Success beyond his wildest dreams

By G. Sharmila

When Chan Kee Siak started a computer hardware business, he had no idea where it would lead him. He certainly didn’t expect to quit college to pursue his dreams, but that’s exactly what he did. And his journey so far has been a good one, he shares in an interview with KINIBIZ.

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It is a well-known fact that many successful technopreneurs are college or university dropouts. Take Bill Gates, who dropped out of Harvard to start Microsoft (and we all know what became of that). The late Steve Jobs was also a college dropout and so was Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.

In this part of the world, however, dropping out of college to pursue entrepreneurial dreams is unheard of. Becoming a college graduate with a professional job was what Chan Kee Siak’s parents aspired for him, and for awhile that was his aspiration too. But that was not to last, it seems.

While he was at college in 2000, Chan started a computer hardware business called Deep Blue (named after the IBM chess-playing computer).

“Because of that business, I thought: ‘I need a website to promote the hardware business’. So I started to explore web design; after I completed my first design, I realised I needed a web hosting provider. I started looking around for hosting providers, back then the entire Internet industry in Malaysia was at a very young stage,” he recalled.

There were already hosting providers in Malaysia, but he found their packages unappealing and expensive.

“So I became frustrated, but I always say that out of frustration comes opportunities. Many of the good providers were based in overseas. Internet infrastructure in Malaysia was at an early stage, there were no proper data centres. So most people hosted their websites outside of Malaysia,” he explained.

He finally found a US-based web hosting company called Ventures Online (which has since been acquired by a bigger company), whose offerings attracted him. He also noticed that it offered opportunities for resellers. So Chan decided to sign up for the reseller programme.

“Interestingly, that was also the time I faced one of my first challenges, because to sign up as a reseller, I needed a credit card and I didn’t have one at the time. I managed to enlist the help of one of my cousins, who gave me a supplementary credit card. So that’s how I started in the web hosting business – as a reseller.

“Then eventually the business took off, it grew very fast and I realised that the hosting business was much more interesting than selling hardware and doing web design,” he told KINIBIZ in a recent interview.

What didn’t he like about the computer hardware business?

“Selling computer hardware is very labour intensive, you can only serve one customer at a time, you have to travel to the customer’s location and have face-to-face meetings with customers. It’s also very time consuming and very competitive.

“Whereas the web hosting business can be done remotely and you can serve customers from anywhere. I also discovered that (selling) computer hardware and web design provide are one-time income businesses, however, web hosting provides recurring income, although you would have to start from a smaller base,” he explained.

As a reseller, Chan’s company was called Hostkaki.

“I chose this name as at the time my outlook was very Malaysia-centric; I wanted to offer web hosting services to Malaysians. But surprisingly my first batch of customers, most of whom were from overseas, made me see the potential of expanding the business worldwide,” he shared.

He eventually decided that he needed a more international name for the business, one that sounded more professional. He found the name “Exabytes”, a newly created term then, was still available so he registered the name and trademarked it. That was back in 2001.

Chan said somewhat sheepishly that he started the business out of his bedroom.

“I was born in Penang, my parents ran a hawker stall in a food court near Komtar, which sells noodles, mee jawa, and kuey teow soup. After school and on weekends, I used to help my parents at their stall.

“One year after starting Exabytes, I had my own office. At the time I was sharing office space with some friends doing software development and I was still a one-man show at the time. But it was kind of cool, because I was a student and I had an office. When I went to classes, I wore shirts and ties, and often got mistaken as a lecturer,” he laughed.

Did he have any customers turn him away because of his age?

“No actually, it was a new industry then, so one could not find any old providers. Also, it was an Internet business, so many things were transacted online; and also since day one, our strategy was to do marketing online and recruit customers online. So almost 99% of our customers were via online transactions, so we didn’t have any issues,” Chan said.

In fact, his staff strength when he started Exabytes was “0.5,” he quipped. “At the time, I was a college student, so I worked on the business on a freelance basis. So I was the 0.5 of the business. The business started growing and I eventually quit studying information technology at Tunku Abdul Rahman College in Penang.”

Chan was only 20 years old then.

“I started to skip lectures and tutorials, and then an exam. I came to a point where I realised I could not continue my studies because I had missed the exam, so I knew I had to (either) quit the business or my studies,” he explained.

Chan’s web hosting business was growing rapidly at the time. He told himself he would give himself a year to succeed or else come back and complete his studies. He could not wait three years to finish his studies and let business opportunities slip him by in the meantime.

“I was afraid my competitors would overtake us. That’s how I started the hosting business,” he said.

Did his parents object to him leaving college?

“Not really. Because I started the business, had certain results with it, only then did I tell them that I needed to quit college. It was not the other way around – when I quit and then started a business. At the time I quit, I was already making a few thousand (ringgit) a month,” Chan shared.

“Initially they were a bit disappointed, especially my mum as she had wanted me to graduate from university. But the business was really growing and had good potential, so she didn’t object,” he added.

What was the most unexpected thing that happened to him when he started Exabytes?

“The Internet business is more than you can imagine; I never expected to get customers from the US, the UK, and the rest of the world. When I started, I thought it would be a ‘neighbourhood business’, but eventually a big chunk of my customers came from overseas.

“It taught me that the Internet is full of possibilities. It allows you to do business with anyone and you don’t have to start with much capital. It made the startup process much easier,” Chan enthused, adding that the Internet gave him anonymity, as long as he was professional and got the job done.

Surprisingly, Chan has not had much of a struggle like many other technopreneurs.

“So far it has been a smooth-sailing journey. Maybe I look at things positively. I started as a reseller and that only cost me US$29 (RM110.49) a month. I always told myself that although I had stopped studying, I have never stopped learning. The entire industry was new when I started out, so I depended on the Internet for my learning,” he explained, adding that whenever he was faced with a challenge, problem or technical issues, he sought help from Internet communities and forums.

Did he have a mission for his business at the outset?

Chan admitted that at the time he had no mission, no big plans for the business. He just wanted to earn a side income, he never thought he would leave the college as his parents wanted him to finish college and become a professional.

“I never expected to become an entrepreneur. It’s just that I hit upon the right thing at the right time, and realised I had stumbled upon a gold mine,” he said.

How did he build trust online?

“Actually, you can build trust online, for example, although our business is online, we advertised in local newspapers. We also advertised online and the way we responded to customers and our fast turnaround times helped to build trust. We knew the formula and how to make things work online, so it was quite easy for us,” he said.

Did he learn that through trial and error?

“We learned through trial and error, and by observing other companies who are good at this business, then we fine tuned our processes and improved along the way,” Chan explained.

His persistence has paid off.

Today, the Penang-based Exabytes Network Sdn Bhd is the leading web hosting solutions provider in Malaysia and also the second-largest web hosting company in Singapore. The company currently serves over 70,000 clients, with over 100,000 websites, and over one million email accounts worldwide from over 121 countries.

In our next article, Chan shares more about his entrepreneurial journey and Exabytes’ business today.

Tomorrow: Growing the business