Manager@Work: Entrepreneur
The Edge - February 26, 2007
By Joyce Au-Yong

Interview with Maisie Chui,
Co-founder and Chief Marketing Officer,
Maestro Planning Solutions Sdn Bhd

Tell us about Maestro Solutions — what does it do?
Maestro Solutions provides both consulting and software solutions, and we help our customers find a balance between cost and service levels. For instance, when you start a company, you have to ask yourself: 'Do I want to be a cost leader?', that is, providing the best price in the market, or 'Do I want to be service-oriented?', that is, no matter how much it costs, your customers are given the best service. We help our clients, who come from the manufacturing, logistics and distribution industries, find a balance. We look for what's most optimal for them, in terms of cost and service, and advise them how to improve and remain competitive over time.

How did Maestro come about?
I was working as a marketing manager for Bell Microproducts in 1999. During this time, I saw the dotcom upswing and downswing — I saw what made a company succeed and fail. The excitement in Silicon Valley was incredible, and I learnt a lot from my time there. There, I met one of our co-founders, Aris Samad-Yahaya. Aris was also friends with another co-founder, Azreen Latiff, who was based here in Malaysia.

Azreen forwarded an email to Aris sometime in early 2002, which was about entering Malaysia's Venture 2002 Business Plan competition [organised by the Malaysian Institute of Management, McKinsey & Company (Malaysia), and Mesdaq]. So the three of us talked about it, online and over the phone, and we thought up a business plan and entered the competition. Aris and I moved back to Malaysia in October 2002, and we presented our final business plan in November that year.
There were about 250 to 300 entries for the competition... We had no idea that we would win! What really helped us was that there were a few judges on the panel who knew about technology and optimisation. We decided to incorporate Maestro shortly thereafter. As a prize, we got RM25,000, which we used to fund the company.

How else would you have gotten funding if it hadn't been for the competition?
We believed in ourselves, and felt it would be better to start Maestro with our own savings. It was really blood, sweat and tears! We did contemplate VC funding but we decided that our ultimate goal is to be listed, and we aim to do so by mid-2008, in places like the Middle East and the US.

What were the major hurdles you faced when you started your company?
When we started Maestro, we aimed to hire the very best but we were a self-funded company and our resources were limited... We decided to apply some creativity towards the composition and compensation of our team. We have also designed training and internship programmes that effectively develop promising fresh graduates.

Our desire to hire the best has paid off. We have had incredible talent join us in the past, and we have an exceptional team now.

What were some of your failures and what did you learn from them?
In the early stages of Maestro, we had moments when the team would work itself to near exhaustion. In many ways, this was the product of a team of highly passionate individuals who simply love what they do. We rapidly learnt, however, that this needed to change. Since then, we have incorporated company-wide activities such as bowling nights with customers, picnics, and other fun activities that help the team to re-connect and relax in a different environment.

What do you wish you had been told when you started running your business?
As a female entrepreneur in Malaysia, I wished that I had engaged in a network of female entrepreneurs and professionals from the very beginning. If there are female readers thinking of starting a business, I would strongly suggest that they try to meet and engage in discussions with as many female entrepreneurs as possible. There are fewer females in the tech industry, and it's helpful to have the support of a network. In the US, I was surrounded by more women [technopreneurs]. In fact, I only know one female [technopreneur] here in Malaysia!

Maybe we should look at how we would encourage women to be in the technology and science industries. I'd like to see it happen. I'd like to have more friends around me [laughs]. And they should start at a younger age — perhaps in their 20s, before other priorities such as getting married and having a family start to kick in.