On 15th December 2009, the 4th batch ileaders met up with the founder and CEO of ilemon, Jouni Keranen and Calvin Ng. I was the one in charge of presenting to the iLemon’s presenter. I made a mistake by presenting to Calvin, who was helping Jouni to set up his laptop, and missed Jouni, who was standing behind me. Fortunately, Jouni was nice enough to accept my apology after the whole presentation.

Jouni went on to show us some videos of the product of iLemon and it was interesting to take a look at how they integrate Social Networking System (SNS) with 3D virtual world gaming. SNS and gaming have been a growing trend in China, so by combining these 2 trends, it would be an interesting product in the market.

There were some takeaways that I had from Jouni’s presentation:

Firstly, recognizing market opportunities at the right time is a very factor whether an entrepreneur would succeed. “The right time” is heavily emphasized by Jouni, as well as other companies’ presenters. For the case of iLemon, Jouni and Co. have managed to identify both the growing trends of SNS and gaming in China, and recognize that combining these two trends would generate an attractive product. This is done by integrating SNS functions into 3D virtual world gaming. For example, webcam functions are utilized in a “stage performance” by a user real-time. Even though the international market for SNS and gaming is more matured than China, iLemon recognizes that this would be the right time to venture into the Chinese market, given the opportunities presented by these fast-growing trends in SNS and gaming.

Next, entrepreneurs should recognize their own limitations and not try to overload their business. By overloading and rushing things, they are usually bound to fail, due to their own limitations, as well as problems that would occur due to the lack of attention, resources etc. For example, Calvin and Jouni initially targeted the international market, due to their limited resources, as well as their experience in “Habbo Hotel”, the biggest virtual world platform. However, when they have realized that the Chinese market is more attractive, they focus their resources on the Chinese market, and temporarily suspend their work for the international market.

In addition, as a Chinese saying “天时地利人和” indicates, getting the right people is vital to a company’s success. Getting the correct people is an issue for both start-ups and mature corporations. These people have to share similar aspirations with the company’s vision, and Jouni and Calvin believe that these people are hard to find, and they are trying to do so via networking and word-of-mouth. Such a task is further complicated by iLemon’s desire to portray itself as a Chinese company with most of its employees being Chinese.

Last but not least, it takes time for an entrepreneur or a person to build his or her own credibility, which would in turn increase customers’ confidence in him or her. For Jouni and Calvin, they have worked in “Habbo Hotel” and such experience helps in their reputation in the virtual world gaming industry.

I have personally gained quite a lot from the presentation in iLemon, and I hope that the points I have summarized are useful for you too.

Tags: ilemon, virtual world

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 23rd, 2009 at 6:00 am and is filed under Shanghai. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.