Brian Quebengco - Founder of and "chief inoventor" at Inovent Inc., creators of the Ilumina

“When you look outward you dream, and when you look inward you awaken,” claims Brian Quebengco, founder of and “chief inoventor” at Inovent Inc. 

Brian believes a person can achieve greatness by knowing and mastering one’s self.  A certified strengths coach, he advises budding entrepreneurs not to be afraid to take risks, and equally important, to build a team that complements one’s skills and knowledge deficit. 

In this interview, Brian talks about Inovent and his firm’s mission to uplift Filipino ideas and promote it on the world stage.  He said that the country can have its own globally known product, particularly in the technology sphere, within the next five years—given the cooperation of the private and public sectors, and their leaders.
 
Find out how Brian has risen to the occasion to become one of the most promising young entrepreneurs in the country.  Learn how he has survived through spates of depression and the mentors who have turned his life around.


Jay-R Patron:  I am here with Brian Quebengco of Inovent.  Brian, will you tell us what you do currently?

Brian Quebengco:  Right now I am the chief “inoventor” for Inovent and… basically we’re still a startup so I wear a lot of hats.  I am the delivery guy, I am the messenger, I give the receipts.  At the same time I am on top of all the projects and I manage the team.  We’re still in that phase.

Jay-R Patron:  What’s a normal day at work to you like?

Brian Quebengco:  A normal day at work…

Jay-R Patron:  Not just work… like a normal day for Brian (in general).

Brian Quebengco:  For me… I always feel that if I wake up at 9 o’clock I already wasted three hours of my day.  So I start my day at 5, leave the house at 6, and I spend three hours reading in Starbucks.  I read like three or four books in the morning and after that I start my day.  I do my e-mails and start with my meetings and if I can squeeze in to go to the gym, I work out a little bit.  I just juggle my day very sporadically—if there’s a meeting here or there’s client to visit.  Normally I end the day at around 11 or 12pm. 

Jay-R Patron:  Will you give us a brief walkthrough of your career?

Brian Quebengco:  Wow… I think it all started in the states.  My first job was in McDonald’s and I work odd jobs.  I was a janitor for a year and a half in the states.  A lot of hands on… if there’s one thing I learned from the states, six years working in the states, through high school and college, was the work ethics.  But then work ethics is not enough.  When I came to the Philippines I slowly discovered that I had this passion to be an entrepreneur.  That led me into taking the leap and starting Inovent.  So from odd jobs to coming in to the Philippines, we incorporated Inovent around 2004.  But even then I was doing odd jobs still.  I worked in an advertising agency.  I had a stint as an insurance guy.  And there were times that things were so hard in Inovent that I had to work in a call center just to survive, while doing Inovent.  So it’s really chaotic.

Jay-R Patron:  Will you tell us what Inovent is?

Brian Quebengco:  Inovent is a research design and development firm.  We have three business models—the cat, the pig, and the frog.  The cat is us being a copycat.  So we look at the industry right now and we ask ourselves, “Where can we make quick money?”  And we looked at advertising agencies doing industrial design work.  So we said, “This is it.  Let’s copy them but do only industrial design, because that’s where we’re good at.”  Surprisingly, now we have global clients and we have done regional works that involve 12 to 14 countries, just doing industrial design.  So we copycat it.  The second one is piggybacking.  This is where we do design outsource.  So an electronics company in PEZA zone would approach us and ask us to do something for them, we do it, we design something for them and then they put a brand on it.  So we’re just piggybacking on their demand.  And then the third one is the frog.  This is where we design in-house.  We leapfrog the market.  This is where you saw the Ilumina.  As a research and design firm, we launched the Ilumina.  So depending on what we’re doing you’ll see us in a different light.  Our clients sometimes see us as an industrial design firm, but sometimes the press picks us up as a tech firm.  It really depends.

Jay-R Patron:  What are the long term mission and vision, and the value that it purports to bring to Filipinos?

