The interview was held at the Cordlife Pte. Ltd. office in the Camden Medical Center, at 2pm on 8 April 2003. The interview lasted for about 90 minutes. The follow is the detail record of the interview dialogue.

Mr Steven, would you like to tell me more about yourself?
Sure. I am 38 years old, I have been in the industry for 13 plus, coming to 14 years. Interesting enough that I did not graduate as a medical person, while my first degree was in computer engineering. One of the first projects I worked on was the development of an expert inventory system for the local hospital industry. That was then I made the major decision to switch industry from that of IT to that of health care. Actually, I was quite happy and satisfied with my first job, I remembered, to being a project person to one of the sales. Then I started with a company which dealing with OTC, RX, pharmacy and drugs. So I eventually got myself into the pharmacical industry. I was involved in several regional projects including startup of new divisions. I spent six years with them and almost half of the time I was involved in the job of corporate development which was looking for new business, new markets and opportunities. That was my first exposure to the regional markets as well as the oversea markets like China, Thailand and Malaysia. The six years were very enjoyable. Also during that time, I managed my basic medical experience, from sales to business development and management. Then I was head-hunted by a local company for the position with Baxter in Chicago and relocated to work in U.S. for four years. During the four years' time, I gained my personal exposure to international companies, particularly international trade and how the American Multinational companies (MNCs) go through their decision making. A lot of them gave me the exposures on not only regional but international business development concepts. Upon my return to Singapore, I was head-hunted by another American MNC and looked after the south-east Asia market for them. In a nutshell, the 13 years of experiences were in different industries but predominately in the health-care industry. I came into this industry with no preconstruction, with open mind, and along the way I learned a lot. I was also able to complete my MBA and there is a lot more for me to learn like how to build foundation for company in the multinational phase. Peoples always argue that SMEs are very different from MNCs. I would say in form and structure they are different, but in terms of aptitude and value they are the similar. You cannot build a great company without having really good foundation. So the people elements and strategies are the key factors in building a good business structure.

How about your family background? How did your family or your friends react when the first time you bring up your idea of startup your own company?
Perhaps the best starting point would be my immediate family as well as my family heritage. In terms of family heritage, it is quite straight forward. I would say today I am what I am all because of my parents. I came from the family of business people in business of real estates and surprisingly hospital and hotel facilities. My grandfather and great grandfather are both in that business, while my father is more on the technical side. My father is an engineer which gave me a lot of analytical background I need today. But it does not change the fact that from very young, I had brought up with this mentality of business and determine what type of business to take. From a very young age, children within my family were taught to look at the business and learn management skills. We were not taught to manage money but assets. The reason is if you can manage assets operation management would become very easy and when you know how to build assets there is not much difficulty in business development. There is always this argue that businessmen or entrepreneur are born or trained. In my personal view, both of them are involved, but two third should be contributed by the born. The reason is simple, as each one of us has his/her own personality and each one of us is guided by that type of personality. To be a entrepreneur, you need certain fundamental traits like ability to understand what business polices meant. You cannot get away from that since either you have or have not that trait.

In terms of immediate family, I am married with three very active children. Today all the things I am doing are just partly for myself but mostly for my family. During those years when I was working for MNCs, the life was considered as crucial compared to what I had been embarked on. The elements or components of the family are extremely important. It is not just a psychological point of view that having family members always been there to support you, but I think it is important because it gives the sense of work what you have been in. Many people today work or get into business realize what that means. A lot of people will tell you that they are not working for money, but what I am really working for is my family. Why Cordlife was formed is more because of my sense and concern to my family especially to my children. In terms of caring my own children and family, it would give me a great meaning of satisfaction apart from the financial and psychological supports they give me. To my wife the most dedication from me is just my return to home everyday after my 10 hours' work and to me that is very important. Many businessmen often plan to make the next one million, but somewhat there is always a million there for them to make. So you need a family to moderate that and to give the real meaning of what you are work for.

