Are we ready for On-Demand Labour?

Over the weekend, I have been spending time at the coaching and mentoring bootcamp for the semi-finalists of Skim Usahawan Permulaan Bumiputera or SUPERB, a RM100 million grant fund to finance Bumiputera start-ups at MaGIC in Cyberjaya.

Among the semi finalists that I know includes Nizreen Noordin of TaxiMonger, Hakim Albasrawy of Tandemic and Arsyan Ismail of 1337 Tech. To advance to the final, all semi-finalists have to go through an intense five minute pitch to woo and convince the judges about their business ideas.

On Sunday night, I was watching Charlie Rose's interview with Tom Friedman, columnist for the New York Times as they ended the interview discussing about on-demand service (taking Uber as an example), on-demand education and on-demand labour.

"On-demand labour" means you work only when your service is required or when you are available. This reminds me of a Singaporean entrepreneur that I have come across on a social media website recently who appears to be living the kind of lifestyle some of us have always dreamed of: working by the beach, exploring various cafés as he plans, manages and executes his projects - it all sounds pretty good to me.

While we may see more instances of individuals venturing into their own businesses, and hence able to better manage one's own schedule compare to a nine to five job, to be an entrepreneur is never a bed of roses. Even when you have your business up and running, as your business grows, you'll face different problems and opportunities that require different approach - what worked in your previous start-up project may no longer be the best approach.

Entrepreneurship requires an individual to have an ongoing fighting spirit, without which would mean one's business idea will not see the light of the day. And to sustain that 'burning desire to succeed', entrepreneurs will need some sort of consistent community support, showing them when they need guidance and support, they are never alone in this.

In late 2013 at Global Entrepreneurship Summit Kuala Lumpur, Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak announced the formation of the Malaysian Global Innovation and Creative Centre (MaGIC). Quoting our Prime Minister who outlined MaGIC's role in nurturing and elevating a Malaysian entrepreneurial ecosystem: “The centre will be a one-stop shop for entrepreneurs, with everything from getting financing from banks or venture capital to incubators for developing start-ups, from intellectual property registration to facilities for training, coaching and mentoring." It is an answer to taking local entrepreneurial community to the next level.

When MaGIC announced the appointment of Cheryl Yeoh as the CEO, she made it apparent during the press conference that her team will be working closely with various community leaders and players in the ecosystem who will help to identify the gaps in building a stronger community while putting Malaysian high growth start-ups on the map of more foreign investors.

In the past month, among the tech related events that I have been to includes "Serendipity Dinner" hosted by MaGIC and Golden Gate Ventures (thank you Vinnie Lauria and Jeffrey Paine for the invite). Cheryl as the CEO of MaGIC has been actively connecting with entrepreneurs - understanding their businesses and individual challenges in starting their businesses in Malaysia; while engaging with regional communities of founders and investors to possibly understand and identify the gaps that needs to be filled.

This year alone, several partnerships has been announced and established between government agencies with local, regional and international players such as MaGIC's collaboration with UP Global and Stanford University, MDeC's MSC Malaysia Startup Accelerator Lite accelerator programme (facilitated by JFDI.Asia), Cradle-Golden Gate Ventures co-investment programme and 1337 Ventures's Alpha Startups pre-accelerator programme in collaboration with MDeC.

A week ago, MaGIC published a "5 minute guide to 2014 Startup Landscape in Malaysia" illustrated by none other than one of the notable start-ups in Malaysia, Piktochart. The key points of the infographic are mainly drawn from the Malaysia Start-up Wiki with content contributed by local community, curated and powered by World Start-up Report. Started by an entrepreneur by the name of Bowei Gai, World Start-up Report is an organisation that explores and documents global start-up communities. Bowei has been traveling across continents in his quest to understand and map out start-up communities around the world.

Personally I think the 5 minute guide is worth a read for local and international entrepreneurs and investors as it presented the key strengths and weaknesses of Malaysian start-up landscape. URL: http://www.mymagic.com.my/startuplandscape.html

Feel free to take some time to check it out. Thanks to Piktochart, the information about local startup landscape has been made simpler to be consumed!