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0 Summary Profile of the Entrepreneur

The Inventor of Pen drive

Name: Pua Khein Seng 

Age: 31
Hometown: Sekinchan, Selangor
Education: 1979-1985- SJKC Yeok Kuan, Sekinchan
1986-1992-Pin Hwa Independent school, Klang
1993-1997- Chiao Tung University, Taiwan-degree
1997-1999- Chiao Tung University, Taiwan-master
Occupation: Engineer/ president of Phison Electonics Corp
Current base: Taipei, Taiwan
Years abroad: 17
Status: Married

Mr Pua was born at Sekinching, Selangor in 1979. He was grown up in a small village
in Selangor. From the year 1979-1985, he was educated in SJKC Yeok Kuan. He continues
his secondary school education at Pin Hwa Independent School which located at Klang in
1986-1992. In 1993, he set off to Taiwan where he obtained the bachelor honor in Chiao
Tung University, Taiwan. Pua Khein Seng’s only aim was to complete his degree in
Electrical Control Engineering at the renowned Chiao Tung University and return home to
work in Malaysia. However, Taiwan has provided him the opportunity to let him think
differently as when he went to Taiwan early. After getting his degree honour, Chiao Tung

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University offered a place for him to do masters program[1]. After finish the courses, he was
working in Taiwan. Therefore, since the year 1993, he started his abroad journey in Taiwan.

1.1 History and background of Pin Hwa Independent School

In 1923, the school was originated by oversea Chinese at north klang and it was night
school. The total amount of student was around one hundred. In 1929, the school was move
to south Klang and the school was day school, the students at that year were 30. Mr. Wu fu to
launch sites develops the school in 1937. 1940 in Wu Fu Road, the E shape campus was built,
the amount of students were more than 1200. In 1947, the school was renamed to overseas
schools junior high school, the campus was continue being developed to o shape. The
students at that year were more than 1800. 1958 the school government subsidies, the junior
school renamed as "Chinese-language primary schools” and the Middle School Department
was renamed the "high school". 1962-due to refused transforming into government high
school, the school name change to Ping Hwa high school. In 1966, three floors buildings and
the Hall were built. In 1988, start fundraising activities, in seven years preparatory school is
Rm450 million. In 1990 five storey building was built for teaching. The year after that, the
auditorium was built, with six badminton field, 1 indoor basketball court and two volleyball
courts, and can accommodate up to 1500 spectators. In 2001, the air conditioning unit was
equipped in the auditorium. In 1994, a completed five-storey building and administrative
centre was built[2].

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1.2 History and background of Chiao Tung University

Chiao Tung University (NCTU) National was established in 1958, in Taiwan. It offers
15 bachelor, 41 masters and 29 doctoral degree programs. NCTU has a high ranking in
Engineering with the reputation as “the Taiwan-MIT.” NCTU attracts students from more
than 36 countries. NCTU leads industry collaboration and receives most of the research
funding in Taiwan. NCTU was ranked No. 21 in the world recently for the amount of ESI
journal papers in the computer science area. NCTU ranked 49th in the world in the
Engineering field in the Academic Ranking of World Universities reported by Shanghai
Jiaotong University in 2007. It is located near national laboratories and the Hsinchu Science
Based Industrial Park, NCTU provides students opportunities to collaborate with top high-
tech companies and participate in leading technology experiments. In addition, 64% of CEOs
and general managers in Hsinchu Science Park are NCTU alumni. The College of
Engineering has 87 faculty members and 2,371 students. Among the college faculty, 98%
have earned their Ph. D. in the areas of their specialties. The College of Management (COM)
of NCTU is accredited by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business
(AACSB)-International. The acquisition of this accreditation further strengthens the position
of NCTU COM in coping with the trend of globalization, and facilitates its collaboration with
prominent business schools around the world [3].

