Posted on :
Thursday, March 18, 2010
| By :
MallEzy
We met up with Mr. Wong Yu Vee at MoneyTree’s office this afternoon. It was actually our first consultation with the representative from MoneyTree. We consulted him on some of the things he highlighted in his e-mail regarding the upcoming Judging Session. He listened to all of our questions patiently and gave us really good feedbacks and suggestions. We were glad that we met up with him earlier so that we can make all the necessary changes. We met Mr. Michael Reyes and Mr. Brandon Liew at MoneyTree’s office too. It was a pleasure to see them there although we only had a short chit chat session.
After the consultation session, we had some discussions at one of the group member’s house. We drafted out some of the things we need to do for the following days. We also make some arrangement to meet up with people that can help us out with our businesses. We are actually bringing our business to another level. We want to change our dream to reality. All of us felt excited about it but at the same pressured too. This is because we need to find the right balance between our studies and the Maybank Moneytree YES 2 Challenge. Still, we will take it as a way to train ourselves and get equipped for the working world that we will be entering in a few months time. Wish us luck!!
For those who are interested to watch the top 12 teams battle it out in a brutal and extremely competitive battle, please kindly secure your seats by sending your e-mails to Akmal Amran at
akmal@moneytree.my with your full name, contact number, e-mail address and university/ college you are from. The venue and time of the Maybank MoneyTree YES 2 Judging Session is as below:
Venue: Taylor’s University College Lakeside Campus
Time: 10a.m.-2.45p.m.
Posted on :
Monday, March 15, 2010
| By :
MallEzy
Today is the day that all the teams have been anticipating. Which teams will be in the top 10 so that they will be eligible to proceed to the next judging session? The mystery has yet to be revealed. From what we observed, a lot of the Maybank Moneytree YES 2 Challenge’s contestants have been really excited and anxious about the results. It can be seen from the Facebook status that they have shared. We too felt the same way like the others. However, the only thing we can do now is to wait for Mr. Wong Yu Vee to announce the results.
We were logged on to our Facebook account and E-mail account most of the time so that we will get hold of the latest information posted. Mr. Wong Yu Vee actually sent us an e-mail with the title YES 2 Breakthrough Session Results around 8.45pm. Once we opened the e-mail, we found out that it was not an e-mail about the results but was an e-mail to motivate us. It really gave us a shock. We cannot agree more on what Mr. Wong Yu Vee stated in his e-mail. We understand that if we fail to proceed to the next round, we have no one to blame but ourselves. However, we will not give up even if we fail. We will work even harder to ensure we achieve our goals. Not all the people succeed during their first attempt in starting up their businesses. We need to fall sometimes so that we will learn from our mistakes and improve ourselves.
Finally, we received another e-mail from Mr. Wong Yu Vee about 11.35pm. This time, it was really about the results. We are in the top 12!! Some of you must be wondering, I thought you said 10? It was supposed to be, but 3 teams tied at the 10th place so Moneytree decided to allow all 3 teams in to the next round. So it means we will be competing with more teams now. A good preparation is in need!! More works need to be done. We will do our best and promise not to disappoint our friends and families.
Posted on :
Saturday, March 13, 2010
| By :
MallEzy
It was finally the day we have to pitch our business ideas. Some of our group members were so excited that they could not sleep well the night before. All of us have been putting a lot of effort in this so that we can stand a better chance to enter the top 10 teams. Upon arrival at The STAR Cybertorium, we saw quite a few of our friends which are already there. We got to know these friends from the YES Red Carpet Party and also the 1-Day Entrepreneurship training held by MoneyTree. Once again, MoneyTree has given us the opportunity to widen our network. We had a little chit chat and photo taking session before the Breakthrough Session officially starts.
When it was time, all of us were asked to remain in a hall until it was our turn to pitch. As we are the 7th team, we still had time to go through our elevator pitch for another few more rounds. However, all of us felt that we should actually relax ourselves before going up to the stage. Therefore, we only rehearsed once. The rest of the time we were practically joking around. It was clear to us that the environment inside the hall was really tense because we could see other teams sitting in the form of a circle practicing their elevator pitch over and over again.
Finally, it was our turn to pitch our business ideas. The team before us was still answering the questions that the judges asked when we enter the cybertorium. One of our group members actually looked pretty nervous once she stepped into the cybertorium. Ms. Evelyn Reyes was kind enough to give the particular group member some moral support. She told her to take it easy because after all, the audiences are just human like all of us and they are not going to bite us. We really appreciate Ms. Evelyn Reyes’s help because we felt motivated at the same time.
