The Travel Agent
Saturday, November 07, 2009
“The spirit of entrepreneurship includes imagination, inventiveness and openness to the new. This spirit of creative response aligns with the capacity to exercise moral imagination and to see ethical problems in a new light. To be sure, our most fundamental ethical values -- values such as honesty, avoiding doing harm, keeping commitments -- are grounded in timeless traditions and are not likely to be soon abandoned. But it is in the application of these ethical values to emerging, unique situations, where moral imagination and the entrepreneurial spirit can make a decisive difference.” 
David Schmidt.
A story of an entrepreneur who believes on himself and whose vision is different than others. Here is the story of entrepreneur Kong;
Alex Kong was genetically destined to be an entrepreneur. When his grandfather arrived on Borneo from China in the 1940s, he established a timber business. His son, Kong’s father, started as a carpenter, and later teamed up with his children to launch a succession of businesses, ranging from seafood exporting to a travel agency.
“If you want to make money, you have to be the boss,” Kong’s father once told him. “Don’t work for somebody else.”
After graduating from the University of Hawaii in 1993 with a degree in tourism planning, Kong returned to Sarawak with plans to get into the travel business. His father had built a hotel in Malaysia’s Gunung Mulu National Park on Borneo Island, but it was struggling due to its remote location. Kong established a travel company that packaged the hotel with transportation and other services. The company, along with his father’s hotel, boomed.
But Kong had bigger plans. An enthusiastic internet user at university, he now wanted to use his technology to expand his travel business. In the mid-1990s the internet was still largely underutilized in Asia, but Kong was convinced that it would take off. When he married his long time sweetheart Catalina Chu in March 1997, the future looked bright.
Within months, everything changed. A thick haze from forest fires in nearby Indonesia engulfed the entire region, keeping tourist away. Then in August, the Malaysian stock market crashed and the currency collapsed. Business slowed to a trickle. All Kong had to fall back on was his plan to start an internet travel business.
Kong sold everything he had and gave $447, 000 to a Kuala Lumpur company to develop an internet-based ticketing and reservation system. “I know this will work,” he assured Catalina. But at the end of 1997, the company went bankrupt without delivering the goods. Kong was completely broke. He couldn’t even afford to care for Catalina, who was pregnant and living in Hong Kong with her parents.
Still, Kong clung to his dream. This is the best time to launch, he told himself. People are looking for bargains. All he had to do was find a financial backer. In early 1998 he met hundreds of bankers and corporate investors. Unable to afford taxis, he sometime showed up for meetings soaking wet from the rain.
“If this project fails, I have nothing left,” he told potential backers. “I have to make this work.” They were touched by his simple, straight-forward approach, but nobody had money to invest.
In April 1998, Kong secured a meeting in Kuala Lumpur with Hanson Cheah, founder of the Hong Kong based venture capital group AsiaTech Venture. Unlike other potential investors, Cheah understood immediately the almost unlimited possibilities of the internet. After Kong’s 90-minute presentation, he took only a few seconds to respond: “How much do you need?”
With an initial investment of $180, 000, Kong started Asia Travel Network in June 1998. The company, through his website Asiatravelmart, links travelers with hotels, airlines and other suppliers. Its bulk buying power secures discounts for customers around the world. Asia Travel Network, which employs more than 100 people, is now a multi-million dollar business.
Catalina and their daughter Claudia have moved to Kuala Lumpur, where Kong now lives. “It was tough trying to convince investors to believe in my pain,” he says. “But my belief, coupled with loads of tenacity, was all that I needed to keep going.”
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David Schmidt.A story of an entrepreneur who believes on himself and whose vision is different than others. Here is the story of entrepreneur Kong;
Alex Kong was genetically destined to be an entrepreneur. When his grandfather arrived on Borneo from China in the 1940s, he established a timber business. His son, Kong’s father, started as a carpenter, and later teamed up with his children to launch a succession of businesses, ranging from seafood exporting to a travel agency.
“If you want to make money, you have to be the boss,” Kong’s father once told him. “Don’t work for somebody else.”
After graduating from the University of Hawaii in 1993 with a degree in tourism planning, Kong returned to Sarawak with plans to get into the travel business. His father had built a hotel in Malaysia’s Gunung Mulu National Park on Borneo Island, but it was struggling due to its remote location. Kong established a travel company that packaged the hotel with transportation and other services. The company, along with his father’s hotel, boomed.
But Kong had bigger plans. An enthusiastic internet user at university, he now wanted to use his technology to expand his travel business. In the mid-1990s the internet was still largely underutilized in Asia, but Kong was convinced that it would take off. When he married his long time sweetheart Catalina Chu in March 1997, the future looked bright.
Within months, everything changed. A thick haze from forest fires in nearby Indonesia engulfed the entire region, keeping tourist away. Then in August, the Malaysian stock market crashed and the currency collapsed. Business slowed to a trickle. All Kong had to fall back on was his plan to start an internet travel business.
Kong sold everything he had and gave $447, 000 to a Kuala Lumpur company to develop an internet-based ticketing and reservation system. “I know this will work,” he assured Catalina. But at the end of 1997, the company went bankrupt without delivering the goods. Kong was completely broke. He couldn’t even afford to care for Catalina, who was pregnant and living in Hong Kong with her parents.
Still, Kong clung to his dream. This is the best time to launch, he told himself. People are looking for bargains. All he had to do was find a financial backer. In early 1998 he met hundreds of bankers and corporate investors. Unable to afford taxis, he sometime showed up for meetings soaking wet from the rain.
“If this project fails, I have nothing left,” he told potential backers. “I have to make this work.” They were touched by his simple, straight-forward approach, but nobody had money to invest.
In April 1998, Kong secured a meeting in Kuala Lumpur with Hanson Cheah, founder of the Hong Kong based venture capital group AsiaTech Venture. Unlike other potential investors, Cheah understood immediately the almost unlimited possibilities of the internet. After Kong’s 90-minute presentation, he took only a few seconds to respond: “How much do you need?”
With an initial investment of $180, 000, Kong started Asia Travel Network in June 1998. The company, through his website Asiatravelmart, links travelers with hotels, airlines and other suppliers. Its bulk buying power secures discounts for customers around the world. Asia Travel Network, which employs more than 100 people, is now a multi-million dollar business.
Catalina and their daughter Claudia have moved to Kuala Lumpur, where Kong now lives. “It was tough trying to convince investors to believe in my pain,” he says. “But my belief, coupled with loads of tenacity, was all that I needed to keep going.”
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12:19 PM
Nice post! Thanks for sharing.