Peter Cauton: Inspiring Techpreneurs to Take One Great Leap

It’s rare to see people who are willing to offer inspiration and help, especially as we know sometimes the Internet is full of haters. But let’s not get into that. Let’s just talk about people who love to help genuinely.

Peter Cauton is the guy behind Juan Great Leap, aptly refered to as the Filipino Startup Movement. It is a Philippines-based innovation forum. He aims to inspire others to take that one great leap into the world of entrepreneurship.

Ever curious, I asked Peter some questions, basically to find out more where his passion for inspiring startups and hopeful entrepreneurs comes from:

What was that defining moment when you made a conscious decision that helping others is what you want to do?

Peter: In 2008, I made the biggest career decision of my life – I took the leap, kissed my corporate career goodbye and went full-time to help my struggling startup. Considering it was in the middle of the recession and I had a newborn son, it was an idiotic decision.

By God’s grace, it worked out. In 2011, not only was I making a good living running my own firm, I also founded more startups.

I just felt incredibly blessed. There was a great need in me to pay it forward. At first I thought, perhaps I could write a book! It would consist of some of the lessons I learned in leaving corporate and developing my startup. But after some months, I found that it was just a huge step to develop material from scratch into a book. So I thought of something I had never thought I do – write a blog.

I remember writing my first post. I dilly-dallied a lot, postponing pushing the ‘publish’ button for as long as I can. In many ways, starting a blog was scarier than writing a book. The exposure was instant. What if people hated what I wrote? Or thought “this guy is a hack”?

But I thought, like my startup leap, nothing worthwhile is ever accomplished without some risk. And so I clicked publish.

The blog has almost taken a life of its own now. I totally did not forecast how much it would resonate with people. Its been an amazing blessing for me.

What are your current projects? Follow up to Juan Great Leap event?

Peter: I am very busy helping out the startups I have helped found: STORM, Searchlight, Mobile Academy, Stream Engine, as well as a couple more in incubation.

For Juan Great Leap, I do a lot of advocacy work to promote startups.