A garage with two Ferraris and suiting up

19 November 2014

(Reprinted from The Edge – Options pullout, 17 November 2014 issue)

Dear Kam,
I’ve spent literally all hours on my business plan. I’m going to do a start-up and then I’ll be rich and travel the world. What do you think?
iBusiness

The garage myth is definitely not a Malaysian thing. The garage has a starring role in the creation story of big American corporations and rock bands. It’s a uniquely American myth that a company or band has humble origins in the family garage with nothing more than a great idea, some second-hand stuff and lots of hard work and ambition. And before you know it, they are Hewlett-Packard or The White Stripes.

Hewlett-Packard is the world’s leading PC manufacturer and the legend has it that Mr Hewlett and Mr Packard started the company in a rented Palo Alto garage in 1939. They were only there for 18 months, but Hewlett-Packard bought the old garage in 2000 and turned it into a museum, called “The Birthplace of Silicon Valley”.

Apple also famously started in a garage and, not to be outdone, Google recently celebrated its 15th anniversary in its original garage. They call their collaborative creative space the Google Garage. Microsoft has its own creative space, called the Garage. Rock bands like Velvet Underground, Ramones and The White Stripes may or may not have started life in an actual garage, but they and thousands of others are often referred to as Garage Rock because it makes sense that they first bashed out their driving sound in the sealed acoustics of a garage. But for every one The White Stripes, there are thousands of bands that fell by the wayside without ever glimpsing a record contract because their sound never found an audience.

These garage creation stories are all true up to a point. The founders of HP were no doubt hardworking and inspired, but both Hewlett and Packard were also Stanford University graduates of electrical engineering and they started their company right on the eve of the Second World War, which would require lots of advanced electronics (although their first customer was Walt Disney). Success certainly came through old-fashioned hard work and a gift for salesmanship but also through fortunate timing. Many of the founders of Apple, Microsoft and Google were graduates (especially of Stanford) and they entered a brand new market with brand new products. Steve Jobs and Bill Gates are famous college dropouts but they and their partners actually knew their stuff. They were not sons of rich and well-connected people who were simply given huge amounts of money to do something, er, you know, hi-tech. Instead, they and their products were tested in the marketplace. The American garage creation story may be a romanticised myth, but it does have an element of truth.

The garage myth is not a Malaysian thing. In Malaysia, we want to skip the garage stage altogether and jump straight to the big time. The garage stage has no glamour, and we want glamour. All too often, huge amounts of money are given to ideas with absolutely no basis in market reality, unless the market testing is something that somebody saw on holiday. And all too often, it is money that has been harvested from taxes. All too often, this creates an alternative economy with an alternative reality where the point is to raise funds and not necessarily to create a product that anybody actually wants. The important thing is the lifestyle that goes along with business, and not business itself. If there is a Malaysian garage stage, then that garage must have two Ferraris.

Dear Kam,
I’ve got this feeling that people at my office don’t respect me. I mean, is it normal to have your desk in the elevator? And it’s not even a desk. It’s an old pizza box.
Despondent

I had a strange out-of-body experience the other day. I have one suit and it is a spectacularly good one that cost me a lot of money. I bought it in a moment of madness and I couldn’t really afford it or justify it because I never have a reason to wear a suit. Somebody quite literally has to die before I wear my suit because I’ve only worn it to funerals. But the other day, I had to do something that required me to look a bit smarter than usual. Normally, I style myself on a homeless and/or casual-Friday version of the creature from the Black Lagoon, but on this occasion, I have to say, I looked fantastic.

So, I went to my appointment at an office that I’ve been to many times before and the strangest thing happened. Everybody gave me respect. I could tell that they were doing the respect thing because I could compare it with other times that I’d been to the same office and it was suddenly abundantly clear that what they had been doing previously can only be described as not doing the respect thing. I felt a bit conflicted by this change in attitude towards me. I was enjoying the respect, but I was also aware that I was exactly the same person as before. I just happened to be wearing a fantastic suit (and exquisite Church’s handmade shoes).

After the appointment, we went for lunch at a five-star hotel and again, I felt the respect thing. It is the job of hotel staff to be respectful to guests, but usually, if I ask them for directions to a restaurant, they’ll send me to the service elevator and get me to do the washing up. But in my fancy suit (and shirt from London’s Jermyn Street), they even did that ridiculous hand-on-heart salaam thing. Whereas, normally, I would struggle to get anybody’s attention, the service was suddenly excellent, fast and attentive. I could only surmise that it was because of my magic suit (bespoke tailoring from London’s Savile Row).

What lessons can I draw for this experience? Clearly, we judge people on their external appearance, which is shallow and wrong. Surely, I am the same person whether or not I am wearing a fancy suit. Surely, I am not what I wear but I am my ideas, my thoughts and my deeds. Isn’t that how I should be judged? They’ve got a problem with the way they judge people, not me. And yet, if I show I am making an effort by wearing a good suit instead of my usual “Frankie Says Relax” T-shirt, then I’m giving them respect, which will be reciprocated. Or perhaps I imagined the whole thing and my excellent suit was subconsciously filling me with a sense of self-respect?

Perhaps the real lesson lies somewhere in between, but one thing is certain: If you’re a man, then it pays to get a really good suit. But it will never be as good as mine, and I’m not going to give you the name of my tailor.

Reprinted with the kind permission of