Starting businesses seems to be in Douglas Gan’s blood. As a child, the InfoComm Technology (ICT) graduate would stock up on marbles, sticker albums and bubble gum whenever he visited his maternal grandparents in Indonesia, and bring these items back to sell for a profit to his friends in primary school.
Curious about the power of the Internet and feeling bored after his O levels, he started his first web hosting site, as well as built online community ohgenki.com.
While juggling his studies at Ngee Ann Polytechnic (NP), he grew ohgenki.com into a money maker, which he later sold to Streetdirectory.com for a profi t of “a few hundred thousand” shortly after he graduated.
“I was intrigued by the Internet when I first started using it 12 years ago to chat with my friends on Microsoft’s Comic Chat. My bill, which came up to $200 per month, spurred me to find out how I could make money from the Internet, because there were millions of users like myself,” said Douglas, now 27.
These early experiences in Internet ventures encouraged him to start another online business in 2007, when he saw an opportunity to provide local Internet users with an analytical tool to gather location-based data that will help them to make business and personal investment decisions.
He approached fellow ICT graduate Lee Chang Jin to start ShowNearby, an online location-based service which allows business owners, home buyers and real estate companies to monitor and evaluate nearby businesses, amenities and demographics.
When an angel investor pumped in $200,000 in 2008, they hired their first staff, Choy Peng Kong, an NP Multimedia Computing graduate, who has since become a business partner.
Douglas said the twin effects of studying IT in poly and owning two Internet businesses at the same time, laid the foundation for him to start his largest venture yet.
“Whatever theories I learnt from school, I would modify it and try it on my businesses. My lecturers were very supportive of my two little booming side businesses and would share notes and ideas to help me cope with school and work,” he said.
Douglas and Chang Jin are now looking into building a passionate and dedicated team. They currently have 10 staff and count Knight Frank, Property Guru and Sakae Sushi as some of their main clients.
“Our dream is to become the equivalent of Google,” said Chang Jin.
What is ShowNearby?
ShowNearby (www.shownearby.com) helps businesses to scan neighbourhoods or specifi c areas to survey existing businesses to determine competitiveness and plan for subsequent business development efforts.
It also helps home-buyers search for nearby amenities such as ATMs, buses and trains, supermarkets, and nearby schools, to help them make informed decisions when buying properties.