Young Entrepreneurs Award - 13th May 2008

The very next day after I came back from London, I had to focus on the Young Entrepreneurs Award competition. I was very worried about being tired and jet lagged and all, but the good news was that I wasn't. In fact, amusingly, at the competition itself, Eric looked more tired than I was. He attributes that to missing his afternoon nap, and how the hype of competitions drains energy as it uses up adrenaline. Makes it sound almost like a sport.

YEA is a business plan writing competition that has 3 rounds. Honestly, in the beginning the only thing that captured my interest was the attractive grand prize of RM 10,000 and a trip to Hong Kong to participate in the regional finals with other countries! And the subsequent prizes were pretty good too. Three top teams win trips to Hong Kong (but only the gold winners get to compete) and cash prizes! My eyes were all filled with $$ signs. Damn materialistic I'm turning haha.

The first submission was way back in december last year, where we had to submit a business idea. The task was simple. A 1000 word essay which just needs to be emailed. Little did we know how much work the next submission was going to be. Suddenly we found ourselves having to complete an actual business plan that is feasible and viable in the commercial market. We had to do market analysis, financial statements, risk analysis and all sorts of business stuff that we really do not know how to do. In fact, before this, I had no idea what a business plan really meant.

Nevertheless, I took this as an opportunity to learn what would, I believe, be extremely useful in the future. Round 2 came at a perfect time, the deadline to hand in was march, and I had the whole month of in February for my semester break. It was Chinese New Year then, and so I went back home to KK. The first week was of course the typical traditional chinese new year celebrations and the next few weeks was all about the business plan and preparing for the public speaking competition. I sacrificed almost my whole semester break pouring through books, reading things up online, researching, and asking people for advice. It took a whole lot of effort and work and time just to get a few pages done. I flew back to KL for the new term at the end of the month, and the first week of the term was madly rushing to complete the business plan. I was so agitated because it wasn't complete and there were holes and glitches here and there. Eric and I spent sleepless nights just to make everything fall into place. Finally after the last minute panicking and rushing, we finally got everything together and submitted it in by hand. I breathed a sigh of relief and also feel quite a sense of accomplishment when I got the sms from Eric saying that he has handed in the 10 copies of the business plan as required. Finally, the hardest part of the competition is over.

We had no idea if we would be able to get through to the next round. We have worked very hard but we really don't know where our standard is simply because there is nothing for us to compare it too. I am a science student majoring in chem and bio. Eric is a pure law student who doesn't even know the concept of assets and liabilities (well I think he does now :P) But we crossed our fingers. Eric, the excited one was really hyped up about it. I, on the other hand, the calm one, was just waiting for the results.

And when the news came that we got to the finals, I was ecstatic! I knew the timing was really tight, since I had my final exams then there was the public speaking and straight after is the YEA finals. It's a good thing that the last round was not as time consuming as the 2nd. This time around we had to give a business presentation. Which worked really well. We co-ordinated well as a team and the presentation went well. My brain was not frozen the way I thought it would be, so I was quite happy with that.

Before the competition, testing out the equipment

That was a good start. Eric speaks

Now Meiyi speaks

The other teams:

The winning team with Vermilizer. WORMS!!!

Bronze prize winner: Capital Youths Enterprise

Team Epsilon

Extreme Bros

Dinner!

Silver Award - we are going to HONG KONG!!!


Their trophies look really good! =)

All in all it was a really good experience, and I made new friends too =) Now I am going to retire from competitions for the time being. It IS exhausting. Looking forward to Hong Kong in June!!