So you started of as an employee?
Yes, I was with other multinational firms.

So that set the groundwork for your business. Were you always in the IT industry?
Yes you can say that I was in the IT industry all the while, except for that 1 year when I was helping out my family business in Malaysia. So it's been more than 16 years altogether. I've been working in England, Hong Kong, New Zealand, Malaysia, and Singapore - all in the IT industry.

What about your family? Were they all in technology?
No, my wife is legally trained; she's a legal adviser.

What about your parents? Any technology related industry?
No, totally no relation at all.

So you stumbled upon IT yourself?
No, I inherited nothing.

Perhaps business acumen?
Well maybe hardship. When I was young I had to work very hard. I didn't come from a rich family. Long time ago in Hong Kong, my family owned a grocery shop and they had to work day and night and I had to help out. So from a young age I experienced the hardship. So business will not come easily - that's always in my mind.

So would you say that your experiences working just with simple transactions over the counter, gave you some experience with doing business? You just said that it was always at the back of your mind. That has formed the basics of your business.
I would say that from young I have seen (compared with my kids right now and even other children) a lot business transaction and yes, that this is business.

Are your children inspired by you?
Well one is 5 the other is 8. They are still too young.

Do you think they would be inspired like how you were inspired by your parents?
Well I would use a pretty different approach. I would say that they're not going to experience the hardship I have gone through. I would say that we're living comfortably, though not luxurious, and I have to drag them to see the slum areas.

Artificially show them what hardship is?
Yes, in fact we're planning to do that. And also we show them black and white movies from about 40 years ago and explain how hard life was then.

Basically I want to let them see the value in things. Things don't appear automatically in front of you. Your beautiful toys and all. It doesn't just come from papa. Papa also has to work very hard to afford these toys. So they have to understand this chain of action before you get this. I want to let them appreciate the fact that what they have now doesn't come easily.

And you think that's the best way to it, short of throwing them into slums?
Well I would say yes. You know Singapore is quite a developed country, you hardly see hardship. I have seen really difficult situations. You can't compare with Singapore 30, 40 years ago. You yourself probably haven't gone through that, though you have probably have seen some pictures of a kampong area where10 people probably sleep in a small unit.

And this was how you grew up in …
Hong Kong. I grew up in Hong Kong and as I said, I moved over to England and so on. And I've been in Singapore for close to 10 years and now I'm a Singapore citizen.

Well what attracted you to take up citizenship here? And what do you think Singapore offers to businesses that want to set up shop here?
I believe it is a pretty fair platform, meaning that there is good governance for private and public companies to operate here. Corruption here is nearly zero and there is a lot of encouragement from the government, compared to Hong Kong which is very laissez faire.

So I would say that it's a good place not just because of government incentives but also because the government is actively promoting it. Basically you would have to see that entrepreneurs would be accepted by society. Not all countries have that kind of encouragement and incentive.

So 10 years ago that's what you saw and that's why you set up shop here?
Don't forget when I first came here, I came as an employee. When I thought the time was right, I got together a few investors and they pumped some money, several million dollars, and set up the company.

What about failure in Singapore? In Singapore people can't seem to accept failure.
Well I would say this is changing. Five years ago before the financial crisis, people probably couldn't accept being laid off. But right now, your neighbours, friends etc, some are being laid off. So the situation has made people accept that it is not their fault. Previously, if you were laid off it was stereotyped to the reason that you were just no good.

But now it's changed to become a bit like the US situation. Where people in the US think that being laid off is not really a problem. It's just that the company didn't do well, and you need to move on. But society will not give them pressure.

Singapore is changing towards that. Because the global economy is so bad, even if you're so good, if your product can't sell there's nothing you can do. Or if your entire plant is moved to China there's nothing you can do either.

What about the laws in Singapore? I know that they're quite harsh on individual bankruptcies. Do you think they reflect the official stand on how we view insolvencies, compared with Hong Kong maybe?
Well in Singapore, in a limited liability company, the company's insolvency will not lead to the personal bankruptcy, unless you take one a personal guarantee, because your liability is limited. But if you are a sole proprietorship, then you may be made personally bankrupt. So unless you're 100% sure of what you're doing, then you opt for sole proprietorship. But if there's a certain degree of risk, and you've got other partners, then you should go for private limited company.

