Rapheal John-Lall

Mazuree Col­in Ali, chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of Trini­Trol­ley, is plan­ning to launch the coun­try's first pri­vate­ly-owned busi­ness in­cu­ba­tor over the next 12 months.

"I would say 99 per cent of in­cu­ba­tors in the US are pri­vate­ly owned. I am talk­ing about in­cu­ba­tors that helped launch plat­forms like Twit­ter. I am con­vinced that a pri­vate­ly-owned in­cu­ba­tor will fos­ter a dy­nam­ic and ro­bust lev­el of en­tre­pre­neur­ship with­in T&T. I have plans to launch the first for­mal pri­vate­ly-owned in­cu­ba­tor in 12 months with men­tor­ship, train­ing, ac­cess to cap­i­tal, ven­ture cap­i­tal­ists and more," he said.

Ali spoke to the Busi­ness Guardian in an in­ter­view at Guardian Me­dia Ltd, St Vin­cent Street, Port-of-Spain, last Fri­day

In Sep­tem­ber 2013, Ali went to the Unit­ed States on the "A New Be­gin­ning Pro­gramme: Busi­ness and In­no­va­tion," a project of the In­ter­na­tion­al Vis­i­tor Lead­er­ship Pro­gramme (IVLP) of the US State De­part­ment.

On this vis­it, he was able to pick up many ideas on the busi­ness in­cu­ba­tors among oth­ers he in­tends to im­ple­ment in T&T over the next year.

The project was a fol­low up to Unit­ed States Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma's 2009 "A New Be­gin­ning" speech in Cairo, Egypt, and the 2010 Pres­i­den­tial Sum­mit on en­tre­pre­neur­ship.

The pres­i­dent's speech was such a land­mark achieve­ment and in­spi­ra­tion that the US De­part­ment of State and En­tre­pre­neur's Or­gan­i­sa­tion (EO) part­nered for a four-year ini­tia­tive called "A New Be­gin­ning: En­tre­pre­neur­ship and Busi­ness In­no­va­tion" Pro­gramme to fo­cus on busi­ness in­no­va­tion and en­tre­pre­neur­ship for 28 del­e­gates from emerg­ing mar­kets, de­vel­op­ing coun­tries, and coun­tries un­der­go­ing sig­nif­i­cant tran­si­tion.

Ali said the pro­gramme ad­dress­es im­por­tant is­sues and chal­lenges in ad­vanc­ing en­tre­pre­neur­ship, pro­mot­ing job cre­ation, en­hanc­ing ac­cess to cap­i­tal and cre­at­ing en­tre­pre­neur­ial net­works.

"In its fi­nal year in 2013, T&T was nom­i­nat­ed by our US Em­bassy and even­tu­al­ly se­lect­ed by the State De­part­ment. It is quite an achieve­ment for our coun­try and the US Em­bassy stressed the im­por­tance of show­cas­ing its mer­its. The three-week project in­clud­ed vis­its to sev­er­al states such as Wash­ing­ton, Port­land, Dal­las and New York," he said.

Busi­ness in­cu­ba­tors

Re­fer­ring to the Min­istry of Labour's IBIS pro­gramme and oth­er lo­cal busi­ness in­cu­ba­tors, Ali said the busi­ness in­cu­ba­tors in T&T have not met their goal of help­ing start ups and it is time the pri­vate sec­tor gets in­volved.

"Sto­ries mat­ter. Have you ever heard of any suc­cess sto­ries com­ing out of gov­ern­ment-owned in­cu­ba­tors that are spend­ing mil­lions? I plan on show­cas­ing every as­pect of my in­cu­ba­tor with hopes that oth­er en­tre­pre­neurs start their own in T&T. It will suc­ceed as op­posed to pub­lic in­cu­ba­tors be­cause stake­hold­ers will have vest­ed in­ter­est in see­ing your idea suc­ceed.

