How Startup PH Training Got Started

The reason may be simple, but the journey to where I am with Startup Ph Training is an interesting one. We might go back to my childhood aspiration of becoming a businessman. Way before the “entrepreneur” became a common word, I somehow have this idealistic dream of making a dent in the universe.

HSBC — from Call Center Agent to the Highest Paid Librarian to Training Coordinator

I joined the BPO bandwagon in the early 2000’s after working as a manager in a bar. I made it clear to my superiors that I wanted to be promoted to a senior management position. After several failed applications, I became an Assistant Manager/Training Coordinator/Librarian of HSBC’s E-Learning Team under Human Resources.

I was pretty much a PA, password resetter of online courses, guardian of books in the Learning Library, and other related tasks to training. But the one thing that I never had the chance to do was to train people.

Looking back, my experience of not being a trainer in the BPO industry gave me insight on how to build and manage a training organization.

Of Klaseko and Failing Fabulously

My dreams of being an entrepreneur came true in 2014 when I founded Klaseko. I thought at the time that “Klaseko is the one”. I was optimistic. I was ready to ready to change the course of enrollment by automating it. I had the funding and started hiring people to build a platform. However, there was one thing I ignored to do — focus on the customers.

Looking back, I failed to empathize with my perceived users because it never occurred to me to conduct an honest to goodness interview. I should have taken the time to learn more about the pain points and frustrations during the enrollment process. I may have done a problem interview, but it was biased. I asked leading questions that definitely leaned towards my perceived problem.

I left Klaseko in 2016 to the hands of my very capable co-founders. It was an emotional experience. It was like breaking up with the woman of my dreams, but I know I had to let go. If there is one thing that I learned from my failure in Klaseko, that is that I sucked big time. I sucked to get to know the customers and uncover exactly what they need. I jumped to building the solution right away without fully knowing what people will pay for.

From Startup Ph Mentorship to Startup Ph Training

In 2015, I started an FB group “Startup Ph Mentorship as my advocacy”. I didn’t have enough time to manage that page because of my role as CEO of Klaseko. The original concept was to match aspiring new and aspiring founders with mentors to increase their chances of success.

With some cofounders I met in startup weekend, we validated our assumptions. I didn’t want to make the same mistakes that I made in Klaseko. I went out and spoke to mentors and investors. I also spoke to founders that I was already in contact with who were asking me for help.

One thing that stood out consistently — The mistakes that I made during my time as a founder were the same mistakes they were making.

Most founders (like myself) didn’t have the basic “startup skills” required of them, Design Thinking, Idea Validation and Agile were a buzzword to most at best.

The Workshops

I produced my first workshop applying the same Lean Startup methodologies I was teaching. Make an assumption about the customer and their problems, test it with an experiment, measure the results and adjust accordingly.

Fortunately, it worked. Though not all of it has worked, it has worked enough for me to make a bit of living ever since. And now I’m doing public workshops for founders, private workshops for corporate, among other things.

Freelancing

Since then, I’ve been doing various kinds of work in teaching and advocating entrepreneurship and innovation in both public and private workshops, for private and government employees, for teachers and college students and of course, to the new and aspiring founders.

I teach it, sell it, produce it, create content for others to deliver and deliver content that others have created. It’s been a constant struggle and I’ve had a lot of doubters and self-doubt, lots of ups and downs but we’re here now.

Startup PH Training as a Startup

And now it’s time to step on the gas and grow the impact to even more people.

If more people began projects and startups with empathy, if more people knew how to fail fast, then I would have made my little dent in the universe.

We don’t have a grand solution idea yet (as it should be) but we have a problem worth solving, customers who have paid and users we want to help. Moving forward we want to practice what we preach and move from a freelancer to a learning startup, to a sustainable and scalable company.

So here we go. And if you’re reading all the way to this point, I look forward to updating you in our journey.

To learn more about Startup PH Training, please visit our website at https://startupphtraining.com/