Tuesday, December 23rd, 2008
I was given an assignment this term to interview an entrepreneur, who could be anyone. We were encouraged to choose an industry we were interested in, so obviously, I turned to Web2.0. I knew the problem wouldn’t be finding an entrepreneur, but rather which entrepreneur I would choose! I decided to pick the entrepreneur with the most “Web2.0″ story, as far as our history is concerned: Todd Murray of Active Channel. (Todd first messaged me on Linked In, asking more about Social Media Breakfast | Singapore.
This interview is special to me for two reasons:
1) Many questions were crowdsourced from Plurk and Twitter, making this a true community exercise
2) It’s pretty amazing that a CEO who has had so many startups spares the time to talk to a university student for an assignment. Even from the beginning when he approached me about SMB, I never felt like I was a student and he was a CEO.
By the time the interview was done, it no longer felt like a school assignment, but like a genuine conversation between two people – and you can feel it from the candidness of the answers – which made it feel much more real to me.
I present to you the interview, in full for your reading pleasure. It’s fairly long, but I was simultaneously awed and inspired by it, and I hope you will be too.
Background
Tell me about your background (education, previous work, previous start-ups etc). How old were you when these happened?
TM – I’m an Aussie, who has now lived in Singapore for over 12 years. I never finished High School, but this hasn’t ever held me back, in fact, in some ways it does help to be an entrepreneur, as you think ‘differently’.
I have done over 6 start-ups with half being somewhat successful and the other half flopping. My first business was started in High School selling and renting everyday stuff to fellow students like paper, music, magazines, batteries, etc. Actually, this was a great money spinner and got me hooked on being an entrepreneur, which I define as finding a problem and turning it into a revenue generating opportunity.
Did you always know you wanted to be an entrepreneur? Do your own thing? Or did the revelation come suddenly? If so, when?
TM – I’ve always had an independent streak and been creative with a low patience tolerance, so to be ‘my own boss’ just felt right. I have had a number of ‘real jobs’ but never felt satisfied as you can’t pick and choose who you work with and always restricted in the flexibility of doing your job.
Would you say wanting to be an entrepreneur runs in the family? (ie do you have parents, siblings, relatives who similarly started their own businesses?)
TM – No way, my parents were very much ‘traditional’ and expected me to have the usual 9-to-5 job. I got most of my inspiration from reading about other successful business people and thinking that that was what I wanted to do with my life. Actually, my dad motivated me to achieve more as he was bored with his regular job and never seemed to make enough money, so it made being my own boss seem more appealing.
On Entrepreneurship
Do you think entrepreneurship is born out of a certain desperation for something or can it cultivated?
TM – For me, I definitely believe that it was born from my desperation, when I was about 15, to have enough money to play video games (Space Invaders was the biggest craze!) and once you get a taste of that potential, it stays in your system. I found myself always thinking ‘What if…’ especially when I was bored with my ‘real jobs’.
I strongly doubt that you can tell someone to be an entrepreneur, if they don’t have the basic ‘chemistry’ to do it. I have met and worked with impressive people who have thrived and been very successful in a corporate environment and then tried to be their own boss or work in a start-up and been completely lost.
I think it’s good to support and cultivate the true entrepreneurial persons having a go, but one of the biggest areas of being an entrepreneur is making LOTS of mistakes quickly and learning in the real world environment about how to move forward no matter what. Maybe if the entrepreneur gets too much help they become soft and it is all too easy. You definitely get ‘street smart’ being an entrepreneur by trying to achieve your objectives with little or no resources.
Where do you get your inspiration from?
TM – Mainly from other successful business people who have overcome their own adversities to succeed. You can never get bored reading about that! 
My biggest inspirations in order of preference would be Kerry Packer (Australia’s most successful business person) Richard Branson, Rupert Murdoch and JD Rockefeller, who through what he achieved and the way he lived his life, is definitely the consummate entrepreneur.
I know you’re married and have a beautiful daughter, Alysha. How, if at all, does being an entrepreneur affect work-life balance? Not necessarily negatively, just in the sense that maybe you don’t have conventional office hours and/or travel alot etc.
TM – Thanks and now I have a son as well! Yeah, there are some big differences from when I was doing my first start-up in ’98 and doing it now in ’08. Being a father and a lot older, I’m nowhere near as bash and aggressive now and definitely try to be more patient. I have evolved from being a sprinter to a marathon runner in my approach, which I think does help. Before I used to run head-on into situations and usually make rash decisions, as I felt this pressure to move fast or miss out (typical ‘dot-com’ mentality). Now, after going through quite a few ‘battles’, I am more patient and don’t have to get results ‘right now’. I’m still 100% passionate about my business but I realise that you can’t do everything in one week.
Spending about 10 minutes with my daughter reminds me that there is more in my life than just the business and gives me the time to reflect and think things through.