Our team managed to deliver the information that what we wanted to the audiences. The bell went off just when we were saying thank you. It was quite a shocking moment for us because initially we thought that we will not be able to finish what we wanted to say. Despite all these, we cannot deny the fact that our presentation has some flaws where some of us talked too fast and some of us paused for awhile to think how we should continue from our last sentence. Our respond to the judges’ questions was fast. We were actually quite happy and proud of ourselves.
Some of the teams left after they have done their presentation. However, our team decided to stay back to listen to what the afternoon session teams could offer. We were glad that we stayed because we found some of the team’s business ideas fascinating. One thing that we observed was that the judges for the afternoon session were asking more questions compared to the morning session’s judges. We can say that we are lucky because we can actually tackle some of the questions that we might be asked in the future.
After all the teams have pitched their business ideas, we went to talk to some of the judges to get some feedbacks from them. We were glad we met new people during the Breakthrough Session. We have added some of the judges such as Mr. Neil, Dr. Siva, Mr. Gerald and Mr. Roslan on Facebook so we could keep in touch with them. Who knows we might actually need their help someday. After all, they have the knowledge and experience that we do not have. It is good to be able to learn from them.
Lastly, our team would like to thank our friends that came to support us during the Breakthrough Session. It was pleasurable to have you guys there. Do continue supporting MallEzy =)
Posted on :
Thursday, March 11, 2010
| By :
MallEzy
The key to a perfect presentation is to practice until you get it right. Another thing is to familiarize yourself with the information that you will be addressing to your audiences. We have been practicing very hard since the day Mr. Wong Yu Vee announced that all the teams will be pitching their ideas in the Breakthrough Session.
When we first joined Maybank Moneytree YES Challenge 2, we were asked to send in our elevator pitch. As we continued expanding our ideas, we found out that the initial elevator pitch can no longer be used. Therefore, we spent some time constructing a brand new elevator pitch. It was hard for us as we need to put in a lot of details within the 2 minutes elevator pitch. Apart from that, it was a challenge for us to find the right words to use in order to be able to deliver the information we want to the audiences.
We have decided to split the elevator pitch into four sections. Each of us will be talking on one section. When we first started rehearsing, we did not manage to speak fluently. As we go along, we managed to figure out how to pitch our business ideas. We tried using different voice tones and different body postures.
Constant eye contact with your audiences is one of the things that we have learnt from making presentations in university. Therefore, we took turns to sit down and listen to each other’s presentation. We pointed out the weaknesses and errors that are made and suggested ways to help each other perform better. We were quite satisfied at the end of the day because we think we have improved if we compare the way we presented at the beginning of the rehearsal.
Posted on :
Saturday, March 06, 2010
| By :
MallEzy
We in MallEzy believe that most people have gone through internship when they are still pursuing their studies. People gained knowledge and experience through internship. Another thing that we cannot deny is that we might meet nice people out there which will eventually help us out one day when you need them. Mr. Eric is one of the examples. He is currently working as a Public Relationship Manager in an advertising firm. We thought that he will be a good choice to review our elevator pitch. This is because he has written quite a number of speeches for events organized by the clients of the advertising firm. He must have acquired a certain amount of skills in writing speeches.
We first started off by pitching our business idea to him. After that, we gave him to have a look at our executive summary. The purpose of us doing this is to see if the idea that he have in mind when he is listening to our pitch is the same as the idea written in the executive summary. We were quite happy when we got his feedback as he said our elevator pitch consists most of the ideas that we have presented in our executive summary.
Mr. Eric gave us his opinion regarding MallEzy’s targeted segment. He questioned us why we are narrowing our market to only shops in shopping malls. We further explain the reasons behind this to him and he agrees at it to a certain extent. He suggested that we could actually widen our targeted segments in the future. He also provided us with a few suggestions regarding the delivery service that MallEzy offers, MallEzy taglines and ways to approach the management of the shopping malls / shops.
Besides that, we also consulted another lecturer of ours, Mr. Mahathir which previously worked as a bank manager. He suggested that we should put more focus on advertising the shops in the shopping malls rather than the products sold by the shops. This is because the details of the product can be easily found through the use of search engines. Therefore, it is pointless for us to do extra work and compete with the search engines. Apart from that, he advised us to set up the online transaction service provided to users step by step. Last but not least, he reminded us that MallEzy’s website should be kept simple and effective.
Posted on :
Monday, March 01, 2010
| By :
MallEzy
Breakthrough Session. In this session, all teams are required to present their elevator pitch. We felt a sudden pressure when we know about this because it means extra work load will be coming in. Another thing is that two of the MallEzy founders will be rushing their last assignment for the year. Therefore we think that time is really not enough and we got to manage our time smartly.
