Stuff I Have Failed At
I fail at more things in a year than most people start in a lifetime. This is my catalogue of those things for my personal reference. These are mostly related to business and there are some personal stuff as well. I have loosely separated it by year so that I have a clearer picture as I grow older.
This list is never complete and I am taking my time to slowly update it. So check back often to have a laugh.
2024
Low Tide
A tropical cocktail bar on Club Street built with the Sago Group. The anchor concept at 98 Club Street.
The concept was initially pretty banging. But change of leadership and constant changes in direction led the concept to be rather rudderless.
The end of 2023 was hard and we decided to do a controlled demolition of the concept after the Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly of Underdog Inn. She survived for almost 4 years. Gonna miss that building tho.
https://www.instagram.com/lowtide.sg/
Underdog Inn
Bronx-style graffiti with hip-hop and fantastic food. The most high-end venue that I have been involved in so far. Built with the Sago Group.
So many fuck-ups on this one. Everything that could go wrong went wrong. Chefs walked out, leaders fucked up, and investors pulled out. An absolute unit of a man Justin and I tried our best and we almost saved it. But the landlord entered and repossessed the unit putting an abrupt end to that adventure. This one hurt like a motherfucker.
https://www.instagram.com/underdog.inn/
2023
Stock Trading V2
Got a lot better. But made bad decisions on trade size. Blew up yet again.
Baby Rascal
A backyard house party-joint built at Huggs Collective on Maxwell Road, led by Anthony Zayat and team. Fun space for events with a family and community focus. Got the space to run large-scale events but the closure of Spiffy Dapper, licensing woes and staffing issues meant that it never really took off. We were planning to raise money and go all in when we realised that the landlord had no intentions of renewing the main lease. Had to exit with a massive hole.
https://www.instagram.com/babyrascal.sg/
The Spiffy Dapper V2
One of my first successful venues. It died a sad and unfortunate death. An inlet pipe broke flooding the venue and the downstairs neighbour. The full fix did not make sense without a new lease (which was not on the table) and we had to wind down operations. 2013 to 2023; 10 years was a pretty good run.
This set in motion a whole bunch of unintended consequences (the sort that happens when you lose the main cash flow business) that are still ongoing.
We were able to bring it back to life in 2024 albeit with better people running it.
Quality Melts
Found a small food stall up for sale and decided to hustle it with one of our veteran team members as the business lead. Think it was the first Chopped Cheese joint in Singapore. The brand building went well with support from the team at Sago. But three locations later we had to exit the business. It is still going with the business lead taking over the whole business. I wish him the best of luck.
Dapper Coffee V4
Revamped the program with a new lead after the brand stagnated for a long time. But the untimely end of Spiffy Dapper ended Dapper Coffee for the last time.
2022
RARE.SG
Created a website to sell rare spirits during the pandemic. It never really took off. The ghost of the site still lurks on the interwebs.
Disco Biscuit V2
Tried prototyping a caffeine beverage, a meta-brand built on AI. Got stuck in prototyping hell.
2021
Porkypine
Built a Cubano joint inspired by the movie Chef. It is my cry movie. Only had one thing on the menu, the Cubano. It was bloody awesome. Created it during covid and it thrived. But the business lead was arrested for dealing drugs and the whole business fell apart. Apparently, I was the only idiot who was not aware of what was going on. Will bring this one back one day.
Amoy Beverage Corp V1
Events and masterclass business built with a business lead. He made some money, I lost some money. Rebooted with a new business lead.
Hubris Bikes V1
Started building custom bikes, but did not sell much. So that ended up with me having a large collection of vintage bikes. This will come back one day. The hubris was supposed to be ironic, guess it was not.
2020
The Pandemic Hustles
I failed at so many things during this time. We tried so many things to keep the businesses alive. Most of them failed. I can't remember most of it as the mind has mostly blocked it from memory. One day I will.
Live Stream Cocktails
We made cocktails live on stream and delivered them. You took the orders on the stream, we made it live and sent it over. Was fun but made no fucking money.
Will It Pie
We made random ingredients into pies and tried auctioning them off. Was fun but made no fucking money.
Disco Biscuit V1
Saltbeef Bagel and Large Cookies to go. The product was good, but the market was not into it. So laid the idea to rest rather quickly.
Stock Trading V1
Got into stocks at the pandemic bottom. Rode the wave up but shorted too early. Lost all the gains and then some. Learned so much about myself albeit in a very painful manner.
2019
In retrospect, this was a good year. I recovered and had a plan going forward. Little did I know that the pandemic was ahead of me.
2018
My Life & Liver
I did not create much, instead spent most of the time drinking and being a total ass. I fucked up relationships with family and friends to a large degree. I am still working on repairing the damage I caused.
Crypto Bubble
Traded altcoins on random exchanges. You can guess how that ended.
EXPAT.SG
Built a community platform for expats in Singapore. The business partner ripped off the site and created a clone to move the money. That was fun.
