To do list

Hey all,

Just updating the ol' blog with a to-do list of the things ahead of us in the coming weeks:

-      Arrange photo study with William Chen (Latest week 9)

-      Email Fiona and confirm computer to use for project (Computer 16)

-      Email Matt Barrie and arrange interview with him

-      Contact Brian Lim and ask permission to use photos

-      Work out shoot locations for William Chen (Think of compatibility of photos with William’s audio narrative

-      Start editing our interviews and coding website

-      Prepare a couple of text pieces for website

-      Book camera for shoot

Let's get to it guys!

 

Progress at Aussietycoon.com

Just a little update,

A couple of weeks ago I created an account and posted on the Australian entrepreneurial, communal website www.aussietycoon.com. I did this in an effort to solicit the help of young, online entrepreneurs as part of our upcoming character study. Unfortunately, so far my efforts have met with little success. I will have to try a different approach in order to improve our reach to this community. A screenshot will illustrate my problem perfectly:

I think, in order to secure more support from online entrepreneurial communities such as 'Aussie Tycoon', I will have to try and offer them a better deal; perhaps coverage of their business, or the opportunity to reflect on successes and mistakes, will appeal to them...

It's time to sharpen our diplomacy skills team! Challenge accepted!

Let me introduce you to William Chen

On August 28th, my Facebook Newsfeed was covered with William's updates.

10.22am: "Lunch with Tom from TomWaterhouse.com today at Rockpool Bar and Grill. Plus a very special guest, will reveal later!"

11.09am: "Other guests to lunch include Natalie Tran! Runner up Miss universe and Olympians! Nervous now!!" 

12.39pm: "For the sports buffs, lunch with Robbie Farah, Jarred Hayne, olympic gold medalist Stephanie Rice." 

I ask myself...What was he going on about?!
It wasn't until 4.05pm, pictures of him with Julia Gillard and many other well known faces started popping up.

Left: William Chen; Middle: Julia Gillard; Right: Tom Waterhouse

We usually chat on facebook with the usual "what's up", "how was your holiday" and so forth.

But this time I was in interrogation mode!

Amy: Lucky Bugger! 

William: Why Lucky? :(

Amy: It's not everyday you get to take a pic with our PM and all the celebrities.

Amy: Wait...so let me get this straight. You're a Magician, then you work for Google and now you're one of the top 10 personalities under 30...

Besides learning the fact that he is a blogger, web entrepreneur, web developer, teaches young people about money and wealth, doesn't work FOR Google but works ON Google by managing clients for Google's advertising etc, I've also learnt the fact that I'm not the greatest friend to have...

After reading into William's story, I feel like I haven't done much with my life yet. He got a taste of business at the age of 12 on eBay. Before his HSC, he launched his own web auction company Eroo.com.au. But I realise not every path is silky smooth. Being a one man team, he had to deal with hundreds of emails daily, leaving him no time to improve and market his website (mind you he also got accepted to University). So he made the difficult decision of selling it. If he had continued this venture, it would have been one of the earliest Scoopon, Groupon type of business to have launched. His story illustrates the power of the online medium. With his design and marketing skills, William was able to transform a traditional, old-style Italian restaurant into a popular, modern Pasta franchise.

We could get a vast array of rich information and knowledge off him. Whether it be him telling his success story as an Australian web entrepreneur, him giving tips and advice to other starting entrepreneurs, or even the reasons he's stayed in Australia (rather than going to California). It'd be excellent to capture what he does in our center photo story.

Here is his personal website. William has also kindly offered to help us with our website development.

I'm really looking forward to this project. We have lined up the SydStart conference, interview with Andrew Stead the Director Business Development at ATP innovations and a piece to do with William.

Now I have one more additional task to complete after week 12...take William out to dinner as a gratitude of his help!

Proposed Timeline

Before we did the pitch for our web feature proposal last week, we figured out our detailed timeline for the whole project.