What is your expectation to your children and what guidance you want to give them?
I will give them actually what my grandfather and my father gave me, which is not how much money I will give them but to teach them know how and what they need to do in terms of asset management. It is more important to teach them the skills rather than just to give them the financial support so that they will know how to play this business game and play it successfully. I think the best way is not just to educate them in the school but to take them into the real business situation and teach them how to take risks and confront the challenges they need to face. Few months ago, I was asked by another interviewer what was my opinion on the difference between American children and the Singaporean children. My point of view is that in the American culture it is very common that children setup stores and sell small things during summer time and that is the very clear way to let the children know what business is. From that children will learn how to take risks and manage competition beyond just earning for few dollars. That is why American today are so entrepreneur and they can take risk and there are more entrepreneur to offer. However in Singapore, we do not have anything close to that because by the time when we try to give the young generation those guidance and experience their perception and risk tolerance have been molded in, i.e., that is too late. So now I do encourage my children to bring up any good ideas. For example, my daughter wants to do something like trading of old books and I told her to go ahead, because she will put herself into that situation to learn the way.

Do you want your children to take over your business?
Absolutely NOT. If you have not found the passion and the understanding for it (business), it is really no handing over and it should not be. My children should find their own business and objectives. These things really cannot be handed down and they are up to individual. Discovery is the key and the journey you need to go through before you can succeed.

Next I shall move on to your business, Cordlife Pte Ltd. How should I describe your business?
Here is how it should be described. For thousands of years, mankind has been searching new technologies and products to help cure and treat. But somewhat most of them and getting more and more of them are man-made devices because they are all used by men on men. I believe that it is shifting the thinking to not necessary use or introduce completely manmade products. The whole idea and concept of own business is that we use something was originally yours and it was given to you by your mother nature with predetermined technologies to heal and cure that person. Just like the evolution of the IT industry, health care industry is evolving in a much slower pace but it evolves towards the one where there should be no longer use all kinds of foreign and artificial products but your own natural tissue and material. That is the basic foundation what we trying to do and we are getting into the stem cell industry by investigate and identify what it means, how it works and how we can make it work for every individual.

What inspired you to setup this company and go into this industry area?
Throughout those years with MNCs, especially when I was in Baxter, they gave me very good training on basic knowledge and management skills on health care and they gave me the chances to see all kinds of good ideas as well as bad ideas. In my personal view, artificial products always have problems of quality, even you have made one million of that products it does not guarantee that the one million and one piece will not have faults and then if you put it in someone, he/she may die. So there was always a thought in my mind which was if what you need is something already within you then there is really no risk. This thought have finally come into the product and services what we are doing now. Of course there is still a lot for us to investigate and improve, but that was basically the origin sparkling fire for me to set up this company or go into this industry.

So, how did you get to know this technology about stem cell?
It is a very interesting story about how I firstly came to expose in this field because in fact there is no technology involved but just the feel of understanding. When I was working in US with Baxter, the son of one of my colleagues and also my very good friend, a Vietnamese-American, had leukemia and he needed the stem cells to boost his immune system which are commonly found in bone marrow or cord blood. But unfortunately they could not find a match for his son at a bone marrow registry because of ethnic incompatibility. The breakthrough came when the man's wife gave birth to a second child. So they took the cord blood from the new baby and transplanted it into the older child. Finally the cord blood matched and saved the life of the older boy. This really struck me and I kept thinking about this even after I came back to Singapore. However at that time the market was not ready because you could not sell or implement the technology which was still under experimental testing. So I believed it still needed some time for this technology to mature and develop. There were 4 to 5 years gap between then but I always kept that thought in my mind and I started reading more and more publications on this topic. In year 2000 to 2001, I realized that there were some American companies had already started putting this technology into business. So I immediately bought a air ticket and flied to US to visit those companies one by one. This was all done on my own and using my own money and time. The objective was to understand how they benefit and what they did right and what they did wrong then try to come out with the most suitable strategies to start this business. I had done all this because in my personal view biotech is totally different from other industry such as semiconductor. Semiconductor industry needs millions of money to build up the industry plant so that the technology can be implemented. For biotech it does not need the millions dollars to set up that industry plant because you can be a local player and all you need are just the office and employees to run the business. That is why I am so confident that I can build a very successful regional biotech company. In fact, since we started from 2001 our business has grown significantly and we are on the track of expensing our biotech business to the international scale.

