Transcription
[Music] Hi everyone. Great to see everybody. It's a bit intimidating coming up on stage after a panel of entrepreneurs like that. Anyway, I'm here to talk to you today about matches made in heaven or hell, and uh, how can startups and large companies work together.
I think one of your first questions would be, why on earth am I here? Right? Why would somebody very senior in a bank have any opinion about how this works? And so I thought I'd give you a bit of my background to give you a bit of perspective. So when I came out of university, I did maths and I joined the chemical industry. And I thought, after a couple of years, yeah, not my thing; I'm not going to stay here. And so I thought I'd do something different, and so I went and trained as a process engineer. Then off to China, where I spent five years building factories, warehouses, amusement parks, and warehouses in five different cities in China. At the end, I ended up running the company which was doing all of the sexy stuff like Kentucky Fried Chicken coleslaw for China. And so yes, it was, it was definitely right at the cutting edge.
So then I packed everything up, moved back down to Hong Kong—I'm from Hong Kong—and um, I was sort of inducted into the internet industry. So I was asked to set up one of the top five internet consultancies um, in the world. Um, it's a Swedish company called Icon Media Lab, and so I set it up here, and that was my sort of foray into, into the internet. I then had my first child, and then I set up eight technology companies, mostly mobile, so from developer network, SaaS platforms, and these were in the US, in Europe, and in China. So this I did for longer than I care to admit, because then I have to admit my age, um, and this, these are the kinds of products I sold. So it was apps to operators; it was million-dollar contracts to, uh, you know, big names in technology for their strategy, as well as SaaS products into clients in the sort of 350,000 licenses.
Hopefully, that will give you a bit of perspective on why I'm here and why I might have something to tell you, because now I'm on the other side of the fence. Right? Now I'm talking, uh, you know, now I'm at Standard Chartered on the technology side, um, in, in looking up to technology clients. So now I've had a look at both sides, and why there are some challenges. So, um, then I joined—oh, I should say I did join another bank for a very short window. Right? So, so what have I learned about this marriage? Now, who in here is a startup? You put a hand up. No. And then, well, the rest of you are probably thinking about startups one day. Right? Um, leave your good, well-paid job and move into startup. But, um, anyway, when you have a startup, you know your idea is brilliant. Right? It's fantastic. You cannot understand why, in God's name, these big companies aren't using it. Right? And it, it just beggars belief. You cannot believe that this, this is so difficult. So I'm going to give you a bit of a journey as to why, and some of the things that potentially you could be doing to help navigate that.
So the first thing we all hear: know your customer. But what does that actually mean when you're looking at a large company? You will find numerous people with the same title, similar jobs, and your job is to work out what is that network? How do you actually plug into the right people in the organization? You also will find that it's your network outside. So events like this, for example, are how you potentially can start connecting some of those dots. So you have to be talking to the right person. I cannot tell you how many times I've been having a conversation with somebody; I thought I've done everything I need to do, and they're ready to buy, and then you realize they have to talk to somebody else, and so you've been selling to completely the wrong person, and it's a huge waste of your time and your money. So one way you can get around this is to find a champion, somebody in the organization who can tell you, oh, well, actually, they're not this, that person is more powerful, or that person reports to there. So it gives you the sort of unofficial network that can, can really help you move your conversations forward.
Now, this one should be pretty obvious: listen. But the number of presentations I've had from companies, they come in, and they have talked at me for 35 minutes. They have no idea what it is that I actually need, where I'm feeling pain, and what problem I need solved. They have just, you know, basically vomited their business all over my desk, and I have no idea how it fits. Now, if they know—I don't know if you've heard the story about the fax salesman—this is, this dates me, um, but the guy goes in and he says, you know, you know, I've got this fax; it does this, it does that, it does the other, and the guy goes, okay. Second guy comes, he says, I've got a fax; it does this, it does that, does the other. And the third guy comes in, no fax, and he says, what do you need a fax to do? And he says, oh, I just needed to do this. Guy goes out, same fax machine, and says, this is what it does. Right? And that's the mindset you have to get into: what is the problem you're solving?
