I was recently interviewed by Barry for Temy’s Bright Founders Talk, a podcast featuring entrepreneurs and professionals from the software development industry.
During our conversation, I reflected on more than 25 years of international experience in automotive engineering, electronics, software, leadership, and entrepreneurship. In particular, we discussed what I learned from co-founding two startups—including CISIUM, an engineering-services company based in the Philippines—and how those experiences influenced my subsequent corporate career.
From Engineer to Entrepreneur
Entrepreneurship was not something I planned at the beginning of my career. However, after approximately ten years of professional experience, the possibility of building a company began to feel like a natural progression.
There were entrepreneurs in my family, so perhaps that environment had some influence. More importantly, I have always been motivated by challenges, continuous improvement, communication, and personal growth.
The idea behind CISIUM was straightforward: provide qualified hardware, software, and electronic engineering services to international customers from a cost-effective location.
We had seen large companies establish engineering operations in the Philippines and believed a smaller, independent business could apply a similar model. From 2009 to 2013, we served customers in Asia, Europe, and North America.
Great Engineering Is Not Enough
One of the most important lessons from that experience was that excellent technical work does not automatically produce a successful business.
Coming from engineering backgrounds, we naturally concentrated on delivering technically sound solutions. The more difficult challenge was commercial: finding customers, earning their trust, keeping them satisfied, and securing the next project.
You can have the best engineering or services in the world, but if nobody knows about them—and you do not know how to sell them—they remain in your garage.
Networking and sales are fundamental pillars of entrepreneurship. A founder must understand the market, communicate a clear value proposition, and create a dependable flow of opportunities. Technical excellence is essential, but it must be connected to a genuine customer need.
Is Entrepreneurship for Everyone?
My honest answer is no.
Starting and operating a company involves considerable risk and uncertainty. You invest your time, energy, money, and passion without knowing whether the business will succeed. Many startups do not survive, regardless of the effort invested in them.
Entrepreneurs must therefore be comfortable making decisions with incomplete information. They need resilience, initiative, and a strong sense of ownership. For people who prefer greater predictability and a more established organizational structure, a corporate career may be the better environment.
Neither path is inherently superior. They simply require different attitudes toward risk, responsibility, and uncertainty.
Balancing Vision with Financial Reality
I have always considered myself both a visionary and a practical person.
At CISIUM, our engineering-services projects generated the income required to keep the company operating. At the same time, we explored more ambitious product ideas, including early concepts related to wearable electronics and other emerging technologies.
Those product concepts were exciting, but product development required considerably more capital than engineering services. This created a tension familiar to many founders: the business must generate enough income today while investing in the possibilities of tomorrow.
Vision provides direction, but financial discipline keeps a company alive.
The Challenge of Sustainable Growth
The hardest part of growing the company was achieving sustainable growth.
Every new employee increased our capabilities, but also our expenses. More engineers required more projects, equipment, working space, training, and operating capital. Revenue might increase, but costs increased with it.
Growth is therefore not simply about hiring more people or winning more projects. It is about maintaining the right balance between capacity, customer demand, investment, and profitability.
Ultimately, customers pay for everything—directly or indirectly. Every investment must contribute to creating value for them.
Building a Team with Limited Resources
Like many startups, we could not afford to build a large team of senior professionals. Our approach was to recruit talented recent graduates, provide them with structured training, and help them develop into capable engineers.
I brought recruitment and management practices from the corporate environment, but startup leadership demanded greater flexibility and ingenuity. We often had to achieve results with a fraction of the resources that might have been available inside a multinational organization.
Watching young engineers develop was deeply rewarding. It was also difficult when, after receiving training and gaining experience, some left for opportunities in larger companies. This is one of the realities a small business must learn to manage.
I have never been concerned about recruiting people who might be more intelligent than me. On the contrary, finding talented people who can challenge your thinking makes the organization stronger.
Wearing Many Hats
A founder cannot limit himself or herself to one narrow responsibility.
During my entrepreneurial journey, I moved continuously between engineering, finance, recruitment, customer communication, project management, business development, and everyday operational work. In a startup, you do whatever is necessary to keep the organization moving forward.
My multidisciplinary education and commitment to continuous learning were especially valuable in this environment. I could move between hardware, software, finance, and management while still conducting a deep technical analysis when required.
This combination of breadth and depth has also been highly relevant throughout my corporate career.
Knowing When to Change Direction
CISIUM reached break-even relatively quickly, but eventually I had to make a difficult decision: continue investing fully in the company or return to the corporate world.
The business had potential. With enough customers, projects, and engineers, it might have grown considerably. However, the balance between risk and reward ultimately led me back to a corporate career.
Walking away did not mean that the entrepreneurial experience had failed. It meant recognizing that the time had come to make a deliberate decision about the next stage of my professional and personal journey.
Knowing when to persevere is important. Knowing when to change direction is equally important.
Entrepreneurship as a Real-Life MBA
The greatest benefit of entrepreneurship is the extraordinary amount of learning it provides.
Operating a company changes how you approach responsibility, uncertainty, people, money, customers, and decision-making. It develops initiative and ownership in a way that is difficult to reproduce in a classroom.
Entrepreneurship was my real-life MBA.
This experience subsequently opened doors in the corporate world. Large organizations increasingly value people who can think entrepreneurially—people who take ownership, act with initiative, work effectively with limited resources, and understand how engineering decisions connect to commercial results.
Regardless of whether a startup becomes a global success, the learning remains with the founder.
My Advice to Future Founders
During the interview, I was asked to offer one piece of advice to someone considering starting a company.
Based on my own experience co-founding two businesses, I would recommend carefully considering whether to start independently. Partnerships can work, but sharing ownership and decision-making is often more complicated than it initially appears. If you can build the company independently and hire the expertise you need, that structure may provide greater clarity.
Beyond that, three questions should remain at the top of every founder’s agenda:
- What genuine value does the business provide?
- How will prospective customers discover and trust it?
- How will it generate sustainable sales?
A strong idea matters. Strong engineering matters. But without customers, networking, and sales, neither can develop into a sustainable enterprise.
Watch the Interview
In this episode of Bright Founders Talk, Barry and I explore the realities of entrepreneurship, the differences between startup and corporate leadership, the challenge of building engineering teams, and the lessons that founders carry throughout their careers.
My thanks to Barry and the Temy team for the invitation and for an enjoyable and thought-provoking conversation.