The details of the Breakthrough Session are as below:
Date: 13th March 2010
Time: 10.00am - 4.30pm
Venue: The STAR Cybertorium, Level 2, Menara The Star, 15, Jalan 16/11, PJ
Attire: Business Wear
There will be 31 teams presenting their elevator pitch and only 10 teams will be selected to proceed to the next level of the competition. All teams will be given 120 seconds and 2 questions will be asked by the judges. It will be an interesting and eye opening session because audiences can listen to different ideas. If you are interested to witness the teams battle it out against each other, kindly write to Mr. Wong Yu Vee at uvwong@moneytree.com. Only 15 seats will be allocated to each Uni / College. So if you do not want to miss the opportunity, write in now to reserve your seats! For those who have already reserve their seats, remember to support us, MallEzy!
Posted on :
Monday, February 22, 2010
| By :
MallEzy
We will not succeed if we merely rely on our own team members and stick to our initial ideas. Therefore, we seek advices from experienced parties or individual. Our elevator pitch was sent to Mr. Wong Yu Vee from MoneyTree and feedbacks were given which we thought was really beneficial. Mr. Wong Yu Vee is a very knowledgeable and experienced person in the business area. The advices given were valuable as it kept us thinking on ways to expand our initial ideas. He commented that our business has too little revenue streams which will be very risky because we rely heavily on collecting advertising fees. The first thing that goes on our mind was that we need to diversify our business. Another problem he pointed out to us was the issue regarding the barriers to entry of our business. It was clear that we do not have one, but with his advice we got inspiration on how to structure the barriers for our business plan.
Besides that, we thought that having a mentor which will provide beneficial advice to us will be good for our business plan. So, we approached one of our finance lecturer, Mr. Kenneth that is currently lecturing in Taylor’s University College. We believe that he has the competences to provide us valuable advices. As a lecturer, he does not limit himself solely on teaching but also involved himself in the banking sector. This is where he gained a lot of experience and thus excels in the sector of finance, marketing and investing. Along these years, he found passion in educating younger generation in tertiary institution. He is currently teaching a few degree programs across several institutions.
He was rather impressed when we told him that we were participating in the Maybank MoneyTree YES Challenge 2. Plus, it was our own will to join this competition. He saw how determined we were towards this competition thus agreed to be our mentor and provide some advices to us. However, he told us that all he can do is to guide us through and we will need to figure the rest of the things out on ourselves. We agreed to this because if we were to rely on him, it defeats the purpose of joining the competition in the first place.
Since our business does not have a clear targeted market segment, he advised us to identify a ‘niche market’ if we want our business to succeed. A niche market is formed because individual from this market is usually ignored as their needs are not served by other businesses. If we are able to target them, the chances of our business being successful will be higher.
Judging from the point that our business is easy to be imitated, Mr. Kenneth asked us to search for more competitive advantages. Our business should create some sort of ‘branding’ to block competitors from copying. Since our business offers convenience to users, he advised us is to think of more ideas that will offer ‘convenience’ to the users. As a result, it will drive more traffic to our website.
Based on the advices given, we reevaluated our business plan. We found out that our website only brings convenience to people who like shopping. This market however has already existed due to the fact that many businesses have been targeting it from the beginning. In order to tackle this, we came out with an idea to target the people who shops irregularly as well. Our business will also offer online delivery services where we will charge customers delivery fees. This will then increase the income stream of our business. We were inspired by what was told by Mr. Wong Yu Vee and Mr. Kenneth. We believed that by providing more conveniences, it adds value to the whole idea and also to the revenue income stream.
After all the discussion, we moved on to write our executive summary. We showed it to our mentor once we have completed it. His comment on our executive summary was lack of structure. He also gave us some ideas to drive more traffic to our website. Lastly, he encouraged us and told us to put in more effort because he thinks that Maybank MoneyTree YES Challenge 2 is a very good opportunity to learn practical business experience.
Besides consulting Mr. Kenneth, we also seek advices from an IT expert. Apparently, he has his own business in the IT field. He showed us a few ways to improve the navigation of the website so that it will be more user-friendly. Since the core objective of our business is to offer convenience to users, he said that it will be better for us to offer after sales services such as online warranty records. From there, we learnt to see in a long run perspective rather than thinking how to earn instant profit.
After the confirmation and encouragement from these people, we now feel more confident in our plan. We cherish deeply for the advices given by Mr. Wong Yu Vee, Mr. Kenneth and Mr. Boon Siong. We will continue developing our business plan and will also conduct market surveys in shopping malls. The results from surveys are crucial to us as it will more information on how we can change our business plan. We take this as a challenge and also to test how far can we push ourselves.
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