Showing posts with label Fable. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Fable. Show all posts

Thursday, December 17, 2015

As we've stated before, you've got to sometimes take a breath and smell the roses (see previous post on Acknowledgements).


Leading outsource engineering team, Fable, who supports over a dozen projects both in Taiwan as well as in the U.S., knows the true meaning of teamwork and sharing. It all stems from Fable's CEO, Paul Shih (see his Fable Startup story profiled here), and his leadership of the team. Though they work hard servicing their clients and bringing new on-line services and products to market, the team takes the time to celebrate each team member's individual milestones. It's a good way to take the moment and celebrate what's truly important: family, team, friends and relationships.

 In this world of tangible and unrelenting success metrics for startups, sometimes it's about celebrating the journey and your travel companions. Here's to a kindlier and gentler startup environment! Add Oil Fable team!


Acknowledgements: Fable Celebrates Personal Milestones
Thursday, December 17, 2015

Acknowledgements: Fable Celebrates Personal Milestones

Tuesday, July 21, 2015

Paul Shih of Fable providing instruction and support to Jibao Team.
Once upon a time, CEO Paul Shih of Fable visited Xceleration Labs and wanted to know how to market a CRM system that he had created for Sales Executives called SmartBoss. Together with his CTO and CFO, we explored various pivots to try to figure out how to market this CRM system to Taiwan and beyond (Hong Kong, Southeast Asia, etc). Areas of exploration included construction management, service personnel deployment or even management of Vietnam salespeople from Taiwan. All would have been excellent applications of Smartboss. Fable even partnered with one of Taiwan's top 3 job banks 1111.com.tw.

In the end, we finally found Fable's North Star. At their core, they were really engineers interested in building great products and services. Although Paul believed in the importance of sales and sales people, at his core, Paul believed he was and team were more suited to project management and technical sales.

Therefore, they evolved from product company to technical consultancy to their current incarnation of project managers and engineers at the ready to help others realize their dream of an on-line service or mobile app. Indeed, a most excellent outsourced technical and engineering solution for others. They're taking on many up and coming mobile app and on-line service implementations. (Stay tuned for their marketing website renewal, but for the moment you can visit their current site at www.fable.com.tw)

And in doing so, they're partnered with many of the top outsourced teams in Taiwan as well as beginning the work of training the next generation of Taiwan software engineers. This means that they can scale up and down rather quickly depending on client needs.

Paul Shih giving a lecture at recent Alpha Camp class.
And of course, besides providing insight and talking about real world startup experiences, Paul is also authoring a series of blogs on ALPHA Camps' blog site. For more see Paul Shih blog.

So if you have an most excellent idea or have started implementing an idea, but need more help. Why not give Fable a try? We would be glad to make an introduction on your behalf.


What to Startup? The Fable Story
Tuesday, July 21, 2015

What to Startup? The Fable Story

Wednesday, February 25, 2015

Employee Weiya performance at leading hotel chain in Taiwan
Professionals entertaining the hard working employees at one of the leading bakery cafe chains in Taiwan.
With the Weiya season at a close (Weiya - a tradition especially in Taiwan of celebrating Tu Di Gong, the god of wealth and merit, and marking the end of the Lunar Year. It's an opportunity for employers to thank their employees for all the hard work of the past year), it's time to dust off those business plans and focus, re-focus, and/or pivot.

PROS/CONS of BUSINESS PLANS
Lots of debate surrounding business plans, whether to do them or not is the question. The Cons are a startup team hiding out in their business plan process, determined to get their plan exactly "right" before moving forward. Or the concern that putting down every thought in 88 pages of documentation, only to abandon it with the next monthly pivot. Time better spent doing something else? 

Jibao Team celebrating at their Weiya. Left to right: Augus, Chloe, Diane, Hai Chen and Paul.

In sales, we're often taught to "Plan Your Work, Work Your Plan." The Pro of doing a business plan is that it forces you to think through your ideas and the mere act of committing them on paper helps to clarify your messaging. 

Do you need a completely polished and typo free business plan? Its depends. Are you creating it for an investor? Or do you need some guiding principles to clarify your thoughts and share with your teammates and partners? I'm more for the later. Some of the teams under Xceleration Labs guidance have recently committed to paper their business plans (even after months and years of operations). 

BUSINESS MODEL CANVAS
If a business plan sounds daunting, try out the Business Model Canvas, an excellent Lean Startup tool, to help clarify your thinking. There are plenty of excellent guides out there to help you clarify your thoughts. Ash Maurya does an excellent tutorial that you can find on youtube. 

