Dr Kim Nam Yong. CEO of Curiox, is a dynamic male entrepreneur who drives the success of this organization. To date, Dr Kim Nam Yong has formed a dynamic and energetic group of professionals who committed to the highest standards of excellence and integrity. Curiox continues to strive towards its vision of accelerating research in life sciences.

Company: CURIOX BIOSYSTEMS PTE LTD Address: 180 Ang Mo Kio Avenue 8, Block Q Unit # 501 S569830 Website: http://www.curiox.com Interview with Dr Kim Nam Yong by on 09-Jun-2011. Student can be reached at 095055A@mymail.nyp.edu.sg   Business Profile: Curiox Biosystems is a bioinstrumentation company enabling the miniaturization and automation of bioassays for the acceleration of research in life sciences, drug discovery, and diagnostics.   Interviewer's Comments: Dr Kim Nam Yong brings with him more than 15 years of experiences in scientific research and technical management in the development of biotech instrumentation. We think Dr Kim Nam Yong would be a great nominee looking at how optimistic he is and how much he enjoys being an entrepreneur.   1. What is the nature of your business? Nature of our business is bio-instrumentation. We develop proprietary instruments used in drug discovery and therapeutics for example life sciences. It is afford to our customers in those industries.   2. When and why did you decide to become an entrepreneur / take over your family business? NOTE: If it is not a family business, ask: Do your parents have their own businesses too? Have they inspired you in one way or another? (Select appropriate question according to the entrepreneur being interviewed.) As you can see I don't have any family here. So obviously its not a family business. Why I did decide to become an entrepreneur? Why not? Because I think its the biggest fun to me and maximize the potentials I have. I want to challenge and enjoy the process of the challenges.   3. What are your reasons for choosing to do business in this particular industry? Because unfortunately, my talents are limited. Then I figured that this field would be the best field that I can maximize my talents.   4. How did you put together all the resources needed to start your business? For example: getting the start-up capital, hiring staff, doing sales and marketing, advertising, etc. If there's a will, there's a way. There are many people that have earned successfully in Singapore and also outside of Singapore. You don't really need to invent anything new. You sort of learn and follow how the other people did. You get a lot of help, advices and mentoring from other people to build how it supposes to build. The key point is to know the right people. If someone is sincere, I think there'll be people who are more than happy to help. So for me the most important thing is that whether you are passionate or whether you want to do it.   5. What are some interesting stories you have about your first few customers/first few years in business? I have many interesting stories. Originally from Korea, lived in the US for 10 years and then came to Singapore 6-7 years ago. It is very interesting to see the working relationships in these different areas, like US, Korea and Singapore. You can see the strengths and weakness or advantages and disadvantages of the different of people in different social settings and cultures. It was interesting to experience interacting with different people and still forming good beneficial partnership so everyone involved can win. But the way to approach sometimes can be very different depend on you work with and where they are from. So that's one of the interesting stories out of many.   6. What are some of the challenges you faced when you first went into business? How did you overcome these challenges? The interesting stories can be the challenges. Because if you are familiar to a certain way of work and certain way of operation and sometimes you come to a situation where the people you are working with, your partners or colleagues, are coming from a different cultures. Then you really have to accommodate and have good understanding before going after a common target. So i think that is one of the biggest challenges in a company. Even if coming from a same culture, it's not easy. Because often in a start up business, the pressure is quite strong and the timeline is quite short. Under great pressure and the resources are limited. From these tense environment, you have to make something out of it and have good understanding and trust and move together. So I think that is most challenging part of work.   7. Can you share some of the lessons you learnt from overcoming your own business challenges that you think will help other businesses? We have some typical answers. We sit down, cool down and think clearly and then we have the mutual understanding with all the parties involved. We come up with good possible practical and positive solutions and go for it. I think that generally applies to every situation. When you go try to enter university, you cool down, sit down and think about I need to get these grades and what is the best way. I think this principle applies the same manner. It's important to know what you want and important to keep cool mind.   8. How long has it been since you set up the company? Curiox has been up fro 3 years.   9. When was the moment you realized the business would work? I think the question is build for those who have good establishments. I don't think Curiox has reached that stage. Even if we have reached that stage, I don't think we'll take it in a way. The moment you think it's have been established, you'll lose the momentum in my opinion. You'll not be as alert or as excited. So I believe we're still far away. In term the commercial success from external references, I think we're making very good progress and we have certain milestones and establishments. Myself, I consider we have a long way to go.   10. So you want to continue challenging yourself? We have not reached yet, in my opinion. Until the day comes where every single possible customer who can benefit from our product or use our products, we need to convince them why our product is better and why it will benefit them. That should be our mission.   