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2.1 Venture of Entrepreneur

After completing his master program in Taiwan, Mr Pua has been working in a local
company for 6 month. After getting much experience in working and has much technical
skills, Mr Pua decided to set up an electronic company in Taiwan. With his few course mates
who study master program with him in Taiwan, five of them set up a company which
focusing on USB technology. Two of the entrepreneurs are from Malaysia including Mr Pua
and three others are Taiwanese [4].
The company was set up by them in November 2000 and it was called Phison
Electronic Corporation. After 6 months, this company has developed the first USB drive SoC
in the world. Before the invention of the SoC USB drive, the development of the USB flash is
only collaborative effort but not intentionally collaborative. The first patent is design by Dov
Moran in 1988 of M-System Corporation. However, it is not looking like the pen drive we
having now.
At the moment they invented the USB drive SoC, Mr Pua is only 27 year old and they
do not know anything about selling. However, he is confident that the USB market will be
huge in the world. So they sought partners or traders who can help them to sell the product.
He then took the idea to Toshiba [4], which is the largest computer company in Japan at that
time. Toshiba help them distribute their idea in the worldwide market. The year after that,
Toshiba has become the largest inventor in pen drive and helped place the product in markets
worldwide.
With the smart strategies and partnerships, Phison Company has made its way into the
world market. As the partnerships, Japanese tech giant Toshiba has work as Phison’s largest
shareholder and customer.
Through out after a few year of his contribution in Taiwan industry, Mr Pua has been
awarded Outstanding Young Entrepreneur Award, Young manager Award and The President
Award of National Management Excellence Award from government of Taiwan.

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3.0 Company Background

Phison Electronic Corporation was set up in Nivember 2000 at Hsinchu, Taiwan. It is

currently the leading UBS flash drive, memory card and SSD controller in the world. The
company started with the world’s first single chip USB flash Drive IC. Other than that, it also
provides the NAND flash total solution, total solution provider and OEM services for major
retail brand names. In 2009, Phison’s revenue reached US$750 million.
The Phison corporation s the founder of Open Nand Flash interface group and the
member of the Non volatile memory host controller interface working group which both of
these groups are chaired by Intel Corporation. The reason Phison Corporation take the major
part in these society is because of the exceptional enginerring strength enables the company
to be a major player in industry standard-setting associations.
Phison Corporation Marketing Strategies making the company always is the leading
company in those fields. Phison Corporation Consist of the ISO certified product
development process, highly competent R&D teams, competitive niche products, leading
technologies and always provide the best customer support. It always satisfied the demand of
the customer in IC design, manufacturing, system integration or the total solution package.
All these advantages of the company enables the company penetrate in the Japan’s Market,
China’s Market, Taiwan’s Market, Europe’s Market and North America’s Market.
Phison Corporation always create some creative solution for customer by pushing for
new ideas thinking "add-value for the end-user", additional features are added to the flash
product to lead the industry. Whenever there is hunger for high speed data storage solution,
we deliver. They always keep innovation, efficiency and ultimate quality in mind to satisfy
the ever increasing demand of the data storage market [5].
In addition, Phison always adapt with the market changes and make changes for our
customers, partners and ourselves. This enables the company to adapt to various customer
requirements at any time, and our technology assists the customers in expanding their market
share rapidly. Phison aims to provide an all-in-one solution designed to provide general and
specific flexibility to meet and even exceed our customer's requirements. In product design,
packaging, driver, firmware, or any other requests for custom, Phison fully dedicated to the
sales and engineering team will work with our customers timely and effectively communicate
the greatest satisfaction. Through the Global 100 companies of several solutions, Phison
proved to be the reliable business partner, in the forefront of information technology.

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 3.1 Company Summary
Company Background
Name Phison Electronic Corporation
 Fully integrate environmental stewardship into the business of
Mission providing quality products
   Best-in-class services
   The best customer experience at the best value.
Vision  Provide Accessible Computers to Visually-Impaired Veterans
 Contract Provides a Standard Configuration for Visually-Impaired
  Veterans Nationwide
Quality Policy  Improvement of techniques.
   Stability of quality.
   Satisfaction of customer.
   Green Product
Environment Safety
Healthy Policy  Conform to legislation and keep commitment to customer.
 Save energy resource, reduce waste and improve continuously with
  vendors.
 Responsible for low risk and zero-occupational accident
  implementation.

3.2 Company Location

The Phison electronic corporation is located at No.1,Qun Yi Rd.,Jhunan,Miaoli, Taiwan 350,
R.O.C.

3.3 Product Innovation / Services

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 Phison electronic corporation is a Taiwan electronic corporation. It is mainly
developed the controllers for NAND flash memory chips. These NAND flash memory chips
are embedded into flash based products such as USA pen drive and memory card. There are
four major services are manufactured or provided by Phison company. The fields are flash
controller IC, embedded solution, OEM/ODM solution and industrial design [5].