"We all want to suc­ceed and be suc­cess­ful. It is a lot deep­er than just re­pay­ing a loan. It is about a vi­sion and chang­ing the way we per­ceive and think. We should not have to re­ly on the Gov­ern­ment for jobs and cer­tain­ly not for our ideas. That was the whole pur­pose of that trip and its im­por­tance. It is about the Unit­ed States' be­lief that we as en­tre­pre­neurs are re­spon­si­ble for clos­ing the gap be­tween gov­ern­ment and pri­vate sec­tor. We owe it to our­selves as so­cial en­tre­pre­neurs," he said.

Ali said many good ideas are lost every­day in T&T be­cause young en­tre­pre­neurs do not have ac­cess to peo­ple who can help bring their ideas to fruition.

"Be­ing a past coach and guest speak­er at events such as Caribbean Dig­i­tal Ex­po 2013 and Start­Up Week­end (an in­ter­na­tion­al Or­gan­i­sa­tion that re­cent­ly start­ed in Trinidad last year 2013), I am aware of hun­dreds of peo­ple with bril­liant ideas that lack the re­sources to ex­e­cute their ideas to fruition. I plan on chang­ing that."

Ali said the prob­lem in T&T is there is too much re­liance on the State for every­thing.

"In the Unit­ed States, how­ev­er, the gov­ern­ment does not cre­ate jobs, they re­ly on en­tre­pre­neurs to do that."

He said there is not enough coach­ing in lo­cal in­cu­ba­tors.

"So I may get a few oth­er in­vestors and start screen­ing peo­ple with busi­ness ideas that would re­al­is­ti­cal­ly work. Then we pro­vide re­sources from a phone to a com­put­er to a room to what­ev­er is need­ed. We, as the in­vestors, would have our cri­te­ria on get­ting back the cap­i­tal that we would spent. But we will make sure that start up suc­ceed. So if you have an app you want to de­vel­op, come to Trini­Trol­ley and we will help you and you can use Trini­Trol­ley's re­sources and we will help you and give you a rea­son­able time­frame in which to de­vel­op your busi­ness idea."

Multi­na­tion­als

Ali said he vis­it­ed the head of­fices of some of the Unit­ed States' large multi­na­tion­al cor­po­ra­tions in 2013, which sparked ad­di­tion­al ideas.

He vis­it­ed the Nike World head­quar­ters in Port­land, Mi­crosoft head­quar­ters in New York and oth­er For­tune 500 com­pa­nies.

"They all ex­posed how they op­er­ate, and shared in­side knowl­edge, tools and skills for run­ning an ef­fec­tive busi­ness. Nike World head­quar­ters was most in­spir­ing, see­ing be­hind the scenes of how the com­pa­ny was start­ed, the chal­lenges they faced and how they got to where they are and, of course, some of their strate­gies and ad­vice. See­ing the Michael Jor­dan and Tiger Woods build­ings and know­ing that they fre­quent the head­quar­ters to 're­lax as a place of soli­tude' was un­be­liev­able," he said.

Ali al­so vis­it­ed Wieden and Kennedy Ad­ver­tis­ing in Port­land, one of the largest ad­ver­tis­ing com­pa­nies in the Unit­ed States. The com­pa­ny is re­spon­si­ble for top in­ter­na­tion­al brands like Nike, Co­ca Co­la, Chrysler and Face­book.

Ali said Wieden and Kennedy have a good in­cu­ba­tor pro­gramme T&T can learn from.

"They have a in­cu­ba­tor pro­gramme called Port­land In­cu­ba­tor Ex­per­i­ment (PIE). It is a dy­nam­ic pro­gramme. They bring in most­ly tech star­tups and there is a time­frame in which you have to com­plete your pro­pos­als. There is lit­er­al­ly a clock that tells you the time in which you have to fin­ish. It was a spring­board for many ideas," he said.

Ali al­so vis­it­ed Mi­crosoft's New York head of­fice.

