So, can you tell me about Fairway story? One of the youngster stratup founder asked me on the other day. I was little bit hesitated. Because it is a story I like to take two hours to talk about in detail. The Fairway story is the mixture of failure and success. We started the Fairway Web as an ECM company back in 2011. ECM mean enterprise content management which generally consists of document management system, collaboration system, workflow management system and web content management system. Which is an enterprise scale, huge system. And we liked to simplify it. We like to make such complex system to be intuitive and easy to use. We liked to adopt modern practices such as agile, SaaS and lean to the enterprise. And we believed we can make that happen. We had a clear vision. We liked to digitize and automate every office processes and workflows. Good bye papers, we wont need you anymore. People gonna love it because our product will help them carry out their business functions more efficiently and effectively. And there is a huge market ahead of us because no one is doing that at the moment and eventually, every business gonna need that. We will make a lot of money. We had a product. A document management system, which is intuitive and has rich-functionality such as version control, library control, integrated collaboration functions, document approval and workflow system. And most important of all, its not just a prototype or proof of concept, its actually working. (youtube/watch?v=5dm9qlrXkYQ) We had a strategy as well. We planned to start with few customers in local market. As our product grow in functionality and stability, we will go abroad, mainly ASEAN market through Bangkok or SG branch. We didnt target for mass market, we targeted for niche market. Since every businesses have different workflow and requirements, we will based on our product but will focus later on customization to make more money. It was a great plan. But, one year later, after we met with several potential customers, we realized that the time is not right yet. We hoped for infrastructure to be catch up with us but it wont. We hoped for technology adoption of businesses to be catch up with us but it wont. We hope for other institution such as financial, distribution and laws would catch up. But they wont. After one year of hard work, it was for us to realize our product and vision is not fit with the market, yet. We counted on potential. But it failed us. So, Im sorry, if Im tired of all those potentials. How infrastructure will be improve. How financial industry will be improve. How mobile market will be improve. How communication will be improve. How opportunities will be improve. Im tired of them. I suggest to you too, its good to have a vision for future, but dont depend on it and you got to make your idea out of the present if you want to be success. Future is hugely uncertain here and its completely unpredictable too. So, back to the story, we needed to think about our survival. We needed to adapt. All potential customers we had met are excited about our product and idea. Although they dont want it yet, they like to hire us for something else. So we stop being stubborn and started grabbing the opportunities in front of us. We become a service company. We built solution for customers per their requests to make money, to survive. Few months later, we gained a reputation of technically excellent service provider and customers started to follow us and we no longer need to be in search of customers. For another year and half, we survived as a service company. This year January, as I already mentioned few days ago, weve been acquired by TrustLink, which I wont repeat again here in detail and half-closed the curtain of Fairway Web. One friends on the table remark it as a success story where we successfully be able to exit finally. I think its depend on the measure of success. How do you define success? Some might not agree. The acquire didnt make me millionaire, but in my measure, yes I agree, it was a success story. We have make something out of nothing. Sorry for the long post. But I hope this give you something to think about especially if you are into a startup business. We failed as a traditional startup but we succeeded as a service company. I dont have this one product that I can proud of, but I have a huge list of customers I can proud of as being their service provider. :) Cheers...
Posted on: Mon, 20 Oct 2014 04:50:18 +0000