My first failed Dotcom adventure

It’s history but it’s worth mentioning: 

In the year 2000, I started a portal that was called Warisanmelayu.
The idea behind it was as follows:
1. Get the Malaysian Muslim community to have a great website where they can connect.
2. They would have individual look and feel when they log in to the page, unlike Facebook.
3. It will provide products: from news to Islamic themes and music to food etc.
4. It was to have its own trucks to deliver goods.
5. It would have been first ever to converge the internet with the TeeVee!

But it failed. Why?
I can list the reasons here, for your reading pleasure.
First of all, the country was not ready for such an internet boost with a professional website that could have been the local social media champion.

Secondly, former Prime Minister Tun Mahathir Mohamad decided to have it on KIV after apparently reading it on a trip to Japan.

I was approached by a local company that offered me RM250,000 to develop the site but it had a sort of political string attached. I did not follow suit.

But after seeing the obvious, I was dragged to the Umno offices on the 14th floor where the site was built and we got thousands of responses on our soft launch.

Yet it failed
The party was not ready for the ‘green’ colour at that time, and its aversion for ‘green’ on the menu titled ‘Islam’ cheesed them off.

The post office – where I converged to meet some of the top people – was not ready for ‘internet’ deliveries…
Renong Berhad – where I went and pitched for the millions – failed to see straight into the business model.

And this after Mahathir mentioned on TV that the government will pump cash in the site to boost Malay access to a good portal on the internet…

And I got into a fight with the IT section at the Umno since they wanted the bulk of the site and leaving pittance to myself.

I pulled the plug and the rest is history!