Mr Tay Wei Kiat, who graduated Summa Cum Laude from the SMU School of Information Systems last year, has been named the winner of the IT Youth Award at the IT Leader Awards organised by the Singapore Computer Society on 21 February 2014.

Now in the 18th year, the IT Leader Awards recognise the contributions of individuals who have distinguished themselves through their achievements and contributions to the IT profession and development of IT in Singapore.

On receiving this prestigious award, Wei Kiat said “To have been selected from a field of very competent and capable finalists is indeed an honour. Receiving this award has been a very humbling experience for me. It will certainly spur me to continue to create useful IT products and services that will benefit society, as well as carry on my work of encouraging more youths to pursue IT as their passion.”

The winner of the IT Youth Award must display consistent integrity, exemplary leadership and instil a passion for IT amongst his/her peers; made outstanding personal contribution to IT in school, institute of higher learning and/or community in Singapore; developed new IT-based learning resources, services or applications; the innovation has a potential commercial value and the nominee has taken further actions to develop the innovation into a business venture.

This is Wei Kiat’s second national-level award, the first being the Future Information Technology Leader Award 2013 given by the Information Technology Management Association. 

During his SMU days, he also garnered numerous accolades, including the Standard Chartered iLab @ SMU Award: SMU Innovation Project Award, Best IS480 Technical Innovation, UOB Prize for Innovation in Retail Banking – Best Project Team. 

Wei Kiat first displayed his innovative traits when he created a desktop console and a text editor in the span of a few years after picking up programming skills at age 13. In 2007, he started an online puzzle called TheWickedQuiz.com that was enjoyed by over 600,000 fans all over the world. In 2009, upon entering SMU, he created a second-hand textbook marketplace BookINBookOUT.com which offered used textbooks 10-40% cheaper than new ones. BookINBookOUT is now used by over 85% of all SMU undergraduates and thousands of undergraduates from other local Universities.
 

Wei Kiat is currently the Co-Founder and Product Manager of Oompr! Pte Ltd, a social marketplace that empowers buying and selling through social integration. The company was incubated at SMU’s Institute of Innovation and Entrepreneurship (IIE), which mentored and guided the start-up in improving its business plan to clinch its first seed funding from Action Community for Entrepreneurship (ACE) Startup Grant. IIE also helped to find and engage an industry practitioner to be a mentor for Oompr!, as well as provide it with office space and meeting facilities for its business activities.

On some of the lessons he learned in his IT journey so far, Wei Kiat said that IT projects are generally time consuming and time sensitive, hence proper time management and good work discipline are important attributes one must possess. In addition, he initially had what he called a ‘Superman’ mentality - trying to accomplish too much alone and lacking a proper focus. That was until a mentor constantly reminded him that there is a limit to what a person can accomplish, it is therefore important to find partners whose strengths and weaknesses complement yours, so as to achieve success together. 

Wei Kiat has this advice for budding entrepreneurs: First, one has to have a "make or break mentality" which will provide extra motivation to achieve success.

Secondly, one must always understand the industry and have ready clients or audiences before starting a company. Wei Kiat said that the common denominator of his successful ventures is that they are based on clearly defined target clients and audiences who already have a compelling need for what he could offer. He cited an often used but very sound advice from Professor Desai Arcot Narasimhalu, Director of IIE: "Know who is paying and where to find them."

Thirdly, a start-up should focus more on sales or user acquisition. Most start-ups that Wei Kiat had come across focused too much time on building the product and neglected client or user acquisition. They spent months creating an innovative, polished and professional product that has little or no demand. Wei Kiat’s advice is to build a minimal yet viable product, test it in the market for demand, then gather relevant feedback to improve the product.

These constitute the ingredients towards building success for start-ups.  

[Photo: Mr Tay Wei Kiat delivering his remarks after receiving the IT Youth Award by the Singapore Computer Society.]