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00:00:01
I've taken INSEAD to space and I think I've been the first one to do that.
138 Plays1 year ago
The rocket was emblazoned with the INSEAD logo and underneath that it said KacificOne, the name of our satellite, and a FORCE FOR GOOD and so it was the force for good logo from INSEAD.
Force for Food is part of the famous John Kennedy speech, when he declared that by the end of the decade he would send men to the Moon. I like that reference that space can be a force for good; money can be a force for good, capitalism can be a force for good and you can use money to do the right thing and to use the capital markets in the right way.
20 YEARS IN PERSPECTIVE:
I don't think I would change anything, I don't think I would be able to, honestly, I think fate has taken me where it's taken me.
After INSEAD, I was quite lost for about a year. In December 2004 I had a big wake up call. After a frivolous year of not knowing what I wanted to do, after a sailing regatta in Thailand I was caught in the Asian tsunami and laughing was over in a matter of seconds. I guess I lost the taste for partying at that point and I really wanted to change my life and do something useful.
It was a huge transformation I think, both INSEAD and of course this tsunami, that put everything in question again for me. So that took quite a bit of time to find my path, my way forward.
I'm here, a consultant on a bicycle, and I would need to raise 250 million dollars for this.
I needed to go back and convince my wife, which was probably the most difficult thing of all.
It took me five months to raise about half a million dollars, it took me another 6.5 years to raise 230 million dollars. So we snowballed that project from a little bit of money, and the more money I raised, the more contracts I got and then that was a nice kind of virtuous circle that we got. We bought a Boeing satellite in 2017 and completed all the financing and launched it at the end of 2019 on a SpaceX falcon 9 rocket.
And that was an amazing day that I'll remember for my life - it was like the birth of a third child, it was incredible.
Q: “What if the rocket blew up?” A: “It would have been a wonderful, a faithful firework and people would have clapped I guess.”
Raising money was a challenge but in the end I found a talent in me to be able to raise money.
ON TOPIC: Satellites and rockets, broadband, internet and more
There will always be, for I guess I don’t know how many thousands of years to come, this little satellite. And if nothing else comes out of this company, this little satellite will be floating in space and telling the story that this has happened and that I was the one starting this whole and putting this machine in space and it will be the testimony of the journey.
In remote parts of the world people want to be connected, people want to spend money, they just don't have the means. If you were to put fibre to all these places it would cost billions of dollars, but with a satellite you have the distribution system built into it, so that's the beauty of satellite.
We are providing sometimes lifesaving connectivity for critical cases that are seen in these regions, people live in very precarious conditions.
You can reestablish huge amount of connectivity in a blink, but we've also provided disaster response after many tropical cyclones, typhoons in the Philippines, Vanuatu, Fiji and even in New Zealand recently.
ON TOPIC: Entrepreneurship, start-ups, snowballing
The most difficult is to be lonely at times.
Raise more money than you really need because you'll need that money.
It's a bigger sandcastle, but it's still a sandcastle that the tide keeps chipping at it and denting it, tide after tide, and I'm on top of it, just piling up new sand on top of it to make sure it keeps growing. So it's an interesting journey.
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Transcript
Introduction and Invitation to Reunion
00:00:00
Speaker
This is Republic of Insead, the 20 years later O3D podcast edition. I am Milena Ivanova and will be your host in this limited series. So, here we are, 20 years later, hopefully all the wiser, naturally smarter and as charming as ever. There were 432 of us in the O3D vintage.
00:00:25
Speaker
And certainly there are 432 unique and very interesting personal and professional stories to tell. While I cannot physically cover all, I have tried to make a selection of stories that will keep you interested and curious and will hopefully convince you to join us on campus for reunion. Welcome to the Republic of Insead Podcast Edition and enjoy the show.
Humorous Tales of Captain X
00:00:50
Speaker
All righty, so we have lots of grounds to cover today, so let's dive straight into the 20-year-old Republican Vinciat entry for him and see how well or not it has aged, the entry I mean. Open quotations. If you first need Captain X, he will define himself as a super satellite engineer.
00:01:12
Speaker
His real passion is linking his professional interests to his hobbies. Without lacking self-confidence, despite some recent accidents, he still tries to rocket himself and his multinational crew around the earth. Please note the specially developed casual space dress. Example, the orange gloves that resist the extreme heat of his immediate environment.
