[sgbuffett]

Poly grad who worked on an invention and through blood and sweat created a company that lasted 35yrs employing many Singaporeans. Yes some say the company has declined last 2 decades but look at the countless tech companies that have vanished - Gateway, Kodak, Polaroid, etc  Creative survived the hard times.

Sim Wong Hoo was snubbed when he took the idea to elites working at EDB who laughed  at his idea of adding sound to a PC. It was by chance when he was flying to US he sat next to  an American VC (Sequoia) who could see the great potential of his product to give him a few million in investments that changed everything. It tells us the judgement of our elites in the establishment can be highly flawed and if not for the determination  of Sim and the foresight of others, Creative Tech would never have existed. 

The importance of Creative is that it inspired many others in Singapore to try and some have succeeded. And during the last few decades it shows the inefficiency  of govt when they involved themselves in developing technology. Govt achieves very little using alot of money while people like Sim achieved a lot using very little resources through sheer determination. 

Sim and Creative 's success holds many important lessons for us going into the future. We cannot depend on the judgement of our elites if we want to do well. We have to be driven by our own determination and appetite for risk . Today this word "disruptor" is used so liberally but Sim indeed was a disruptor and his accomplishment  came not just from breakthrough technology but disrupting the Singapore system...a system that penalises risk taking and over rewards those who take the safe path of scholarship and a steady climb up the govt ladder. 

To close I will leave you with this story told by Sim Wong Hoo himself about his first exhibition in 1989 at CES for his first sound card  Micheal Jackson went to that CES and quickly skip through most of the exhibits but when he got to the Creative booth he stopped there for half an hour talking to Sim Wong Hoo. At that time Jackson could see the importance of putting high quality sound onto a PCs which could only produced beeps at that time.  Indeed a knowing what js important in the future is they key to doing something valuable in our life.