We were on 8TV

26 Sep 2013Career4 min read

8TV's new series Self Made did a segment on Ow and me. They filmed at the office and at our homes, and it's hard for me to watch.

Ow and I were on TV. 8TV has a new series called Self Made, Thursday nights at 10.30pm since 29 August, about people who went out on their own, and one of the episodes is us. Here’s the poster.

The Self Made poster: black and white portraits of the people in the series around the words Self Made, 7 days to go, beginning 29th August, Thursdays 10.30pm, exclusively on 8TV, with two men sitting on a sofa in the bottom right corner — Guess where we are.

The crew didn’t just want the office, they wanted to film at home as well, so before the shoot I was cleaning the whole house … everything had to be spick and span. We only got married in February, and my wife ended up in the video too. On the day I was nervous la, but after a while they told us to forget the camera and just be normal, and somehow that worked.

A man in glasses and a white polo shirt at a desk at home, hand on his chin, looking at a monitor, with a blue wall behind — At home.

Most of the episode is the two of us on the red sofas at the office, talking about how we got here.

Two men on a red sofa in an office with big windows, one in a white shirt and jeans, the other in a grey T-shirt with his legs crossed — Ow and me, on the red sofa.

Ow and I go back to 2004. We met at church and we’ve been friends ever since, long before there was a company. He was a solid programmer even then, and over the years I’ve learnt to trust his code … I design, he builds, and it works. So when he says on camera that I’m the maverick, guns blazing, questions later, and he’s the one who wants the questions answered before he walks in, he’s right. He’s more a friend than a business partner, and one of the very few friends I can rely on.

That’s also why the office looks the way it does. Neither of us likes meeting rooms, so we don’t have one. Meetings happen on the sofas, and people say a lot more on a sofa than they would across a meeting table, where you only talk when you’re allowed to.

The team in a meeting on red sofas and a green rug, some with laptops, one sitting on the floor by a low table — A meeting, on the sofas.

The team came up a lot. We don’t hire staff, we bring people in as partners … we invest in them and they invest in the company, and if one day someone leaves to chase their own thing, that’s fine. We don’t count hours at a desk either, we count work done, because you can sit at your desk the whole day and be on Facebook. Some of the team work from home, and the rest is trust, which is why we’re so particular about who we hire.

Somewhere in between they got Ow and Enoch dancing on the Kinect.

Ow and Enoch dancing in front of a TV playing a Kinect game, on the green rug next to a red sofa — Ow and Enoch on the Kinect.

The serious bit was about fear. Most of us are creatures of comfort, me included, and starting Nerd Attack meant not knowing whether the company would work or when the next paycheck would come in. But nobody in Malaysia starves to death because they quit a job to start something. And no, we don’t have a five-year plan. Mobile moves too fast for that.

Watching it was hard. I don’t like seeing myself on camera, and now the whole family and all my friends know about it … embarrassing.

Self Made on 8TV. Our part ends at about 10 minutes.