00:01:37
Speaker
Captain X also uses his space dress to show off and conquer Asian beauties on his wakeboard. Obviously, he never forgets his handcuffs that he handles with a master dexterity. Interesting. Since he's supposedly linked to the Columbia's
00:01:55
Speaker
recent suspicious explosion during a party 167,879,346 kilometers away. He wants to hide from the old catching eye of his own satellite and switches campus as much as possible.
Life-Changing Tsunami Experience
00:02:12
Speaker
Fonti-singi, fonti-singi.
00:02:14
Speaker
After graduation, he will probably seek his luck and future in the heat of California and Hollywood and will ultimately leave our Milky Way, CP, for home. Well, well, you switched campus a lot, that much is true, but you did not end up in Hollywood, so some must be disappointed. I did a little bit, yeah. Yeah, no, I used before. Okay.
00:02:43
Speaker
No okay well you can tell us but tell us the last 20 years in a nutshell and you've had a very eventful 20 years so floor is all yours. For the last 20 years what happened?
00:03:01
Speaker
How much time do I have for this? Very short, very short. Elevator pitch style. Okay, so after INSEAD, I guess I was quite lost for about a year. I had no idea what I wanted to do, so I was kind of wandering around Singapore.
00:03:21
Speaker
It took me, I guess, until December 2020, sorry, 2004. I guess time goes by so quickly. So 2004, and in December 2004, I had a big wake-up call after a frivolous year of not knowing what I wanted to do because
00:03:49
Speaker
After a sailing regatta in Thailand, I was caught in the Asian tsunami. Laughing was over in a matter of seconds, so life completely changed.
00:04:03
Speaker
And yeah, so I saw pretty horrible things on that day. And, you know, it was, you know, I guess I lost the taste for partying at that point. And I really wanted to change my life and do something useful. So in 2005, early 2005, fortunately, I was completely unscathed after this disaster.
Career Shift and Challenges
00:04:30
Speaker
In early 2005 I went back to the region where this had happened in Thailand and I raised a little bit of money and I called a few friends from INSEAD actually who joined me to run some
00:04:52
Speaker
you know, some action there, some humanitarian action to help the populations. And so we started running that, like, you know, providing supplies to people who have been affected. And that lasted probably a month and a half or something like that. And yeah, so the whole thing expanded at one point after about a month and a half where we started
00:05:18
Speaker
you know, rebuilding boats for the local fishermen. And it developed in large shipyards that we run and we donated boats to the fishermen over a period of one year.
00:05:35
Speaker
So that was interesting. It actually really refocused my perspective on a lot of things. And after this, I came back to Singapore, restarted my work in satellites and a lot of consulting, private consulting, which was very boring for many years. It was, you know, basically helping broadcasters
00:06:04
Speaker
figure out how to provide internet via satellites. And I had years after years contracts with broadcasters who wanted to hear the same thing on how they could provide internet. And I always gave them the same answer on how they should buy new satellites, change all their team, and change their customers, change everything. And that actually they were not really equipped to provide internet.
00:06:34
Speaker
And of course, nobody wanted to listen to that because that was not really interesting. After a while, they would say, well, thank you very much. But we're just going to continue being broadcasters and we're not really going to provide the internet to anyone. And so it was very frustrating after a few years to kind of study how to use satellite to provide internet in Asia.
00:06:58
Speaker
But I didn't find anybody to
Starting a Satellite Internet Company
00:07:00
Speaker
do this. I was paid to figure out a business model, but that business model was not embraced by anyone. And I thought it was quite valid. So in 2013, I took a bicycle ride with a friend here in Singapore. And I was in between two consulting jobs and he told me what you want to do next.
00:07:23
Speaker
I said, look, I'm so tired of doing these consulting jobs and just repeating the same thing all over again. And I know what needs to be done. And I know that there's huge demand for this, but nobody, you know, there's nobody willing to finance this. And so he said, well, why don't you do it yourself? And I felt like, well, you know, I'm here a consultant on a bicycle, you know, and, you know, I need, I would need to raise 250 million dollars for this.
00:07:51
Speaker
So, and he had a small private equity fund, that friend, and he said, well, you know, I can give you a desk. I can give you a couple of guys to help you and in segments and, you know, I can incubate you if you want to do it yourself. So, you know, it was quite daunting, but I felt like, well, what choice do I have?
00:08:14
Speaker
So at that point, I needed to go back and convince my wife, which was probably the most difficult thing of all, that I was going to do this. And so in the end, she said I was crazy, but you know, it's like, OK, fine, whatever. And I said, well, look, give me six months and I'll at least I'll raise enough money to pay myself a salary. And then after this, we'll we'll see where it goes. Right. So
00:08:40
Speaker
And so it took me five months to raise about half a million dollars, and then I could pay myself a little symbolic salary at that point. And then, yeah, so fast forwarding, it took me another six and a half years to raise $230 million.
