Bell Beh, Co-Founder & CEO, Buzzar
As they say, if you cannot figure out your purpose, follow your passion; for that would lead you to your purpose. Starting her career as the Compliance Counsel at Marina Bay Sands, Bell Beh’s life took a sharp turn when she turned her favorite pastime into her profession. Being an aficionado of spatial computing and VR, Bell Beh, the Founder-CEO of BuzzAR, was overwhelmed to get an offer to work as a VR model for his friend’s gaming studio. For the first time, Bell got an insight into the immersive world of Metaverse and this gave her an impetus to forge her passion and skills to carve out a niche in the VR industry. Her dream turned into reality with the formation of “BuzzAR” in 2015, which started operating in full swing in 2018.
Unleashing the potential of an entrepreneur at BuzzAR
‘Metaverse’, the most hyped technological buzzword is yet to emerge and evolve from its stage of infancy. But in the present era of digital explosion, it is a unanimously accepted fact that Metaverse is the only NEXT BIG THING. Back in 2015 (that was 1 year after Facebook bought Oculus), the moment she wore the Oculus Rift headset at her friend’s gaming studio, Bell, a tech maven, got besotted with this intriguing world of VR games and 3D Avatars. She got transported to the world of virtual reality, the industry that Bell recognized as the one teeming with possibilities.
Driven by this zeal, and in a bid to bootstrap her startup, Bell started saving money from her day job and quietly as UX/UI team lead at the gaming studio. With the succor of some visionary leaders who shared a common interest in VR, along with her friend Ken Lim, Bell Beh led the inception of her first standalone entity, BuzzAR. As she said, “…we bootstrapped to our first million revenue before taking in the external capital” and this possibly filled her with the glee and gusto to move forward in her mission.
Tale of subverting challenges and gratifying passion
It’s very easy to set high goals in life, but it’s equally difficult to give a concrete shape to your dream and sustain it. We see our dreams fall apart due to a lack of determination and the wrong choice of action. In a world full of negativities, it takes a lot of courage, effort, and dedication to churn out profit from the job which you may love to the core. At the onset of her entrepreneurial journey, Bell and her friend too had to come across many such misleading and negative comments which she referred to as ‘white talks’, and this she ignored with all her vehemence. The entrepreneur talks about the fear factors, shrouds of uncertainties and doubts that could possess your mind so much that you can neither escape nor overcome them. Bell had a very tough childhood which strengthened her to face adversity with much resolution and resilience. To “mitigate” the FUD phobia i.e. fear, uncertainty, and doubt, Bell took up a Master’s Program in Law and Technology from the University of California, Berkeley, where she got the opportunity to study on a scholarship. It was there, and then, BuzzAR was born. She recruited her most talented co-founder, Ken Lim, to join her journey.
Core values of leadership
In the opinion of Bell Beh, leadership is all about training your mental faculties because for her, “Entrepreneurship is 99.99% failures, mistakes, reactions, and 0.01% “success”. A successful entrepreneur like Bell Beh knows how to deal with such mental fallacies and remains undeterred in her objective.
Her struggle became evident and iterant while apart from fiddling with her grades to maintain the scholarship at Berkeley, Bell had to attend tech conferences with the big techies to upskill herself with the latest technology. Shuttling between Asia and the US finally yielded results and Bell nailed a project of 6 figure US dollars. With an unswerving loyalty to her mission, over the first four years, the entrepreneur could bag a sales turnover of 1.8M US dollars and declare half a million profits. In the last financial year, the profit of BuzzAR skyrocketed to 8 times their previous amount.
The culture that cultivates values of entrepreneurship
Only a good leader who knows how to change her stumbling blocks to stepping stones displays consistency, agility, and motivation while driving the team spirit. At BuzzAR, Bell garners talents through creativity and excellence. In the words of the leader, “We are pretty open if our teammates want to work from anywhere they are, with enough flexibility, the team is incentivized well to deliver their KPIs.”
Plan for tomorrow and message to the budding entrepreneurs
Bell Beh, the CEO of BuzzAR is buckled up to hit the first 10 million revenue, in 2023. With eyes glittering with happiness and a voice laced with confidence, the leader says, “We want to increase the happiness index of the planet, starting with Singapore.” Her message to the rising entrepreneurs could surely embolden the spirit of entrepreneurship among the youth, “I hope young entrepreneurs could embrace themselves fully, and embrace FUD, be inspired, and be empowered to be who you are!”