Empty cup, open mind

Empty cup, open mind

After the death of Chairman Mao, Vice Premier Deng Xiaoping led his country towards market economy reforms. He understood that it will take significantly longer if they were to figure out the ropes themselves. So he reached out to the World Bank for help to educate his countrymen on how the Western world have been managing their economies.

This helped kickstart the amazing growth China have been experiencing for the past few decades. He famously described the transformation as crossing a river while feeling the stones. He not only understood that they needed help, he also realised those frameworks and insights from others will need to be tweaked and modified to work for their unique situation.

There and back again

There and back again

This is an email written for my team to remind them of the values & principles that brought us to where we are now

It has been more than three years since we embarked on this unexpected journey together and for some reason, we tend to find ourselves back to similar situations again and again.

When John and I first join Mindvalley, we were tasked to build Omvana Online. Then soon after that, we started working on Elula while growing the team. And recently, we started a new quest to develop the greatest personal growth learning platform the world have ever seen.

Personally, I think we are amazingly lucky to have the trust of the company to be the go-to team to build the next big thing. All of us should be thankful for the opportunities given to us and we should never take it for granted.

The easiest way to transfer information between different devices

The easiest way to transfer information between different devices

Thanks to the Post-PC revolution, most of us use more than one computing device. Most likely you will have at least one smartphone. Then you may have a tablet, laptop, desktop or all of them. It’s not uncommon to have more than a dozen devices in a household.

Most of these devices run on different operating systems. This makes it annoyingly difficult to transfer data and information between them. Most of them time, I have to resort to either pasting the information in a note application, a chat application with a message to myself or over email. And this will only work if I had the app installed on all my devices.

I wanted the easiest and fastest way for me share stuff between my devices and found some web clipboards online. Web clipboard is basically a web application that behaves pretty much like a clipboard on your computer. You put in whatever information you wanted to share and it will generate a unique link that you can use to access them. The catch is that most of them only support saving textual information which is good enough for me.

Why I Love Carebears

Why I Love Carebears

I'll admit I may have seen more than 1 episode of Carebears when I was younger. I don't remember what it was about except that they are colourful bears with different icons on their tummy.

But I like Carebears. Not so much the cartoon but rather people who are caring and are willing to sacrifice themselves toward things that matter to them. If you ask me what type of people I would hire, I'll choose a Carebear any day, any time.

What happens when KK goes Lean?

What happens when KK goes Lean?

Last weekend, instead of watching a movie or lazing at home, about 50 people decided to spend their time stalking strangers, working late and building prototypes. They participated in our very first Lean Startup Machine (LSM) workshop here in Kota Kinabalu, Sabah.

For the uninitiated, LSM is quite different than your average workshop or hackathon. Besides learning and working on your idea, you are "forced" to Get out of the Building to interview, sell and pitch to your customers. It focuses on customer development and practices the mantra of Learn First, Code Last.

The User Experience (UX) of an Elevator

The User Experience (UX) of an Elevator

You may have heard of the term User Experience (UX) and wondered what does it mean? Lots of companies including startups are looking for UX Designers to help improve their products. Why does it seem like everyone is raving about user experience and why should you care?

Even if you are not building a product or directly is involved in the creation of one, as long as you are consuming and using any product or service, then you are part of the equation. User Experience or UX is about how you as the user feel and think about a product or services you are using.

The myth of the average consumer

The myth of the average consumer

Whether you are running a business or a marketing campaign, ideally, you would prefer to target as many people as possible. Since by definition, most people are average (yes you are), the largest target market is the average consumer.

But, who is the average consumer? How do they make decisions and what are their preferences? Let’s take a look from the consumer's perspective.

35 Apps & Services I use daily

35 Apps & Services I use daily

From the moment I wake up till the time I go to bed, I’m always interacting or using some sort of applications and services across multiple devices. Since I’m a software developer, I spend a large amount of my time in front of screens. Even when I’m not working, I’ll be reading and interacting with smaller screens.

So, I’ve decided to go through a typical day and list the applications and services I use on a daily basis. I’ve identified 35 of them and grouped them into categories. Hopefully, you’ll discover something new and can consider adding it into your daily routine.

Successful entrepreneurs are great at capturing value

Successful entrepreneurs are great at capturing value

Most would say entrepreneurs are job creators. Businesses and companies they build, employ workers and drive the economy. You could also say entrepreneurs are value creators. Their ventures create and deliver value to their customers.

In my mind, an entrepreneur is someone who is exceptionally good at identifying gaps in the market, fills it and captures the resulting value of this exchange.

Effective communication is more than just words

Effective communication is more than just words

If you could only improve one skill at this moment, choose to get better at communicating. Communication (listening, verbal and writing) is one of the most sought after skill in the workplace. It doesn’t matter if you are in a managerial position or not, being able to communicate effectively, provides tremendous value to the company.

A good communicator is not only someone who can listen, speak and write well. She also knows which channel to use to get her message across and chooses the right mode of communication to improve its effectiveness. To get the message across, you have to care more than the words you use.