PATISCO
CEO Even Chung of Patisco hard at work on his Business Plan
After you've used the business model canvas to work through your thinking, that should help guide your business plan, as it has guided Patisco's re-focused plan. More to come in a later blog post. Hint: 2015 should see a rapid expansion into more business lines and more geographies.

KUKY WORLD
Another team, Kuky World, had the advantage of attending a business school class and get guidance from one of their Professor to develop a more traditional institutional investor oriented business plan. 

For this exercise, the Kuky team (Yale Entrepreneurial Institute Summer Fellow) was asked to create a more focused and niche marketed plan. This plan should serve as a great jumping off point to build one of the most unique and "kooky" e-commerce sites to come along in a while. 

Kuky World will bridge Chinese designers and Chinese manufactured products with US audiences. Stay tuned, as it should be an interesting entrant into the highly competitive e-commerce marketplace. CEO Mavi Miller is banking on her curating skills to carry the day, and she is quite the fashionista, as an excerpt from the Kuky business plan attests, "For the last ten years, Miller has been passionate about finding unique products. Colleagues, friends and strangers on the street regularly ask her where she bought these items." - a reference to the unique items she may be wearing or carrying at the moment!


That's all for now, we say good bye to the Year of the Horse, and wish everyone happiness, health and good fortune for the coming Year of the Ram. Happy Business Planning!

Aki's name card at Fable/Dr. Finance Weiya.


Dust Off Your Business Plan Startups! It's Post-CNY.
Wednesday, February 25, 2015

Dust Off Your Business Plan Startups! It's Post-CNY.

Wednesday, April 23, 2014

In the startup world, there's often the hope, prayer, desire or even daydream that you'll be able to conquer the world.  Hit a home run.  Or even go from zero to 1 million subscribers overnight.  I think we all know that its never that easy.  What lies behind each and every seemingly overnight success, is in reality years of hard work, dedication and plain persistence and perseverance.  (For those of you familiar with the Angry Birds case study, the team hit their home run on their 51 game!  That is to say, they developed 50 other games before creating Angry Birds.  These were seasoned pros who knew a thing or two about listening to customer feedback.)

I was reminded by a recent startup/VC breakfast that it's really about taking your venture one step at a time.  That is to say, put one foot in front of the over and better not to daydream about scoring the big one.  Take it a step at a time.  A day at a time.  That's how you build a steady and sustainable business.  

At this same breakfast, I was reminded that even if young people today can only dream of starting a cafe or a small breakfast place that this isn't to be scoffed at or discouraged.  Instead, these are indeed noble pursuits.  After all, one of my mentors started in the bakery business some 28 years ago and now runs a 20+ bakery unit operation with approximately 400 employees.  Each and every day they serve tens of thousands of customers one roll and coffee/tea at a time. It should be okay for an entrepreneur to start with selling 45 NTD (1.50 USD) breakfasts and know that there is nothing wrong with doing so.  Where would the world be without these small business owners pouring our coffees and serving up eggs on a platter?  In fact, its from these real "selling" experiences that one can learn the fundamentals of selling.  (It really surprises me how many e-commerce teams who are intent on selling things on-line but have absolutely no selling experience at all.  Never worked retail.)

One such team who's on this road of taking things one step at a time is Fable and their SmartBoss service.  They've worked hard and cultivated their partnership with one of the top 3 human resource/job bank companies in Taiwan, www.1111.com.tw  The result is now Fable's SmartBoss is now featured on their partner's website.  See below image/link.
www.1111.com.tw
The team worked tirelessly to educate their counterparts at 1111, whether it be their chief sponsor, head of business development or the sales management.  They worked to promote themselves.  Made technical resources available on site.  Worked to understand their partners needs, goals and company structure.  Provided marketing messaging and sales pitch decks.  Finally, after months of work, the dividends are beginning to pay off for both parties.  We look forward to the next steps that Fable will take with their channel partner, 1111.
Don't be such in a rush to "cloud hop" as they say in Chinese. Take it one step at a time.  One day at a time.  


One Step at a Time: Forget "Clouding Hopping"
Wednesday, April 23, 2014

One Step at a Time: Forget "Clouding Hopping"

Friday, February 21, 2014

Of course, there are various kinds of partnerships for startup teams to consider in order to enlarge their team without hiring and paying for additional staff resources.  Common scenarios are service relationships where one partner acts as a lead sales team and requires more service partners to present a full service offering for a client.  Other partnerships may be of a technical nature in which a product is developed, but portions of the code or perhaps the iOS version of the service is outsourced to another provider.  One of the most common ones is for the engineering team to have developed a viable product, but have no sales team to sell the product.  This is commonly called a sales channel partnership.

