21-year-old started his own business and startups
Sigma School
7th February 2024
Watch the full interview here:
In this episode of Stories of Hackers, we talked with Daryll, he's of the guy that we met when we just started our own company. He's been running open academy for 2 years and let's hear from him what's he been doing and what he doing currently. We hope you learned something from Daryll's stories, enjoy!
Yeah, I mean, for you and me, we've been some years back, and to see where you are today as well, congratulations, you know? I see your growth, I see progress, and I think that is something to slowly commend you on, you know?
Um, and uh, what have we been up to? And that means as well, yeah, yeah, pre-pandemic times, it was like three. A lot of us thought that, you know, 2020 was going to be the year, uh, 2020 was all going to be the year, uh, that we're going to make it even bigger. But little did we know, obviously, after two years now, uh, close to the end of 2021 already, um, the company has been through many ups and downs. Uh, Open Minds, or 2020 and 2021, we're pretty blessed. I mean, with God's blessing, we've been doing quite all right. Um, we've had a new car, right?
Um, in fact, this year has been quite a good year for us, despite the dip back in 2020 and 2019. And um, we have recently acquired also a local company's license to basically sell, uh, become a premium partner of this CRM tool called Shop Spring. Shop Spring is very well known in the US, uh, they are on NASDAQ, and they're on par with your major CRMs as cloud-based CRM and marketing automation tools. So, we are now considered the premium partner here for Southeast Asia, and we are moving forward that in 2022 for the digital team. So, we are very much into, very much into automation, marketing automation, very much into still digital marketing and strategizing, and of course, tech development still goes on for us. We do a lot of enterprise-level tech solutions.
And um, maybe you have heard as well, Open Academy. Uh, we've been running Open Academy for two years. So, Open Academy is basically an education platform, uh, both B to B and B to C, and it's amazing because we have an app as well for B2C, and it's like your Netflix for education, yeah, right? So, we have many videos in there. We call it, you know, mobile learning, or we call it learning on the go, right? So, basically, bite-size, uh, able for you to learn on different topics that we have in there, uh, so yes, that's going on, going for us, Open Academy, Open Minds Group. Uh, we're trying to move Hong Kong a bit more. Uh, we recently also incorporated Singapore, but it's a bit difficult to move Singapore right now because we're physically not there, yeah? Uh, so it's a bit difficult, uh, but let's see la, let's see what we're doing.
I'm nobody, man. I'm literally back in high school, you know? I'm not even there, and I don't do too well. I mean, to be honest, I don't do extremely well in my studies. I can talk about this in a whole new session, but if you want to bring this way back, even during my university days, or my college days, I didn't even finish my university, and I don't have a degree. At the age of 20, I decided, actually, at the age of 19, I decided to step out of university, at that time, sorry, college. I just finished college. I went for a six-month gap year, and I decided to come back and take my bachelor's, you know?
After the first year, second semester, I decided, I told my parents and my sister, I said, "Hey, I don't think I'm learning through the four walls of the classroom. I think I need to head out, I need to start my own business." So, at the age of 21, I officially started my first business called Chase Motions, and we were basically in the talent agency industry, but very specialized talent.
My dream for that was to use specialized talents like people with special talents, whether it's extreme sports, taekwondo, martial arts, dancing, free running, and use them for commercials. But long story short, that didn't fly after six months, and I decided to pivot. That was my very first pivot at that time. As a young entrepreneur, I didn't even know what the meaning of pivot was. I just basically decided to say, "I'm changing direction." And at that time, I changed it to a more video-driven agency, being the liaison between the client and the production house, right?
And that's when it actually first sparked a need for partners, for business partners, because at that time, even up to now, the one thing that I learned in entrepreneurship is that there's no lone wolf. You need to venture and need to journey with someone or some people or a couple of partners that you believe and trust, yeah?
And since then, that was 2011, I decided to partner up, and long story short, 2012, we merged two companies together. So, my current partners used to own one company, I owned one company, and then we merged, and then we used back the name Open Minds in 2012. Open Minds was an existing company, Chase Motions was an existing company, all right?
So, we kind of, there's different partnerships. So, when we merged, right, we decided to hold the name Open Minds, okay? And that's how we officially incorporated into this digital and tech industry.
When we first started off in 2012, our first stumble was stumbling into social media and tech website development, per se. We were as easy and simple as that. But if you look 10 years back, social media management was just starting out. Everybody was getting into social media, even pages and Facebook groups were then the thing, right? And we went in at the right time. I mean, with God's blessing, we really entered into a time where we caught the wave. In 2012 to about 2015 around there, we did a good three to four years worth of social media management and tech development.
Throughout the years and throughout this 10-year journey, we have also pivoted in multiple directions, and our first pivot was then to be more data-driven. Sometime in 2016, we decided to be more data-driven, more analytical, and therefore we even had a product based on this. It's called Roundup, it was an integrated analytics system.
Now, from then, our vision from day one has always been to develop an ecosystem that is self-sustainable and that makes a global impact. Okay, and this whole vision moving forward is that it also allows a platform for people to do what they love and thrive in.
