedut ilmu

Startup / 2 years ago
13 jan

Semalam berguru dengan salah seorang usahawan level ratus juta tentang pengurusan syarikat.

“Nadhir, give me a pen and paper.”

Beliau pun lukislah bell curve seperti di bawah yang menunjukkan hayat sebuah syarikat dari awal sampai akhir.

Kemudian beliau tulis pula empat personaliti pengurus:
1. Producer (P) – seorang yang berfikir tentang results, results dan results.
2. Administrator (A) – seorang yang berfikir secara tersusun dan fokus kepada proses serta SOP
3. Entrepreneur (E) – seorang yang mempunyai visi dan idea gila
4. Integrator (I) – seorang diplomat, yang dapat bekerjsama dengan semua orang dan bina culture bagus

Beliau kata:

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Validasi: Bagaimana Hendak Menguji Idea Startup dan Kurangkan Risiko Rugi

Startup / 2 years ago
ScienceExperiment

Kerugian dalam bisnes itu adalah suatu perkara yang biasa. Anggaplah itu sebagai “yuran tuisyen” yang kita perlu bayar dalam perjalanan kita menjadi jutawan.

Tetapi apa yang kita tidak mahu adalah kerugian ratusan ribu ringgit untuk idea yang unproven atau tidak diketahui sama sekali peluang kejayaannya.

Ngeri.

Namun begitu, risiko ini dapat dikurangkan sekiranya kita menjalankan proses validasi idea bisnes itu terlebih dahulu sebelum bermula.

Validasi?

Validasi apa ni Nadhir? Kita nak buat eksperimen sains ke?

Tepat sekali.

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Making TheLorry.com: A year of growth and learning

Startup / 2 years ago
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It has been close to a year since I wrote Making TheLorry.com: A journey from idea validation to being VC-funded.

As 2016 comes to a close, this article will highlight our hits, misses and key learnings for upcoming entrepreneurs.

The Chilli’s Summit
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Fresh from receiving our Series A funds (USD1.5 million), Chee and I had dinner at Chilli’s early January 2016 to discuss top-level strategy and our plans for the year.

Quite simply, the goal was to grow x% by December 2016 in terms of revenue, number of bookings and gross profit.

We also discussed division of labour – I was to handle our bread-and-butter B2C business while Chee took on the fast-growing B2B department.

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11 Movies & Shows Entrepreneurs Should Watch For Inspiration

Fun / 3 years ago

Being an entrepreneur is not easy. There’s so much going on during the week you just need a “release” during the weekend.

Personally, I watch a lot of movies & shows just to do that. Here are some of my favourites that will leave you feeling inspired!

#1 Wall Street (1987)

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My all-time favourite. Watch Gordon Gekko’s wheeling and dealing and the persistence of Bud Fox in getting a meeting with Gordon.

Favourite scene: The BlueStar Airline scene when they pumped the share price up, brought it back down and the commotion that followed.

#2 Narcos (2015)

narcos

Yes, this show is about drugs and crime. But Narcos is also an amazing depiction of entrepreneurship – how to build a network, formulating profitable strategies and thinking big.

Favourite scene: When Escobar told “Cockroach” that he hasn’t got vision. Cockroach was looking to sell product locally while Escobar wanted to export to the USA. “If it costs ten dollars a gram here… imagine how much it will sell for in Miami.”

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Making TheLorry.com — A journey from idea validation to being VC-funded

Startup / 3 years ago
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On 19th January 2016, we announced our USD1.5 million Series A funding round. This is what happened behind the scenes.

Scaling up

When I wrote this post about TheLorry’s story on idea validation on Nov 2014, we were still basically a two-man team (two-man and a half if you count a freelance developer). I was doing mostly customer service & operations work whereas my partner and co-founder Chee Hau was in charge of marketing & sales.

(Btw, if you were our customer and noticed a certain “Adam” replying – that was me. “Adam” was my customer service alter-ego.)

“Adam” in action — replying customers’ text messages at an event. Photo credit: Sam

As we started to get traction, we were convinced that our idea is sufficiently validated and it was time to put in more resource to take it to the next level.