00:09:02
Speaker
So we really snowballed that project from a little bit of money and then signing what we call off takers. So people who were willing to put their money where their needs were. So their future needs were going to be to get bandwidth. So telcos, governments started signing
00:09:23
Speaker
with the project you know they said hey we need your satellite okay it's not here but i'll sign it i'll sign your service and then on the basis of these contracts i raise more money and i snowballed and as the more money i raised the more money
00:09:39
Speaker
the more contracts I got and then that was a nice kind of virtuous circle that we got. And then we bought a Boeing satellite.
Successful Satellite Launch
00:09:48
Speaker
We specified that satellite. We bought that satellite in 2017 and then completed all the financing and then launched it in
00:09:58
Speaker
at the end of 2019 on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and that was an amazing day. It was just a day that I'll remember as well as for my life as much as the birth of my two children. It was like the birth of a third child. It was incredible. It was an epiphany. We had those
00:10:23
Speaker
We had 200 friends and stakeholders attending the launch. It was just amazing. And the rocket was emblazoned by with the INSEAD logo. And underneath that, it said the, you know, Pacific One, which is the name of our satellite and a Force for Good. And so it was the Force for Good logo from INSEAD. And so it's...
00:10:52
Speaker
You know, I'm proud to say that I've taken INSEAD to space and I think I've been the first one to do that. Amazing. I think we just got the title for this episode. I've taken INSEAD to space. Was it you who approached the school or the school approach to? How did this work out? No, it was, you know, at that point I was helping a little bit the entrepreneurship professor and I was in touch with the INSEAD and then I, you know, I was in touch with the PR
00:11:22
Speaker
group of Insead and they were interested in the story and at the same time I like the concept of false for good because it's actually the false for good is part of a of a John Kennedy of the famous John Kennedy
00:11:41
Speaker
speech when he declared that by the end of the decade he would send men to the moon. So it's actually a force for good comes from a space age speech from the president. And so, you know, I like that reference to space can be a force for good, money can be a force for good, capitalism can be a force for good.
Navigating COVID and Future Plans
00:12:04
Speaker
And, you know, you can use money to do the right thing and, you know, to use the capital markets in the right way. And so that's what I like to do. And, you know, it's just it was just a good, you know, give and take both for INSEAD and myself and for the project to
00:12:26
Speaker
to collaborate within SEAD. And then I thought, well, how about I use the logo of the Dragon or the Salamander? Sorry, it looks like a dragon, but of the Salamander.
00:12:37
Speaker
and the force for good underneath and in the Pacific one, the name of the satellite. And it was pretty big. I think it was like two meters by two meters on the rocket. It looked a bit small from a scene from three kilometers away when we saw the rocket take off, but it was quite a large logo that we took to space.
00:13:01
Speaker
And yeah, so that's where we are. And the company grew through COVID. Of course, the curve ball was COVID after that. And it was, yeah, a couple of years of additional white hair on my head of trying to figure out how to navigate the business. You know, we had to work so hard, six and a half years to put this up in space.
00:13:27
Speaker
And then COVID happens. And yeah, so last year we managed to get about a top line of $51 million of revenue on the satellites for 2022, despite all the COVID years and then of course the high inflation, high interest rates. The project is highly leveraged, so we are a bit affected by high interest rate, but
00:13:56
Speaker
We managed to extract 31 million dollars of MPDA from this top line last year. The company is doing well.
00:14:05
Speaker
and it's now ready to buy a second satellite so we're raising about 300 million dollars now for the second one so it's a sand castle it's still a sand castle it's bigger sand castle but it's still a sand castle that you know the tide keeps chipping at it and denting it tide after tide and i'm on top of it just just piling up new sand on top of it to make sure it keeps growing but
00:14:34
Speaker
Yeah, it's an interesting thing.
Challenges of Entrepreneurship
00:14:36
Speaker
So you mentioned the rocket and having 200 guests there. What always, because recently there was one unsuccessful launch here in Europe, what if the rocket blew up?
00:14:51
Speaker
Yeah, well, it would have been a wonderful, to me, a wonderful, it would be a fateful firework and people would have clapped, I guess. I don't know that. The rocket was heavily insured. We had about 250 million dollars of insurance on it. We had private insurance on top of it. So we had like a lot of insurance on that.