Brian Quebengco:  Our guiding north star—meaning a north star is something you can never attain but we always have to go towards it—is that we have to champion Philippine ideas.  We want to create new markets and add value to people’s lives.  That’s how we make decisions.

Jay-R Patron:  What is our prospect, in terms of promoting Filipino ideas, and actually developing them and putting them into realization?

Brian Quebengco:  Well, we’re 40 years behind everybody.  After World War II Japan was able to catch up through Sony.  20 years ago Samsung was able to do it for Korea.  On our end, we still are not doing it.  We have the capabilities in PEZA zone, we have the best management working for global companies, and we have engineers and software people that go to other companies outside the Philippines.  There’s no one consolidating everything so we feel that this is an opportunity for a small company like ours to be able to lead the pack, and hopefully a lot of companies will follow us. 

Jay-R Patron:  How long do you think will it take us to get to where Sony (Japan) and Samsung (Korea) are?

Brian Quebengco:  Five years.

Jay-R Patron:  Five years?  That’s a relatively short period for…

Brian Quebengco:  That’s because of technology.  I’m sure you already know the cliché “The world is flat”, and we’re not starting from scratch.  Sony had to start from scratch, Samsung had to start from scratch.  We don’t.  We have the best trained executives, the best software engineers, we have the might of the PEZA zone.  Everything is in place.  Give or take five years, we’ll catch up to them.

Jay-R Patron:  How are things looking for you and Inovent at this time?

Brian Quebengco:  There’s no way but up at this time.  Up because on a cash flow basis we don’t have an office yet so any money for us is more money than we need, and it allows us to have a war chest.  On the same note, we’re the only industrial design firm in the Philippines that is accredited internationally.  We’re a member of ICSID—International Council of Societies of Industrial Design.  We’re the first in the Philippines to be accredited.  Our standards are global, and we have the Ilumina that’s coming out that’s going to put us on the map.  So a lot of things is going good for us.

Jay-R Patron:  Have you approached any investor, have you gone through any source of funding?

Brian Quebengco:  For Inovent Inc., yes.  There are times that we had no money and we were even pawning our own stuff.  I would really beg investors.  I would even just ask for two million pesos.  Of course, they wouldn’t give it to me because we didn’t have any clients.  But now I think about two million pesos, we’ve come a long way surviving without that money.

Jay-R Patron:  Where did you get your sense of entrepreneurship?  

Brian Quebengco:  I guess for a lot of entrepreneurs, we don’t really say at one point in our lives that we want to be entrepreneurs.  It does not really work that way.  It’s just more of we see a need, we see something that’s missing in our lives or in other people’s lives so we have a strong sense of calling or responsibility that pushes us in a certain direction to answer that need.  And it just so happens that we go on the entrepreneurial journey.  Only then do we get to label ourselves and understand that, “Hey, I’m an entrepreneur.”  For me, what got it started was in 2001, I read a book called “Built to Last” by Jim Collins.  I saw that Japan had a company called Sony and I read the story and I said, “Why doesn’t the Philippines have one?”  And then I read an article by Gokongwei saying that—I’m not sure, don’t quote me on this—but Finland has nine million people but they came up with Nokia and we have 84 million and we don’t have a single brand.  This is it.  This is my calling.  I want to champion Philippine ideas, and since 2001 I never stopped.

Jay-R Patron:  Where did you get this sense of being able to do something greater than yourself?  Like instead of putting up Inovent, why not just found a simple business that would earn you money, get you more funding from investors?

Brian Quebengco:  Funny, when TJ Manotoc interviewed us in Mornings at ANC, he jokingly said, “People your age come up with ideas like baking cookies, or putting up restaurants.  And you guys did this!?”  First things first, I believe everyone is meant to do something special in this world.  I just happen to find my calling and that would have been it.  I mean there’s greatness in being the best janitor, there’s greatness in being the best waitress or accountant.  For me, I just found that this is my calling.  This is where I am best at. I just spend a lot of time understanding myself.  I always say this to people, “You first have to look inward before you move forward.”  And for any entrepreneur, although we have to constantly move forward, we should never stop looking inward. 