Which do you think comes first: the love for what you’re doing, or the money?
TM – Its definitely 100% about the love of your idea and making it tangible. There is no money in being an entrepreneur, which is really the biggest misconception that people have, mainly from reading about the IPO bonanzas during the dot-com days. I would have a LOT more money in the bank today if I had settled for a regular job.
Even if you have a great idea and can actually sell it to the market, it doesn’t mean you make loads of money. I got hit badly during SARS in 2003, when I just started to break-even on my start-up and then overnight, it felt that the whole market for my services had disappeared. That was a major learning curve that even if you do everything right, something can come along to ruin it for you.
What drives you to get up and go to work every morning? A passion? A drive to succeed?
TM – Both those things as well as being extremely stubborn and never giving up. The hardest thing for me is to walk away and admit that I failed. Also I’m very competitive so I hate to think other people have beaten me or would say ‘Told you it wouldn’t work’.
Starting Out
Where did you get the idea from? Did you go in it alone or did you have a team? Did you have a solid business plan which you used to pitch investors, or did you jump straight into it? Did you have outside help? (eg legal, financial, marketing)
TM – The ideas come from seeing an opportunity and trying to make it work.
For me, I feel that there needs to be one person driving the business and once you have shown the results, then go out and build the team around the current status of the business and the skill sets you need. Building, and keeping, a good team is one of the hardest things to do with being a start-up, the other being getting customers.
I usually jump straight in and work it out as I go along. Finding investors is also hard until you have a proven track record, which is more important than a business plan.
I think a business plan is highly overrated as a must have for an entrepreneur. You should be out there building and selling rather than documenting ‘what if’
Did you have to give up financial stability to start out on your own? How did affect you? Your family? Your lifestyle?
TM – Absolutely! There is never enough money when you are starting up and there needs to be sacrifices with time as well as other opportunities, such as travelling or doing sports.
What was your dream/vision you first had when you were starting up Active Channel? How close have you come to achieving it? Surpassing it?
TM – Basically, I wanted to build a new media platform based on how much success I saw come out from YouTube. I still have a long way to go but the whole business concept has got more succinct after 2 years and finally starting to see some results from the market.
How important was the Singaporean government’s encouragement of entrepreneurship in setting up Active Channel, if at all?
TM – It didn’t/doesn’t affect me at all. I haven’t seen or heard of anyone that has felt any impact either. The main reason is that the companies in Singapore need to be more accepting of working with a start-up, rather than the tried and tested market players. In the media space, nearly all marketing budget is given to SPH & MediaCorp, even though that’s not where most people spend their time engaging in media. Until there is a shift in this mind set, which maybe the government should highlight, then things won’t change.
How did you fund the beginning of Active Channel? How many times did you have to try to get funding?
TM – I usually self-fund my start-ups as I believe that unless you put in 100% of your time and money, why should anyone else. Raising funding as a start-up in nearly impossible, but does help to refine your business model and makes you think of all angles.
Did you have a mentor? Who was it and how did you balance making your own decisions versus taking his advice?
TM – Nope, never found anyone on the ‘same page’ as me with my ideas but I can imagine it would help.
On Active Channel
What were the most demanding tradeoffs? Work-family, work-personal life, work-hobbies?
TM – Definitely work-family, but there again, if you want something bad enough, you’ll find a way around this to get the right balance. I always wish I had more time with my family to do fun stuff but I also wish I had more time to fix things with the business. Overall I think the balance is working out ok.
I work my personal life into my business and my business is my hobby.
How do you decide on the type of shows to air on Active Channel? How do you decide on who to host it?
TM – Great question! All the ideas for the shows come from me and it’s really just trial and error or making do with what you have. I just try to think of shows that people want to watch and yet are not currently available. Actually I’m shocked that there aren’t these shows already made or done in a way that reflects the current needs of the viewers.
Do you view YouTube, Vimeo, Seesmic, Razor tv as competitors? If you do, how do you deal with them? How do you differentiate? What do you feel they have that you don’t? Does it ultimately matter? If you don’t, why not?
TM – YouTube gave me the inspiration to start ActiveChannel as I looked at it over 2 years ago when it was getting popular and thought ‘I can do better than that!’
These guys aren’t really my competitors as I want to provide an interactive experience when viewing video online, where as they are trying to replicate the traditional TV model which I strongly think will never work.
Actually, I just hope they don’t ruin the potential of online video by screwing it up or overpromising on the opportunity. If they stuff up, then everyone will assume that online video doesn’t work.
How does your revenue model work? Is it working out as well as you thought it would?
TM – Revenue is generated by developing lifestyle shows that have a brand integrated in the content in more of an advertorial style. Agencies and clients are still getting their head around this opportunity and still looking at the 30 second spot or print advert as an easier and safer bet (no measurement or strategy involved).