But it doesn't mean that you will not be affected at all. Your fortune may not be affected but your reputation might be affected.

In Hong Kong, there are more than 200 000 trading firms, small companies. A lot of them are sole proprietorships, because the situation there is very different. Because there is no active governmental support, people tend to do small number of transactions, based on their own capacity, on top of their full time jobs. Hong Kong people, they always have two jobs.

So they're probably an employee for somebody in the day, while at night they'll continue to study the market situation for another business. So when the time is right they will jump into another business. So most people probably have their own vehicle to transact, big and small. That's why there are 200 000 trading firms. But you won't see that in Singapore.

Why do you think so?
If you look at the path people take here, you see the average person goes to primary, secondary school and then you probably be able to go on to university. And after that generally, they go to ROM, book a HDB flat and then there's a 50% chance that you'll work for the government or a government linked company. So 50% of people are being accepted within this framework.

And another 40% will be accepted into the big MNCs and they'll probably very comfortable in their jobs because all the structures are already set out for them. So they probably won't have the chance to experience the process. The process of doing business.

Whereas in Hong Kong because the small and medium size business and the private transaction scene is so vibrant, so that's why so many people have been exposed.

Why do you think Hong Kong's SME scene is so vibrant? Is it cultural?
Cultural probably. I always say that the Hong Kong people have the 'refugee mentality'. If you look at the history of Chinese, in the last 200 years, the people in China because of hardship, because of famine and war, people have had to leave China, by boat to Nanyang and Borneo. Some went by train to Hong Kong, some even to Vietnam and Thailand. But basically they have always been on the run.

So for Hong Kong, there were 2 waves, the 1st was after World War II and the second even bigger batch was in 1961-62 because of the very bad situation in China. So because of that, the people have the mentality that they have to work extremely hard to get whatever they want. Because they believe that whatever you have in your hand is yours. You can't rely on the government.

So if you go to the streets in Hong Kong, Temple streets and Woman street you will see all these businesses there but you won't see that here. Everybody wants to be a businessman.

Singapore's stability has always been due to government intervention. And government intervention has helped you and attracted you to set up a business here. But at the same time it has provided so much stability that the people have lost their entrepreneurship.
The people have become complacent. The complacency….they probably are very comfortable.

So how would you see a way out of this?
Well the government is trying to do something. I can see that. Intervention, well I wouldn't say that, I would say to assist to a certain degree. You need that to a certain degree, especially when you set up a country after 1965, it's really from a slump. Up till now, after 37 years, and I think the government has a very good track record. So now it's on to the next stage and I think you have to compete globally. And if you want to compete, government-linked companies or sponsored activities may not be able to reach their hands out of the net of Singapore. So that may be a problem. They have to depend on entrepreneurs to go out.

And that is the government line now?
That's correct. Now you see a lot of movement to encourage entrepreneurship, grants to and assistance to companies to go overseas, International Enterprise Singapore, I think they've done a good job to encourage that. And there's actually a lot of venture funds by the government to companies that are not at all linked to the government. Some people may think that is not enough. Some people would think that it's a very good start. But you wouldn't see the result immediately.

For example televisions. Thirty years ago, when you wanted to buy televisions, nobody would buy a Japanese brand. They would go for European or American brand. They would think that Japanese means low quality. Twenty years later, you look around your house. Everything is a Japanese brand.

What is due to? Quality. They took 30 years to build up their name. Now, Japanese as a whole means quality. Did it take them 1, 2 years? No it took them 30 years.

So now for Singapore's case if you want to get this going I would expect this to take at least 10 years.

Also do you see yourself as going into IT when you were in school?
I did Electronic Engineering in Hong Kong. I have always liked electronics and gadgets since I was young. So yes, I have always wanted to do something along these lines.

