Main strengths:
Hard working
When I was in primary school, I like taking part in arts contests and have won substantial prizes. Taking part in contests taught me to work hard and to be courageous when facing challenges. In secondary and University, I continue to take part in contests and won too.
When it comes to life after graduation, I attended startup events and learned about entrepreneurship. I attempted to set up my own company in dealing with IT services once. However, the venture failed and I lost money. Despite failure, I learned that such venture is same like in taking part in arts contest. You need to fail a few times first before you can win top prizes. Hence I may attempt again in future to set up my company if conditions are feasible.
PS Did you know that I met with Anthony, the founder of Grab when I attended a cell group (Christian Friday study) once? I asked him, “What do you plan to do with your company?” and he answered he wished to IPO it.
Broad in knowledge
I enjoy reading fields which are different from my core competency (in IT). Topics I read include finance, startups, cosmology, philosophy and religion. My iphone contains many ebooks and audiobooks which can be accessed when I drive or when I am idle.
My role model are people like Da Vinci and Shen Kuo (the guy who invented compass). They know so many different fields of knowledge (check their wiki).
I personally feel that being a Generalist has many advantages. In career for example, as a developer I can liaise with people of different background and understand their conversations – example talking to business managers, analysts, IT architects etc.
Being broad in knowledge allows me to become a “Swiss army knife” when it comes to dealing with difficulties in life. Because I have dream of having my own company in future, this also acts as a early preparation for me in the future.
Clear goals
I took some years off during my early 30s and seek answers to life’s biggest questions like, what’s the purpose of life, why am I here, is there God, my future plans and other miscellaneous questions. In case you are curious, here’s my answers:
Plans for achieving financial success
1. Short term
I am busy developing an app, which can help me with investment decisions. The app is able to analyse global stocks in terms of fundamental, technical and statistical ways. It can tell me whether a particular stock is under, over or fairly valued.
Caveat is that it is very difficult to develop such app. It needs cross disciplinary knowledge from fields of computing, math, statistics, finance and investing. Hence I am spending majority of my time reading up books on these field.
2. Long term
I often go to Magic Cyberjaya (Malaysian Global Innovation & Creativity Centre) and attend their entrepreneurial activities. I am inspired by startup founders who work hard to start new companies and business from scratch. I have a friend who founded a hotel reservation company at Melaka and I deeply admire his hardwork and dedication. Now manages his company and occasionally shares his stories in talks. I hope become like him in future.
If possible, I would like to attempt to start my own hedge fund company. The company would utilize computational methods to generate excess returns (alpha). A great inspirational person for me on this would be Dr Jim Simons who manages his quantitative hedge fund company named Renaissance Technologies. Lookup on it from sites like Bloomberg to understand more.
Futher even down the road, my ambition would be to have a own AI (artificial intelligence) company. I have given careful consideration on the technology I wish to develop - it's basically a knowledge base engine that can answer questions. Yes, it's like Siri, but the difference is that the engine itself has "deep" understanding on the meaning of the sentences a user types in.
For example, upon typing in natural language query like "Where can I find the best roti canai at Cyberjaya?", this software, Ramlee, can directly output say, "You can find the best roti canai at Pelita @ Jalan Lingkaran Technokrat". You get it.
Why I want to do this? I have an ultimate goal - to have my own foundation in future that specializes in helping poor children that have difficulty financing their studies.
I have pondered upon the question of how to help reduce poverty (in Malaysia) especially for children, and my answer is - education.
While education may not guarantee someone to become rich, at least it can give a child freedom in choosing his/her future path.