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Okay, let's address the elephant in the room. It's been quiet here. Like, really quiet. My last post was sometime back in the whirlwind of 2020 – back when 'pivot' became everyone's least favorite word and we were all figuring things out on the fly. So, where have I been for the last four years? Short answer: in the trenches. Building. Mostly StoreHub. Turns out, scaling a tech company across Southeast Asia, especially navigating a global pandemic (remember launching Beep Delivery in basicall

In these tough times, I hear a lot of people talking about grit and resilience. That it's important to hang in there and tough it out. But I think it takes more than toughness to thrive in crisis. It takes being Anti-fragile. To explain this concept, imagine a glass bottle falling on the floor. It breaks. It's fragile. A piece of rock falls on the same floor. It doesn't break. Is it anti-fragile? No. The opposite of fragile - breaking easily, is not that you don't break when force is appli

"I love you guys" An unexpected message shot across my phone screen from a close friend. What sparked the random expression of a deep emotion, I wondered. "A close relative just got cancer. Brain. Stage 4" My heart sank. Feelings of injustice and sadness overwhelmed me. What else can you feel, when a 45 year old is handed a card like this. 2020 has been a year of many such reminders. Kobe, 41. Chadwick, 43. Some would make a case for living unabashedly and with no regrets - the YOLO movem

When most of us talk about permanent markers, we rarely describe them as such. We simply call them Sharpies. There comes a point where your brand is synonymous with the action/group of things it represents. Google Bubblewrap Jetski Tupperware Post its Rollerblade Yoyo All these brands started out as company names that became so popular in mainstream culture that they ended up being the very definition of the act/product they represent. But they didn't get there without any effort. I've used

We all know the classic story. Hare vs Tortoise. Slow and steady wins the race. But that's not what really happens here. The emphasis on slowness and steadiness camouflages the true lesson within: focus. I love how this video shows the hare getting distracted by the spotlight and its surroundings while the tortoise zeroes in on its goal. How often do we find ourselves distracted in our pursuits only to find that the one who wins simply didn't give up on that one thing. It's not about how f

Competitive gamers know that winning a game requires us to understand the seasons and match our actions accordingly. In most games, it's as simple as the early, mid and late phases. Each of these phases would require a different playbook - a set of rules and principles which help you build an advantage over your opponents. By applying the right mindset and executing according to the season, you eventually build enough of an advantage to drive forward a victory. In business, or life, this sam

We often believe that winning Requires us to take immediate action And a follow up with many steps We think by doing more The needle moves faster and further Until we hit the mark But perhaps sometimes Winning is simply waiting For when the shot's been taken And all we need is a little patience

We dream bigger We act bolder We work harder We get out of bed easier We speak with more conviction We can't help but share with everyone We are more patient For the most important things in life, believing really matters. Because what we believe is what we'll be living.

2020 hasn't been easy We've been challenged to our limits Some of us have thrived While others have tilted But this is a needful season The air is getting cleaner The forests less ravaged Silly ideas for startups thrown away The return to fundamentals of driving value Tech adoption by the boomers - who are now evangelists We stay home - and have more time to reflect And these moments are what make us better As human beings and as caretakers of our planet 2020, it hasn't been easy, but could this

The most glorious of days Often linger around the corner In the most unexpected ways You might just discover A happy happy day The best steak ever A wagyu 6+ at RM120 that happens to be the best steak ever? Love it when I discover these rare finds. What has been your most unexpected best ... ever recently?

A close friend and colleague(Greg) recently wrote about learning, and how most of us think that the act of consuming content makes us better each day(full post here  - def check it out, it's great). TLDR; it doesn't. I've been a gamer all my life. And have competed in all kinds of tournaments. And one thing's clear, we don't get good from just playing. We get good from all the time spent watching our replays, analysing our games, getting coached. And the best competitors just do it more dilige

Follow your passion rarely lasts. Never give up doesn’t apply to everything. You can be anything you want as long as you believe/work hard enough is simply false. The truth is Passion is a great starter, but success is what keeps us going. There are some things we should give up, fast. Dysfunctional relationships, Negative people, Insecurities. Our genetics, geography, family affluence are greater predictors of where we end up - not everyone can become a Roger Federer or Lebron James just becau

Our best choices In dire circumstances Don’t come from absolute strength But rather a willingness to walk In spite of the absolute certainty Of the pain of failure Because of the joy and hope of success

Yesterday's 500 Growth Series was really fun. I shared on the Top 20 Tools to Hack and Grow a SaaS business. You can find the full video recording here: https://www.facebook.com/500durians/videos/1200933713355377/ Some of you guys have requested for me to share the slides so I’ve put them up on slideshare here. If you have other questions, feel free to connect with me on twitter or reach me on linkedin Top 20 tools I use to hack and grow a B2B saas business from Wai Hong Fong In case you wa

There are no problems. Every problem is an opportunity. There are only Probletunities. 5 long Breathes will calm your body which calms your brain. Startup life is a roller coaster. You may feel incredibly down at 6pm. And feel on top of the world at 8pm.