Now, this is painful to hear as a startup, because this is your baby. But guess what? Companies don't care about your baby. They're not, they're never interested in your product; they are interested in the problem you are solving. Right? So how do you solve that problem, and that they will listen to you to the cows come home. So everything you tell them has to be couched in terms of what it is that you're able to bring to them. Education—I don't know if any of you here in blockchain, and any of you here don't know blockchain—but it takes a long time to get people to understand crypto, and the problem with that is if you are using your time to educate investors and clients and stuff, you're going to kill your company, and that is a real problem. So you have to find people who are ready to actually take this on board. So if it's investors, you cannot go in and explain again and again and again, and trust me, they will bring you in again and again and expect it done for free, because, and you're thinking, oh, they're going to do the deal; they're going to do the deal. Trust me again on this, because I've learned the hard way: the deals I've, the biggest deals I've done are the quickest deals I've done; the ones where they've made me jump through hoop after hoop after hoop generally haven't closed.
Now, in the fintech space, you'll find a lot of them are built by ex-bankers, and the reason they feel that they can do so well is because they've seen it firsthand where the problem is, so they know they can take that learning; they know the business intimately, and they take it outside, and so they're convinced they can be very successful. The bit they miss is the fact they have the same problem that anybody does in working with a large company, and it is how to onboard. Now, this is actually the magic, the secret source of actually getting into a large company, because you have to go through all kinds of hoops, and that's partly because if you're talking to an operator or to a bank, etc., you have to be compliant with regulation; they have to jump through hoops; they don't have a choice. They're also sitting on legacy technology, which is very, very old, and it means they haven't got everything automated; there are things they're worried about that are paying, you know, bringing in revenue faster, so they're less worried about, you know, some of the more back-end issues. So that gives you, um, an issue in how you're onboarded. So you have to work out how to onboard and how to do it quickly. And so when you start these conversations, it's important that you get on as, as fast as you can, and some of them will let you onboard well before you're actually talking about contract.
Um, another question is: are you the aspirin or are you the vitamin? And we all know we should take vitamins, right? Everyone always tells us that, but do we do it quite often? Not. And so the question is, which one are you? If you are the aspirin, and you're selling to that pain point, people know that's the thing they will buy first. So from a logic perspective, if you can solve an aspirin problem rather than a vitamin problem, you, you, you're going to be a higher priority. So you just need to make sure you understand where that pain is, or if you're talking to the right person, because if they're in pain, they're not going to listen to the vitamin story, and vice versa. So, um, POCs—a lot of people say, oh, it's great; I've got this POC with this company. The problem with that is you need to know what's the investment cost from you; is it really going to return for you, and is it really going to deliver what you want? And I'll come back into that a little bit later. One of my colleagues, when I asked her—she used to have her own startup for five years—about what her input was, she mentioned the buyers are humans. She developed a product that actually saved a buyer millions of dollars, because every time he went out on a weekly basis, the person doing the next job messed it up, and it was costing him millions. So when he came back, she showed him over two months he had—she could save him 20 million dollars almost instantly by automating. Now, she thought, slam dunk, they'll buy it, but of course, this person then had to admit that he'd been losing 20 million dollars for the company, and of course, he's like, no, no, I can't do that. So again, he wouldn't buy the product.
And this is just a little thing: online etiquette. If you're selling something, um, you, the duty is with you to actually make sure you know how you're selling and how you're setting things up. For example, um, on LinkedIn, I often get people sending me a request but no information as to why. Um, they will often send me their Calendly so I can set up a meeting with them, but they're trying to sell me something. So again, it's like, why are you giving me the job of the hard work when you want to meet with me, not the other way around? And so again, it's just making sure that you're making things as easy as possible for your client, or hopefully your client. The other one is: know yourself. Right? The number of people who don't know their value proposition, they don't understand what differentiates them, what makes them special, and why they should be here, you know. And this brings me to point two and point three: often you'll get a company coming in and say, I do X, and you're going, that's pity; I need Y. Oh, well, we can do that too. Right? You really have to know exactly what it is and get your value proposition in a way that the client can understand it, because again, it comes back to that education piece: if I don't understand what you do, I cannot buy from you. It has to be very clear so I know what I'm buying.
