Lessons Learnt from the Dot Com Era for Real Physical Business
This entry is inspired by enterprising MMU students (or rather graduated students) and I feel strongly that I should at least give them a mention wherever I can to "advertise" their business.
One of the most successful dot com business model is online advertising where companies such as Yahoo!, Google and a magnitude of others actually manage to create a successful web business. The brick and mortar business can also learn from this business model. In Japan, entrepreneurs are providing free photocopying where they generate revenue from selling advertising space on one side of the paper whilst photocopying on the other.
Locally, in Malaysia, keep a look out for Enveluv.Com. Their domain should give you a clue and they should be ready for business in the next few months. I for one wish them success and believe strongly in their business model.
Monday, August 13, 2007
Monday, June 18, 2007
Halal Baby Food
Malaysia a Halal Hub?
I was actually looking for some food and beverage business idea when I came across this company in UK that produces Halal Baby food! Being a parent of a toddler, it made me explore this more as I have always thought that baby food contains just vegetables and other soft food.
Although they have a Internet store, it would make more sense if someone can import their products in bulk, obtain a halal certification and distribute them through retail outlets here as well. I am sure the market is very big and would even say that a speciality shop in maybe Putrajaya would be highly successful.
Mumtaz Baby Food
I was actually looking for some food and beverage business idea when I came across this company in UK that produces Halal Baby food! Being a parent of a toddler, it made me explore this more as I have always thought that baby food contains just vegetables and other soft food.
Although they have a Internet store, it would make more sense if someone can import their products in bulk, obtain a halal certification and distribute them through retail outlets here as well. I am sure the market is very big and would even say that a speciality shop in maybe Putrajaya would be highly successful.
Mumtaz Baby Food
Monday, May 14, 2007
Web 2.0
Web 2.0 in a Vertical Market
This has been at the back of my mind for sometime but I haven't found the time to write it down. There are lots of talk about Web 2.0 and surprisingly not many know what it is. Ok, I don't really either but from what I gather, it has to do with the web is now no longer a one-way traffic for information flow and in it's new re-incarnation, it is now a community based publishing or simply put (in my view), the content involves more than just one party. Examples of these are YouTube, Wikipedia, and MySpace (although I have no idea what is MySpace!).
Now, it makes me wonder. So far, the success are all 'horizontal' in nature. What about a community based information publishing in a much narrower vertical market space? One can argue that it is already part of an existing or new Web 2.0 site. However, information overload is an issue and with this in mind, I believe there will be a lot more Web 2.0 sites that are more specific in nature. It would be a smaller audience but a more targetted one, hence if the revenue model is based on advertisement, the charges can be higher due to targetted audience.
This has been at the back of my mind for sometime but I haven't found the time to write it down. There are lots of talk about Web 2.0 and surprisingly not many know what it is. Ok, I don't really either but from what I gather, it has to do with the web is now no longer a one-way traffic for information flow and in it's new re-incarnation, it is now a community based publishing or simply put (in my view), the content involves more than just one party. Examples of these are YouTube, Wikipedia, and MySpace (although I have no idea what is MySpace!).
Now, it makes me wonder. So far, the success are all 'horizontal' in nature. What about a community based information publishing in a much narrower vertical market space? One can argue that it is already part of an existing or new Web 2.0 site. However, information overload is an issue and with this in mind, I believe there will be a lot more Web 2.0 sites that are more specific in nature. It would be a smaller audience but a more targetted one, hence if the revenue model is based on advertisement, the charges can be higher due to targetted audience.
Wednesday, April 4, 2007
This Google Economy
Adsense?
Well, I have finally got sucked into the Google Economy. As you may have noticed, there are now some google stuff on this website. So, for those who are not sure what to do and have their own little websites, Google AdSense may make sense.
Well, I have finally got sucked into the Google Economy. As you may have noticed, there are now some google stuff on this website. So, for those who are not sure what to do and have their own little websites, Google AdSense may make sense.
Thursday, March 29, 2007
PS3 Supercomputer Project?
PS3 Cluster
Well, with it's 1 PPE and 8 SPE (that's 1 main processing core with 8 pipelines vector co-core processors), it has a theoretical performance of more than hundred GFLOPS (that's billions of floating point operations per second to the slightly technical minded people). The Top500 fastest computers starts with a few TFLOPS, so clustering a few of these low cost mini monsters should theoretically be able get yourself list on the list, albeit temporarily. I am sure there are people in the scientific community running FORTRAN or C code, using simulation such as Monte Carlo, would be interested in a low cost alternative. The PS3 comes with many networking ports, so that's a good start for clustering, it can run Fedora Core 5 on it (check out the IBM website on this) which means that there should not be a problem with programming.