3.3.1 Flash Controller IC

The function of the flash controller is to manage the data which is stored in flash
memory and manipulate it with electronic devices or computer. It can be divided to two
types- low duty cycle environments and high duty cycle environment. The example for low
duty cycle environment is SD cards, CompactFlash cards, or other similar media for use in
digital cameras, PDAs, mobile phones. Flash memory controllers designed are used in USB
flash drives to communicate with personal computers through the USB port at a low duty-
cycle. Flash controllers can also be designed for higher duty-cycle environments like Solid-
state disks used as data storage for laptop computer systems clear up to mission-critical
enterprise storage arrays [5].

3.3.2 Embedded Solution

Phison Electronics offers a wide variety of interfaces to the host system provides the
flexibility and easy integration with any system, in accordance with the requirements of
customers. SSD module family will describe the customer through a NAND solution with
minimal effort, and shorten the product development cycle. This engineer will describe the
customer at any development stage of production and clock.
Phison Corporation provides software development and consulting services for
Customers embedded product design in all its aspects. These include requirements analysis,
design, implementation, and support. Phison Corporation also provide support for each event,
with specific questions or problems.
Due to a person's software is only part of the full product, Phison Corporation also
provides custom electronic development. Phison Corporation specialize in custom printed
circuit board for data acquisition and control system products [5].

3.3.3 OEM/ODM Solution

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 Phison Corporation helps the customer in design and manufacture, and ultimately
brand by another company to sell products. Phison Corporation allow the customer to brand
the company production (as a supplement or only) without the need for organization or
operation of a factory. OEM stands for Original Equipment Manufacturer and ODM stands
for Original Design Manufacturer.

ODM in recent years increasing size and now sufficient processing typically provide
overall production of a large part of multiple client scale of production. This business model
the main attributes of the ODM brand owned or interior design firm to purchase products.
This is relative to the contract manufacturer (CM) [5].

3.3.4 Industrial Design

Phison Corporation has great advantage in mechanical design, industrial design, trade
design professional multidisciplinary team. Phison Corporation has creative Center designers
perform various product development responsibility project control and management.
Phison Corporation’s mission is to show our customers create procedure and create
the best solution. Phison Corporation can also realize the design of their increasing
innovation and expertise to make the idea of a dream. Phison Corporation designs time
international benchmark product quality is critical. In addition, Phison Corporation can fully
satisfy the designer's original ideas to complete the process and the CAID-based
manufacturing experience [5].

3.4 Human Resource

The available human resources for overall workforce in the company are 100
employees. 20 of who are Malaysians [5].

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4.0 Characteristic of a Successful Entrepreneur

Mr Pua has a strong characteristic. He established his business in 2000, without any
financial support. Before set up the company, he was working in a semiconductor company.
According to him, before set up a company, we need a specific collection of personality traits
and skills that let us see opportunities.

According to the talk that given by Mr Pua at IPI conference, KL convention centre,
in May 2010. Below is the few important characteristic of an entrepreneur. First, An
Entrepreneur must have positive thinking in a positive manner. Positive psychology is to deal
with business life cycles. Example, without any financial support, he with few course mates
set up a company and invented the USB drive in SoC. Even at that time no one believes that
they can design their own pendrive and manufacture themselves. Finally, Toshiba accept their
idea and sell them around the world. He never considered giving up even in the worst
condition worst [6].
Other than that, other important features are the independent and confident. He
explained that confident will help you to determine and make a lot of decision when others
suggestion are keep coming towards you. Confident in own decision insists on the course of
action they set out to accomplish.
He also said that an entrepreneur must be able to identify risks and has confident to
face it. A technology used for the calculation of intelligent risk-taking, gamble its own
instinct. Risk reward value will be the experience for an entrepreneur to achieve higher level
of success.
In addition, he also mentions that an entrepreneur must be able to do multitask at the
same time. At the moment the company is established, their company only has 5 people, they
have do design, manufacture, finance, marketing, and many more on company daily task.
He also felt that like the competition's attitude is very important when u start a new
business. According to him, you will feel a very active when you have compete with others.
This feeling will not let you lost the competition, but it will keep you to another higher level
of achievement. Once you have this kind of attitude you like and people want to do better and
your competition and greater than they are. Therefore, this attitude can let you further.

