Summary Chapter 9.

While Tengku Farith was wandering about the lack of success among bumiputra entrepreneurs in the IT sector, he was invited to join the New Entrepreneur Forum (NEF), a grouping of bumiputra IT entrepreneurs founded by Mirzan Mahathir. It is a small group of 16 people that involved New Economy. Their always hold meeting at Carcosa and the purpose of the meetings was to exchange ideas and provide moral support to each other.

Tengku Farith sent out an e-mail to everyone told that propose the NEF had to become more pro-active. Tengku Farith's e-mail sparked off some discussions and debate. Another issue that was being debated was whether the NEF should be open to non-bumiputra entrepreneurs as well. Tengku Farith had to follow the majority that NEF is only for bumiputra. But Tengku Farith argued that the bumiputras cannot live in an unconnected world because the New Economy is by definition a connected economy. Tengku Farith's arguments prevailed so when the NEF organized a networking function called NetBash, it was open to all. NEF held NetBash once every quarter and invited people from the private sector as well as the government to attend. It was success when each event attended by around 600 people.

The NetBash event down to 300 attended after the dotcom bubble burst and things started to slow down, interest in networking dropped. The NEF is a lot quieter after that but it’s still around with 27 members and a renewed focus: lobbying the government to provide more opportunities for bumiputra technology companies. NEF try to collaborate with one of our suppliers that is Foochow guy from Kuching to produce three million bricks per month. He contacted one of his relatives who was a big-time developer and asked if he would buy our bricks.

The relative agreed to buy up to one million bricks per month on the condition that NEF could meet his exact specifications, with the quality he expected and the price he was willing to pay. Another group that Tengku Farith actively involved with it is TeAM, which is open to all races. At the time of Tengku Farith’s writing, he is the president of TeAM, which was started in 2001 by Sivapalan Vivekarajah, an entrepreneur who can best be described as a venture capital broker. The NEF has its place and is important, but we desperately needed a national organization as well.

Tengku Farith delighted to be a part of both organizations. Siva did a lot to raise the profile of TeAM and got the government to take our white papers and recommendations seriously. After serving as president of TeAM for about a year, Siva decided to go to Edinburgh to pursue a PhD in venture capitalism. Chris Chan of The Media Shoppe (TMS) was subsequently elected the president of TeAM while Tengku Farith was elected deputy president. TMS happens to be a competitor to SKALI, but Chris and Tengku Farith get along really well. Tengku Farith thinks this has to do with the fact that they had very similar experiences in building up their companies.