David Ketchum has over 20 years of experience in business in Asia. Here's the lessons he's learned along the way

1. 7½ Lessons Learned From
Starting Up,
Selling Out
& Making It Up As I Go Along…
February 23 2016

2. • Accounting
• Legal
• Real Estate
• Insurance

3. Trust Me: I’ve Failed…and Succeeded.
• Started a company
• Survived the Dotcom crash
• Opened 6 offices
• Started an industry association
• Started another company
• Shut Taiwan office
• Bought 5 businesses
• Sold a business line
• Listed on London’s AIM stock exchange
• Sold a company
• Hired 300 people – fired 20

4. 7½ Lessons Learned From Starting Up, Selling Out & Making It Up As I Go Along…
1. Build enterprise grade
2. Hire around your core team
3. Get great at your core offering fast
4. Get scalable fast
5. Accounting => Finance
6. HR
7. Marketing
7½. Embrace Risk

5. 1. Build Enterprise Grade
• Strong
• Tough
• Realistic
• Valuable
• Sellable

6. 2. Build around your core team
• Figure out what you’ve got
• Don’t duplicate Founders’ skills
• Hedge Founders’ weaknesses

7. 3. Get Your Service Delivery Right
• Innovation…
• …and efficiency…
• And 99.99999% uptime
• No rookie mistakes

8. 4. No Company Ever Shrank To Greatness
• Be robust and scalable
• Don’t wobble when it gets tough
• Don’t cut when you don’t have to
• Be valuable as a whole, not cobbled together

9. 5. Love your accountant
• One day accounting grows up to be
finance
– When?
– More than admin

10. 6. HR – it is what you make of it
• Talent sourcing/retention…
• …or admin
• Hire 3, fire 1

11. 7. ABM – Always Be Marketing
• Corporate marketing
• Product marketing
• Channel marketing
• Investor marketing

12. 7 ½ - Take crazy risks
• You can’t go back later
and be bolder

13. Thank You
Contact:
David Ketchum
David.Ketchum@CurrentAsia.com
+852 9034 2528
13
Hong Kong
BOC Group Life Assurance Tower, 12/F
136 Des Voeux Road Central
Hong Kong
Singapore
Singapore Land Tower, Level 30
50 Raffles Place
Singapore 048623