Jay-R Patron:  What was your childhood like?

Brian Quebengco:  Surprisingly, I was a depressed kid.  I was alone and my empathy was “skies the roof”.  I was very sensitive.  My parents are loving parents.  They were like any other parent.  But when they scold me, like any normal parent, I get so emotional about it.  So I grew up being very depressed out of that, not their fault, to the point that I attempted suicide when I was 18.  I attempted suicide again when I was 24, which made me end up in the basement of Makati Med.  I spent my whole years trying to fight my depression, and I realized one day that I should stop fixing my weaknesses but rather just focus on my strengths, which has always been there.  That changed my life.   At 29, that was the tipping point in my life.  I started focusing on my strengths.  I voraciously read, even to this day.  I am 33 now.  I have read around 400 books, just to master and know myself and know a lot more about…

Jay-R Patron:  You started at 29…

Brian Quebengco:  I started thinking this way when I was 29.

Jay-R Patron:  Really?  That’s quite late for… I mean age doesn’t matter…

Brian Quebengco:  Yes… quite late.  There’s a story.  I was in the Philippine Marketing Conference in Westin at that time.  I was 27.  I came in early and I sat in front.  When the whole conference started I was beside the CEO.  I don’t remember his name but for some reason I vented out and I told him, “I’m still in college and I don’t know what to do with my life.  I’m 27.  I’m lost.”  The next thing I know his name gets called.  He is the keynote speaker.  So he goes up on stage.  He stops in the middle of the steps in front of the thousands of delegates there, looks at me and speaks to me and says this, “It took me eight years to finish college.”  And then he went up.  It left an impact on me that it’s not how strong you start but how strong you finish. 

Jay-R Patron:  Would you remember who this person is?

Brian Quebengco:  Oh my gosh… I can’t remember his name anymore.  I’ll have to dig it up. 

Jay-R Patron:  What role does your family play in shaping you as a person?

Brian Quebengco:  I grew away from them because I lived here by myself.  I was a very independent kid.  When it comes to growing, I was a very self-taught kind of person.  But if there was one thing my parents always instilled in me was to be very generous.  They’re the kind of people that would give me money when I needed it the most, even if they don’t have money.  My parents are very simple people in the United States.  They have regular jobs working in…like my mom’s a simple accountant, and my dad works in an electronics store.  I mean they’re just really simple people but they’re very generous when it comes to helping me out especially when I’m really in need.  I’ve learned that from them and that’s why I easily give back to people when I can.

Jay-R Patron:  How about faith?  Faith in general, how does that play in your life?

Brian Quebengco:  Faith.  Faith plays a big part.  You have to have faith first in yourself and I have so much faith in myself.  I remember Will Smith said it best that there’s only one person you can bank on and that’s you.  You can only bank on yourself.  So you have to have unwavering faith in yourself—meaning you have to have faith that God gave you something special and it’s your job to find what that is.  When you find it, it’s like a diamond in the rough.  You have to believe in it, you have to polish it.  Actually you even have to dig deep to find it.  For me that’s how I view faith. 

Jay-R Patron:  What to you is being Filipino?

Brian Quebengco:  For me being a Filipino is about being filled with pride. I think that’s something that resonates with every Filipino.  I don’t know where it comes from.  I don’t know why it’s so contagious.  I don’t know if we’re born with it.  We have so much pride being Filipino.  When people ask me, what does a Filipino mean to you?  I always say we’re filled with pride about our country.

Jay-R Patron:  Do you do a lot of traveling or have you traveled around the country?

Brian Quebengco:  I’ve never had a lot of cash with me.  I’ve never really had the chance to travel that much.  But when I do get the chance to travel, which I can count with my left hand, maybe Boracay, the Tagaytays, the Baguios; in the states probably Las Vegas and San Diego.

Jay-R Patron:  Do you do any volunteer work?

