That Awkward Moment When You’re Asked What You Plan To Do With Your Life? (Birth of TWOPACK)

First commit -m “Initializing first post”

The Premise

We’re born into an environment where paths seem predefined for you. Those were the days, I would say, where I didn’t have to be ‘aware’ of what’s going to happen. The days where ignorance prevailed. The days we call bliss. The days where I wasn’t consciously visualizing how I wanted things to turn out. For me, it was high school > national service > university (which brought me to London). Then the question arises.. What’s after that?

I recently had a presentation discussing my life hitherto and talked a bit about my choice of inspiration. Frankly, that sounds pretty dumb — at least that was my initial thought. However, in pure motivation for a good grade, I sat down and pondered over it (Haven’t regretted putting in the effort thus far). I’ll summarize who I chose and my findings as succinctly as I can:

• I chose Min-Liang Tan, CEO & Co-founder of Razer Inc — a gaming peripherals company reportedly valued at north of a billion dollars
• He’s from my hometown, sunny Singapore. He studied and practiced Law here but took a leap of faith to pursue his passion. He was quoted saying that he was “a gamer first and a lawyer second”
• If quitting a respectable job is not tough enough, check this out. He left Singapore for California to start his business
• He was described by early investor Koh Boon Hwee as such — “Stylewise he is impatient, has a great sense of urgency and is a perfectionist in delivery”
• Key Lesson 1: Pursue your passion. We’re essentially working for the rest of our lives, find something you love and there is a higher probability you will excel
• Key Lesson 2: Challenge the status quo. Would Min-Liang be where he is if he conformed to society’s view at that point of time, where gaming was seen as merely a bad hobby? (I’m aware of the multi-millionaire gamers today)
• Key Lesson 3: Don’t be afraid of risks. Fair to say, we should be brutally honest with our personal risk appetites and current situation but I have to say, no risk no reward.. Or more colloquially, you gotta risk it to get the biscuit.
• Key Lesson 4: You are the author of your own life. I get that society imposes certain views that steer our decisions in life and I go as far as to say that I have been a victim of that many times, but what story do you actually want to tell?
• Key Lesson 5: Be impatient to act, but patient to deliver. The first part refers to execution. Ideas are easy to discuss but implementation isn’t. If things are purely discussed, it leaves room for unproductive debates and doubt. Action removes these doubts. The last part of the quote talks about timing. Gaming peripherals would not make sense if gaming platforms weren’t made to be economically affordable

Disclaimer: I’m not an investor in Razer, but I do own one of their mice ;)

What I’ve Been Doing

Just a little about me. I’m a front-end developer currently studying in UCL. I met my cofounder in my course and boy am I grateful to have met him. Anyway, we currently work on our digital studio where we design + develop web products & services for clients. Our first few projects were for friends and products for our personal projects (would love to talk more about this in future posts). As you can imagine, it’s hard to split time between Uni and this but we love it so much we try to manage. Don’t be surprised if I write a following post discouraging it.. That post will be contingent on my grade.

We want to pursue doing client work for exposure but that’s not just it. We enjoy building products for ourselves and if we do identify a gap in the market we’re targeting, we aim to build products to fill that gap. There are more plans down the road but this should suffice to put my point across.

So, What Do You Want To Do For A Living?

This is the tricky bit. It’s hard to detail my plans to someone who is not a full on techie. If not, we just come off like we’re all over the place and making it up as we go along. The real test was describing this to my parents. I’m pretty convinced they still don’t fully understand what I do with their responses but I do feel a sense of support and that goes a long way. There’s always something special with their blessing.

Other responses from different people would include:

• Why not join a big firm?
• Why not join a startup?
• Maybe you’re dreaming a bit too small?
• Why not do this instead?
• Isn’t the risk of failure pretty high?

Don’t get me wrong, these are fair concerns that show people are actually listening and giving a fuck unlike those who simply agree for the convenience of it. I can’t address all these questions in this post and for brevity’s sake I’ve reached a response I’m comfortable with:

We are dreaming big; just in a realistic, cautious and practical way.

Birth of TWOPACK

I can’t predict the future, and things could and probably would turn out quite differently than I expected. But that’s the life of an entrepreneur, which in it’s own way is seductively rewarding to me. It will be an interesting exercise to pen this down and refer to it in a year or so. Hopefully, I’ll be better positioned by then.

With that, I introduce our digital studio, TWOPACK, to the world. At the time of writing, we literally only have a landing page — splitting time between Uni and work is real. There is, however, good news to celebrate to; and that is that we’ve just scored our first proper client. At the stage we’re at, I’m pretty damn grateful but I will not stay satisfied. A quick toast to the present and to moving forward.