Why Sulit.com.ph is So Successful?

It was after I decided to try online entrepreneurship back then and when I was retrenched from the company I worked with (together with those poor employees like me who were very loyal to that company) that I noticed Sulit.com.ph is gaining popularity across the country. That was in year 2007, when I went full time on the internet to make a living. Those days were full of hope and dreams that someday I might be one of the dotcom moguls of the internet like those famous successful people like Sergey Brin and Larry Page of Google, Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, Marcus Frind of Plenty of Fish or Craig Newmark, the founder of Craigslist. But now I realized that it might just be a dream because I’m still chasing it. Maybe I don’t have the qualities needed to become even just a fraction of what they are now or maybe I’m not in the right time or in the right place.

Those successful online entrepreneurs are from the western world and so I was very skeptic that someone in our country like the Philippines can be like one of them. But it seems that I’m wrong because Sulit.com.ph changed my perception and now the biggest online classified ads in the country. I also read on Yugatech.Com that Sulit.com.ph is already sold with an undisclosed amount and sounds like it involved hundreds of millions. The founders were RJ David and her wife Arianne. There was a nice Q&A with the Founders of Sulit.Com.ph I read in Pinoy Tech Blog that can inspire someone who have a passion on the internet. One noticeable portion of the post is about RJ David who was a former Mechanical engineer  who left his field to become a web developer. He entered the IT industry in 2003 as a Software Test Engineer then moved on to be a PHP Architect / Senior Developer in 2005. By the end of 2005 he decided to go full time with freelancing. He said that the decision to leave the security of employment was brought about by the influence of the book “Rich Dad, Poor Dad” (by Robert Kiyosaki) on him.

And he also tried other offline businesses but didn’t have passion on them so he concentrated on his online ventures. Aside from his great classified ads Sulit.com.ph, he also have other ventures but didn’t work out. So to cut the story short and by analyzing what the founder, RJ David shared on Pinoy Tech Blog, in my opinion the real secret behind his success is “Focusing on His Strength”. Yes it’s good to have multiple businesses and I also believe on the saying “don’t put all your eggs in one basket” but if you put all your energy on what you are good at and concentrate on it, you can do what most people think as impossible. I remember what I read from the book The Power of Concentration by Theron Dumont as I quote:

“But the greatest man would not accomplish much if he lacked concentration and effort. Dwarfs can often do the work of giants when they are transformed by the almost magic power of great mental concentration. But giants will only do the work of dwarfs when they lack this power.”