00:15:15
Speaker
of course it would have been a huge disappointment but financially everybody would have been made whole. But yeah I mean look we chose the best bet in terms of partner in the satellite industry. We had Boeing as a partner, we had SpaceX which you know at that time was already
00:15:41
Speaker
almost launching humans into space with that rocket. So it was really a highly resilient, robust, validated launch vehicle. What did you say have been the biggest challenges of these 20 years? Well, it's
00:16:00
Speaker
It's probably to find my path after INSEAD. That was a real challenge. It's to find the way forward. It was a bit fortuitous the way it happened because I relied on INSEAD, I relied on my path.
00:16:17
Speaker
on my past career before in Seattle. I had had a decent career before, about 10 years in the satellite industry. I was a bit old when I did in Seattle, I was 34 years old when I did it, so it's probably one of the oldest. But I
00:16:33
Speaker
Yeah, so I relied on that after Insead, but I was probably one of the most lost ones after Insead. I just didn't know what to do, where I wanted to go. It was a huge transformation, I think, both insead and of course this tsunami thing.
00:16:50
Speaker
that put everything in question again for me. So I took quite a bit of time to find my path, my way forward, but it's probably for the better. It's probably helped me to kind of secure that position
00:17:09
Speaker
into secure that vision, I would say, moving forward with that startup, relying on all the experience I had built after INSEAD, all the contacts I had. It was really, I was at a mature point in my career to embrace this.
00:17:30
Speaker
it was I would say that it's probably then the second most challenging is probably to find the money to get to achieve all this you know raising money was was a challenge but in the end I found you know I found a talent in me to to be able to raise money and of course I was raising money for something I
00:17:57
Speaker
I was deeply experienced into,
Providing Internet to Remote Areas
00:17:59
Speaker
right? I knew what I was talking about. I had such a long experience in that business that, you know, I was credible. Yeah. And in terms of on our preliminary talk, and I should brag about this, I'm doing this project and I'm catching up with people all over the world, but I think no one is going to beat
00:18:24
Speaker
briefing from Papua New Guinea. So with you, you and I, we had a call, and you were in Papua New Guinea, so I'm like, you know, talking to people. That's in Seattle, right? But that's in Seattle to extreme Papua New Guinea. There you go. So, but you were telling me how you started, and
00:18:43
Speaker
We also talked about all these, in fact, you did mention how even the tsunami has been instrumental in people coming for the internet and not for the boats. That was one clue you got. And then just like going and providing internet to places which otherwise would not have internet, as it was that. So can you expand a little bit on this?
00:19:08
Speaker
Sure. Yes, like you said, when I did the humanitarian action in Thailand,
00:19:18
Speaker
We had set up a satellite dish using a broadcast satellite at the time for receiving internet in that remote part of Thailand. And I was really surprised that every night I would have 30, 40, 50 people sitting outside that office. It was still the early days of the internet, right? In 2005, people wanted Wi-Fi, there was no
00:19:46
Speaker
There was no iPhone then, there was no 4G, etc. So people were gathering around Wi-Fi hotspots.
00:19:55
Speaker
And so, yeah, it was a real clue to what was to come later that, you know, in remote parts of the world, people want to be connected. People want to spend money. They just don't have the means. But they do have money there. There's a lot of businesses.
00:20:19
Speaker
What opened my eyes or so is that people are doing all kinds of businesses in those rural areas. They are selling their crops. They are, of course, fishing. There's a lot of primary industries that are thriving there. And when you live in these regions, you realize that they are the economic engine of these countries.
00:20:43
Speaker
You know, in Thailand, the wealth is not created in Bangkok. The wealth is created in the countryside. It's managed from the big cities, but it's actually created, all those commodities are created in the countryside.
00:21:01
Speaker
But just that they created over very vast areas that the dollar per square kilometer is very low. But with satellites, that's the advantage, right? You're covering all these little activity centers that would otherwise cost a bomb to connect via terrestrial systems, right? If you were to put fiber to all these places, it would cost billions of dollars. But with a satellite, you have the distribution system built into it.
00:21:29
Speaker
So that's the beauty of satellite and it's also nicely meeting a real market that has a willingness to pay of an entire satellite if you aggregate the volume over very large expanse of territories. And so that's what we do. We've just taken that model and we're connecting
00:21:57
Speaker
I mean, the satellite that we launched was designed first. I put the first blueprint myself and then a lot of the colleagues that I hired over the years just added a little bit of their talent to it. And then we came up with a final blueprint of a satellite that looks a little bit like a mobile network from space and that connects at a very high with very high speed internet.
