Member Article

Running a marathon is like running a business

It’s entrepreneurship focus week on Bdaily. BuzzCity has grown into one of the largest global mobile advertising networks by focusing on the vast Asian mobile market, before tackling the South African and European market, to name a few. Dr KF Lai, co-founder and CEO, shares his tips and insights.

In 1999 I co-founded BuzzCity in Singapore. Having worked as an applied researcher in laboratories funded by the Singapore government, specialising in pattern recognition and text retrieval, we ventured into several related areas before focussing on mobile advertising in 2007. This was at a time when consumers were still using feature phones and the first mobile payment was just being trialled, well before the 3G networks that many of us rely on today.

As BuzzCity took off, it was not long before we began to spearhead our global strategy, opening offices in Mumbai, Cape Town, Jakarta and Bangkok. One of the interesting challenges has been how fast the mobile advertising industry has developed, reflecting the developments in technology, QR codes, mobile coupons and mobile banking to name a few! These changes have led to a much more engaged consumer, with recent research finding that 69% of UK consumers expect their mobile usage to increase dramatically by 2015. As a result of this ever-changing landscape, we have focused our strategy on understanding the challenges and diversity of the global and local markets, and we regularly survey users to provide insight into mobile usage and consumer behaviour patterns.

Earlier this year we opened our first office in the UK. This was an important milestone for us regarding our global strategy. Our European hub had been Paris for a number of years and we had been watching carefully the development in the UK – this is because we know that it is a centre of advertising excellence and is viewed by many brands as the hub from which to launch international campaigns from – so visibility on the ground in London was a must-have. This looks to be paying off so far and supports our strategy to support the growth of the network on with local teams. Globally BuzzCity is now a successful business of over 75 people, owning more than 30% of the market and serving more than 20 billion adverts per month.

With this in mind, for all those budding entrepreneurs that have started a business and want to go global my standard advice would be: focus on the basics and the assets you have to hand, the knowledge of your staff, customers and investors. By understanding your customer and their habits in each market you will be able to react swiftly to changes in the industry.

However, I would rather speak to you from my heart.

Earlier this year I picked up running more seriously and will attempt to complete my first half marathon in June. I usually run along a popular track towards a beach where I meet many other joggers and bikers. It rains a lot in tropical Singapore. I notice something interesting: when it rains, very few will be staying on track, but those who remain become more friendly and jovial towards each other. I will run past many rain-soaked people wearing a big smile. It is as if we are saying to each other, ha! Look at these crazy people. They are all like me!

Running a company is not unlike running for marathon. When the going gets tough, some will keep going and urge each other on. We belong to a special fellowship that only admits a few.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by BuzzCity .