When the first time you started your company, how did you choose your location, how did you get your startup capitals and how did you deal with those administration staffs?
I think in term of determining location, you do not have much choice at the startup stage. It purely depends on how much you have in your seed money. How we got our seed money is also very interesting because we are co-founded with a couple of scientists and medical doctors and each of us contributed certain amount of money. As most of the companies have many difficulties during the time of starting, we also went through our hardship. I did not take pay for six months; I sold my house and even took all my savings including my children's one to help in finance. From the starting of just two employees, Dr. Ho and me, and a only 60 ft2 office, to today's 6000 ft2 one, we have overcome a lot of problems. I can proudly say that our vision is correct as well as our strategies.

As I believe there are certain stages along the way of your business, how do you define the current stage of your business venture?
I think we are at the expansion stage. We have moved from the startup to expansion within a very short period of time. We can achieve that mainly because we have spent a lot of time to think of the strategies. I put in close half a year to do nothing but just sit down and strategize. Most people will just go out and start to do. However to me, it is very important to understand the strategies not just for the company but on the overall trend of the whole industry, especially in this very young industry. Since we have put in a lot of time and effort in building up the foundation of the most correct strategy for our company, now what we need to do are just simply to execute. Our achievement is also built on the fact that we knew what we actually our role and standing point in the industry. Beyond the expansion stage it is ready to move forward to the stage of bringing the company to other things, like IPO. So this grow stage is very critical for us.

So would you like to talk more about your business during startup period, like how did you manage to get your first customers and how did you deal with them?
We got our first client very early as just two to three months after our operation. How we deal with our clients are pretty simple because we did a lot of strategy planning so that we knew exactly how to find our customers, how to tell them and how to service them. But during the period of moving from the startup stage to expansion stage, we needed to get to the level of stability as we needed not just sales but also a strong management team as well as all the core functional items like technical supports, infrastructures and market image.

As now your business has been expending globally, how do you deal with your business partner and what is your expectation to your company in the next few years?
There is no right or wrong strategy but just working or non-working strategy, but one thing is ensure that Singapore companies cannot go oversea, let's say China, and just tell the people there we are from Singapore and that is how we do things. If we do like that, nothing can be achieved, hence we would like to have partners. As their name describes, partners should share the same vision as well as the risk with you. So we have partner in each major market we want to move into. In a nutshell, I think the sayings of "think local and act global" will best describe our partnership police.

How did you choose your partner and what criteria they should have?
There is always a few criteria when we choose our partners. Firstly it should be the comfortability of working with your partners and there must be certain interpersonal comfort in working relationship. Next it is financing and we require the commitment from both sides of the partnership in terms of investments and resources. Thirdly, the business partners must know how as they should have certain level of technical background.

How do you describe the market competition? And what makes your business outstanding in the market?
In terms of competition in the exact manner of what we are doing now, which means stem cell banking, R&D and regenerative biomedical therapeutics, in fact there is only one of the few companies in the world is in the same category. Of course if you just take a piece of it, let's say cell banking, there is quite a lot businesses are going on around the region and there are different levels of standard involved as well as different levels of competence. For us in the stem cell banking side, we collect, process and store the umbilical cord blood, complying with AABB standards and utilizing USA FDA-approved system. Another step we take to bring Cordlife outstand from the other companies is that we use the Ex-vivo stem cell technology which can increase the number of umbilical stem cell outside the body so that enable it to be used in transplant to patients. To meet the international standard, we invite some experts to manage that technology while the number of experts for using that technology is limited to certain amount over the whole world. So we are the only Asian company can provide that technology to date. Because of the nature of this business, we can afford to play at the international level and the advance technology and our strong research team would actually put us ahead of the rest.