00:22:24
Speaker
You know, all those commodity production centers of the developing world, Indonesia, Philippines, Papua New Guinea, Pacific Islands, even Nepal, French Polynesia, Fiji, you name it, all these places.
00:22:40
Speaker
and is able to connect a very remote area with an internet quality that is better than what you would have in a capital city in these countries at a price point that is absolutely affordable for a small office. We are also connecting, of course, all government facilities, schools, hospitals,
00:23:05
Speaker
you know, civil defense, even courts of justice, communities at large.
Entrepreneurial Advice and Reflections
00:23:11
Speaker
We're connecting mining, renewable energy farms, windmill farms, and solar farms. Even reconnecting a dam is a dam that produces hydroelectric power in one of the islands of the Pacific. And, you know, it needs to be remotely controlled. So we're connecting that dam with
00:23:33
Speaker
with satellites so yeah all kind of things even of course resorts remote resorts and the law the list is very very long but of course the most important facilities that we connect our schools and hospitals and when we connect hospitals we provide a fundamental lifeline to the people who are treated in the hospital
00:23:59
Speaker
we're providing, you know, sometimes life-saving connectivity for critical cases that are, you know, seen in these regions. People live in very precarious conditions. And of course we do also a lot of disaster recovery with
00:24:18
Speaker
We've contributed to the evacuation, when one of our system contributed to coordinating the evacuation of a 10,000 people island where a volcano erupted. We also reconnected the country of Tonga, the country, I mean, some regions of the Philippines, more recently an entire region of the Solomon Island after their cable got cut, for instance. Because when undersea cable get cut,
00:24:47
Speaker
need to reconnect.
00:24:49
Speaker
quickly, you have all of a sudden an entire regions that are in the dark. And to be reconnected and satellite is great for that. You can reestablish huge amount of connectivity in a blink. But we've also provided disaster response after many tropical cyclones, typhoons in the Philippines, Vanuatu, Fiji, and even in New Zealand recently.
00:25:17
Speaker
So how many of you on the team do that magic? How big is the team in other words? The team is 80 people. We are a capital intensive infrastructure player. So we have people in a lot of us are in Singapore, traveling a lot. But we have people in many different countries. We have reps in
00:25:43
Speaker
in Fiji, perhaps in Solomon Island, in Papua New Guinea, in Nepal.
00:25:50
Speaker
in East Timor, Indonesia, Philippines, Australia, even in the US. So yeah, we have people in many, many different countries. But really what we do, we work with local partners. We have a network of 400 distributors that work with us and distribute our systems.
00:26:13
Speaker
We have resellers or so, licensed reseller, you know, telecom operators. We work with, you know, brands like Digisale, Vodafone, and people like that, and with governments as well. You know, government of Indonesia, Philippines, Papua New Guinea, all these governments are quite close to us when it comes to connecting their health care, education, as well as disaster recovery.
00:26:43
Speaker
So can you tell me in your view after these 20 years, what's the most difficult aspect of being an entrepreneur?
00:26:54
Speaker
Well, I guess for me, because I did this alone, I started alone. The most difficult is to be lonely at times. So it's not easy. I'm happy in a sense that I did that alone because I know that sometimes people who started with other partners now run into relationship trouble. So I didn't have to deal with that.
00:27:23
Speaker
However, it is sometimes an issue to be the one driving this, to feel responsible eventually for all the money that has been raised by the company. I have more than 90 shareholders in the company.
00:27:44
Speaker
I had to raise money you know from you know we started from you know at first we had like the first round was 15 different people we raised those five hundred five hundred thousand dollar and then again we had to complete rounds or sometime accept accept people who would just put ten or twenty thousand dollar as well as people who put twenty million dollars so we had we accepted all kind of money at that point from
00:28:13
Speaker
reputable individuals, but still people with their own means. And yeah, I felt personally responsible for that. And when the company was facing challenges, I very often felt alone. And I think that was the most difficult part. Because you have nobody to talk to. Even your family would not understand what you're going through.
00:28:42
Speaker
And on the flip side the most rewarding part of being an entrepreneur for you.
00:28:49
Speaker
Well, there's a few things. I guess the most rewarding, of course, which is not something I'm necessarily directly in touch with, is the fact that we have saved lives. Of course, that's the ultimate reward for the project. The estimation today is we have saved so far approximately 3,000 lives.
