Most of students who majored in technology usually has communication problems when they started funding theirs project. They do not have capability to fully describe and present theirs products’ potential well to investors which leads to communication breakdown.”
The sharing of Mr.Tran Duy Khiem – Account Executive for Vietnamese market of Singapore Expara Investment Funds started the information workshop” Star-up Engineering, how to fund?” in Hochiminh University of Technology.
Singapore Expara Investment Funds
As an expert who has experience dealing with projects that need funded from working to numerous start-up contests, Mr. Khiem stated that presentation and negotiation skills are the essential characteristic that easily be skipped and lack of investment from people and candidates who majored in technology. “People spend a lot of time on presentation but fail to emphasize the main ideas so investors failed to catch up. They can have a general understanding but it’s not enough to persuade them to start funding. If you cannot communicate well enough with investors, how can you manage to win skeptical and demanding customer?”
How to communicate better?
Engineers are full of logic and creativity, they are have strong potential and ability to make a change in the field. In this century when start-up becomes a trend, engineers with theirs abilities, knowledge and working experience are striving to become the part of start-up trend.
They are expected to have a fully understand theirs products while but why would they fail to present it fully to investors? To answer for that question, Mr.Khiem belive that because of engineering working environment, they lack of communication skills to well present theirs projects. In others cases, their presentations are not appealing and solid enough to make investors invest their money. From investors’ perceptive, theirs projects are not stand-out form others.
With the same question, Ms. Nguyen Thi Anh Phuong, MBA-MCI’s director also believe that it’s not only engineers but also experienced speakers could having a hard in summing up the main ideas of presentations
She also shared that communication skills places an important role in in workplace that managers and business owners should learn more. She is linked with the MBA-MCI program – which aimed to innovate, start-up business that lack of communication skills. In MBA-MCI program, we are focusing on to training those skills from the basic to advance, from the daily work place to formal business meetings etc. Besides that, we also train for negotiation, consulting and persuasion skills to prepare for not only from start-up but also later in promoting career. “The basic of communication skills actually build on a critical thinking mindset”, she concluded.
What is market insight?
Besides communication skills, having a market insight is another challenge of those who came from technological background. “Even though some projects spark many creative features and show hard work, it doesn’t reflect customers, competitors or current’s market perspective. Most of investors concern about a market feasibility study, because a product can barely survice without a careful market insight. “No product can last withought customers” Mr. Khiem said.
Some cases proved hard research, point out new product features but lack of market research about customer’s need, market’s needs and even competitors while market value is the most important thing that concerned by most of investors. “The very simple thing is how can a product survive without customers?” Mr.Khiem said.
That’s the reasons why many start-up business plans easily fails from the starting point! Even some big international start-up projects with huge funding for an extraordinary marketing campaigns can still have an undesirable outcome
The final goal is about selling not funding. Market insights is the most crucial step but it also the hardest step for everyone who want to be an entrepreneur.
According to Ms Millon Dollar – Le Diep Kieu Trang who made a blooming in Silicon Valley with Misfit project (*):” Gaining the basic knowledge from MBA is the essential things for startup, especially for whose technology background”.
According to ThanhNien.Vn
