A few days ago, Netccentric announced to the stock market that I will be leaving my position as COO and taking a step back from active management of the company. I will though still remain a director, advisor and shareholder of the company.

This was a really big decision for me and for the first two days after leaving the company, I was in a state of denial. I felt like I had just gotten out of a 10 year relationship and reality was just sinking in. I didn’t want to talk to anybody about it and I kept myself busy.

Today though I’ve decided to sit down and pen down my thoughts.

With Ming running the company as CEO for the last 2 years, I’ve felt like the company didn’t really need me anymore on an executive level. So in the past few months I carefully evaluated the next steps of my future.

My future of course is no longer mine alone but also that of my family who depend on me. So I had a heart to heart talk with my wife one day. I said I was going to leave my COO position with Netccentric and start something new. With that something new, it will likely be years before I can earn the same income that I used to earn. However I had saved up over the years which would help us maintain our lifestyle. Just no private schools for the kids and less holidays.

Just as important is how happy I think I would be. I’ve always told my colleagues and friends that I was happiest when our company had 20-30 employees. As the company grew to over 200 staff , I began to see the pains of running such a large organization and it ate away a little bit of my happiness.

Being a listed company added to that stress of watching a stock price fluctuate on a day to day basis. More experienced businessmen have told me to ignore the stock price and what it means to my personal net worth but the stock price (which has come down a lot) has affected me in a bigger way. Turns out I’m totally not bothered by what it means for my personal net worth because that’s all just ego.

What hits me though is how sad I feel when investors who invested in us lose money (at least for now) even if the reason for that is contributed from really macro reasons like investor sentiment on ASX Tech stocks being  down. Perhaps that’s one thing that holds me back from being a true businessman. I can’t bear to lose other peoples’ money. I can’t find it in myself to do anything like what Donald Trump did with his Atlantic City ventures.

Ming feels the stress too, but he copes much better than I do. Rather than worry about the fluctuations he puts all his mind into working on the business to deliver shareholder value in the long term. His strength in doing that is something I give him credit for and I’ve never seen him work harder than he has now.

When I first co-founded Netccentric some 10 years ago I hoped for a business that would make me some money but what I ended up getting in the end was far more than money. I had made great friends from clients, colleagues and business partners. Friends who I still keep in close contact with. I’ve also been blessed with a number of entrepreneur awards, the most recent being the Ernst & Young Emerging Entrepreneur of the Year Award last year.

I’ve had also had great memories.

My experience with Netccentric / Nuffnang from boostrapping startup to IPO has also given me invaluable lessons in business that I will carry with me for the rest of my life.

Some people ask me what I’m doing next… I have an idea, but I’ll talk about it publicly once I’m actually doing it. In the mean time I’m going to spend the extra time I have with my family and pursuing some interests.

I’ll spend more time reading books and if there’s one thing I’ve always wanted to do was relive my teenage days of doing absolutely nothing but playing computer games from sunrise to sunset.

Maybe I’ll be able to do that now.

Hi Guys

I just spent the past half an hour going through all the SEIKO stories you guys submitted on your platforms. Thank you very much for that.

There were many many good stories, many of you wanting to give to fathers, husbands, brothers and even friends. I wish I had more to give but I only have one.. so the one that I’m giving it to is to Hanimh who’s giving it to her husband, a SEIKO fan.

Thank you guys for participating and I’ll have more giveaways in future ok? Thank you!

My wife and I watch a lot of movies together and we generally find ourselves talking about the actresses rather than the actors. For some reason we hardly talk about Robert Downey Jr or Brad Pitt from the movies we watch but we’ll always talk about Emma Stone.

There are 3 actresses that I generally really like though:

1. Emma Stone

I like Emma Stone because she’s this really pretty girl who doesn’t seem like she’s afraid to make fun of herself.  Like this.

She also comes off in talk shows as really friendly, like if you saw her in public you won’t be as intimidated going up to her to say hi as opposed to say seeing…. Beyonce?

2. Anna Kendrick

I first heard of Anna Kendrick from Pitch Perfect.

I think it’s amazing she can sing but there’s one thing I love even more about her than her singing and that’s how witty and hilarious she is on Twitter.

Here are some of my favourites.

Yes of course I got your text – I’m just ignoring it. Don’t make it weird.

— Anna Kendrick (@AnnaKendrick47) January 27, 2015

I don’t get why girls paint the “Chanel” symbol on their nails… I could tattoo it on my ass but it don’t mean I’m fancy. — Anna Kendrick (@AnnaKendrick47) March 10, 2014

I woke up just before winning the argument in my dream. Fuck this day.

— Anna Kendrick (@AnnaKendrick47) March 6, 2014

pic.twitter.com/CsXcgXrzpq — Anna Kendrick (@AnnaKendrick47) February 28, 2014

I suspect that low-carb diets work not because they are healthier, but because without carbs I simply lose the will to eat.

— Anna Kendrick (@AnnaKendrick47) November 5, 2015

3. Blake Lively

This one really because of this movie.

I first saw her in Gossip Girls years back but I always just thought she’s okay but wow in Age of Adaline… it was really something else.

She’s coming up with another movie that looks pretty interesting too.

One of those lone survivor against all odds kind of movie. I normally don’t like watching movies like this because man it’s stressful but I might watch this one just for Blake Lively.

Also I kinda like her husband Ryan Reynolds too (from Deadpool).

10th of October 2009…. oh wait was it 2008. Okay I just said to my wife sitting across me “We got together in 2009 right?”.

And she gradually lifted her middle finger to me in slow motion. Ok so it was 2008.

