Friday, October 12, 2007

The Story Behind One Of My Clients

About 2 months ago I received a text from my brother.

“K is looking for you… call him”.

Now K is a nickname that my brother gave one of his uni friends when they all used to hang out in Sydney.

K’s real name is Swee Yeong which may be familiar to some as one the Malaysian success stories of our time.
Just a brief introduction in case many of you may have missed out on it.

Just a few years after graduating from Sydney, Swee Yeong came back to Malaysia and started a mobile content company called UnrealMind which he expanded from Malaysia to all around the region and subsequently listed on the Mesdaq.

He then moved on to sell his company for millions years later and left the company around the end of 2005. At 32 now, he tells me he spent much of 2006 taking a break and playing DOTA.
Yes, so the next time you see someone sitting next to you in a cybercafe playing Dota from morning till night.

You might think he’s a BUM with no damn life.

But for all you know he could be an entrepreneur who has already made his millions so HAH!!!

I’ve met Swee Yeong briefly before just before UnrealMind’s IPO but we never really sat down to chat until we met for coffee a few months ago.

Over the cup of coffee, Swee Yeong gave me the little history lesson about himself but quickly moved on to talk about his new project and why he was meeting with me.

His new project was Pacmee.com, a Malaysian-like Twitter though I won’t call it a Twitter per say since there are some innovations to it that Twitter doesn’t have.
For example, if I get an SMS from Twitter telling me what my friend is doing, I would have to create a new SMS to respond to him if I wanted to.

But for Pacmee, all I had to do was to simply reply to that very same SMS I got from Pacmee telling me what my friend was doing.

From Left; Me, Swee Yeong and ChoonYew (Swee Yeong’s partner) at Hannah Tan’s recent album launch part at Mardigras 1-Utama.

Since that cup of coffee, we planned out a campaign on the Nuffnang Blog Community together and timed the campaign for just after its beta launch.

Today, Pacmee is used by bloggers all over Malaysia including bloggers like myself, Kenny Sia, Nicole, Xes and their subscriber base is growing strong. Looks like another successful dotcom startup is in the making.

Oh and I am NOT being paid by Swee Yeong to write this.

I enjoy writing about my business associates turned friends sometimes.

8 comments:

Dan said...

DOTA players r not no-lifers ok! Don't make me stun you then cast my lvl 6 ultimate on you!

feeder Tim! :-)

-gg-

Unknown said...

Take care & hang in there.

Boss Stewie said...

dan: hahah!!!! dota fan eh!! i dunno how to play dota unless i haf a friend next to me who tells me what to buy

giovoni: :P

Raven said...

err... Swee Yeong’s partner?

By partner, do you mean business partner or is the millionaire dota player gay?

Lyle Gogh said...

would love to see when pacmee will have integrated IM / email usage.

For the time being will be using pacmee and jaiku system.

Boss Stewie said...

jonathan: uhmm.. no.. business partner! he's straight!

serge: ahh will suggest it

Gwendolynne said...

Hmm ... about as no life as WoW players. However, the skills I listed as being an officer of a very prominent raiding guild scored me my job. So nyah! Don't say playing games doesn't get you anywhere. Unless of course you're playing those lame console single player games ... which offers little to no social interactivity at all. Boo! *hides in her bunker*

AdGoggle said...

Check out www.twitter.com