Anyone out there who wants to jointly develop this, being a poor academician, I can't even afford a PS3, so you guessed it. Have ideas, no money ... sigh ...
Well, with it's 1 PPE and 8 SPE (that's 1 main processing core with 8 pipelines vector co-core processors), it has a theoretical performance of more than hundred GFLOPS (that's billions of floating point operations per second to the slightly technical minded people). The Top500 fastest computers starts with a few TFLOPS, so clustering a few of these low cost mini monsters should theoretically be able get yourself list on the list, albeit temporarily. I am sure there are people in the scientific community running FORTRAN or C code, using simulation such as Monte Carlo, would be interested in a low cost alternative. The PS3 comes with many networking ports, so that's a good start for clustering, it can run Fedora Core 5 on it (check out the IBM website on this) which means that there should not be a problem with programming.
Anyone out there who wants to jointly develop this, being a poor academician, I can't even afford a PS3, so you guessed it. Have ideas, no money ... sigh ...
Tuesday, March 6, 2007
Training
Setting Up a Training Centre
I just returned from a short crash course for Novell Linux Certification and it dawn upon me that the setup cost for such a business is very low. A small training room, a RM3,000 projector, some used Pentium 4 PCs with 1GB of memory and some tables and chairs. That's all?
Now, it can't be that easy right? CSA just sent out a marketing email that they are conducting a 5 day course on some virtualization technology and they are charging RM3,000 per person. In a small class of 10, that's RM30,000 per week? Sounds easy ... not! In setting up a centre for short courses, many other things are involved. Constant marketing and constant cancellation of classes are common, very much like a low-cost carrier! Overall margins are not as lucrative but then hey, investment is also quite small. Any takers?
I just returned from a short crash course for Novell Linux Certification and it dawn upon me that the setup cost for such a business is very low. A small training room, a RM3,000 projector, some used Pentium 4 PCs with 1GB of memory and some tables and chairs. That's all?
Now, it can't be that easy right? CSA just sent out a marketing email that they are conducting a 5 day course on some virtualization technology and they are charging RM3,000 per person. In a small class of 10, that's RM30,000 per week? Sounds easy ... not! In setting up a centre for short courses, many other things are involved. Constant marketing and constant cancellation of classes are common, very much like a low-cost carrier! Overall margins are not as lucrative but then hey, investment is also quite small. Any takers?
Highly Technical Training for the Industry?
Linux Kernel Internals Anyone?
I don't think so but then these courses are offered in the United States targeting the industry. Anyone out there think that such a course would be marketable in Malaysia or in the South East Asian region? If so, I would like to hear from you.
I don't think so but then these courses are offered in the United States targeting the industry. Anyone out there think that such a course would be marketable in Malaysia or in the South East Asian region? If so, I would like to hear from you.
Saturday, January 6, 2007
Money
Happy New Year!
Well, firstly Happy New Year 2007 to my readers and we start the new year with new ventures. What is needed in a new venture? ... Money ... really? I have a proposal to be part of a startup that will start without any funding, basically just to do projects for income and to barter trade services for rentals and such. All this whilst developing it's own suite of multi-modal supply chain management. On the other hand, I have also been approached to partner in a cool idea which is probably 12-18 months ahead of its time, but the proposal is to obtain some funds. No matter how you look at it, any ideas that you have probably requires some form of funds.
For the financially challenged student and academic staff who yearns to be a technopreneur, here's your chance. Under the Malaysian 9th Malaysian Plan (9MP), they have allocated RM80Million for the budding technoprenuers. Money, money, money ...
Well, firstly Happy New Year 2007 to my readers and we start the new year with new ventures. What is needed in a new venture? ... Money ... really? I have a proposal to be part of a startup that will start without any funding, basically just to do projects for income and to barter trade services for rentals and such. All this whilst developing it's own suite of multi-modal supply chain management. On the other hand, I have also been approached to partner in a cool idea which is probably 12-18 months ahead of its time, but the proposal is to obtain some funds. No matter how you look at it, any ideas that you have probably requires some form of funds.
For the financially challenged student and academic staff who yearns to be a technopreneur, here's your chance. Under the Malaysian 9th Malaysian Plan (9MP), they have allocated RM80Million for the budding technoprenuers. Money, money, money ...
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