00:29:14
Speaker
So it's a huge number of people that would otherwise not be here on Earth. So that's something that's...
00:29:26
Speaker
a huge feel good for me and the whole team and everybody and even investors who have contributed to it. But I guess the second most rewarding part for me is it's kind of silly, but it's the fact that I have employees that I can pay salaries to. I create livelihood among the employees.
00:29:52
Speaker
And that's something that makes me feel valuable. It makes me feel, I don't know if valuable is the right word, but it makes me feel useful. It makes me feel like we've created something.
00:30:08
Speaker
Eventually, you know, when shareholders will be able to sell their shares, today already I'm quite proud to have been able to multiply the value of the shares. Of course, they haven't sold yet, but the value of the shares of those who have believed in me early on and that hopefully I'll allow them one day to exit and one day soon, hopefully.
Evolution of the Satellite Industry
00:30:32
Speaker
What's the plan there? Well, we were planning to potentially, you know, lease the company on the stock exchange. So in the fairly near future. So, you know, maybe a locket period. But yeah, I would imagine within a year or two, people should be able to move on. So that will be rewarding for me to see people happy that I have them make money.
00:31:02
Speaker
And then beyond all this, you know, they will always be for, you know, I guess, I don't know how many thousands of years to come. This little satellite, if nothing else comes out of this company, this little satellite will be floating in space and telling the story that
00:31:22
Speaker
that this has happened and that I was the one starting this hall and putting this machine in space and it will be the testimony of the of the of the journey. But you have plans for more more satellites. Yes, so hopefully your installation will be there. So can you
00:31:44
Speaker
just there briefly from broadcasting to broadband you are trying to help broadcasters move but can you just give us the basics of the industry in terms of where it's coming from where it's
00:31:56
Speaker
where it's now and where it's going. Just a very helicopter. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So look, satellites have started, I don't know, in the 1960s. That's where the first satellite came around. And then in the 1970s, the industry expanded to provide international telecommunication. That's when that was the main means of communication via geostationary satellite.
00:32:25
Speaker
between countries. You'd have Europe connecting and calling US via geostationary satellites. They were not very powerful machines. And then in the 1980s, these satellites became more powerful and were able to carry television, probably in the end of the 70s already. And so they carried
00:32:48
Speaker
they were basically broadcasting television channels that were received by cable head end. So those cable were pushing the television to every home, or then the play out center would then retransmit that via all those little antennas that people had on their roof to receive television.
00:33:12
Speaker
And then came around broadcasting what is called DTH, direct to home television. So you have all those little dishes that people put on their balcony or wherever and then they receive direct television from satellite. And that became very, very powerful. So that was the
00:33:29
Speaker
These were the heydays of broadcasting in the 1990s when I started my career. So in these days you'd have an expansion of number of TV channels you'll get via your satellite dish at home.
00:33:47
Speaker
And I was in this industry, in the broadcast industry before INSEAD. And I saw so many satellites being built for that and the explosion of TV channels to the point that between the early 1990s and the early 2000s,
00:34:03
Speaker
You know, the number of TV channels that you could access got multiplied probably by 50 or more than maybe 100 depending on where you were on Earth. So, you know, in the early 2000s, you'd have 500 channels on a satellite dish, right?
00:34:22
Speaker
And so everybody was flocking that industry and in the end, the technology further evolved in broadcast and people started receiving television via fiber with what is called IPTV.
00:34:37
Speaker
And you had compression scheme where a satellite would not only carry like 10 or 20 channels but be able to carry like, I don't know, 500 or 1000 channels. And then at that point, it was over capacity in space and that broadcast industry started declining.
00:34:55
Speaker
It's still a huge cash cow today. It's still feeding billion-dollar companies that operate thousands of satellites in space doing broadcast. But it is not a growing industry. Broadband, however, has started really becoming sensible in the early 2000s to do it via satellite.
00:35:19
Speaker
So you have satellite that we're starting to be designed to provide two way communication via small dishes that you would install at direct to premises. Basically at each premise you would install a little dish and you get high speed internet. And so that has grown over the last say 15, 20 years, but it's still a small industry compared to the broadcast industry.
00:35:46
Speaker
But it is growing really fast now. You have even people like Elon Musk himself with this little Starlink constellation taking on the world.
