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TECHNOLOGY ENTREPRENEURSHIP: HOPE
FOR YOUNG FILIPINOS
MANILA, January 10, 2006 (STAR) By Paco Sandejas, Ph.D. - Trapos!
Everywhere we go nowadays there is a loud rumbling growl of
disgust aimed at the traditional politicians and crony business
oligarchs who have mismanaged our country for decades. At times,
this rumbling even bursts into loud applause and cries of
approval when some less fearful folk speak out in public against
the trapos. As chronicles indicate a worsening situation, this
unhappiness results in despair among our more brilliant young
professionals and students. A very serious effect is the Brain
Drain, which to me is not defined as the departure of brilliant
and idealistic minds but, more, as their continuing decision to
stay away or, at least, not get involved with the mess that goes
on in their home country. If they returned instead after some or
many years, then we would enjoy a Brain Gain which is worth much
more than the original Brain Drain since these people can bring
with them experience, state-of-the-art training/technology, good
work ethic and significant money.
However, we can’t give up. With the entrepreneurial attitude of
a good engineer and scientist, we must all seek solutions to
this malaise and we obviously cannot rely solely on the usual
suspects to fix things for us. In this spirit, Techie Palooza
V.05 (as in the year 2005) was celebrated on Dec. 1, 2005 by
almost 200 professionals engaged in engineering/science
businesses or related activities that deal with or service these
businesses. The news articles in this paper and the buzz
generated by this business networking event for these "technopreneurs"
resulted in more than 700 individuals registering on the Brain
Gain Network website at www.BGN.org. Many people went to the
BGN.org website and enjoyed the pictures of the party – or
particularly of Mocha and her dancers – but the question often
asked is, "What is "technology entrepreneurship," or what we
fondly call "technopreneurship"?
Most people have a good sense of what entrepreneurship means at
least in terms of people they might consider as entrepreneurs,
e.g. people who refused to work for large, stable companies like
Ayala Corp. But is an entrepreneur a rich Chinese young man who
doesn’t work for Ayala or Intel and instead uses P10 million of
excess change from his father to start a little high-end shoe
store in one of his mom’s malls? Yes and no?! Maybe?!
To be more general, I’d propose that being an entrepreneur means
possessing the spirit or good habit of calculated risk-taking
when it comes to one’s professional career and/or financial
future. One might possibly say that even a professional at a
government trade office is entrepreneurial if she regularly
takes the risk of losing her job by proposing new investment
directives for areas that her bosses don’t understand nor
appreciate as future trends. In businesses, employees can also
behave the same way. Revolutionaries like the ilustrados were
social entrepreneurs. Nonetheless, the degree of entrepreneurial
spirit is at its fullest when a professional figuratively "bets
the farm" (or takes a loan against all his earthly possessions)
to fund a new company based on an idea that is yet unproven.
Note: There is a fine line between being an entrepreneur and a
fool. That is why one must emphasize the use of the adjective
"calculated" for the risk-taking of an entrepreneur. A good
entrepreneur is one who is an expert in what she plans to embark
on. Likely, not all experience resides in one person and thus
entrepreneurs of the best kind are normally found in packs of
two to five. Solo fliers are often those who crossed the line to
foolhardiness – but there are, of course, exceptions. To avoid
being called a fool by users of the BGN.org (they are experts
now since they read these kinds of articles there), one must
train well and become close to the world’s best at building or
designing products and/or services that customers will want.
Only if you do this better or cheaper than your competitors will
you be able to profit from your products.
This leads me to the reason for the emphasis on technology
entrepreneurship. While the most boring stuff one can find at
www.BGN.org might be things like calculating risk, NPVs,
preparing a business plan, talking to investors, etc., one of
the three most important things that venture capitalists like me
look for in business proposals is barriers to entry (the other
two are large markets and a great experienced team of
entrepreneurs). The reason why venture capital has been so
successful in Silicon Valley (the world’s largest concentration
of venture capital) is that venture capital there has been
invested in start-ups that relied on superior technology to
create barriers to entry that people like Dado Banatao call
"unfair advantage." Why almost unfair? Because technologies are
normally patentable and competitors can’t copy the same device
or use the same manufacturing process, as the case may be. For
example, Dolby Labs in California doesn’t make products itself
but has intellectual property that helps reduce noise in audio
recordings and playback. Their patented techniques are so good
and so expensive to replicate that most audio equipment
manufacturers don’t even compete with their own algorithms and
instead just pay Dolby Labs royalty and licensing fees to use
their technology. And even in the cases where patents or other
forms of intellectual property protection can’t be used,
creating products that are differentiated by high technology
(either by the way they are made, delivered or packaged) is a
better business because there are simply less competitors that
can do the same thing. In simpler words, think of the number of
people who actually know how to program their VCR to tape Big
Brother and then divide that by 100 thousand and you have the
number of people that will know how to build a competitive
product to yours.
One final note: Being a technopreneur is a habit. An
entrepreneur finds opportunities every day and his practice
makes perfect. Today, you might not have enough training or
experience to start your own techie company but you can prepare
for that day. You might join one of the start-ups and learn
there or behave as an entrepreneur within your large
organization. Volunteer for the new project team to learn a new
standard for wireless communications and figure out how to
exploit it within your telco. Or even in mundane matters,
challenge your colleagues from other countries that they should
outsource engineering to us in the Philippines. There are
drills, too: in the next party or wedding you attend, be an
entrepreneur and practice asking out the prettiest girl there.
If you are married like me, think of another practice drill!
Like I said, an entrepreneur, not a fool!
* * * The author is the managing partner of Narra Venture
Capital.
source: philippine headline news online
http://www.newsflash.org/siframe.htm
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