A Dialogue with Jesse Ting, Founder of IConnectE

Lately, online social networks and web 2.0 are moving in high gears around Singapore. Last Wednesday, through a post from E27, I attended a successful party launch of a new social network, IConnectE in the Ministry of Sound. During the party, I met the founder of IconnectE, Mr Jesse Ting. In the process, he is kind to accept our interview and speak to us about his thoughts as an entrepreneur and how he ended up starting this new enterprise.

BL: Hi, Jesse, we appreciate that you are joining us for this interview. Tell us about your background and what motivated you in setting up IConnectE?
Jesse Ting: Thank you for inviting me to this interview. I graduated from Simon Fraser University in Canada with a bachelor degree in Marketing. I started my career in Vancouver as a Marketing Manager for a boutique design agency and returned to Singapore where I was trained to be a Franchise & Business Consultant for small local enterprises. I moved on to join a global Brand Consultancy firm – Enterprise IG in London and was sent to Hong Kong to pioneer their market entry into Asia. I have since worked in other global agencies like Ogilvy in Germany and George P Johnson in Australia. I also started my own Marketing and Business Development firm in Berlin, and a boutique Brand Consulting firm when I returned to Singapore, right before launching lconnectE.com

As a small enterprise owner, I was very unhappy with how my business website was working for me as an online marketing tool. After having spoken to other business owners like me, I soon discovered that most, if not all, share the same frustration and doubts about the effectiveness of a business website. Firstly, it is not easy to update or upload new information onto my site without having to pay more money to a designer or a techie to do it for me. Secondly, we are not able to track who our visitors were. I also find myself losing patience when visiting other’s websites because most are outdated or do not have the information that I need to make a meaningful connection with them.

That’s when I decided to take on the mission to help small business owners and independent service providers find a better solution to leverage the Internet more effectively. After consulted a few trusted friends who are also small business owners with my ideas, I was encouraged to develop and realize the IconnectE concept.

BL: Are there any initial difficulties in getting your portal setup? How did you manage to overcome them to reach your product launch?
Jesse Ting: I am quite particular with the people I choose to work with, and took a bit of time to finding and building my existing team. The most challenging part in the development was to get the programmers to fully envision the concept as I didn’t have any example for benchmarking. Another challenge was managing the design of our identity and the overall look and feel of the portal at the same time. I wanted elements of the logo to be carried out throughout the portal to give it a stronger identity. I also had many debates with my IT consultants over the development platform options. After considering all pros and cons, we finally decided on .Net but underestimated the public’s passion for Firefox browsers in Singapore. We are now working tirelessly to make our system compatible to browsers like Firefox, Mozilla and Safari.

Like any start-up, one of our biggest difficulties is our limited resources. Right now, it’s just me and Ethan managing the marketing, plus an external consultant retained to assist in the product development and management. We are in the constant look-out for excellent people to join our marketing team.

BL: During the launch (where I was there), you mentioned that one of the purposes of IConnectE is to help entrepreneurs in the small-medium enterprises or working professionals to connect with each other. Why have you decided that this is the market that you want to reach?
Jesse Ting: My business career in the international arena has made me realized the one common thread that binds all businesses is their need to market themselves and develop new business effectively. I read somewhere that only 10% of new start-ups will survive in the long run, the rest will fail. I remember being saddened by that, and since then have developed a respect for entrepreneurs and inner wish for them to succeed.

I believe that the Internet has opened a world of possibilities and most are missing out, or not making the most out of it. I want to help SME’s to leverage the Internet to effectively reach their business objectives. My idea was to design a more effective online marketing tool other than the business website, which results in the E-Profile. The E-Profile helps to communicate succinctly one’s business and objectives. It comes with interactive features and useful Internet tools such as web banners, made easy for them to use. In addition, it also has a customizable Homepage with its unique URL based on their Username to showcase the E-Profile. They can also submit their meta-tags to ensure Search Engine Optimization.

The E-Profile is simple and can also be used by individual professionals to build their professional or personal reputation – which I believe is the cornerstone to building a successful career. It doesn’t matter whether an individual is self-employed or an employee, the E-Profile succinctly communicates its business objectives and what they have to offer as a professional.

BL: How do you see your product for being different with known professional online social networks such as LinkedIn (US) or E-Academy (UK)?
Jesse Ting: First of all, we don’t see us a mere networking portal, we aim to help our members to be able to generate more business opportunities.