Now, if you look at our multiple different services that we offer, it's very complementary to what we do, whether it's digital marketing education all the way to performance marketing and marketing automation to CRM. It's all a mesh of complementing ventures.
And of course, along the way, we had multiple other ventures that failed, some stuck, some, most failed, and the ones that stuck have stuck around until now.
If you look at the overall makeup of Open Minds, obviously, we are here to make a global impact, right? Yeah, so global impact, in that sense, we tend to try as much to have not only offices or presence, but we also have clients overseas. And obviously, we are serving some clients in this part of Asia and also in North America and Europe. We have clients as well, and that's a good blessing to be in and really expand our vision in that sense.
Vision for next five years, I think we have always been planners. I think my partners and I have always been planning, and obviously it's to champion culture. We are big on culture. When we talk about culture, it's actually a mash-up of things. There's values, values that translate to correct character personality, and then after that behavior. And behavior truly works in the sense that you and I, or fellow teammates, would know how to respond in the correct manner, right? So that builds that culture. And of course, there's operational culture with our perks, with our three in-office days throughout the office days. We've been doing flexi working since 2012. So the pandemic, the pandemic didn't really put much of a dent in our operations, you know, everything was cloud-based, everyone was able to work, no matter what. You can work in a café, you can go up to Gun thing, as long as you have Wi-Fi, you can walk. So we have set up in this way, and the pandemic has basically just on steroids. It's a bit like you're at home, you know, five days a week compared to two days a week, but pretty accustomed to that. So culture also is a sense of processes, right? We accept we have multiple processes to meet the needs of people so that they don't worry about the basic needs and they can do their work and they can perform. So we are big on culture, definitely three, five years down the road, we still want to champion culture, yeah, we want to champion the whole area of marketing technology. Okay, so technology becomes the driver, becomes the bullet, becomes the vehicle, whatever you like, right? And marketing basically is an industry we're still in, we believe that a lot of things run on good marketing, and therefore that's why you see we also champion or rather try to bring in tools that would then help the marketing side, but ultimately still powered by technology.
I think that's a very valid question because um, well, a lot of entrepreneurs still struggle at this point, and I think where entrepreneurs struggle at this point versus 10 years ago, it's just that there's too much content and there's just too much advice going around. And I think it really boils down to this: the challenge of entrepreneurship right now is that um, a lot of young people or people who want to go into it, especially the younger ones, are still a bit starry-eyed, and they think that you know a lot of uh, news are coming from overseas, right? You've got billions made out of the control crypto, they, you know, this new energy, there's these industries. They never really, I think what face the challenges that face young entrepreneurs right now is that they don't know or they haven't researched enough what went uh, in or all the hard work that went in the earlier days of these successful people. And I think that has caused uh, entrepreneurs then to be impatient. I think one of the challenges that face entrepreneurs right now is being impatient, uh, and they want something to get done in the next one year or two years, reach a million evaluation of 10 million, 100 million, whatever, and get their rounds right, yeah? So it's difficult because you do see these stories but I mean the grid and the different launchpads that got these entrepreneurs to where they are, it can be very, very, very different. And of course, there's this famous word going around right now whether your unicorn or uh, I don't know what's the next one, a decagon or something like that, right? Wow, that's another one, yeah, sorry I can't remember, but you know, something even bigger than the unicorn, um, oh, I did, do they call it zebra or something like that, yeah, it's, it's basically talking about startups that are sustainable rather than just always going big on valuation and the NPE firms and and VCs and angels are out there, obviously, to provide you with the money and resources but sometimes people just get caught in the game. I think the challenge here is that there's not enough money going around but if you take the money you're in for a game, you're in, you're into a different type of squid game, you know, uh, you're into the game of series "A, B, C, D, E, F, G" and I mean, you're getting hounded from outside to just make money and sometimes you might just be developed from your main vision and purpose of why you even start up, yeah, so I think knowing uh, knowing where you want to head to and how much you want is again another bigger challenge for entrepreneurs this time versus last time because last time I think it's just not enough knowledge.
I mean, if you allow me, I would say you definitely need to focus on the people and partner first, without the people, without the partners, especially partners. So, I recently also, I'll give you an example, I recently started another company, and we are focused on CPG, consumer package goods, and I want to build this company to be more tech-driven as well, so in more food technology and so on. Um, I spent one and a half years looking for appropriate partners. I've actually changed partners two times, and this is my third set of partners. I spend so much time doing that because I know I cannot run businesses on my own, and I need people who I can trust. I need people to go through this journey with me.
So, even before business and before product, you can even just have an idea of a product and service, and then you pitch it to them. If your partners believe, and then let's work together to build the product and build the business. I think if you talk about tech, of course, it's, I would straight up say, you know, once you got your partner, once you've got these few teammates in place, it's obviously just build the product first, right? Test the product three months, six months, and then build the business. And I think from there, you need to go side by side already, neither one can come, you know, has more priority than the other.
