I turned to entrepreneurship as a necessity really. I dropped out of NUS as i was too engrossed with my part-time work at a web design shop (which didn’t take off by the way).

So at the end of 4 years (2002) of university life, i’m left without a degree, heaped in a mountain of debt (study loan) and without a career to speak of. Its a predicament i wouldn’t wish on anybody else. So please study as hard as you can while you can.

I turned to doing web design and PHP programming as it was the one thing i was good at. A kind friend from my JC days approached me one day about starting a web hosting business. I was interested in finding out about web hosting - cos we designers need a place to put our stuff.

My friend, HCM, told me about the year’s worth of research he did into the business and he found the barriers to entry had reduced significantly since the tech bubble burst in the late 1990s.

So we started SprintServe in 2002. HCM, being an NTU Accountancy grad, handled the financial aspects of the business. He also handled the technical setup of the Linux dedicated servers. I did the web design and PHP programming work as they came in. I also shared in manning the support help line when HCM’s asleep (which isn’t alot). I had no money on me, so HCM bankrolled the entire operation.

I really learned a lot from my dear friend. I learned how to setup a practical and viable web hosting business with very little capital involved.

But ultimately, my first passion was building websites that work. So the idea of making web hosting the main business function and dealing with customer support wasn’t my idea of fun. So i decided to venture out on my own - building a business centred on my vision and passion of building websites that work.

To be continued…