Brian Quebengco:  Well, yeah, right now I’m a Board of Director for our alumni in the College of St. Benilde.  So that’s a lot of volunteer work.  And there’s a lot of things that we do inside the alumni–giving back to the poor, planting trees, coming up with scholarships, doing the infrastructure.  I also do voluntary work as a strengths coach using strengths psychology.  Although there’s a part of me that does it on the corporate side, but I also do it on a volunteering side to just share with regular people.

Jay-R Patron:  What is strengths psychology?

Brian Quebengco:  There are three disciplines of psychology ever since a hundred years ago.  There’s pathology which is fixing what’s wrong.  There’s holistic well-being, meaning a balanced life.  And then there’s the study of individual talent.  Out of the three disciplines, for a hundred years, the two were lost.  The only thing that remained was pathology.  So you have shrinks fixing people, focusing on what’s wrong in marriages, finding the answers and saying, “This is what you do”.  So if you look back, you get maybe 80,000 studies on depression and only 400 on joy, for the past 100 years.  So a lot of that discipline of strengths psychology and positive psychology has been left out.  For the past 40 years, an organization in the States called Gallup as been focused on it and they’ve been starting a strengths revolution making people realize that bad is not the opposite of good, it’s just different.  If you focus on bad, you get not bad; if you focus on good or excellence, you get a totally different answer.  So if you focus on what’s best in you, you learn something new; something so new, and that’s what strengths psychology is.  As a strengths coach I focus on what’s best in people.  I focus on their talents, or recurring patterns of thought, feeling and behavior that they can apply productively.  As a strengths coach, that is my main job.

Jay-R Patron:  Why is it important to give back, to do something greater than you?

Brian Quebengco:  Every leadership book, I always read in the last chapter… I don’t care if it’s John Maxwell or Tony Robbins… it always says give back.  They always finish the chapter in giving back.  I think it’s a natural course of nature where as young kids we absorb.  When we’re in our middle age we interact, we learn and we practice what we’ve learned, and when you grow old there’s a point where you have to give back.  It’s just that some people, at an early age, gives back faster than most people but… I guess the aspect of giving back also has a lot to do with leaving something behind–that you’ve actually helped people.  It can be in a very small way–giving back to someone in the street, or creating a really big company that in the end will give so many jobs and help so many people, that could also be another way of giving back.

Jay-R Patron: Has there been a moment in your life when the right person has told you the right words at the right time and at the right place that has changed your life?

Brian Quebengco:  I would have to say those are all the books that I have read.  I always believe that the books find you.  I would have to say 99 percent of my mentors have been the authors of the books.  I like buying books that are very narrative, not academic.  Narratives meaning the authors are speaking from their perspective.  There are so many things that they have shared to me that I use and practice on a daily basis.  Those are the people that have affected me the most.

Jay-R Patron:  Speaking of mentor, who would you consider as your greatest mentor… amongst all the authors or anyone?

Brian Quebengco:  I would have to say Jim Collins, Michael Ray, and Marcus Buckingham and Tom Rath.  I would have to say those four.  Jim Collins because he is the author of “Good to Great” and “Built to Last”.  Michael Ray, because Michael Ray is Jim Collins’ teacher… so Jim Collins learned from Michael Ray.  Michael Ray is a yogi, a spiritual guide.  And Marcus Buckingham because he started a strength revolution in me.  Tom Rath because he championed StrengthsFinder 2.0 which I used so much helping people.  So they are my four big mentors in life.

Jay-R Patron:  Why do you think is it important to do what you do?

Brian Quebengco:  It’s important to do what I do because no one is doing it.  I have to do it.  Sometimes I wake up and ask myself, “Why am I doing it?  Why can’t I just start a small business?”  But I have to do it.  I feel the responsibility that I have to do it.  Even if I don’t have money.  Even if I have to owe people money.  I have to survive long enough to do it.  What value does it give people?  Me and Mark we have a new term that we like to use.  We call it “newbie”.  Newbie entrepreneurs–meaning nation-building entrepreneurs.  We’re the kind of entrepreneurs that builds our nation to the point that we can be globally competitive.  Examples of that would be Sony.  When the founder said we want to make “Made in Japan” means something globally.  Tata of India, when they said they wanted to look at India and what they can do best that the world can’t do.  It’s about thinking global by building the nation.  So for Inovent and the Ilumina, we’re looking at building the best executives, the best designers, engineers, software people, the best production in PEZA zone, the best Global brand in the country to go head on with other Global brands.  That would be the best example of giving back.