What are your views on a formal education on your business? All around us we see millionaires - people who've made it in the business world with nothing more than secondary education. Yet we see that some people view success in Singapore as graduating with a degree and then going to work for an MNC and retiring after that. So it seems the more highly educated you are, the less risk appetite you have. Whereas the more lowly educated ones will think, what do I have to lose anyway, and just take their chance in business.
Well, some of my ex-classmates after secondary school went out to do business and now they're very rich and successful. Myself, although I have two master degrees, I honestly don't give much to it right now. I don't even bother to put my qualification in my name card. Why? It doesn't mean that formal education doesn't help. But it's to what extent.

In the last five years, a lot of Singaporeans opted for MBA. But it certainly doesn't mean that you can do business. It's whether you have the elements in you to do business. When I did my MBA 12 years ago, you can tell some of them can't become a manager. It's better that they be a senior consultant or a senior engineer. They would be very good at doing that, but they can't be a manager, they can't be a businessman.

I believe that the world is very fair. Some people will be a minister, a CEO; some will be a tea-lady, whatever. You have to understand your strengths and weaknesses. A lot of people don't understand their weaknesses and try to force it, but give themselves false hope by enrolling in MBA classes. I'm not saying it's no good, but it gives them false hope. That if I do this course in international marketing, I can be a super marketer.

So what can these people can do to fulfill their aspirations about being a good boss?
So it's a process where they have to study themselves ask themselves evaluate themselves and know their weaknesses. Don't be a driven by the crowd. Driven in the sense of just following the crowd, if everybody's doing an MBA or everybody is going into IT, I'll do it as well.

You've got to ask yourself, can I take the risk? If you're married you got to look into that. Can you afford to do that? And even if you can afford, am I capable of that and how can you do it? You got to think very carefully.

A lot of people totally underestimate being a businessman, but only see the glory in being a successful businessman. Like Sim Wong Hoo or something like that. That is good. But we need to tell them the dark side about this. It's not that easy. It's a lot of hard work especially in the last years. I can tell you. I've got a lot of white hair because of this. When I first started this company, I didn't have a lot of white hair. Sleepless nights. Uncertainty, especially in the last 2 years the global economy is so bad.

So would you say that anybody can be a businessman it's just how to educate yourself?
No. I wouldn't say that anybody could be a businessman. I would say that if anybody wants to be a businessman, they have to evaluate themselves, ask themselves if they're qualified to be. It's not just MBA, funding and an idea.

In any business plan there are 3 very important elements to starting up a company. The first is intellectual property. Your own idea, very unique. Whatever you do, you must expect a lot of competition. But that's fine as long as you're better than your competitors. Breadtalk can sell bread, you can sell bread but you must sell bread better than Breadtalk right?

Second you must have a good business plan.

Third the execution. You must have a good management plan. For example, I tell my chief technology officer, you're not a people manager but you're good in your department. If he did it himself? Do you think he can do it alone? No, he would just be part of the team. He would be more related to intellectual property. Business plan, execution. Some other people need to do that. So people need to know their strengths and weaknesses. If you want to start your own business, the risk is relatively high.

You need to evaluate yourself. You may be better being an employee. Seriously, I've seen a lot of failure. Not everybody can be a businessman. They have to face reality. Not everybody can be a consultant, engineer anyway. You can't ask me to be a lawyer, I'm not interested, it's not my strength.

So you must be satisfied with what you are.
Well some can be trained. You may be a borderline case. For example, in my old company previously more than ten years ago, my background was very technical-oriented and I had just transferred over to pre-sales. I remember my boss, with many years of senior management experience, told me, Eddie, you have to get away from the keyboard.

It was then that I realized that besides technicalities, there are many other things, like pricing strategy, in sealing the deal. If you're going to shut yourself off only to the technical then you forget other things. So you have to look at a much broader picture.

Did he say that only to you because he saw something special in you?
No, I was only his pre-sale manager although we were on good working relation. He didn't see anything special in me. The thing was I used to be very technical and I was very good. At that time I had transferred back from that same company in Britain and I was doing a highly technical job.

