On the fast track

LEARN a thing or two here from one of Asia's Top 10 young entrepreneurs, Joel Neoh who was previously head of Groupon Asia-Pacific which has been re-branded to Fave. He also won the Ernst & Young Emerging Entrepreneur of the Year in 2012.
Small skill sets
The first important thing that really helped Neoh figure out what he enjoys doing is by doing a lot of part-time jobs.
"What is interesting during that education period is you are learning syllabus education, but not necessarily real world education. Doing internships and part-time jobs help build skill sets needed in the real world.
"For example, the first part-time job I did was in a call centre. I was calling random people selling hotel memberships, and that was the most difficult job ever. But that was how I learned how to sell.
"After that, I worked in a kitchen and I learned how to cook and set up operations. My internship in an engineering company is where I learned to design and copy write. I use a lot of these small skill sets today and build upon it," he said.
Three out of three
"When I was working in Groupon and we were sitting down for a global board meeting, one of the things we talked about was the culture of the company because we were moving so fast.
"We needed people who are not one or two out of three, but three out of three – people who work fast, work smart and work hard. Talents today are not just intellects, you also need to have good attitude and be emotionally engaging; it is a combination," Neoh said.
No backup plan
We only live one life and a lot of times we regret the things we go through and not the things that we don't. When you think of a backup then you will always try to work on your backup plan than your real plan itself – that is the source of regret for most people.
"I think we shouldn't live in the backup plan. We should always live in Plan A, that is the plan you want to go for. Don't think if I fail, I will fall back to this – thinking like that will hinder you from thinking ahead.
"Let's say your parents say engineering is great, but you want to be an entrepreneur. You don't do the engineering job justice because you are getting paid for just being there and also because your parents said so. We should live life to the fullest and be passionate about what we do," Neoh said.
Fail fast
"As an entrepreneur, I go on a very different journey compared to working in a company. The luxury we have in building a start-up is to be wrong. On the get-go, there will be people telling you it won't work and people telling you no. You get a lot of rejection and there will be a lot of failures, but you get used to it.
"I know it sounds a bit sad, but failure and success go hand in hand. There is a fine line that defines them both. Success comes after many failures. No one has been successful without going through failures. Failure is a better teacher than success. Don't be afraid to fail and accept failure, but the key is failing fast; don't stay there for too long," Neoh said.
Measure of success
Neoh believes that success is highly correlated to happiness. People must be happy with what they do, that is the clearest definition of success to him.
Some people love to be creative and if that makes them happy, they are successful. One could sit on a mountain of money and still be unhappy, then that to him is not successful.
Neoh grew up being a very curious person which was why he tried different jobs, and entrepreneurship allowed an extension to his personality. It allowed him to be curious about the world, challenge the status quo and build products that would hopefully impact humanity or people.
"What we build today may not be relevant tomorrow. There is a constant change to make things better," he said.
The future
For the past 12 years as an entrepreneur, work has been never-ending for Neoh that he feels it is also important to be grateful for the things that have come by.
"Gratefulness drives happiness, and having the hunger to innovate and build the world drives me. It's almost like having opposing emotions – one to be grateful for what you have and the other, what we have is not good enough so we have to do better," he said.
He added that it is hard to foresee beyond. Currently, the platform he is building aims to connect consumers who are online to businesses who are offline in a more efficient manner.
"Businesses are decentralised so we can build a centralised layer that helps. If we build for five restaurants, 5,000 or 500,000, it is the same and the broader we build the more we can learn from and make the platform better," he said.