Singaporean Entrepreneurs

Even as home sales in the US plunge by 27%, the lowest its been in 15 years and China’s hot properties has practically no second hand market, Singapore property prices continue to rise although signs of transactions easing up are evident.

“Imagine, I have to fork out 50,000 COV (cash over valuation), I can’t afford it,” lamented a friend who is trying to purchase a second hand HDB unit.

DTZ reported that the percentage of buyers with public housing addresses who purchased units worth more than $1 million reached 43 percent in Q2 of 2010, up from 36 percent in Q1, while buyers with private addresses who acquired units above S$1 million hit 73 percent from 69 percent in the earlier quarter.

WHO’S BUYING?
Apparently, Singaporeans are the ones buying (as opposed to previous years where the rise in prices have largely been a result of foreign buying). Singaporeans’ share of private home purchases rose from 71 percent in Q1 to 74 percent in Q2.

Permanent Resident (PR) buyers’ and foreigners’ share of total purchases in Q2 declined, most likely due to the sluggish economic growth in Europe and in the US where many are worried about a possible double-dip recession. In other words, a fear that the economy will move back into a deeper and longer recession because the initial recovery was not substantial enough.

It’s strange to hear young people talk about passive income when they are working 24/7 on their websites.

“Yeah, I don’t want to work for someone. I just want to set up this website so I can have passive income,” young stalwart declares as he types away furiously on his tiny phone.

“Ehrm … you do realise you are spending 10-15 hours in front of your computer everyday including weekends and when you’re not doing that, checking on your 3G phone if there are any queries made by people using your website?”

“Yeah? Uhm, what do you mean?”

“That’s far from passive, isn’t it? That’s a lot of hours of work.”

“No, I’m not working.”

“You mean you’re not being paid. You are working.”

“It’s just my hobby, after I finish all the tweaking, I can do whatever else I want. The website becomes passive income. It will be on 24/7 and I don’t have to do anything and it will make money for me.”

“You mean you won’t need to upgrade, tend to requests by customers, resolve disputes, change to meet new technologies being developed even as we speak?”

“Yeah, but that doesn’t take much time,” he says completely oblivious to the fact that he is constantly checking on the site, fixing bugs, upgrading, and the most time consuming, answering or talking to potential customers. If the tallied his hours, I am sure it would be more than 15 hours a day.

“How long have you been doing this?”

“Not long, 3-4 years, but that includes when I was still in uni studying,” receives another sms he needs to reply to as I take my coffee wondering why the time in uni doesn’t count. In addition, given his skills, he could have made much more than his so called passive income in the 3 years he has been out of school and working on this passive income project of his, something inspired by Kiyosaki and Ferris who believe that we should make money off of other people’s sweat.

“So how come after 4 years you’re still not done?”

“No lah, dun say like that lah, there’s just new stuff that has come out, that’s all. And my customers have lots of good ideas you know, so I think it would be good to implement them.”

“Are you sure this is passive income?”

“Yeah, because I can be sleeping and the site will still be making money for me,” now showing infuriation that I don’t get it.

“Enough?”

“Yah, lah, soon, now it’s still a hobby,” and thus ended our passive income conversation.

Many business consultants will make a correlation between mountain climbing and running an enterprise, from the mix of confidence, optimism, determination to the rigour, skills, and help needed to make it to the summit. There is a very great difference though between mountain climbing and business that makes one deadlier than the other- in climbing full concentration is on the work at hand, in business it is muddled with politics, egos, and sometimes even lack of purpose.

And perhaps it is this very simplicity in purpose of a mountain ascent that beckons many in the business world to try to summit the most challenging mountains in the world. A mix of adventure that can go wrong and an incredible sense of accomplishment, complete with bragging rights that only a few have ever achieved the same, makes most entrepreneurs appreciate the climb. The daring and unknown end of a difficult mountain ascent is a microcosmic version of entrepreneurship sans that stuff that make it dreary.

Interestingly, while reading about this subject matter, it was brought to my attention that author Jon Krakauer who wrote Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mt. Everest Disaster has pointed out that that it is actually harder to climb the second-highest peak of each continent instead of the highest. Collectively, they are known as “the Seven Second Summits”, each of the seven being the highest peak of their continent.

SYNOPSIS FROM WIKIPEDIA
In Asia K2 (8,611 m) demands greater technical climbing skills than Everest (8,848 m), while altitude-related factors such as the thinness of the atmosphere, high winds and low temperatures remain much the same. The summit of Mount Kenya (5,199 m) is a rock climb, while Mount Kilimanjaro (5,895 m) can be ascended without any technical difficulty.

In North America, some sources consider Mount Logan a more difficult climb than Mount McKinley (generally known as Denali in the climbing community), although the climbing and outdoor recreation website Summitpost considers Logan no more difficult than Denali, because it is neither technical nor steep.

In South America Ojos del Salado involves a short scramble while Aconcagua is just a walk. In Europe Dykh-Tau is a considerably harder climb than Mount Elbrus. In Australia Mount Townsend is a considerably more challenging climb than Mount Kosciuszko, even though both are relatively easy.

I find this fact fascinating … does the same case play out in the businessworld? Is it easier to be / stay first or second?