So it was that one sentence which changed everything.
And after that I went to do my MBA that the company sponsored me to do. Because I decided that technically I'm pretty ok, on the job exposure I wasn't good enough. So I needed to do a fast track so I enrolled myself in distance learning MBA. But I didn't do just for the MBA. I was more interested in the discussion. My discussion group involved one =senior marketing manager in Hong Kong Telecom and a medical doctor and the doctor wanted to do hospital administration. So all of a sudden you have many different views from different people

So that was the value of your MBA as opposed to just textbook.
Well of course the textbook teaches you some background, but things change and move so fast. So I enjoyed the discussion groups, sharing each other's experiences and we are still very good friends and they come and visit me sometimes in Singapore.

You mentioned that you were from Imperial College. So how did a formal education there do for you? Does it still help you?
When I was there, I was in the Masters for Communication Engineering. There were 26 people from 13 countries. So they were from all over, international scholars, not a lot of British. It was a very multi-national environment.

Because you are in a Masters programme, you are allowed into the senior common room along with the PhD students and senior teaching staff and academics. There are two tea breaks a day at 10:30am and 3:30pm, everyday and it never fails. And teaching staff from other departments might come as well. And they will talk about all sorts of topics.

You may not be able to find this in even Hong Kong, the sheer depth and the breath of the topics. And they may have no relation whatsoever to your field.

So what did you learn from all this?
Well I was there and did a lot of listening even though those topics might have nothing to do with my field.

Is there one thing that you remember that has helped you to this day?
Well there was one thing I remember. At that time Stephen Hawking still had not written his famous book the "Brief History of Time" but his paper was widely publicised. And on that day we were talking about this and on that day basically it was like this because they were arguing about singularity. The universe expanded from a singular point and exploded into the universe and then would contract into a single point again. And we were arguing whether it was from God. It's very similar to the Bible, the Exodus the first seven days. I remember also one PhD student who studied lasers and he was explaining how within nanosecond you could hit a fly within a box.

What about to a student now? Would you encourage him to forego formal tertiary education?
No I don't think so, but they should not be too specialised.

When I was in England in 1986, I was recruited by one of the biggest IT firms called ICL. Their recruitment was very stringent, I actually went for an interview, which lasted one and a half days. When I started as a graduate trainee in 1986, more than 50% of my colleagues in that batch were not IT trained. One was a PhD student in biology and one a bachelor in mathematics.

But if you want to compare with what's happening in Hong Kong or in Singapore. If you graduate from computer studies, I will hire you to be a programmer. You will not hire a programmer from other fields of study.

So these firms like ICL will train you but you must show your talent. They know that they don't need your previous experience of programming. They are after your calibre. But unfortunately here, they stream you so early and specialise so early.

So would recommend that people expose themselves to as many things as possible.

So do you think it's changing in Singapore? Or is the mindset too ingrained already?
It's a difficult task. They can't afford to have a bad batch of students. It may upset the whole balance. So they must make sure that all the graduates must specialise and at least have the skills to survive. It's not like in the United States. I know in Singapore, it's tough because we don't have the scale. So I would advise people to expose themselves to as many things as possible.

Can you name absolutely one thing, which made you set up e-Cop?
I told myself if I didn't set up then, other people would get on to the idea already. And in the US there are now many firms like us. But today, we are still No.1 in this region. And if I didn't start then, I don't think I would ever start because my kids were getting bigger and I have to make a decision at that time, being 39. If I started any later, it would be very difficult.

You have to grab the opportunity when it's there you know, you can't keep on waiting. You will never start. I mean I had a job with good prospects at IBM.

But the market was right and all the factors were pointing in the other way.
Yes, and I decided to take a fifty percent pay cut to start my own business.

But of course you're reaping the rewards greatly now.
Yes, but that is a risk that all entrepreneurs have to take. You sink or swim with your company.