As we mentioned in our proposal, due to lack of connects, we're firstly looking into contacting members of USYD's innovation and entrepreneurship research group to see if they know of entrepreneurs who might be interested in helping us in our project. We finally got the response! We are glad to have an interview with  Andrew Stead, the Director Business Development at ATP innovations on next Wednesday (Week 7), which is going to be our first expert interviews for the project! We also emailed some other potential interviewees and we still are waiting for the responses.

On Week 7, particularly Monday, 10th September, we are about to attending  the Sydstart Conference where startups meet talent, investors, co-founders and a heck of a lot more. We hope to interview some Australian entrepreneurs, who are willing to share their stories and experiences on their business, and take some photos of them and the activity, hopefully.

That's all for now, our members will do our best to follow the plans and continue for more investigations. I can't wait to see where our project take us.

Response from Andrew Stead

Andrew Stead replied after a follow-up email! 

Unfortunately I won't be able to make it next Wednesday as I work full day.

Is anyone of you able to make it?

Ending this post with one of my favourite quote: 

"A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step"

Reasons to become an Entrepreneur

I was doing some research about entrepreneurship and I realize in most interviews with entrepreneurs, one of the most common question is 'Why do you want to be an entrepreneur' or something along those lines. So why would people want to become an entrepreneur? Below are some of the possible answers I came up with.

Be your own boss

Being an entrepreneur allows you to be your own boss. You are responsible for making decisions for yourself, for your employees and for the company. It is hard to be proud of doing a task someone else assigned to you. You want to do things your own way and be proud of what you have done without having to follow guidelines that fulfill the expectations of your bosses rather than yourself.

Pursue your dreams

Being an entrepreneur allows you to pursue your passions with greater agency and control over the direction of the particular venture without having to answer to anyone. You are able to do what you love and have a group of employees who will support and help you in achieving your goal. With passion in what you are doing, you can do big and go far. Just like how Steve Jobs would put it “people with passion can change the world for the better”.

Create Jobs for People

Entrepreneurship plays a crucial role in providing people with what is needed to keep their lives going – a job. From the cleaner of the office to the consultants hired to manage the company, a business startup create job opportunities for people and this leads to a sustainable economy – the very reason why government strongly encourages and supports entrepreneurship all over the world. By being an entrepreneur, you are able to contribute growth to the economy and provide many with their daily bread.

Make money

As compared to being an employee, being an entrepreneur enables you a greater chance to achieve greater financial rewards. Business startups can develop into multi business enterprise. Even if you are less successful, you should still be able to make a modest amount for a living and earn more money than the rest of the company. However, money should not be the only motivation for you to start a business. Money can only bring you this far, it is passion that keeps you and your business going through the years.

Encourage innovation in a Society

The progress of a society depends on those who are come up with innovative ideas and inventions. The creativity of successful entrepreneurship enables us to send a message to be received immediately across lands and oceans with just a click on the ‘send’ button and look up for information just by typing some words on the Google search bar. In the past, we have mobiles that operate by key pads. Today, we have mobiles that can operate by voice recognition. In the future, we want phones that operate by just thinking alone. By becoming an entrepreneur, you are able to bring much convenience to people’s life through the creation of faster and newer products.

Digital Dreamers

Digital Dreamers is a program exploring couples of Australian entrepreneurs start-ups making their way in the Silicon Valley, shot by Sydney Morning Herald tech reporter Asher Moses. Our feature should go through those episodes  to see how these young entrepreneurs experiencing.

Take a look at these two stories that I found which inspired me most.

Above: Peter Watts from SMH "Daring to fail at 23: Australia's  hackathon hero"

Peter Watts, a 23-year-old young entrepreneur from Sydney won $20,000 prizes from coding competition “Hackathons” and is heading to US to present his start-up business Swarm.fm.

With Swarm.fm, Watts is developing apps to help people find new music and learn more about the artists they love.

