It’s been a long way since our founder, Mr. Earnpin Lee won the Venture 2002 business plan competition. Jointly organised by the Malaysian Institute of Management (MIM), the Mesdaq Market and McKinsey and Co. Malaysia, the competition drew more than 200 entries. Last week, The Edge Malaysia caught up with some of the finalists to see how they were doing, one of them was 1.com.my.

Initially, we all thought it was a great idea. Then we were short-listed and we went through some of the sessions with the VCs. We listened to what they had to say and some were things that we didn’t think about. Eventually, we realised that the idea was not practical because it would have been too expensive and difficult to implement,” says Lee

Lee did not proceed to implement the idea he and his friend Daniel first initiated. A true-blue entrepreneur, he laughingly confesses that he has never attended a job interview in his life. He knew early in life that he wanted to strike out on his own. Hence, he began taking on freelance web design projects during his university days, and saved up RM30,000 to set up 1.com.my in Dataran Prima immediately after graduation. Aside from that, he lined up projects that would keep him afloat for the first six months of setting up.

“When I first started, I was the only person in the 800 sq ft office with my desk and PC. For the six months or so, I worked, ate and slept in the office,” says Lee

Indeed, success never comes easy. His hardwork is paying off as the company now has a larger premise, and is running an electronic visa system which was designed from ground up for the Cambodian government. To date, feedback about the system has been very encouraging. Currently, 1.com.my is working on a new project that involves advertisement-space booking on all mediums, and is on the lookout for investors to fund the RM1 million project.

Reference: The Edge Malaysia, by Toh Mei Ling

More from Earnpin

Our publications underscore our dedication and commitment to value innovation. Below are books written by us:

Linux Virtual Server Setup

Earnpin Lee, Assoc. Prof. Dr. Lee Yee Loon, WanChing Lee – First Edition, 2004 Website Solution Series, ISBN: 983-2963-15-X, Penerbit KUiTTHO, Batu Pahat, 53 pages

In this book, you will find practical guide to setup a server with Red Hat operating system. The server is configured to support virtual services by hosting multiple domains in a single machine. It covers the installation and configuration of various services including web server, FTP server, SMTP/POP3 email, SQL server and etc. This book features expanded information on system administration, console tools and other resources that is applicable to real-world environment. Often used commands and system check list are included.

Learn HTML in 10 steps

Assoc. Prof. Dr. Lee Yee Loon, Abdul Aziz Bin Abu Bakar, Earnpin Lee, Lim Teong Yee, Jason Koh Choon Bok, Tan Kie Hui – First Edition 2001, IT-Lodge Series, ISBN: 983-2473-12-8, Prentice Hall, 78 pages

Learn HTML in 10 steps is a beginner’s guide to a popular markup language to create web page. The simple and practical approach to the subject makes it easy and enjoyable to learn HTML. A beginner is expected to be able to use the language to produce a simple web page in about three hours with hands-on experience under supervision. The ten steps cover the choice of editor, HTML basics, basic tools, headings, font, lists, hyperlink, images, background and tables.

Since 2002, we’ve been designing systems that improves bottomlines and efficiency.

With Kumomo.com, we aim to create an ad-space booking platform to match ad space owners with buyers. This project has also helped to build 2 schools in Cambodia.

The Cambodia e-Visa project began since April 2006, and has now served more than 55,000 travelers. We provided our technical expertise and experience in online marketing. Some travelers said that it’s the best in the world ;-)

A4trip.com is a global online guidebook store, where you can purchase the most updated guidebooks online and print them in handy A4/Letter sized formats.

We’ve been actively hiring interns from local Colleges and Universities. Since 2002, we’ve hired more than 20 interns, where some of them stayed around till today.

Web Developer Alliance (WDA) is an initiative to bring together the best talents in Malaysia’s web development industry. WDA facilitates the exchange of expertise and also helps each of the members when it comes to pricing and also to keep track of blaclisted clients. At the moment, we are about 50-member strong.

Over the years, we’ve built web presence for more than 500 companies. Online shopping, Content Management System, Email Marketing, Search Engine Optimization and Customer Relationship Management system, you name it.

We consider email as an integral communication medium when running our business. Hence, we advocate the importance of reliable email hosting to our clients where email is an important tool in the running of their business.

We love listening to feedbacks, especially negative ones. Hence, we love blogging. A blog also allow us to share with you our opinions on various issue concerning web development and how it affects you.