I was hoping that these guys would ‘get it’ faster than this but they are getting there. There is a lot of traditional barriers in place that cause resistance to accepting a new marketing medium and if you look at the current ad spend online of only 2% of the overall budget in Singapore, as well as most of SEA, you can see there are some legacy issues that need to change soon.
What was the biggest hurdle in getting Active Channel up and running? What did you learn from it?
TM – Great question again and it was really the technology implementation that has held me back, which is a strange thing for me as I come from this area. I couldn’t work out why my developers kept delivering crappy solutions and I kept changing to try and find the best one. In the end I gave a VERY detailed requirements document and am micro-managing the whole process to make sure there are no issues this time around.
What I learnt from it is to communicate more precisely and not leave anything open to interpretation, especially when you outsource overseas. There seems to be a huge lack of technology experts in Singapore now, mainly because they either have great jobs in big companies or that most people don’t see a lucrative future in IT, with most of it being outsourced to cheaper locations, which I total understand as I used to be a web developer in the early days before it got commoditised.
TV on demand is a relatively new industry, how do you see it growing in general over the next few years, and how will that specifically affect Active Channel?
TM – It’s amazing that the general public, especially in the lucrative teens to professional/internet savvy crowd, seem to be getting their content online via these different portals and yet the advertisers and agencies still waste loads of budgets in traditional media. Who has time to watch TV or read the paper when you can get the same information, or most times a lot better, online. I really believe that there are plenty of decision makers that have their head in the sand, or somewhere else.
For ActiveChannel, I see we are ahead of the curve and need to be ready when the change happens, which it will do as it has happened in other markets already. UK will spend more ad budget online than any other media platform next year.
How different do you feel the Singaporean market is compared to any others you have experiences in? What are the unique challenges and rewards that come with it?
TM – OK, Singapore is a damn tough market for most start-ups, especially in IT/internet because it is a very conservative mindset here that prefers to follow what everyone else is doing rather than try something different. Everyone goes to the same hawkers stalls just because they read or saw that it is ‘world-famous’. This also shows in the business decisions being made, where the biggest barrier for a start-up to overcome is ‘who else is using your product’.
Having said that, Singapore is a great test bed, or what I call ‘my kitchen’ where you can try something, tweak, try again, tweak some more, very quickly. I also like how I can have 5 – 6 meetings in a day here where in other markets you only get 2-3 because of the distance.
How different is it to work in a Web2.0-like product like Active Channel compared to a more traditional channel? What are the unique challenges and rewards that come with it?
TM – Mainly, convincing people to take a chance on something different which is untried or tested. Getting the first 10 clients is the challenge. After that it does get easier, from past experience.
I assume not every day is sunny, either financially or for some other reason for the company. How do you keep morale up in those times?
TM – It has been raining non-stop for the last 2 years! Giving up is not an option.
How important are your consumers/viewers to you? Do you connect with them? How?
TM – I see the viewers acceptance of the content produced on ActiveChannel as being validation that we have the formula right. You always need to be aware of how viewers are consuming and more importantly, talking about the content.
Connecting with them at this stage is not our main focus until we have the fundamentals in place that reflects the true potential of the platform.
Looking Back
If you had to go back and do it again what would be the top two things you would change, if any?
TM – First thing would be to focus much more on the technology development and not just trust other people to deliver what they promise but to manage the whole process more thoroughly.
Second would be to have spent less, which I think all start-ups would change if given the chance. Money is always spent on stuff that seemed important at the time but turned out to be a waste.
What was the hardest lesson you’ve learned from striking out on your own?
TM – I’m 100% responsible for everything and not to overly rely on other people to do what’s right or have the same level of enthusiasm as me.
What was the most useful thing you learned in school that applied to your business? (if any)
TM – Rules are there to be broken.
What, if any, instances from your childhood/adolescence/formative years had the biggest influence on your businesses today?
TM – I used to surf ALOT, so that taught me to keep pushing though waves and getting knocked around just for 1 good ride, so definitely perseverance which is a very important trait to have in order to succeed.
As the saying goes… it takes 10 years to be an overnight success.
What advice would you give an aspiring entrepreneur?
TM – Be prepared to give away everything you currently have, and still realise that you will mostly likely fail. If that sounds ok, then go for it and never look back!
Moving Forward
If your venture ever failed, would you consider going to work for someone else? Or would you jump into a new idea?
TM – Nope, this is my last chance and I don’t think I have it in me to try again (although I remember I said that last time I failed!)
Where do you see Active Channel in three years?
TM – In many major markets, such as Europe, Pan Asia and maybe America. We will be producing great local lifestyle content and advertisers realising that there is a better way to communicate with consumers
Tags: active channel, entrepreneur interview, interactive tv, online tv, todd murray, web2.0
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