"One of the top sales coach­es in the Unit­ed States, Jim Ry­er­son, al­so spoke to us about sales pitch­es and how to ex­e­cute sales. He trains com­pa­nies. Peo­ple from Ama­zon's sales team al­so spoke to us," he said.

From that ex­pe­ri­ence, Ali learnt that think­ing dif­fer­ent­ly leads to in­no­va­tion.

"Be­ing a game chang­er and adapt­ing to the cul­ture that sur­rounds is one of the lessons I learnt from Mi­crosoft. I think that is what we have done at Trini­Trol­ley, we have in­no­vat­ed."

So­cial en­tre­pre­neur­ship

One of the main ideas Ali got while on the busi­ness pro­gramme he hopes to im­ple­ment in T&T is the new fo­cus on busi­ness about not just gen­er­at­ing prof­its, but the role of en­tre­pre­neurs in giv­ing back to so­ci­ety.

He gave his ex­pe­ri­ence in help­ing to pack food in the North Texas Food Bank in Texas on the pro­gramme in 2013.

"I vis­it­ed the North Texas Food Bank in Dal­las and helped pack­age food. Af­ter they weighed the amount of food we pack­aged, they told us we helped feed 1,800 peo­ple that night! Then they showed us how we can im­ple­ment strate­gies in our busi­ness­es and in our coun­tries to help and be­come more so­cial­ly re­spon­si­ble as en­tre­pre­neurs."

He wants to im­ple­ment a sim­i­lar mod­el in T&T.

"I have al­ready be­gun speak­ing to restau­rants and food places that are be­com­ing more in­volved and they are be­gin­ning to see the so­cial im­pact for their busi­ness. Of course, it does not hurt their busi­ness ad­ver­tis­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties as be­ing more so­cial­ly re­spon­si­ble. I am show­ing them its a win-win sit­u­a­tion. If ex­e­cut­ed ef­fec­tive­ly, we can en­sure no one goes hun­gry in T&T again," he said.

He said busi­ness­es as­sist­ing the com­mu­ni­ty is some­thing that busi­ness­es in T&T do not re­al­ly pay at­ten­tion to and this has to change.

"We should not be re­ly­ing on the Gov­ern­ment to feed peo­ple or for jobs. It is the role of busi­ness­es and en­tre­pre­neurs to play this role. When you look at busi­ness­es in the Unit­ed States, this is where they are mov­ing to, they are giv­ing back to so­ci­ety," he said.

Trini­Trol­ley

Ali said Trini­Trol­ley, which he found­ed in 2009, has sev­er­al new ser­vices and fea­tures launch­ing next year that will change the scope of e-com­merce in Trinidad and the Caribbean.

Trini­Trol­ley is viewed by many as a lo­cal Ama­zon.com where con­sumers or­der goods on­line.

Some of its fu­ture ini­tia­tives in­clude part­ner­ing with multi­na­tion­al fi­nan­cial ser­vices com­pa­ny for an al­ter­na­tive form of pay­ment on Trini­Trol­ley which can be ex­tend­ed to oth­er e-re­tail­ers in Trinidad.

In­tro­duc­ing more de­part­ments on Trini­Trol­ley that would show­case ser­vices through­out Trinidad and not just the tra­di­tion­al phys­i­cal goods. The com­pa­ny is al­so mov­ing up the is­lands of­fer­ing prod­ucts and ser­vices.

They have en­joyed con­sid­er­able suc­cess from Pay­Pal be­ing in­tro­duced to T&T from break­throughs in ICT along with over 5,000 sell­er ac­counts from sell­ers across Trinidad and the world from Kiss Cakes and RIK Book­stores to the av­er­age man all reach­ing a wider mar­ket.

Trini­Trol­ley holds strong re­la­tion­ships with lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al con­glom­er­ates like Mas­ter­Card.

Ali has been nom­i­nat­ed for the T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce's Cham­pi­ons of Busi­ness Awards–Emerg­ing En­tre­pre­neur, to be held in Oc­to­ber at Hy­att Re­gency Trinidad ho­tel, Port-of-Spain.