Since tech is our core competency, we felt we should get a developer on board full-time. Freelance won’t work. Our credit cards were already maxed out so we needed to look for outside money in order to start hiring.

We began to actively meet potential early-stage investors to pitch our fledgling startup.

One of them that we pitched to was a KL-based angel investor. Meeting went well but I suppose we didn’t impress him enough.

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Starting a Startup: 3 Reasons Founders Get It Wrong

Startup / 3 years ago
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Ok, so you’re driving back home after a mamak session with your friends. As you’re about to turn into the Kota Damansara exit of NKVE you suddenly get a moment of epiphany — you have an idea for a really cool website that hasn’t been done before, one of a kind.

You speculate that this website will go really, really far. It will make you billions of dollars after you exit and get acquired by Google. You can imagine yourself swimming in a pool with your future wife Ayda Jebat full of RM50 notes already.

After telling few of your friends about it (and always by starting the conversation with — “Eh, this is a secret ah, don’t tell anybody. I don’t want people to know about this and copy.”) you find yourself a co-founder who believe in your vision.

The both of you then start building wireframes on how the website would look like. You identify your target market and have a marketing plan in place. Since you worked in a management consulting firm before, your business plan slides exceed 30 pages.

None of you can code, so you source for a developer to build the really cool website. After a few phone calls and emails you finally found a freelancer guy who you like and has a good portfolio of clients.

Since you don’t want the website to look incomplete and to have ALL the features you want, the quote for the website came up to RM100,000 (50% upfront) and 6 months of development time.

But you believe in the idea. You believe that it will be worth billions. So what’s RM100,000? You will be known as the guy who pumped only RM100,000 to build an empire worth billions.

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A Malaysian Startup Conversation

Startup / 3 years ago
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It’s lunch time and two coworkers (both running their own exciting startups), Chris and Rizal are trying to figure out where to eat (a common Malaysian problem).

The conversation went a little something like this:

Chris: Who’s gonna Kaodim lunch today?

Rizal: You hutang iMoney bro. Of course you gonna buy today.

Chris: WTF, where got? Why all of a sudden like MaGIC I owe you money?

Rizal: Please bro. How come you forget such things. Up to today, you owe me1337 Ringgit Plus man. Remember you used my credit card to buy AWS Credits.

Chris: Oh ya hor I totally forgot about that. Oklah today’s lunch on me. Can you Recomn a place to makan?

Rizal: Now Offpeak hours, should be no jam lah. Ara Damansara there can?

Chris: Cool, I got a Baucar for a restaurant there. Got good reviews on Hungry Go Where also.

A bus passes.

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Teknik Pengiklanan Google Adwords Menggunakan “Long Tail”

Learning / 3 years ago
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Google AdWords adalah antara strategi pemasaran kegemaran saya. Sekarang ini, apa sahaja perkara yang perlukan jawapan atau pencerahan kita akan “Google”. Sebagai contoh:

“Eh bro, apa nama player yang botak, dulu main kat MU, posisi midfield tu?”

“Jap bro. Aku Google”

*Google search: “bald, midfield, man united player”*

“Juan Sebastian Veron, bro.”

Daripada segi pemasaran pula, Google AdWords membolehkan kita untuk mengiklankan produk bagi kata kunci (keyword) tertentu. Sebagai contoh, sekiranya kita buat bisnes servis aircon, kita mungkin akan mengiklankan servis kita apabila pelanggan menaip “aircon service” di google.

 

Iklan untuk “aircon service” dalam kotak merah

 

Masalahnya, sekarang ini sudah terlalu ramai orang mengiklankan produk mereka di Google AdWords, terutamanya untuk kata kunci umum. Kita perlu bersaing dengan orang lain untuk memastikan iklan kita berada di atas ataupun sekurang-kurangnya muka surat 1.

Namun begitu, bukan semua pengguna akan menaip “aircon service”. Sekiranya mereka tinggal di Mont Kiara, mungkin mereka akan menaip “aircon service in mont kiara” untuk mendapatkan butiran syarikat yang beroperasi khusus di kawasan tersebut.

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