After living over 16 years of my life away from Malaysia, I finally returned home in 2013. While it seemed like this was a natural progression considering the market focus(SEA) of my second startup(Storehub), I knew that there was a deeper purpose behind this move. Although it was not clear what this was at the time, there were a bunch of ideas I’ve been toying with for a few years now. Community development, encouraging entrepreneurship, solving real problems and adding real value. What I did

In my experience We are most tested just before we achieve some major milestone And sometimes our worst enemies hide inside us In our thoughts and our doubts and our dreams But when we take them down we grow strong. And develop what it takes to hold success with gratitude and humility

I recently did a talk at the Magic Academy 2015 conference (http://academy.mymagic.my/ma2015/schedule/2/). Some of you guys have requested for me to share the slides so I’ve put them up on slideshare here. If you have other questions, feel free to connect with me on twitter or reach me on linkedin Top 20 tools I use to hack and grow a B2B saas business from Wai Hong Fong In case you want the actual links here they are: MOZ – moz.com Usertesting.com – Usertesting.com Crazyegg.com – Crazyegg.

Humility is the ultimate networking tool. Still so true today. Even as we celebrate the small wins, we remember those unassuming, unexpected people that we took the time to respect and get to know, without agenda and prejudice. And how they led us to others who did indeed help us. Honour every person you meet with your full self. You never really know who they know.

At StoreHub, we’re constantly looking for ways to automate the way we do things. When we first started out, we knew an area that will pose a major issue is managing subscription billing. There were some solutions out there that did ‘recurring billing’ like ipay88 and paypal but the problem with those is that these are services focused on the payment side of the equation and do not help you to manage the actual subscription of the customer. For most SAAS businesses, this wouldn’t be sufficient

Hey guys. We’ve got some exciting news. StoreHub got accepted as one of the top 20 finalists at the Alliance Bank Bizsmart academy challenge. There were 485 applicants and so we feel very lucky indeed to be amongst the finalists that got chosen. Check out our link here at BizSmart – StoreHub.

Over dinner last night, a friend and I had a spirited conversation about a whole range of issues that we as Christians today engage with. We both agreed that there is a lot of fixation on ‘sin’ in church culture and that it tends to lead to a culture of condemnation. Nonetheless, he asked me to clarify my understanding of sin and how it sits in my theological framework. Here’s my attempt at a response: Sin is missing the mark. It is not fulfilling the full potential God envisions for us. It is

Today, I got a message from an entrepreneur wrestling in their journey and sharing some of the struggles they’ve had to deal with. In the midst of the rant, there’s the popular disclaimer that we commonly hear of “I’m only Human. (therefore)I’m weak.” And while most of us will typically attribute our ‘humanity’ to weakness, I would dare say that the biblical story points to a very different view. One that talks of a Creator that made Humans in God’s image. And of a Man who came to show us what

Aloha. As I’m getting more understanding of the ecosystem here in Malaysia, I’m starting to see a few opportunities here and there. For one, I just signed up for an account on MyEG’s make the pitch. Seems like it’s an interesting programme giving startups a nationwide platform for their ideas. The sign up process is a little rough on the edges, but here’s our profile for Storehub’s MyEG Pitch. Let me know if you’ve had any experience with this!

I’ve now had a few months to get to know the startup scene in Malaysia. It’s really been an eye opening experience and in the midst of it all, I’ve also had the chance to help make a health related startup come to life. Healthworks is on a mission to make Malaysians healthier by becoming Malaysia’s leading health community. Their approach is multi-fold: education through expert advice and interesting health-related articles, eCommerce with health-related products, and building a thriving, bustl