2017
Display Science
Decided to take my best friend’s idea and build a company with him. While I was able to add value in the very early stages, I was soon out of my depth. I had too many projects going on and I burned out. Crashed and burned to a crisp to be exact. I gave up my equity and left, burned more than a couple of bridges on that one. The company has iterated and survived
FNB.COM.SG V1
Tried building a complete repository of suppliers et al for the food and beverage industry. Spent too much time on the data and not enough time on sales. A common theme here at this point in time.
2016
Social Farms
Wanted to build an open-source data structure and analysis company for aquaponics. So I built a full-on farm with 36 A-frames that ran 300 plus plants each. But I neglected the platform. What I should have done was build one system and focus on the tech. One year later, I ran out of money and the farm collective took the space back. That one hurt real bad.
Makcik Chicken
Built one of the first premium chicken rice brands with a friend’s mom’s recipe. They were designers, so the brand build-out was awesome. But the complexities of working with a family and the fact that I was not paying enough attention broke up the partnership.
Coco Shake Bay
Built one of the first coconut milkshake joints in Singapore. Good real estate deal and the business lead worked very hard for 1 year. But eventually, we gave up as we did not have the cash flow to support the business. We were way too early to the game and now the city is full of coconut milkshake brands. Makes me wonder what would have happened if we just stuck with it.
Dapper Coffee V3
Moved the bar and the coffee house to a new location and put together a new team. They kicked ass and we had a great program. But I pushed everyone too hard and I broke it. The business lead left after getting completely burned out and left the brand stumbling for a long time to come.
2015
Little Drizzle
Built a cake shop with one of our employees. Good real estate deal. The product was right. But the business lead gave up after 6 months. A big lesson in understanding that some folks are just not ready.
Dapper Coffee V2
Restarted with a new team and was one the first to try selling bottled cold brewed coffee. But that team imploded too fast.
Living Space Finder
Real estate lead generator built on principles of automation. It worked but I was lazy to do the legwork and it quietly died.
2014
Beer Brisket Wings
Way before smoked brisket became widely available. We started a smoked meat and craft beer place. It boasted the largest collection of American spirits (at the time), and a sizeable variety of craft beers. But we did not get positioning right in time and ran out of runway.
Tool Room
Tried to build a co-working space. But spent too much time building something that was not fit for the market and did not spend any time building a community. But I learned carpentry.
Dapper Coffee V1
Started a coffee shop operation at Spiffy Dapper. It worked, but we expanded too fast and it all came crashing down.
2013
BE-LIFTED
My first attempt at a branding and design house. We did some ok work for a couple of years. But we could never punch above the lower-tier pricing. So we ended it.
2012
Wanderify
A travel social network, almost got it right but I spend too much time building and then got bored.
Top Ten Singapore
A review site with a lot of focus on Instagram, ahead of its time. Custom code and had a whole sales team behind it. But we did not get the sales strategy and execution right. Close but so far.
2011
1 or 8 Faction
Started a hip-hop record label with a friend of mine. I did the business, he was the talent. He was pretty good but we were too early to the game and the market was too small. I was too weird and left after a couple of years when I felt I was not contributing enough. But on the plus side, learned a lot about hip-hop, and the music business; even shot a couple of music videos. You can check out some of Taisuke’s music below.
https://soundcloud.com/taisukemonkeyking
Tune Soul
A music social network, never took off the ground as I spent too much time building it and not enough time getting market fit right.
2010
Marriott Vacation Club V2
Got flung back to the old haunts, where I spent aimless days sitting in front of the screen waiting for everchanging management to give me some direction. Got wise and left the rat race.
My first and only taste of global organisational clusterfucks. Glad to have done it. So much clarity on what not to do.
2009
Marriott International
After slaving away on the bottom rungs I got an opportunity to play with the big boys. I fucked it up, I did not have the discipline and the work could not keep my attention. Got my first taste of global corporate operations. But could not cut it.
Space to Party
My first attempt at a magazine. Did not work. But was in the early days of Facebook and the like. Got a message from a girl who wanted to promote a cause for a non-profit, and years later she became my wife
2008
Marriott Vacation Club V1
Got into the company as a telemarketer. Was shit at it. Was about to get fired when they moved me to the inbound team where I excelled as a phone operator. I learned how to code in between calls.
Proposed a new lead generation system that I built from scratch and it worked pretty well. But I was bundled off to corporate so as to not cause too much trouble.
2007
Daybed Bar / Martini Firm
After starting from an apprentice and working my way up to part owner in two years, I was kicked back to the curb when the rug was pulled from under me. A Rude awakening that showed me how naive I was. But I am glad I went through that. The grit and doggedness have served me well.
2003
A Whole Semester at School
I skipped a whole semester at school playing hookey and hanging around with the wrong crowd. It ended with me being homeless for a month in Singapore. Sleeping in parks and surviving on a couple of loaves of bread.
2000
Decided to start here as I had turned 15 and had decided to start acting on my ideas and trying to make them happen.
Pirating
Rather illustrious start to my career. Back in the day in Kerala, India; folks had VCD players, but no one had the media. I tried to build a pirating business by renting VCDs from other stores and copying it to sell. Got ripped off by the guy who sold me the CD writer and did not end up making much sales. Quite the write-off.