But what would you do if you hadn't succeeded then? Would you still have stayed on in IT? Or would you have done something else?
Well to be honest, I hardly thought about failure, but that doesn't mean that I didn't have plan B. Worse come to worse, I still can go back to the corporate world, I can still get the job as I have been in the field for a long time. You can't think about failure all the time.

When you first started was there anything that held you back? Any insecurity?
No, when I started it was just day and night.

What about the early days of the business? Who was the original team? Who were the people who supported you through?
I'm the founder and I recruited some of my co-founders. My CTO. My co-founder from ex-HK Telecom, who used be one of my customers. Also another guy who isn't full time but one of the advisory people in our board. It started with 4 people. And it has grown to 90 to 100 people.

What kind of support did you need in the old days?
Funding. I think we worked as a team. Division of labour. I needed to concentrate on the organization and the business plan. My CTO had to concentrate on the R&D. My global operations director had to concentrate on the set up of the command centres. We started off here in Singapore, then Hong Kong, then Malaysia. We were in this very office (80 Robinson Road). But during our early days, it was out of one of the investor's company, a small corner with a few desks for a couple of months while this place was being renovated.

Who were your first clients who helped you succeed?
Well we can't disclose the name of our clients because of our very strict info-security reasons. Some of them are government-linked, some of them multinational firms, mostly banking and finance.

How did you make them buy your idea?
Well, at first it was very hard. The first year was very tough for us. They had to see how we managed their security. Next thing was about credentials, they must see that you are very knowledgeable and reliable. It took quite a few rounds of meetings to confirm that we understood their needs.

The second round is the process. We paid a lot of attention to the whole process and the deliverables. Now we are certified with the Best Practice in the whole world (BS7799), we follow the best practices. A lot of companies are either too focused on the technology or they are too focused on marketing. Meaning that they forget about deliverables i.e. they sell first. We strike a balance. Yes, we sell but we don't want to oversell. We also make sure the customer is happy.

So after the first batch of customers tried and more and more people got to know.

So after that it was more of word of mouth?
Well, our customers don't actually discuss this in public because we have an agreement with them, and it is a mutual agreement that they can't mention that they use e-cop services publicly.

Because we are doing monitoring and we don't want to let hackers know that we are behind the scene. So we want to do it quietly. Thus, we don't allow the clients to announce in any public domain that we are behind them. It's very dangerous from an info-security point of view.

It's like working under cover, the less info you give away the better.

So how do you actually sell your product?
Well, we have sales teams; we invite people over here (e-Cop's office) to view our command centre.

It's definitely very new in this region. For example, in Malaysia more than 50% of the local banks are already using our services. So they start to find that this is very important to them. So we need to go through a not so short education period where we educate our clients, as there was no reference customer. We were the first in this region.

So there was a wait-and-see attitude, whereby they see who will be the first customer and see if they will use it because they don't want to be the guinea pig and they want somebody else to try out first. And they will pose all sorts of difficult questions to us.

But now they don't ask those kinds of questions anymore.

So those were the kind of problems you faced when you first started out?
For example, when you buy something from IBM, you're not buying based on the reputation of one person, you are buying from IBM. Of course I'm ex-IBM but e-Cop is very new. They asked things like, "What is your paid up capital"? "How many people do you employ"?. At that time it was very bad because the dot.com bubble had burst and clients thought we were another dot.com company. Now, nobody asks that.

So how did you ride through that bad patch? Just sheer convincing?
Yes, we have to be very persistent, drive the sales team to call and talk to customers personally and try to convince them. But the key thing we hold to is that we don't oversell, people appreciate that.

So, what's a bad day like for e-Cop now that you're already established?
Well, when I say we're established doesn't mean we're doing very well. What I mean is that we can do better if the economy is better.

We want to scale up further. That means we were a start up, but have reach this stage where some operations are profitable, but it's not big enough. So, next year we have to expand 3 times. This year we experienced 4 times growth over the last year.

Are you going into China? Everybody's going to China.
Well, we're opening our China office next month.

Do you have any fears about China?
Well, I wouldn't say its fear. You need to know the game plan. You need to know the rules of the game.