00:35:58
Speaker
putting a lot of effort in delivering broadband via satellite. So yeah, it is growing fast and we are in this kind of a crossroad right now in this industry between broadband growing fast but not necessarily representing the vast amount of the industry revenue yet and then the broadcast
00:36:23
Speaker
industry trying to scratch its head on what is next. But having a huge, representing a huge cash cow that is slowly, slowly declining. So interesting times. Tidal waves, right. So what advice you may have for students or recent graduates that are thinking about about entrepreneurship based on your experience positive or negative?
00:36:52
Speaker
Should they go it alone? Yeah, I'm still involved in SEAD entrepreneurship classes. So sometime I do the review of business plans here in Singapore on the Singapore campus. And yeah, so one thing I always recommend is that
00:37:15
Speaker
You know, first of all, the usual thing, right? It's an idea. Everybody has one, right? So the execution is everything.
00:37:26
Speaker
be required to execute your idea is unthinkable. The places that grit will take you are places you never believe you could go to before starting. At least that was my experience. The other thing is I would really recommend that to try to choose something they really believe they can sell.
00:37:55
Speaker
that there is something simple to sell. If their idea is complicated to sell, if they have a hard time figuring out if there is a market for this, if they can really sell it, I would not do that. And sometimes you can have very complicated systems that are a very simple answer to people problems.
00:38:24
Speaker
And so that makes it very simple to sell. And then generally I think people should not underestimate the power of a network. And I'm not talking about network of telecommunication network, I'm talking about human network.
00:38:42
Speaker
Every business needs a network. Reseller network, supplier network, presence network. Every time I've seen a successful business, it builds a network somehow. And I see a lot of those young entrepreneurs from INSEAD trying to launch an app, for instance.
00:39:08
Speaker
Maybe a little bit less now after COVID, but before COVID, I saw so many doing this. The app was the answer, and then you sprinkle a little bit of AI over it, and then there you go, right? So you have a great product.
00:39:23
Speaker
But even with an app, you need a network. You need a network to spread the word. You need a network to actually anchor your app. I'm not saying it's impossible to make money just with an app, but then you become vulnerable to competition.
00:39:39
Speaker
With a network, you dig a great competitive mode around your business.
Value of the INSEAD Network
00:39:45
Speaker
And that's what I think entrepreneurs should focus on. And finally, probably raise more money than you really need because you'll need that money. Right. At some point, always be prepared. So you already mentioned the INSEAP connection and
00:40:04
Speaker
forceful and all that stuff. But you forgot to mention the guy on the bike who was also an inside guy, right?
00:40:14
Speaker
No, he wasn't. He was introduced to me by the late Professor Patrick Turner of Entrepreneurship in Singapore. And in my previous startup that I had done
00:40:35
Speaker
At the same time of doing this consulting business in satellite, I was also doing hotspots in Singapore in the early days of the Wi-Fi hotspots.
00:40:49
Speaker
And I've done a little bit of that for a few years in parallel, so deploying hotspots, Wi-Fi hotspots. And then Patrick Turner put me in touch with that friend Sebastian, who later on basically gave me the guts to start the business at Casific. I'm just looking for all these connections, right? And also that's also a network as in
00:41:18
Speaker
a network that could be very valuable and works both ways. Absolutely, yeah. Actually, you know, a little story around the INSEAD network. I had now a colleague of mine, our regional director in Papua New Guinea.
00:41:40
Speaker
is Insead and he is from Papua New Guinea. I think he's probably one of the handful Insead graduates from that country. And he has an amazing story of grit also of pushing through the barriers of being born there and managing to get an Insead degree, an Insead MBA.
00:42:08
Speaker
bouncing from place to place and one day actually realizing that our satellite was providing internet in his country and he had just graduated from INSEAD and he sent me a message on LinkedIn and told me,
00:42:29
Speaker
I'm from Papua New Guinea. I see that you're providing internet there. And I've just graduated from INSEAD, which gave me an amazing stamp of quality for a guy like this. So I said, hey, I want to talk to you. We need some good people there. We need a regional director there in Port Morrisby. Where are you based? And he said, oh, I'm actually in a little village called Rivers Out.
00:42:56
Speaker
north of Pépinot in the south of France and it's actually it was about five kilometers from my vacation home where I was in I was spending my holiday there and I said just take your bicycle and come over so he came and then we had a great talk and then now he works for us in in Fort Morrisville
00:43:21
Speaker
I mean, that's how it works at INSEAD. It's just amazing that the network works so well. And for me, it's when someone tells me that they are from one of from INSEAD or sometimes from very reputable business schools as well. I mean, it's it's always a stamp of quality for me. Yeah, I just love all these stories. So and
00:43:44
Speaker
And to finish this, and then we're going to the quick round of questions. How do you think about giving back in general and then in Seattle in particular? How do you?