In the article I found in Sydney Morning Herald website Daring to fail at 23: Australia's hackathon hero, he tells us his opinion of Australia business environment, particularly online, “It’s hard to convince those people to stay in Australia because there isn’t the same environment for them to succeed.”

Above: Nikki Durkin Photo: Hugh Hamilton from SMH "Brain drain: why young entrepreneurs leaving home"

Nikki Durkin, a 20-year-old entrepreneur started her fashion website 99dresses since she was 15.

Ms Durkin's aim is clear:" I want to build a billion-dollar company." But she says Australia won't let her, so she's joining thousands of other Australians pursuing their dreams in the US.

“Over in Silicon Valley, failure is celebrated and seen as a chance to learn, but in Australia failure’s seen as a bad thing… generally I think it’s a bit of tall poppy syndrome happening.” She says.

Hence, it makes people wondering why so some Australian entrepreneurs choose to make their business big in Silicon Valley, in the US and the reasons why some Australian entrepreneurs have failed andcontinue to fail.

In order to know the exact reason, we should figure out the economic condition of Australia now. Unlike the US, Australians, by in large, are not investing in onine companies. There are more than 65 technology start-ups in Silicon Valley that were created by Australians,and this number is growing rapidly.

According to the Aussie expat network Advance, about 15,000 Australians work in the San Francisco Bay Area alone-alarge portion working for tech companies.

In the article that I found on SydneyMorning Herald website Brain drain: why young entrepreneurs leaving home, Matt Barrie, the Sydney-based CEO of global online outsourcing site Freelancer.com, says "They’re moving to the US, they’re getting agreen card, and they’re not coming back." We hope to do an interview with him to share his point of views.

Here are some statistics, in 2011, only$120 million – out of $1.8 trillion funds under management in Australia- was invested by Australian venture capital firms.

Adrian Turner, an Australian entrepreneur who has lived in the Valley for the past 12 years, says if Australia doesn't invest in the technology-based businesses in parallel to capitalizing on the commodities boom, we’re “going to be left behind globally in a way that’s irreversible”. 

Our feature will investigate deeply and further particularly on the reasons why Australians are heading to US and what is the different on policies and opinions between US and Australia in venture capital and investment on online business.

Matt Barrie

Matt Barrie, the CEO of Freelancer , the world's largest outsourcing marketplace connecting over 4.2 millions professionals from around the globe, and in the top 250 websites globally.
He also has been an external lecturer at our school Sydney Uni since 2001, teaching in computer and network security and technology venture creation.

It will be really good if we can actually interview him.

Departure of a group member

The table I uploaded in the last post is reflective of our changed circumstances. I thought I should note that one of our group members is no longer with us, and we have adjusted to this by re-assigning responsibility (albeit in a minor way). We do not anticipate that this will have much of an impact on our ability to complete the project at this stage.

Blog Post

Division of Roles and Responsibilities

Hello everyone, and welcome to the Silicon Valley Down Under blog space. Over the last week or so, Silicon Valley team members have been working out a long-term plan on how to realise our project goals.

We have been discussing a number of possibilities regarding online entrepreneurship, and its relevance to the current business world. We've cycled through a range of possibilities and angles to take, and have found some to be more palatable than others. But more on that later.

For now, I'm putting up the duties and responsibilities that each team member has, and I'll write a little about what relationship each role has to the overall project.

To start off, we'll look at what I (Louis) will be doing, and what my responsibilities both to the project and my team are going to be. 

I have the task of managing the overall project and coordinating the efforts of team members working on it. This role involves acting in a managerial capacity, and to do it effectively I must hone my communicative and organisational skills.

Amy Pun, Margaret Li and Grace Zheng all share the role of being content producers. This means they are responsible for editing and refining all the stories and sub-tasks our project entails. The sharing of responsibility in this area allows for collaboration and cross-involvement in the preparation and creation of material for our project.