Why is because the product itself needs to serve its purpose, right? It needs to solve a problem, mainly solve a problem, alright, solve a problem or enhance something needed, and then the business is obviously to sustain the people, right? Business in terms of resources, finances, manpower, culture, operations, and you need the business then to run that vision right and the branding, of course, also. So, it goes hand in hand after, I think, six months of testing your product, but I would say still and still and again is to find the right partners to journey with you first. And I think that too naturally, yeah, will kind of fall, fall in place.
Actually, you really hit the nail on its head. It's two, actually the biggest one is being pampered to come, the industry is paying too much and over-evaluating the talents, and it's a bloke, uh, just because demand is more than supply. At one point in time, there was also a particular brand in the industry that overpaid a lot of the BD and sales people, right? So, when that particular brand closed down or moved on, or more, a lot of their people coming out, asking two times more than what the industry actually pays them, and I pity them because sure, at that two or three years you earn a lot, but when things go south, when you come out, it's very difficult to match that salary and look at your talent and this all you do is it's so great.
So, you really hit it on the head, it's actually a combination of two things, although I did say pay more, uh, but pay more for the talents that you're really comfortable with, right? Yeah, but I do know big companies, a lot of these tech giants, they get money and they just want workers, so they hire, sure, maybe two, three very good, uh, tech, and then they have all the rest just doing the execution work, and these people don't get the chance, and when they come out, sure, they have the experience and some actually don't really have the experience, they have the theory but they don't, they don't, they don't pass our test, some even score zero, some talk very good, they score 100 percent, but when you give that assessment, it's called zero.
So, that makes you think, right? That makes you think, are we being too harsh or really there is no good quality talent? And I think because a lot of the seniors are seniors with no time to teach or coach, and I think that has, you know, um, been snowballed down, yeah, to the next generation where they don't have a good mentor or coach or senior to even look up to for the past 10 years because tech for the past 10 years has been growing so much to all the really good ones are just probably hit to those filled with tasks to do and they may not be able to teach, and the young ones obviously coming out for universities or colleges don't have the practical knowledge of how to build something of quality or what the best practices are, and some of them, even worse, they're learning all methods or even languages that are not so fond of, right, in this new, in this new, uh, times, and then you have to unlearn and train and retrain again, and it's difficult. And I think because they have been so, quote-unquote, neglected throughout the years, it has, it goes to show that talents nowadays, unfortunately, don't have that amount of critical thinking or knowledge, uh, to even execute that level of, uh, of a job, and therefore, sure, you may get CVs but truly if you look into it, maybe the best again some can't even do WordPress by the way.
So, yeah, so it's difficult, it's, it's difficult to say yes I want to hire you but who then is going to train you, yeah, who's going to look into your codes? I mean, we, I mean, I admit most of our leaders as well actually got no time to train and coach because it's just too much work to do and those who can, uh, difficult to find although we've been blessed to have some really good ones who are willing to train and help but they have their own tasks to do as well. So, I think it's a trickling effect, you know, throughout the generations and how fast tech has moved so all the senior ones have moved up and moved out some of them and then you have this batch that is coming up, uh, sure, everybody wants to do tech but can you really do it? I don't know, it's a question mark.
I'll share from an entrepreneur's standpoint is that, uh, because I think through the pandemic we have naturally created a lot more business owners, and being a business owner, it has, I wouldn't say it's actually tougher or easier, it's actually just a different experience. It comes with different challenges. Whether you're a staff or employer, employee or employer, it comes with different challenges as well.
What I want to say is that, um, I go for by a few things that I try to play out a part of my life is that you need to wake up, you need to take the leap, you need to show up, you need to be present, right? And you just need to kick ass and repeat. Do that right for the next two to three years, and I think it would reward you and you reap the fruits as well.
And I think the other area is a whole area of where a lot of people don't talk about. I myself I'm still learning, I'm on this journey of character building, and I think, um, character is very important because one of my spiritual mentors always reminds me that don't go where your talent can bring you but your character cannot sustain you, meaning to say, you know, you and although we did talk a lot about talents and the lack of talent but in our own way, we may not be good at coding. Some people might become coders but they are not good at coding, then they can't get a job but they may be super good at doing business so they may be super good at, you know, painting or cooking so whatever skills you have, you know, it will get you to places, it will get you up there, and when you reach up there, I pray and hope that you have the character that to sustain you because if you don't have a character of patience of humility of certain form of leadership if we don't have the character of grit if you don't have the character of forgiveness or even just generally a good kind soul, right? Sometimes it hits you and you can hit you bad and you can fall and you can fall hard so the whole area of character building as an entrepreneur or as a business owner is very important as well.
And the last thing I would say is that if you're in a business no matter what business is is to try your best to find one or two more partners to journey with you because the going will get tough and it's, again, it's very cliché thing to say but you know it's very lonely at the top and you need people around you to encourage you and the same time you can then also return that favor and you can encourage other people or your partners as well. I think good friendships have been formed through my partnerships as well and it has gotten us through a lot of dark times and even most recently I was telling one of our very good business partners, uh, sister company is that you really need to find another partner because the partner left so long story short is that this person right now is also realizing that hey actually yeah I cannot survive for myself I actually need a partner to cover my tracks so that's one thing I'll leave with you guys as well. A lot more to share that's on my top three, yeah.
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