00:43:53
Speaker
conceptualize this and obviously it's not just about money. Yeah so look to me it's the work that I've done regularly I would say about every three months I do that with the various entrepreneurship professor
00:44:14
Speaker
right now I'm helping regularly Milena, the entrepreneurship, well Milena, just like yourself, actually. You know her? She's the entrepreneur. I don't know where she's from. I think it's from Croatia or something like that, isn't it? I think so.
00:44:35
Speaker
She's in Singapore, but she teaches in France as well. I help, I go there every three months for a day. I usually prepare two days in advance. I read all the business plans of the INSEAD students.
00:45:00
Speaker
And then I guide them. And I've heard that some of them have actually become entrepreneur and they've taken their business plan forward. So that's, you know, I like to do that. I think that's my way of giving back.
00:45:15
Speaker
Also, I'm quite proud of what I did with the rocket and the Force for Good for INSEAD. I think it's a good thing to put INSEAD on the map. A lot of people were asking me what that was. And then I had to explain and it was a good way of spreading the word that this is a great school and that it's focusing on
00:45:42
Speaker
I'm doing good on using money for and capital markets for the right thing.
Personal Reflections and Conclusion
00:45:48
Speaker
Yeah. Nice. All right. Are you ready for the quick round of questions? Okay. Your proudest achievement. Yeah, to launch a rocket in space here, to launch a satellite in space. Success for you is? It's having impact.
00:46:10
Speaker
Happiness is? It's looking back at what I've built. Biggest regret? Not being more selective with certain people I've included in my project.
00:46:30
Speaker
What keeps you awake at night? Or you sleep well? No, I don't sleep well. It's the same castle I was mentioning earlier. Wish you had known or someone had told you? How to build a better shareholder agreement. If you had to do it all over again, what would you change? I don't think I would change anything. I don't think I would be able to.
00:47:00
Speaker
Honestly, I think fate has taken me where it's taken me. So retirement ever or never. You see yourself with a glass of. Yeah, I have young kids. Yes. Yes. The answer is yes. I'd like to. Yeah. All right. If you had to pick one book, everyone should read the Blue Ocean. Okay. Most admired public person. Huh.
00:47:28
Speaker
That's a good one. Who is my public person? I guess I'm cynical, so I'm just probably... It's gonna be funny. Neil Armstrong. Okay. And most despised public person? Yeah, I'm not sure. I'm allowed to say it. Oh, well. All right. Last one. Are you coming to Reunion?
00:47:55
Speaker
I'd like to, yes, I've told my wife and we are planning to. It's going to be a bit challenging with the kids and everything, but I really would like to. I think I've missed all of them before and I've told her, look, we really should try. As a few faces I'd like to see again, it would be fun, even if not for long, at least.
00:48:19
Speaker
It would be interesting to see people with kids. Swing back to Fontainebleau. Yeah, it would be really nice. Swing back to Fontainebleau. We're going in France for two months now with the kids and then coming back to Singapore, then October going again. But yeah, look, we'll try. We'll try my best. And if not with the family, maybe all of them. But I'd like with the family, I would be cool. Yeah.
00:48:43
Speaker
It would be awesome to see you. So it's October 6th, 2023, Pontebleau. And the gala dinner is at the Chateau on October 7th. And I can finally say that this was a conversation with Christian Patero, serial entrepreneur and founder, CEO of Casific, a guy who decided he wants his life to be useful. Thank you very much for your time and your do good attitude, Christian. And I'm very much looking forward to hopefully seeing you.
00:49:12
Speaker
in Fontainebleau in October, but maybe also in the summer. So thank you so much. Thanks, Milena. You were listening to the Republic of Insead 20 years later or 3D podcast edition. It is my hope to remind everyone what an interesting and there I say colorful bunch of people we are and how much we can contribute to each other, be it through ideas, knowledge or mere inspiration.
00:49:39
Speaker
The podcast is inspired by the original Republic of India, the yearbook produced on paper 20 years ago by Oliver Bradley and team. Thank you, Ollie and team for this contribution to our classes memory and for letting me continue in the tradition title and inspiration included. Creator and author of the Republic of India, 20 years later, all three deep podcast edition. Am I Milena Ivanova original music by Peter Dondakoff with help from their films productions.
00:50:08
Speaker
Stay tuned for more and remember to book your tickets for the 20-year reunion in Fontainebleau October 6th, 8th, 2023. Thank you for listening.