Cambodia Colombia Kenya Kosovo Peru Philippines Senegal Tajikistan The countries I’ve made Microfinancing Loans to via Kiva. I truly believe microfinancing is one of the channels to address the issue of poverty(teach a man to fish), and to believe in people who have dared to dream that they can break away from the chains they were born with. Microfinancing makes money available when it counts. So join the revolution today. p.s. My goal is to eventually have $1M USD sitting in Kiva that cont

when the world has fallen out from under me I’ll be found in you, still standing When the sky rolls up and the mountains fall on their knees when time and space are through I’ll be found in you – Brooke Fraser (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4KiGN1j1No) Sometimes I feel this. The world falling out from under me. Whether its ‘good’ things or ‘bad’ events that accumulates, you can’t escape that sensation and that knowing that sometimes there’s just so much outside of your control. We’re const

So I’ve just updated my blog to a new skin. And also will make it a point to post more regularly. Haven’t really Made it a priority but people have asked if I write. So this will be my avenue of expression. Looking forward to a new season 🙂

Just doing my usual routine only to find that google malaysia accessed at www.google.com.my has been hacked by some Pakistani hackers. The group seems to call themselves team madleets. This is definitely the first time I’ve seen a google page hacked. I suspect a DNS attack but have to wait and see for googles response. Malaysia boleh! Even our google can get hacked 🙁

So as some of you guys may know, I recently launched onesaviour.com which is simply the front I use when people come to me looking for consulting work. I bought a simple wordpress theme and implemented it fairly quickly. Of course, I needed a new logo designed for the site. I had a friend who started work at DesignCrowd lately, so I decided to try it out instead of the other design sites I’ve heard about. Overall, I paid $277.59 for the project and got over 40+ designs after only 4 days. By

I have hope in a world where there’s enough grace for all our shortcomings. Where love is our default posture towards each other. Where cancer & sickness don’t exist and healthy relationships flourish. Where journey is celebrated because our hows are more important than our ends. Where work is meaningful and life is time shared with those we care. Where our blessings are received only to be readily shared with those around us. Where trust is the currency of our engagement. Of such a world I hop

Some people have requested that I posted up the 10 tools I’ve been sharing at the Online Retailer Roadshow. Thank you to those who took the time to encourage me and hopefully these tools will help you towards greater success in your own eCommerce journeys. So here it is: SEOMOZ – One of the best SEO tools + highly reputable Blogs out there Opensiteexplorer – Replacement for yahoo site explorer and great for gauging a domain’s strength/competitiveness of a market Usertesting – For $39, get a

In reflecting on the year 2011, I’ve also looked at what to expect in the year 2012. Here are some of my thoughts around what’s happening in SEO this year. Love to hear your thoughts so please feel free to post comments. 1. Social media will be an even bigger factor in Google’s algorithm Social media influence on ranking positions today reminds us of Google’s efforts in dealing with link and content data 10 years ago. Today, Google is 100 times better at interpreting the link graph. By the en

Couple of weeks ago, I unexpectedly received a phone call saying that I was selected to be on The Age Melbourne Magazine’s Top 100. According to Fairfax, “Now into its fifth year, the Top 100 celebrates the cities’ most influential people. From actors to activists, scientists to sports stars and chefs to CEOs, the Top 100 will have changed Sydney and Melbourne in some way in 2011 — whether it’s by making a difference in their field, setting a trend or contributing above and beyond what is expec

So we had a pretty epic day on Saturday. We were all out celebrating a friend’s final week before enrolling into the school of marriage. Surfing in the morning and horseriding in the afternoon. Of course, to complete the ritual, we needed to do something crazy in the evening/night right? So we dressed up our dear friend Heng Khuen Cheok, as none other than SUPERMAN! of course, as the night progressed, our superman had obtained 4 kisses from different random girls on the street including won

For anyone experiencing issues with M2E’s Magento & Ebay integration, you need to replace a file which contains the token that M2E uses to connect to eBay’s API. The error that I am referring to is : Synchronize eBay items transactions/orders ... Fail DateTime::__construct(): Failed to parse time string (Auth token is hard expired.) at position 0 (A): The timezone could not be found in the database The file in question is /app/code/local/Ess/M2e/Model/M2eConnector.php As the changes required

I struggle with ‘networking’, full stop. It’s an unnatural thing for me, and hopefully some people will empathise with me. But in my experience, there have been many wonderful moments where I simply get opportunities to meet truly amazing people. Some of these people are thought leaders in their industries and what not. Some of them have led me on to other more interesting people. Here’s what I’ve learnt through these: Just be genuine. There’s nothing to be gained from going out there and try

Hi everyone! It’s been really eerily quiet here over the last couple of months as we wade through challenge after challenge in the business. I apologize for the lack of updates and will commit to posting more regularly! I think part of it is trying not to get too caught up with being perfectionistic on what to write about. So…. After months of preparation, and 2 weeks of intense work… we’ve done it. it. is. finished. (or has it really just begun?) let me give you a hint. it has something to

