7½ Lessons Learned From Starting Up,

Selling Out & Making It Up As I Go Along…

February 23 2016

• Accounting •  Legal • Real Estate •  Insurance

Trust Me: I’ve Failed…and Succeeded.

•  Started a company •  Survived the Dotcom crash •  Opened 6 offices •  Started an industry association •  Started another company •  Shut Taiwan office •  Bought 5 businesses •  Sold a business line •  Listed on London’s AIM stock exchange •  Sold a company •  Hired 300 people – fired 20

7½ Lessons Learned From Starting Up, Selling Out & Making It Up As I Go Along…

1.  Build enterprise grade 2.  Hire around your core team 3.  Get great at your core offering fast 4.  Get scalable fast 5.  Accounting => Finance 6.  HR 7.  Marketing 7½. Embrace Risk

1. Build Enterprise Grade

•  Strong •  Tough •  Realistic • Valuable •  Sellable

2. Build around your core team

•  Figure out what you’ve got • Don’t duplicate Founders’ skills • Hedge Founders’ weaknesses

3. Get Your Service Delivery Right

•  Innovation… •  …and efficiency… •  And 99.99999% uptime •  No rookie mistakes

4. No Company Ever Shrank To Greatness

•  Be robust and scalable • Don’t wobble when it gets tough • Don’t cut when you don’t have to •  Be valuable as a whole, not cobbled together

5. Love your accountant

•  One day accounting grows up to be finance – When? – More than admin

6. HR – it is what you make of it

•  Talent sourcing/retention… •  …or admin •  Hire 3, fire 1

7. ABM – Always Be Marketing

•  Corporate marketing •  Product marketing •  Channel marketing •  Investor marketing

7 ½ - Take crazy risks

•  You can’t go back later and be bolder

Thank You

Contact: David Ketchum

David.Ketchum@CurrentAsia.com +852 9034 2528

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