So what are the rules in China?
If we want to sell services in China, the answer is no. They haven't yet reached the level where they appreciate service. If you want to sell software in China, the answer is no. They don't appreciate that either. So what you do is that you have to bundle it with hardware and our services, everything is bundled, but it must be tangible. They must be able to touch it. They will not pay you several thousand dollars for 1 CD. They can't accept that.

So different countries have different thinking. For example, in Europe they pay very high for services like when you go for a meal in a restaurant etc. In Asia you can't charge very much for services because service is cheap here. So you need to make money from other things. So different countries require different strategies.

But what do you think of the China market? People have gone there and have got themselves burnt because they say they you have to get a local partner.
Yes, that's what we're going to do. In fact in Singapore, Malaysia and Japan, we all have local partners. For example, our Singapore operation is a joint venture with 40% owned by CISCO Security. In Japan, our local partner is Mitsui and Co.

So you always look at it from a partnership point of view then.
We have to. Even the holding company is a joint venture. I can't provide all the funding. I contribute the intellectual property; the ideas but who gives the funding? It's my partners. In fact even with my co-founders it's a partnership.

Because it's very Asian thing to want to exert influence over every aspect of the company like it's your Kingdom.
Well from a shareholder point of view, yes, I want to increase share value.

So you're a very enlightened businessman then. Not to want control over everything.
Unless it's absolutely necessary. The key is, why do you need to control? For example, if there is a good successor in future, and I move on to do other things, people can take over from me and I'll become a non-Executive Director. So if there's a better person why not?

So you don't have that kind of dynastic mentality?
For example, three years later, if for some reason the company has to move over to Europe or the US. On paper I may have traveled there a lot, but I don't have any operating experience. So there may be better people than me who can run the show.

I know there are some people who can't take it. But not me. This is my baby and I love it, but I have to prove my worth.

So you're a very flexible person then. But what if tomorrow is a bad day and the company fails?
Well, I would come together and see how to rescue it. But failure shouldn't always be at the back of your mind. Because if that's so, than you would have failed 90% already.

From my knowledge bankruptcy isn't looked upon very favourably here. If they're a bankrupt, no company wants to hire them. Whereas these people who've been through bankruptcy should be the most experienced ones.
Well, I would say that some companies think that they should hire people who still have a job rather than those out of a job. They still have the mentality that if they're laid off there must be something wrong. I don't like that kind of mentality. I mean if you can prove that you can do the job, then good.

I don't care about your academic qualifications. As long as you get the job done. My own CTO, who is one of the best info-security officers in the world, has no formal tertiary education. Formal education cannot accommodate him.

So what you're saying is that formal education can only bring you so far, but it's really up to the individual to take the opportunity.
Well, there's no framework on how to run a company, there's no golden rule. The textbooks will tell you how to set up a company but they don't tell you how to run it.

What if your own kids tell you at 15 years of age, that, papa I'm going to opt out of the formal education system and set up my own business. What would you do?
Well I would have a good talk with him. What would he be setting up?

Based on my experience it's better to finish off tertiary education. The reason is because society will give a certain value to education, that's not my preference but it's dictated my society.

At least if you fail you can go back to the Ministry of Education to get a teaching job. At least you still have a job. It's a life long asset. After "O" levels, your asset is nearly zero. My children may not be able to be a businessman. So they have to build up their own individual asset. But don't allow yourself to be bound by education.

When you set up this business, was there anybody in particular you looked up to? Maybe mentors?
Not really. But many years ago…there were little things… Like my boss telling me to get away from the keyboard. And I read a lot too, especially about history.

Is there any one person? Just any incident?
I would say that if you read history, or even now, 80% of the business in US is related to intellectual property. It's related to invention. Invention of Coca Cola, silicon chips. 80% is due to invention. Japan after WWII was very poor. In the 1950s, they tried very hard to build up and in 60s and 70s they used $5.7billion to buy 25 000 patents. It was too slow for them to develop on their own, so they bought it and they excelled from there. You see the refrigerator, the washing machine….very good.

