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High Tech Start Up in Cebu City
Lawrence patterned CipherTrust (CT), based in the US, after the
template for a Silicon Valley style company found in HTSU, now
in second edition. CT grew 3200% in the first 4 years (based on
market capitalization - 0.15 to 4.87 per share).
Today, Lawrence is based in Cebu City and started a software
development company a few years back - InfoWeapons (IWC). He
used HTSU again in creating IWC and it's working again.
According to Lawrence, "We just got validation of our technology
and market direction by demoing our secure DNS appliance to a
big company in Washington DC (company name deliberately removed
for confidentiality). They loved every aspect of it and ordered
the first two high-end units."
"This may be a first in terms of a world class product being
created from scratch in the Philippines and getting that kind of
sale. The guy in charge there said it was amazing that the two
most innovative companies in IPv6 were both small, and neither
was US based."
HTSU was written after Nesheim interviewed folks at 17 of the
most successful Silicon Valley companies, for all the details of
how they started, their funding, their stock plans, compensation
plans, marketing plans, etc. It's all laid out there in the
book. "The magic of Silicon Valley (SV) was not the real estate,
or being in California. It was the new and remarkably powerful
business model. That model works in Atlanta (CipherTrust) and
appears to be working just as well in Cebu for IWC," Lawrence
explained.
"One of the key aspects of that model is the aggressive
Incentive Stock Options for employees. That leads to
unprecedented loyalty and motivation. You give up 10% of the
company to the employees, but the size of the pie is about 10
times larger. All employees (not just top management) become
co-owners, and stand to profit more than with any other model.
That's what made it possible for me to help launch CipherTrust."
"There are other aspects of the SV model, but that one alone is
enough to make an enormous difference. We had a lot of fun
getting our ISOs through the Philippines SEC. Every Friday
evening, the group does a week end review. I'll lay odds you've
never seen anything like it unless you've visited real SV
companies.
I really do want for others in Philippines to emulate what we're
doing. IWC is a proof by existence that it can be done here,
given capital."
Nesheim has just released a new book, essential to anyone
pursuing venture capital, called "The Power of Unfair Advantage
- How to Create It, Build It and Use It to Maximum Effect".
Lawrence said that this is as good as HTSU.
For newbies, he also recommends Hernando Desoto's "The Mystery
of Capital," to understand the problems capitalism faces here,
and exactly what to do about it. The book author spent years in
Manila exploring exactly what the problems were. He is an award
winning economist from Peru (just happens to be named after the
famous Spanish Explorer).
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