5.0 Challenge and Success

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 Mr Pua says that it was very difficult at the early state when they set up the business.
They were lack of capital. Before they invented the USB drive SoC, they do not have any
income and followed by lack of business plans, management issue. After they create the USB
drive SoC, they do not know the sales/marketing expertise. Mr Pua found out that many new
entrepreneurs including him have the technical skills in their expertise, but not the sales skill
to bring their products and service in front of their customers in an effective way. They are
too eager to promote their products and do not know the correct way and skill to
communicate with their target customers. Normally they do not have many contact networks
as well. Therefore, Mr Pua was struggling to define his target client at the first place [6].
Luckily, they planned to sell the idea to the Toshiba. Toshiba help them distribute
their idea in the worldwide market even nowadays Toshiba has become the main shareholder
of the company and become the main customer of the company. In 2002, the company added
one more shareholder which is the USB giant before this. This company is M-system.
In 2005, the Phison Electronic Corporation won Grand Prize of ASPA (Asian Science
Park Association) Awards. Two more electronics giant were invested in Phison Electronic
Corporation which are Kingston Technology and Hynix Semiconductor in 2008.
In 2008 may, it was the other milestone for the company. The company invented the
Solid Sate Drive Alliance (SSDA) and this make Phison Electronic Corporation become the
first company to sell SSDA in the world. In 2009, Phison Electronic Corporation Elected
Board of Director of SD Card Association (SDA) along with Nokia, Motorola, Canon, NEC,
HP, Sharp and others.
According to the research, the amount of NAND Flash controller IC shipped in 2008
by his company is 264.9 Million Units. Lastly, in 2009, Phison’s revenue has reached
US$750 million [5].

In 2010, the company now has more than 100 engineers in Taiwan and 20 of them is
Malaysian. Mr Pua has planned to set up a branch in Malaysia. The founder of Phison
Electronic Corporation, Mr Pua has been awarded Outstanding Young Entrepreneur Award,
Young manager Award and The President Award of National Management Excellence
Award from government of Taiwan.

6.0 Factors Influence the Success of a Technopreneur

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 The main reason he success in the business is because of timing. Many start enterprise
success is mainly due to the fact that they are at the right time in the right place. As an
entrepreneur, tracking the opportunity is important in the courage of success. At moment he
established the company is the time where there has the technology to manufacture the Pen
drives which was developed by him.
Other than that, experience is also one of the important factor enables him success in
business. He was working in a semiconductor company for 6 months which enables him to
learn the concepts of the flash drive, the architecture of the computer and the hardware and
the software interface. Besides that, during he was educated in Chiao Tung University, he
gained a lot knowledge either from degree or master. There has 6 years for him to learn and
focusing on the electronic components [7].
Business planning is also become the key of successful. It requires entrepreneur
Analysis of each business research and compile data, and lastly make decision base on the
facts as revealed through the research. In addition, the goal and the mission also take
important role. It will encourage and direct the entrepreneur to the correct way of success.
According to him, perseverance is also important to lead him to success. Before he
was married, everyday he is working for 15-17 hours. This long time focusing research let
him create his first product for his company.

Lastly, communication skills is very important nowadays, someone who got a good
communication skills, he may able to communicate well with others people, it is an
advantage to be success.

7.0 Conclusion

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 After did the literature review on the venture of Mr Pua, I knew that is not easy to
become an entrepreneur as I thought. A good entrepreneur requires a lot of characteristic and
good personal behavior. In order to success in this field, the dream, vision, instinct,
competing feeling and business strategy are very important on playing their role. I am willing
to do whatever it takes to make it to my dream, which is become a successful entrepreneur as
long as in the ethical way.

8.0 References

1. December 20,2010, http://all4one4all.wordpress.com/2009/12/20/6987/

2. smpinhwa.edu.my
3. http://www.nctu.edu.tw/english/history.htm
4. Carey d., http://www.life123.com/technology/computer-hardware/jump-drives/who-
invented-the-computer-jump-drive.shtml
5. www.phison.com
6. Suzy, May 3, 2010, http://blog.toto-bobo.com/index.php/inventor-or-founder-of-pen-
drive/
7. Renee Banzhaf, http://answers.yourdictionary.com/technology/inventions/who-
invented-the-computer-jump-drive.html

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