Yeah so we got together on 10th of October 2008 although I neither of us can really confirm the exact date because it’s not like I officially asked the question. We just gradually started acting more and more like a couple. So in the end we chose the date 10th of October because it was easy to remember and we celebrated that date every year.

Well every year except for this year. Ahhh we just realized that we completely… like completely missed the date. Like the whole day went by and we did our things, worked, took care of kids and all that and it was only the next day did Shorty remember it was our anniversary.

There was no celebration, no wish for each other, no kiss, no hug and not even a dinner. I don’t know what happened. I guess we’re too focused on taking care of our kids now that we forget about us sometimes and I know that can’t be good.

We both know that we need to spend time and work on us. Rather than just the kids. So I don’t know… I’m thinking of maybe going for a holiday, just me and Shorty. But when we did that last year we missed the kids so much we really suffered.

Ahhh so I don’t know. Maybe we should just go for a staycation or something. Somewhere in KL, just for one night… so we can come back the next day and see the kids again. It’s like we never left.

Does anyone know some place in KL that serves as a great staycation?

Believe it or not I’ve never been to the F1 in Sepang before. Many a time I was tempted to go to see what the fuss was all about but whenever I heard about the heat and how hot it would be in the outdoors I shied away from it.

Then just this year Heineken offered me an experience of a lifetime: Tickets to watch the F1 from the Paddock Club which is this corporate box right opposite the grandstand, fully air-conditioned, catered and serviced by staff flown in from overseas. It was amazing.

The unfortunate thing is that I’m not going to be able to make it for the race day, but I did make it for the qualifiers’ today and that was all I needed to experience the whole thing.

Here’s how it felt:

1. Everyone from the host to the waiters and waitresses in the corporate box had the highest levels of service. I found it hard to finish a glass of water before a waitress would come around and top it off. The food was great too.. the dessert… to die for.
2. It was a nice bonus that they served ice-cold Heineken in the box.
3. The only other F1 I’ve ever been for was the Singapore F1. The thing about that one though was that I spent a lot of time walking the grounds and while I could often hear the cars go by, I didn’t have a Grandstand kind of view.
4. There’s something about the sound of the F1 cars whizzing by that makes your heart get really excited. I saw even my wife who normally would meh about these kind of things… get excited.
5. For some reason on TV all the cars look like they’re going super slow but in real life the cars drive past you at such a speed you’d think they were flying.
6. There really is much more to the F1 race in Sepang than the race itself. On the grounds we saw little Go-kart type of race tracks for kids to play in, and little game tents as well. The whole thing felt like a carnival. Shorty commented that maybe next time we should bring the kids.
7. There is no air conditioning in the F1 cars so I couldn’t help but wonder how hot those drivers must be the whole time. Then again I think about how they probably make more in an hour than I do in a month… so it’s not too bad.
8. The Sepang race track is really something. I can’t help but admire the aerial shots of it. I remember when I was growing up how some people were like “Why do we need to spend money on a race track in Malaysia?”. Well now that we have it, I’m really proud to have an F1 race in KL every year.

All in all a great experience. Thanks again to Eileen and Steph from Heineken for the wonderful time!

This morning I was just on YouTube watching some other stuff when I saw a suggested this suggested video.

I really thought nothing about it at first but I decided to check it out to see what this guy had to say and I was blown away.

The speaker here is Gary Vaynerchuck. He’s an entrepreneur that used to run a wine e-commerce business and now runs a successful social media agency that does $100 million in revenue. He also happens to have a sizable following on social media.
When I googled him though he had his fair share of detractors. The harshest really likening him to a motivational get rich scheme kind of speaker and maybe he’s just that. But listening to what he said in the first 5 minutes of the video made so much sense.

Here’s my key takeaway from it:

1. We live in a world now where everyone thinks they have to be an entrepreneur but it’s not that. Entrepreneurship isn’t for everyone. What’s important is being self aware of who we are and then deploying our skills on things that suit it best. Maybe we aren’t good entrepreneurs but we’ll be good number 2s or 3s or 4s or 5s.
2. Startups are chasing paper valuations but driving user numbers of whatever metrics in the hope of raising a higher round and eventually exiting. What happened to building a business that makes money?
3. Stay in your lane. Know what you’re good at and what you’re known for and keep to it. Don’t deviate.

I think this video is really worth listening to if you’re an entrepreneur or setting out to be one. Or even if you’re just interested in entrepreneurship.

So check it out!

Yesterday I read this article.

It’s an article that has a video of a man who threw his 3 year old step daughter into a hotel pool and watched as she struggled to stay above water, eventually drowning.  All this while her mom was sleeping in the hotel room. I can’t imagine what the mom must have woken up to.

There’s a video attached to the article but I couldn’t get myself to watch it. Just looking at the pictures alone was heartbreaking enough. So heartbreaking I even had a nightmare in my dreams last night after reading the article.

Before I had kids, watching the news about how kids get harmed as collateral damage whether to war or abusive parents used to affect me but all that is nothing compared to how I feel now that I have kids. Maybe it hurts me more now because I imagine “What if it was my kids”.

Whether it’s looking at the picture of the Syrian refugee boy who washed up on a beach, to a video on CNN of how a little girl got hit by a bomb blast, it stabs me like a knife to the heart.

Once I go through that shock and pain, anger seeps in. Angry that there are people that exist in this world who would harm kids that have nothing but innocence on them. I then ask myself why does God allow these kind of things happen to children who have done nothing to deserve the pain they go through? Children who hadn’t had the chance to live through life long enough to see the good and the bad that exist in this world.

I feel like there should be harsher punishments for crimes against children. That for this man here who drowned the 3 year old girl, even a 100 year prison term isn’t harsh enough.

Why does the world we live in have so much violence? How can we leave a better world for our kids to grow up in?