Um, why you have to ask yourself why you actually want to do some of these deals—some of them are brutal. Right?—and why is it that you actually want to do this? Now, the next one is team. You heard before how important the team was, and also thought they had made some great points about the complementary nature of team members and how you really have to have—often you see companies where everybody is an ex-whatever it was. Right? They're all similar roles. You cannot understand if you haven't been in different roles, different companies. So you're just slower than if you actually are really of quite a diverse team. So that really matters, and your team can include your board, and you heard the earlier session: the board was critical in terms of adding value. So I think again, you're asking yourself, what is it I need from my team? If it's, you know, um, startup advice, go to a startup founder—the people that were here, the people that you know have been assembled in this room and in Singapore—you know who else is going through something similar or who actually worked it out and can prevent that problem for you. Um, and so, but again, you want big company people from, you know, they've got their expertise in a certain area, but you need the hustle from other people. So make sure you know what it is that, that's, that's that you can really bring on.
Cash—this to me is what killed one of my businesses, and it was excruciatingly painful in a number of others. Cash is—with a big company, if you're working with a large company, it will always take you longer than you think. Everyone always says, oh, yeah, well, they love it; they brought me in last week, and I'm going in next week. You will be doing this for months. Right? So I think some banks I've heard of, they can take 18 months. Right? Some large telcos, again, it's 18 months, two years. You have to have enough money, or you have to have other ways of bringing money in in the interim. The other thing is, if you're a technology company, is anything that requires to go in—I mentioned the legacy company—I think the average age of technology in a large, in a Fortune 500 is 40 years. So they don't actually have the ability necessarily to integrate. So anything you're proposing that integrates into the back end is going to be much, much more painful. So working out a way that you can fake it to get through a POC is going to be really worth it.
Um, vetting, um, vetting can be—this is something that the, that in, in Hong Kong particularly—I'm not sure what it's like in Singapore—people like to have proof points. So if you're able to do something like win a competition, you know, get a client, those all help. But again, you have to work out what's the risk reward; what is it worth to you to do this, and what's, you know, what's it going to cost you? Careful what you wish for. The HP—I remember—invested in a company, and they said it was like daily waterboarding sessions because the cultures were so different. And so you have to know, again, can you deliver this? Can you afford to deliver this? Is it really what you want, and how are you going to do it? The next one is the opportunity specifically. Right? Again, it comes back to what is that opportunity worth to you? Right? Is their brand really that powerful? Is the business that good? Is the money that good? Um, we used to do it with a four F's: fun, fame, fortune, and facility. How easy was it to do? And we would grade clients, and sometimes we'd be surprised at the result, and we'd actually get rid of clients because we thought it didn't, didn't make sense. What's it cost? Remember the opportunity cost of doing some things will make it impossible to do the other. So just make sure you choose smart and don't be too dazzled by logos.
Three: never—I've given this advice by my, my boss in China—never give something away for free if you can help it, because people don't value free. Right? So if you offer to do a POC for free for somebody, you have no idea if they're committed or not; do they really care? Um, you know, when, um, with a lot of companies, if you don't know what the objectives of your buyer is, you cannot therefore understand whether you're doing—I'll give you an example—um, in the innovation team, sometimes they're measured on number of ideas; they're not measured on how they get the product, how many products they actually get into production. So therefore, you're wasting your time; they've hit their KPIs, and they're quite happy, and you've done it at your cost. So think through how you can actually make that work, um, and, uh, in some cases, what you could do is things like, I'll give it to you for free, but you, I pay you pay for it now, but if we get the contract, we'll deduct it from the contract. Right? But again, there is an investment from both sides, not just from yours. Sell something easy. I know we all want to buy, sell the big thing, but it's very difficult to buy a big thing from a young company. It's much easier to buy something small and then start rolling that way, plus you're onboarded, etc., etc., and they're not going to lose their job for hiring you for a $10,000 project if they've done a five-million-dollar project and they could have used, you know, an Accenture or something; you're going to put them in a very difficult position. On-prem integrated—that was again about the back-end technology. Next one is: is the POC enough? Can you prove your case from this POC alone that they go, it's absolutely slam dunk? And that's also down to your success metrics. Can you prove—so often you'll get people going, it increases engagement. What does that mean? By what? By when? With whom? Right? To be very specific, so that they cannot turn around and say you didn't get to get this POC. Um, so again, it's know your customer, know yourself, and know the opportunity. So good luck to you all. Um, you know, make the most of these kind of things and surround yourself with other people who are fighting the fight with you or can help you get on to the next stage. And if you are interested in Standard Chartered, there is the, the bridge; go to the bridge, and the team there would help look after you. Thanks.