11. What are some of your proudest business achievements to date? We recently made sales to Genentech. Genentech is the number one leading biotechnology company in the world. The fact that we passed successfully the validation test and received the PO of multiple units from them showed that we've developed something valuable to these technology companies.   12. How do you differentiate your business from your competitors? You can come to our website www.curiox.com. You can have a look there.   13. What are some business ideas you have implemented that created great results in your business? From my experience, all the good ideas we have build so far and came up, is all are mutual or all are collaborative ideas. Let's say you may have the motivation and someone else build up or someone else may motivation and you build up much stronger. I'll say it's more of collective ideas. So I don't have any my own great idea that I can say that led to great success. It's coming up from all of us through "our" thoughts and opinions.   14. Where or who do you get your business ideas from? It's coming from everybody. You get some hints from competitors, you get from some partners, you get some from someone else and you also get from your colleagues and you build from there. In the end, yes, someone will get more credits and someone will get less credits. But still it's the combination of all these. Overall, it's coming from all.   15. What do you see yourself and your business in the next 5 years? Do you have does it any plans for expansion? I hope that I'll retire.-joke- Maybe someone else will expand and I can retire. I hope and believe that we continue to do it. I don't think 5 years we can reach every single customer that we can reach. So probably we'll be still working. We are branching out to the US. US is the biggest market. We have to be close to our customers. We have to make it a worldwide because we have customers everywhere so we have to be able to reach customers everywhere.   16. What does entrepreneurship mean to you? I want you,students, to think about it. You say being confident in what you want, being innovative and being able to inspire other people to be an entrepreneur themselves. I believe all of you are right.   17. What are some entrepreneurship qualities that you have which has helped you come this far? It'll be more objective to hear from someone else. I think the biggest advantage to me is having fun. Whatever you do, you got to have fun right. I think to me the most important part is you have fun in whatever you do. I mean not just entrepreneurship or any other job, just every single job you got to have fun. In your life, you spend most of your time in work and it is sad that the most of time in your life is not fun.   18. In your opinion, what other qualities does a person need in order to be successful in business? Like do you think is it important to have high educational standards or good work experience? No, I don't think so. It's good to have. But can you say that is the necessity or enough necessities to make a good entrepreneur. I don't think so. You need to be passionate, independent, be brave and have a will to make it. If you are determined, the rest will follow you.   19. What motivates and inspires you? As I mention, it's fun to do it with the company you set up. I think the advantage of starting company at an early age is that you carry more weight. You have opportunity to build organization; you have opportunity to make a bigger impact as what you believe. It's truly good for the communities and good for everyone. I think from that sense that is the one that motivates me. I'm pretty sure that many people feel the same way. You have this great opportunity to make impact with your talents and with what you have. You don't basically waste what you would've done. You don't waste your potentials. So do think about your potentials. I'm sure everyone has very good potentials is just that how you plan it with good discipline and execution. If neccessary, you change your own way of doing things that you enjoy yourself achieving what you have plan. Instead of spending time carelessly.   20. What are some of your business values? Let's have look at the function of the company. The function of the company is that you give the best value to your customers, give best ambiance to your employees to work and the best return to your investors. So to me, the business values you got to maximize these three conditions of the company. There're many others. You have given the best you have and get the best in return. I'll say that business values are more like a tool. To me as far you have good objective of satisfying those three functions of a company, you'll know how to achieve it. It doesn't need to be define values, specifically..   21. With the changes in the market today, do you think it has become harder or easier to succeed in business? I think it's neutral to us. It doesn't make a big difference. No matter what, if your product has a value and it's truly attractive then if it's good economy, it will be sold well because it's good economy. If it's bad economy, it will be sold well because it's bad economy so people will look for more value.   22. Can you share some of the more significant events / incidents that affected or shaped your business philosophy and the way you conduct your business? So far nothing yet.   23. What advice would you give young people who want to start their own business? I understand that young people are concerned with financial risks associated with starting own business. You can start something where the financial burden is low. It doesn't need to have a big investment. It's really up to you how plan it. If you think about it, the best time is when you're young. It's really the execution. Some people have grand ideas but if the execution doesn't follow, then it will fail. I think people are more afraid of that rather than lack of ideas or lack of the motivation. It's more of the lack of determination. You can find ways to mitigate your risks.   24. Were you afraid of competitors copying our products or demand of our products goes down? Actually your question has the answer. If your competitors is copying your product, it means that your product is so attractive that they are copying it. Your products are selling very well and you have made a lot of money. Competitors are smart. They do not come into your field unless your products are selling well. They'll not copy a product that are not selling well.