Photo by BusinessNEXT
Fable's CEO Paul Shih discussing his Smartboss product partnership
with one of the 3 largest HR companies in Taiwan - 1111.com.tw
at a recent BusinessNEXT event showcasing Startup Teams in Taiwan

Beware!  Sales channel partnerships are not as easy as they seem!  In many cases, the overly eager startup team struggling for a way to sell its new tech product or service, seeks a much larger entity with a large sales team.  The idea is that this new sales team starved for new products to sell will energetically learn and push the new product, and everyone generates a lot of revenue, with happy customers in tow.  This dream isn't impossible, but never easy to achieve.  It isn't unusual for startups to spend lots of time negotiating and working for free with a larger company in the hopes of leveraging the larger company's sales channel, but in the end, spend a lot of time, resources and gain little or nothing in return.  To avoid such a secnario, the startup company has take the lead on the partnership - come up with how the larger company's sales team would sell the product, how their clients would benefit, and in the end how the larger company's sales team will be incented to sell the startup's product.

Not so simple or easy, as our Fable team will tell you.  They worked for months to sign an agreement to work with one of the largest human resources and recruiting companies in Taiwan - www.1111.com.tw.  In this relationship, CEO Paul Shih works hard to keep his product, SmartBoss, top of mind with 1111 sales people, who have many clients and even more of their own products to provide to their customers.  Much of the sales strategy and ideal sales scenarios has to be worked out on the Fable side and then presented to their larger partner in order to make it simple for 1111 sales people to understand and be incentized to sell Smartboss.  Fortunately, for Paul and team, 1111 has stepped up and begun to work closely with Fable to service 1111 clients.  They've even generated some joint marketing e-DMs and an integrated home page (see below).

1111's new service, powered by Smartboss
Partnerships are often a good alternative for startups.  With an open eye to the daily realities of making the partnership work, plus a little luck, the partnership will be a win-win for partners and clients alike.
To Partner or Not to Partner? A Not Too Uncommon Question for Startups
Friday, February 21, 2014

To Partner or Not to Partner? A Not Too Uncommon Question for Startups

Sunday, September 15, 2013

In a recent BusinessNext article, CEO Paul Shih is quoted as saying that he is all about creating "an easy to use tool which enhances the value of employees" - thus, SmartBoss.  In a single instance, executives can see on a mobile device what their out of office/on the road employees are doing, their schedules and their interactions with customers.  It helps manage the flow of important and mission critical information from the field to central office.  This overcomes the delays often associated with returning to the office and filing reports; thus, delaying critical decision making and responsiveness to customer needs.

For more please see: BusinessNext

From BusinessNext.  The Fable Team, makers of SmartBoss

圖左至右為財務長特助吳玉璇、財務長林祖儀、技術長葉俊緯、執行長施政源。(攝影/侯俊偉)

Helping to Make Employees Smarter: Fable with their SmartBoss Product
Sunday, September 15, 2013

Helping to Make Employees Smarter: Fable with their SmartBoss Product

Saturday, August 17, 2013

October 2012 Fable Technologies launched a new software program which combined on-line web services with smartphones and tablet PCs for keeping an eye on where your staff is in the field.  The synch between systems is nearly instantaneous at aproximately 3 seconds.
Paul Shih, CEO (left) and Zuyi Lin, CFO of Fable Technologies
For more detail please see:Fable Technologies Launch New Calendar In Product

REVISITED: Trying to Figure Out Where Your Staff Is?
Saturday, August 17, 2013

REVISITED: Trying to Figure Out Where Your Staff Is?

Monday, May 6, 2013

From Fable Technologies (Taiwan) comes their innovative new product "Smartboss" which is geared to assisting in ARM (Administrative Relationship Management), linking people in the field with headquarters via a variety of mobile devices and a centralized SaaS platform.  Although the platform is useful for many industries suffering from issues related to lost communication and miscommunication or delayed communication, Smartboss is ideal for Job Bank companies who staff hundreds of sales people supporting thousands of accounts.  SmartBoss is also being developed for construction management saving time in the critical communication of job site constructions issues.  For more, please see SmartBoss website: http://www.smartboss.com.tw/ and Fable's website at: http://www.fable.com.tw/


Constructon Management Made Easy: Using Mobile Photo App Technology to Gain Timely Updates on Construction Site Progress.
Monday, May 06, 2013

Constructon Management Made Easy: Using Mobile Photo App Technology to Gain Timely Updates on Construction Site Progress.