The Jedi can Wait! — My Journey from Professional to Entrepreneur. Part Two

I have learned more in the last year than I did in 20+ years in the Financial Markets. I have discovered a new language that was invisible to me before. My conversations have turned from talking about delta hedging, low latency, and high frequency trading, to validation, iteration and product market fit.

My days are full, and often carry on well into the night. It is a different kind of busy.

In Tokyo during the early days covering listed derivatives handling clients like Chemical Bank, from TIFFE and TSE open to market close it was pure chaos. The afternoon close would offer little respite as we rushed to process all the trading tickets before the night session and London open. On figure nights, when the US would release economic indicators, we’d often jaunt to a local Mahjong parlour under the Yurakucho railway lines, play a few rounds and order yakisoba before heading back for the numbers which were released at 10:00pm.

I was living in Singapore when Lehman Brothers imploded. 2008 was a record year for our brokerage as bull market turned carnage brought record volumes on exchanges worldwide. Humungous and often undeserved year-end bonuses were dished out with little regard to the “formality” of performance appraisals. It would never be that good again.

A position opened up in Shanghai to head our office there and develop our joint venture with CITIC. The Beijing Olympics and Shanghai Expo heralded China’s grand entrance onto the Global stage. China was opening up its financial markets.

A number of candidates were under consideration, and unlike me, all of them could speak Chinese. But I guess I begged the hardest and a few months later found myself in a new country full of optimism.

The gates never fully opened. My clients, many of the largest global market makers, lined up like barbarians at the gates patiently waiting and waiting. A crack in the door, then a slight gap before closing again. To this day, the doors are only partially open.

In 2012 I hired a few financial engineering MBA interns. These kids were desperate to start their careers on the right track. This was my light bulb moment when I discovered how difficult it was for college educated young adults to find a job. No longer was a degree, let alone a Masters a fast pass to a bright future. Youth unemployment numbers worldwide blew my mind. It made no sense to me that we were seeing record high numbers in unfilled jobs, and record high unemployment numbers. Was the recruitment industry broken?

(see “An Open Letter to the Recruitment Industry”)

Our goal was simple — reduce youth unemployment.

We decided to embark on this endeavor by creating a tool that we hope will become a blueprint for online recruitment models of the future. — to shift the focus from the prevalent online job database solutions to an online candidate database.

Build the single largest searchable database of graduate job seekers

The premise — As an owner of a small business you need to hire someone immediately. You can’t afford exorbitant agency fees. Input your requirements — university, degree type, availability, lingual skills, even minimum GPA — Search, and Bam! — A list of profiles that match.

Quimojo — Global Campus Recruitment

Search, Connect, Chat, Video Interview, All from within a Single Platform

It is a steep learning curve. Not only am I facing a completely new industry to tackle, but there are so many daunting aspects to entrepreneurship that require huge sacrifices and commitment. Yes I want to impact youth unemployment, but perhaps an even bigger driver is that I want to make good on the team of passionate individuals who have given up so much to make this work.

Star Wars The Force Awakens — I have not seen it yet! Partly due to my reluctance to be drawn in by the all too powerful marketing machine that is Disney. I prefer movies that find me (Cider House Rules, House of Sand and Fog). My favorite brands don’t advertise (Urwerk, Ariel Atom). They don’t need to. I am off-topic…

Mostly I have given up movies as I just do not have the time to not think about the company we are building. It occupies every single waking minute of my day and night.

I want to iterate, and iterate, and wait patiently for our tech team to implement, test, bug fix, test again, move to production. While I wait, I work with Marketing to build our social equity. I read and read — other entrepreneur journeys. I research the competitive landscape. I network and connect with people who have been through exactly what I am going through. We share ideas, share war stories, share our visions, and share encouragement. At night I study, courses on entrepreneurship, courses on startup funding. Sometimes I find myself on a call with Angels, Incubators, Accelerators well past midnight (being in Asia and having to cater to Pacific Standard Time). I am watching ”Shark Tank” as a lesson to a socially awkward individual in elevator pitches. My pitch is too long! Shorten it!

I have a million questions to answer:

Content distribution — HootSuite or MeetEdgar — I love MeetEdgar and what they are doing, and as a startup I would love to support them, but they only integrate with Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. What about Snapchat and Instagram?

Social Media — Facebook is a given. I mean 1.6 Billion users, the ability to target our demographic nicely. People swear by Twitter, but I find using it baffling. LinkedIn yep, but what’s up with that massive stock drop? How about Snapchat for Millennials, Peach and Bebee?

Niche Marketing — Was advised by one Incubator to focus our marketing dollars on a niche market. Great advise yes, but our company is Quimojo, Global Campus Recruitment. Hmmm.

Bootstrap or seek funding? — Tough question. I’d rather own 5% of something than 50% of nothing. And we firmly believe this will work. But online giants like Indeed are closing funding rounds in the tens of millions. And what if we run out of funds before getting traction? Agrhh, not gonna happen. Its gonna work.

What if we fail? — The odds are stacked against any startup. Like most entrepreneurs we knew the odds, but went anyway. Not afraid of failure myself, but don’t want to fail the team.

Move to the U.S.? — Huh? Well I like to think other continents provide opportunities to grow a world-class company from scratch. Asia has an upcoming startup ecosystem. Nothing will rival Silicon Valley for the foreseeable future, but why should the U.S. get all the good businesses?

A million questions that require our attention every day. But it is all good.

I am learning about content marketing, SEO, SEM, digital marketing, influencer marketing, email marketing, conversion rates, bounce rates, gamification, guerrilla marketing, video marketing, conversion rates, sales funnels — the list is endless.

Even if I could spare time to watch a wookie in space, I probably would not enjoy it. Judging by how awesome J.J. did with my favoured space franchise, Star Trek, I am sure The Force Awakens is going to be brilliant.

We are well past Minimum Viable Product now, but Star Wars will have to wait, at least until Product Market Fit.

Dean Owen is the Co-Founder of Quimojo, a revolutionary new concept in Global Campus Recruitment.

From Beef to Pork! My Journey from Professional to Entrepreneur. Part One