Would you like to tell the hardship of doing this business? And would you like to share with me your worst day as well as your best day in this business?
To me the definition of hardship maybe is quite different to the others because what you describe as hardship may be quite enjoyable to me. Let me give you some examples such as the long working hours which is from 7am to 10pm on every working day, and when I am back at home there are still phone calls even during midnight since the business in Europe or Australia may just start. But to me this is a part of the life style and life enjoyment. I have been used to this long working time especially when I was in those MNC, while the only different is that now I am working for my own company which I feel much more meaningful and enjoyable. Besides that, life style change also may be one of the hardships in your term like giving back all those benefits and remuneration to the MNC but to me they are somewhat unnecessary. My personal life philosophy is just to live everyday with lease expectations for example I am fairly happy for eating in food courts instead of five-star hotel or I am also alright for driving a humble car or taking Taxi.

How about in the cases of customers complains or financing difficulties so and so forth?
For customer service, we take a very educational approach which is clearly telling them their actual situation or status, what they can do and what they cannot do, while we would leave them to make the decision. So we have very little clients who are not happy with our services. On the other hand, I think I must be qualified to say that we invest significantly and work very hard to get our service level up. We are the only one in Asia in this industry operate in 24-hours basis. In terms of dealing with banks or partners, that should not be considered as hardships but more on the management techniques.

How about the best day?
The best day and the most rewarded day is that I feel I have helped someone and help to save someone's life.

Any suggestions you would like to give to the young entrepreneurs and the pioneers in the new business?
There are many but I would like to say two are the most important out to of the rest. The first thing is to be prepared. To be prepared does not mean just financially or psychologically but to prepare to take risk and prepare to fail. Failure is really not a bad thing. For example I ever met a CEO of an America company and we talked over dinner. One question I asked him was how many times you had started up companies and failed. His answer was I had failed more times than I had succeeded. And you know what his investor next to him said? He said that is exactly the reason why I choose to invest on you because you have failed so that you understand how not to fail next time. In my point of view is that unless you have taken the tests of it and you have been through it otherwise you cannot say you have done it. Besides that, passion is the other key thing must to have because passion is that one thing which sustains the entrepreneurs throughout the way of doing their business.

Will you suggest that the young entrepreneur should go to find a job then gain sufficient experiences and business skills before they can succeed in starting their own company? Or they may also be able to succeed by just straightly go into entrepreneurship?
I would like to say there is not fixed formula to do that. I have seen people spending thirty years in multinational company and then come out to start their own business ventures, but they are not easy to succeed because there is too much burdens on their shoulder. While I have also seen people hardly got a business degree but still can make it big. So there is really no fixed formula to being succeeded in entrepreneurship. What I would like to say is that the individual needs to take into account and it is own competency. Business requires certain fundamental competencies. If you have those or you think you have those, then you may just go ahead and do it. Otherwise, you may need to spend time to learn them and pick them up. If you ask me how I would like to do it, I will choose the exact way I have been through which is to find a job but do not stay too long and wait for the right opportunity and grab it. The most important is to know yourself well and know the environment around you well.

Next I would like to get some agreements from you before I end this conversation.

If you are chosen as one of the 38 winners, will you come to the ceremony to be honored?
Sure.

Will you be comfortable with the press and TV asking you many of the same questions if you are a winner?
It should not be a problem.

If part of the Spirit of Enterprise is a scholarship given in your name directed to any school you would like to give it to: any idea now where that would be?
I cannot give you my answer now and I think for this one, we can keep the dialogue open and discuss it in the future.

Do you have any objection to this interview being posted on the community website or published in the newspaper prior to being chosen?
I will have no objection provided if you would like to work with Mr Ronald.

Sure! When the interview is written I will show you a copy for accuracy and for your signature before we post it on the website.

Basically, that is all for today's conversation. Thank you very much Mr Fang. It is so nice to talk with you. Thanks for taking so much of your precious time with me and I have really learned a lot from you.