It’s been a while since I blogged now, but I think I’d try to get into the habit of regularly posting again. I’d try to journal the things I’m learning on this journey on this blog as I go along. Watched a video today on leadership – http://ecorner.stanford.edu/authorMaterialInfo.html?mid=1719 “It is not the strongest of a species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but those that are most adaptive to change” – Charles Darwin In talking about leadership, Carly Fiorina highlights capabil

Linkbuilding – The rel=“nofollow” tag So this week we will be examining another key component of the link: the rel=“nofollow” tag. This tag was originally introduced in 2005 by Google by way of helping webmasters combat spammers. So how does it work? Basically, you add this tag to the end of the link structure as follows {a href=“http://www.startupsmart.com.au” rel=“nofollow”}. What this does is it tells Google that the link above shouldn’t be given any credit / linkjuice even though its on yo

Search engines determine a website’s relevance to a search query according to on-page (internal factors) and off-site (external factors) signals. Today we will look at title tags, which are arguably one of the most important on-page factors to work on. They can potentially affect rankings with immediate effect. When writing title tags, you must ensure that all relevant keywords to the page that you are describing are contained in the title tag. You can find relevant keywords to the subject mat

So you’ve got your website set up or are thinking of launching it and you’ve heard of this thing called search engine optimisation (SEO). You’re wondering what exactly it is and how relevant it is to your business. You know traffic is important and that more and more people are taking their search for information online. But all you have to do is build your website and people will come, right? Well, not quite. What is SEO? SEO is the active process of optimising a website in order to increase

I just got home and decided to google my name. I know what you’re thinking but I tell myself its for SEO purposes! This is what I found: A live twitter feed from my twitter account on the SERPS for the search term ‘wai hong fong‘. My immediate reaction was OMGOSH, I’m important enough for google to consider adding a twitter feed of me to the SERP. I quickly went and googled my favourite people at SEOmoz like Rand Fishkin, Danny Dover and Gillian Muessig and nothing there! So I thought, well I

As a result of the conversation with T today, I realised that a lot of the stresses I’ve been holding in tension in this season of my life, do not justify the amount of attention that I have given them. Let me explain. The typical Gen Y part of me carries a burden for the injustices of this world and a need to want to be part of the change. As such, my most recent thoughts revolve around the quest for goodness, and the seeds of grace, truth and hope that have yet to be sown in the communities w

Warning: This post is a rant of the mind, without form or purpose, and best read with a pinch of salt. There are certain times in our lives where we feel we are caught in a valley. It’s usually characterized by the inability to see beyond the hill in front of us, simply because of the constantly elevating terrain that blocks our vision. In many ways, this is where I feel I’m at with my life at the moment. At work, things are moving so fast, but at the same time, the ability to see past the ne

So I had the privilege of being a part of the 100 selected for the Brightest Young Minds 2010(BYM 2010) Summit held at Sydney earlier this month. Folks have asked me, so how has the week been for you? In a short answer, I simply replied: “It’s been one of the most inspiring weeks of my life”. So how has it been inspiring? Amazing Speakers With a line up of speakers including Hugh Evans(Global Poverty Project), Steven Persson(CEO – Big Issue), Prof Ian Harper(Economist), Peter Williams(Deloit

Every now and then, we enter into a season of our life where certain memories, or feelings, or thoughts cause us to almost resent the very breathe that we draw, the very life that is the gift of the creator becomes a curse. It feels like this is the current season for me. The senseless reruns. The momentary swings between happy and sad. The broken images, fading in fading out, like a slideshow gone wrong, infected by the virus of being double minded about whether to keep the memory or to forget

I was recently asked by a close friend, “What is it that you do that gives you the edge in business?”. As I paused momentarily to ponder the question, the answer jumped out at me with certainty. “I think it’s the fact that I’m teachable”. In the world that I navigate, I am always having to face up to challenges in relating to people. Whether it’s trying to get a new supplier on board and convincing them that we were interested in a long-term business relationship and not just here to make a qui

So this is the very first post of this blog. It may stay it may not. The most important question behind any endeavour is the WHY question. It is what gives meaning to the project. It is what gives purpose to life. So WHY did I start this blog? One thing I’ve learnt on this journey of entrepreneurship is that life is a journey, and it’s much much better doing it together. There has not been a single significant event on this journey that does not have relationships at its core. As such, I hope