That is invention. So when I started up the business, one thing that was very important was intellectual property. The core asset of our business apart from the process and the people is the intellectual property. Singapore wants to build that up.

What about money management? Do you dabble in shares in your spare time?
For the company? No. I don't trade shares anymore, I don't really have time. I don't believe in speculation.

There are certain businessmen don't believe in speculation as well.
Well I should qualify that. Not all share trading is speculation. What I'm saying is that I don't like short term trading which is obviously speculation. I would rather spend time building up a business.

It is too risky?
No. I'm just not interested. If I want that kind of money, I would work for it.

I see that you do things based more on your interest, than any strong desire to earn big money fast.
Yes, it's interest but also because I don't believe in short term gain.

The last trading I made were shares in a company that I held for a long time until it went bust.

So what do you see yourself as contributing to the company?
I think the leadership. I mean people look at me to get ideas and the direction.

So that's why my focus has changed in a way. In the beginning I had to roll up my sleeves and chip in with the actual groundwork. For example, in Hong Kong, I had to work until 3 am in the morning together with the engineers to set up the command centre.

Of course now we have a well-defined structure, more engineers and managers. So we can't bypass them. So more and more, I'm focusing on leadership and overall company strategy. And I will monitor the execution.

Do you monitor it personally?
Yes. We have our own internal mechanisms for monitoring, so I will know what's happening in the company.

But do I need to go down and do the job? No, I don't think so anymore. Because our company has different layers now.

Do you ever miss the old days when you were in personal contact with customers and selling the services of the company?
Well I still go down and sell my services to clients, but not so much anymore, because there are so many of them and many activities. And I have to spend a lot of time on strategy.

So what is the future?
To be the leading info-security service provider and that we have three times (3X) growth in the next year, assuming that the economy doesn't deteriorate further. Yes we got to be very adaptive.

What are you doing now to face the economic crisis?
Several things. One, we are pretty tight in terms of cost control. We don't follow the NWC and cut the salary. We don't want to send the wrong signal. We are growing. But we exercise very tight cost control. We don't buy unnecessary things. We only buy things that are absolutely necessary. So it becomes a culture in our company. Sometimes for a start up company, people tend to be a bit loose.

Secondly we talk about resource allocation. One person may have to do multiple roles. We are pretty lean and mean-no fat. Just in case anything goes wrong, we are very flexible. We don't want to lay off people. That's why we are very cautious about hiring.

We have a very different way of motivating our staff. For example, this morning we had a conference call with all our offices through Asia. And we got Ernst and Young to prepare the employee share options plan and announced it to them. All employees are eligible but there are some selection criteria. So that's to retain talent and reward the high achievers.

Why share options now?
I think we have high confidence on what we're doing. Although not a lot of companies would do that especially when they're not public. But I think we have high confidence in what we're doing. So we allowed them to have share options at this early stage.

And you're very confident it won't end up like Enron?
No, we have very strong corporate governance and we also have third parties involved. That's why we have Ernst and Young to develop the share options scheme based on market practice and put up the plan for us. It's not up to the management here to develop it but an independent party.

When you hire people, do you go for a certain type of people or wide range of people?
Well, the person must have, especially the people who report to me, must have a certain degree of skill and experience. They also must have teamwork. Some people will be the listener and some people will be very outspoken. You must have a balance. You can't have everybody being an outspoken party. I balance whatever I can. For senior level hiring I will be involved.

For people in your company, do you ensure that they are always working together as a close-knit organization? Or are you a laissez faire operation, leave it as long as the job gets done?.
It has to come very naturally. I mean there are different departments and different operations so they have different styles of working. For example, I know some departments go out every Friday night for a drink.

We also organize trips. Last month we had a trip to Bintan to play golf together and all staff is encouraged to join. Half was paid for by the staff and half by the company. So there are many activities.

But there are many types of people. If you're a family man then we understand if you can't take part in the evening activities. But the key thing is at work.

Thank you very much for your time Mr. Chau
You're most welcomed.

Student Interviewer's Personal Comment