All members of our group share the responsibility of undertaking research and pursuing pieces for our project. At present, our research efforts have been divided into two key areas. The first involves communicating and arranging interviews with Aussie online entrepreneurs, as well as academic experts in the field of online entrepreneurship (a task that Grace is currently handling). Researching and Journalism is a key role of Margaret, who will oversee and manage the progress of these tasks generally.

Finally, both Grace and Amy share the task of managing the social media platforms relevant to the project and creating and maintaining the website where the project will be based. Grace has created a Twitter account, and Amy designed the graphical layout and appearance of the blog. Grace and Amy will blog in more detail about this as the project develops.

That's all for now, but I'll keep everyone updated on the progress of our work as we continue with our investigation!

Australian winning the Gold Medal

Above: Ruslan Kogan Photo: John Woudstra from SMH "Million-dollar man: Ruslan's rise and rise"

The model success of Kogan is appealing to young Australian entrepreneurs out there. However, what I find highly appealing is not the end but rather the journey to success. We need a feature with core rather than skin. In essence, young entrepreneurs don't want to see numbers or how successful entrepreneurs spend their money. They want to see the blood and sweat it takes to get to where they are now!
Take a look at this article I found on the Sydney Morning Herald website Million-dollar: Ruslan's rise and rise. Our feature should go along the lines of how it's been framed in this article. Focus on the entrepreneur, their working environment, obstacles and if so, how they've overcome it in Australia.

In the article Kogan tells us his fascination with the internet.

"I would've needed an investment of $5 billion, retail stores all over the country, millions of dollars' worth of stock, some serious backing. I started Kogan with zero dollars in the bank account - that's why I love technology."

I understand investing in such online ventures are of high risk. However, Kogan's story demonstrates that with hard work we could start with nothing and yet become successful  in the land Down Under.

"I have worked my butt off for four years, training 15 hours a day and it's finally paid off."

 I believe inspirational stories will be appeal to our users (Young entrepreneurs). Obviously, we would also have stories about failures, but standing up and trying again is in itself inspirational.

I can't wait to see where our project takes us!

Andrew Stead

Here's a little background information on our potential interviewee Andrew Stead. He is the Director Business Development at ATP innovations, non-executive director of the NSW Enterprise Workshop and the co-founder of Sydney Angels. He also gives lecture on entrepreneurship at the University of Sydney. He graduated from a Bachelor of Science (hons) degree at USYD, an MBA from Macquarie Graduate School of Management. He has a personal website, click to check.

I think it's worth looking into why he decided to take a business related course after doing an honors in a science degree in our interview. Unfortunately, he hasn't got back to me yet. I'll probably send another follow-up email next week.

Sean Ashby

Here's an interview with Australian online entrepreneur Sean Ashby. He is the founder of aussieBum, is an online website that sells men's swimwear and underwear to customers all over the world.He started his business in 2001 with $200,000. Ashby has been named 'Australian Exporter of the Year' twice.

It will be good if we can do an interview with him.

SydStart

Hey guys, remember how we contacted Sydstart to see if we could enter for free cause the tickets are far too expensive?

Here's his response:

Do you guys reckon we should pay the 10bucks
or should we put ourselves as USYD 'exhibitor delegates'?

There's a conference on the 7th and another on 10th. So which conference do you guys want to go? 

I would be able to make it on both days.
Let me know your views asap & I'll get back to him.

USYD's Innovation & Entrepreneurship Research Group

Good job guys on the presentation! I think it went pretty well. I'm really looking forward to the interviews that we'll be conducting next week. Hopefully everything would go smoothly and that we will be able to stick to our timeline.

Anyway, here's a link to the USYD's Innovation & Entrepreneurship Research Group

I've contacted one of the members - Shanie Atkinson and she suggested that we contact Andrew Stead (which I've already done so). Here's a snapshot of his profile. You guys can view it here.

I've also added new gadgets such as Twitter, Shoutouts and Recent Comments. Feel free to utilize any of these platforms!

P/S We didn't end up taking a group photo today.. Lets take it next thursday!