As the end of 2011 draws closer, I can safely say that it has been a fruitful year filled with a mix pain, lessons, and success. Looking back to January of this year, I remember just how lost I was at the time. Penn Olson pivoted so much and my final bet was to focus on tech in asia. And things have worked out well so far, I think.
Just 12 months ago, few who I spoke to believed that Asia needed a media machine to tell the technology and entrepreneurial stories in this continent. They pointed me to competitors A and B who were supposedly already doing what I planned to do. But in my opinion, I believe I can execute this whole media thing better. And I think we have proven my vision right this year. So much so that the big boys from the West are starting to take a more serious look at Asia. And that makes me excited. It is good for all of us in Asia.
We need blogs to tell stories from Asia. And the more influential the collective community becomes, the more vibrant, informed, and well-connected we will all be. We hold our heads high as bloggers because we know we are doing a service for the community.
We were also lucky enough to have East Ventures to back us up on our project. It may not have looked like a sound investment back when I was just an undergrad with no journalistic experience. All I had was a blog with ‘okay’ traffic and a vision. But we’re still here, working hard, and doing better than ever. We’ve made mistakes along the way, but have recovered from them quickly.
I also built an awesome team who could learn quickly with me along the journey. I was never a trained journalist. I always considered myself a business person. So the core blogging team has to be made up of folks who have journalistic experience. Many folks asked me how I managed to find Rick, Steven, and Charlie. It was a mixture of both friends referral and luck. Rick was introduced by friend-of-the-blog Serkan Toto, and Steven was introduced by Rick. We were fortunate to pick up Charlie along the way.
I’m lucky to have them as they turned chaos into an organized daily workflow. We’ve experimented with a lot of low-cost tools so we can communicate better, produce faster, and make our content stand out. There was much trial and error, and we broke things, and argued. But under it all we know we have the best interests of the blog in mind. Minghao was picked up after he sold our first venture. I needed a business development person so the timing was apt. Having worked with him for years, he is a person who I can trust.
After the team stabilized, we got into the events. We had been planning that for a long time. There was a lot of fear and what-ifs but I guess we had reached to a point where we had to stop researching and just start doing. And so we did.
All in all, 2011 has been a pretty exciting year for all of us. We aren’t successful yet, but our Asia tech news start-up will continue to bootstrap, fight, and scrap for every inch of improvement in 2012.