5 years after graduating from Harvard Business School, the class of 95 was due to meet for its 5th reunion in June 2000. We were asked to pen a note on what we've been doing since graduation.
Has it been five years? Time just flies in the tropics, with no seasons to remind you of the pace of time. And the tropics is where Steph and I have been all this time, first in Malaysia , now in Singapore. Yes Malaysia was a little bit of a homecoming, having been living and working abroad since leaving home at the tender age of 16. The settling in process in Kuala Lumpur was made smoother by being with BCG at the time - it was great to work in a familiar work environment whilst getting acclimatized to how things work in Malaysia. But there was one teething problem. Steph and I had to get married again. Let me explain.
Steph and I were married in England prior to HBS, but this was not recognized under Malaysian law as we did not go through a "proper" Muslim ceremony. And there were tough penalties for not going legit (time in jail was a possibility). So on a BCG recruiting trip to London, Steph and I took the opportunity of getting married again before an Egyptian cleric and two witnesses roped in from the adjoining Regent's Park mosque. "Where did you go?" asked some BCG colleagues afterwards. "Oh, I just got married", was the reply. That was February 14, 1997.
Confident from this new marriage, I moonlighted in the evenings writing up a business plan for a classifieds-only paper. The newspaper classifieds market was great at the time, and the idea was to start with the first all-classifieds paper in Malaysia, then take it to Singapore, then use the offline publications to enter the Internet classifieds marketspace.
By August 1997, funding was concluded, and I left BCG and we began buying equipment, leasing office space and recruiting people. There was one small thing. In July, Thailand's currency had buckled. Isolated incident, we thought. Then it came smack bang at our doorstep. Malaysia's currency was now under attack and the stock market swooned - first by 30%, then 50% and by the end of year, by almost 80%. What we thought to be just a financial problem turned out to be a much more protracted one, and the classifieds market went silent. Whoops.
After persevering for one year, I threw my lot in with a group MIT guys who had built the leading jobs portal in Malaysia, JobStreet.com. The mandate was to raise funds and regionalize Jobstreet.com. To date, we have raised two rounds of financing and opened 3 offices (Singapore, Philippines and India) and Steph and I are now based in Singapore.
So it's been a mixed 5 years. Baptism by fire comes close to describing the experience of starting a start-up business during tumultous times. On the other hand, Steph and I had a great experience working together (a situation which, I must confess, I was very wary about initially). I also got known in town as Mr. Batman due to some publicity stunts that required me to dress up as the hooded hero (Didi and Malcolm, thank you very much for the Batman cufflinks). This put me in good stead with venture capitalists whom I was to meet later ("So you're the Batman I read about!"), which then sets the right tone for ensuing discussions.
That's where we are, look forward to seeing everyone at the Reunion!
