After 12 years, Morris Sim (co-founder of Circos Brand Karma) closed the show at this year’s WIT Conference 2016 by asking the powerful lady behind it all, Yeoh Siew Hoon, to reflect back on her experiences in building one of Asia’s largest travel and tech startup communities.
What was your most memorable experience?
There are just too many. It’s gone so fast, I can’t believe it’s been 12 years. I remember the first one we held in a very small hotel room… and Martin Symes saying after the event, “you’re a bunch of passionate amateurs.” I feel like we’re still, in a way, passionate amateurs. I’m not a conference organiser; I’m a journalist. Every event, I learn. We make mistakes, we fail fast, we test and learn…
The first event, we actually had the hotel owner – he was the business tycoon in Singapore – he was our keynote speaker… in his own hotel. Guess what happened when he spoke? We had a blackout. Those are the experiences I remember, the defining moments… Anything can go wrong in an event but it’s how you recover that’s important.
When you started the conference, you wanted to bring about this community to share, learn and really push this industry along. What do you see for yourself in terms of how the industry should be moving? Has this conference made an impact in helping the industry achieve that vision you had?
I don’t think the answer should come from me. I started WIT completely by accident. I’m a journalist and I love content… I frankly did it because I wanted to work for myself. I saw this technology wave coming and I wanted to learn about it. That’s how I do things. If I want to learn about something, I go out and do it.
WIT is the sum of its community. It’s not about me. I’m just the thing that pulls people together. So the answer should come from the community.
What would you say was the biggest lesson you had over the years of that you have had from doing this as an entrepreneur?
Well, I decided to firstly do things for myself. I never wanted to raise funds because I wanted to control what I wanted to do. I didn’t care too much about money, I wanted to put great content out there and build a community around that content, and felt the commerce part would then happen.
I think if you believe in something strongly enough and just do it, that’s when people can experience it, and then they get it. If you try explain it, they won’t get it. They have to come to WIT to experience what WIT is about.
The people who started with us have come with us and grown with us, and together, we can help grow our own community.
A lot of companies come on this stage and they’re trying to expand beyond their home region. You did that, starting in Singapore then you started going to other regions like Japan, Thailand, London etc. Can you walk us through what you were thinking about? How scary was it for you? How did you overcome the challenges?
I kind of pick places that I want to visit.
I love Japan and I was determined. I had to make it in Tokyo because everyone was saying “you can’t run an English language travel event in Tokyo”. So I started building the bridge 4 years before the first event… it takes patience and it takes determination and thirdly, it takes local partners. We could not do WIT Japan without Kei [Shibata] and Aya [Aso]. Indonesia is the same, we have local partners and we could not do it without [them].
And, I just think it’s fun to take your brand places because we’re all about travel so why should we stay put?
Over the last 12 years, have there been any trends that have surprised you because they came in or even faded out?
I think the most rewarding thing is seeing all the startups. When we first started, we had to beg for pitches. The Asian mentality unfortunately is that we don’t put ourselves out there… so for me, it was breaking that and getting young people in Asia to have the confidence to stand up and pitch their ideas.
Now we’re seeing submissions from Asia, Poland, the UK. I think Asia has more than arrived, and has found its own way. After 12 years, I think it’s more than clear. The last 12 years has been all about getting Asia there so the next 12 years is going to be very exciting.
To me, it’s a really important milestone in travel because I can tell you things are going to change so much from hereon.
In 2016, what advice would you give entrepreneurs who are going to start up a business in travel now?
Go for it. When we started, we didn’t have this community…
I think one thing we need to address is getting new talent in our industry. It’s telling young people that travel is more than jobs in hospitality and jobs in airlines. Travel is a whole universe of jobs and technology has opened that path and that’s why I launched a travel careers event called Tern. We need to get kids excited about the travel universe. That’s one thing we need to do.
For the rest of us who are no longer in startup land, what advice would you give us?
Get out! Get out and let the kids in. I have a really fantastic team, the team that supports me is just incredible. The reason I started Tern was to give me an excuse to work with young people. I think it’s time to get our egos out the way and let young people come in and reimagine travel.