Jay-R Patron:  What will you consider as your greatest challenge and how did you overcome it?

Brian Quebengco:  Oh wow… my greatest challenge was in 2005 where…

Jay-R Patron:  …that’s pretty recent.

Brian Quebengco: Recent yes… my ego was so high, my entrepreneurial skills was so bad.  A very close friend of mine, Sid Madaraso, invested half a million of his hard-earned money and I lost it.  I made a bad bet in starting the business and I lost it.  For the longest time I was very heavy and I’m not the employee type, I knew if I took an employee job it would take me a lifetime to pay him back.  I had to really stick it through and put up the business, and now that we’re finally doing good, I’m slowly going to start paying him back.  That was the hardest part, the heavy feeling in me that my friend worked so hard and I messed up.  So even if it was an investment, I wanted to pay him back.  Every entrepreneur goes through that, it just sucks when you go through it.

Jay-R Patron:  And what would you consider as your greatest achievement so far?

Brian Quebengco:  So far?  It’s bringing out the best in my team.  It’s amazing when you have just a simple idea but it rallies people and brings out the best in them.  I just sit there and watch.  When people ask me, “What did you do?”  I always say I didn’t do anything.  It was my team.  To me my biggest achievement is seeing my team grow.  They’re all heroes right now, they feel like heroes, they feel like rock stars, and I know I played a big part in that.

Jay-R Patron:  What does it take for one to be successful?

Brian Quebengco:  I love that question!  Success has a lot to do about living a happy life.  If you love to be a janitor and you’ve been doing it for 20 years.  You wake up everyday because you love what you do, you love cleaning, you love making people happy, then you’re successful.  If you’re a waiter, and you’re the best waiter because you love going to work everyday; connecting to people, trying to fix your tables problem, or trying to suggest to the customer the best dish, if you enjoy it, then  you’re  living a successful life.  For me success has a lot to do with happiness.  People always mistake what  weakness and strength really is.  They think that weakness is something you’re not good at, and strength is something you’re really good at.  But our definition as a strength coach, weakness is an activity that makes you feel weak, and strength is an activity that makes you feel stronger, meaning there are activities out there that you’re so good at and people come to you for it but everyday it makes you feel weak.  But yet there are certain activities that you do, that every time you do it, before you do it, while you do it, and after you do it, it just makes you feel so strong.  Time passes by.  You have that sense of satisfaction; you have that urge to do it over again.  For me, if you get to live that kind of life, if you find that kind of life or craft your work to make you feel that way then that to me that is being successful.

Jay-R Patron:  What would you consider as your passion and purpose in life?

Brian Quebengco:  My passion is to share what I have to everybody.  That’s the reason why in our company, Inovent, we don’t have a corporation, we have a cooperation.  I even practice it down to that, that everyone including me has equal shares.  I don’t care.  No one has control over Inovent even if I’m the founder.  So my passion is to share the best of the Philippiens to everybody.  My purpose in life are two things–to bring out the best in people and to champion Philippine ideas.  That would be my two personal purpose.

Jay-R Patron:  What advice would you give to budding entrepreneurs?

Brian Quebengco:  When you look outward you dream, and when you look inward you awaken.  Entrepreneurs should always spend time knowing themselves, listening to themselves, and mastering themselves.  At the same time you also have to start.  In short, the way we live as entrepreneurs is ready-shoot-aim.  We get ready, we shoot, and then we aim as we go along.  And you will find that as you go along, you should never forget to always look inside.  It works that way.  Another advice I could give is that the more you know yourself, the more you know the things that you’re really good at and you also know the things that you’re not good at.  So don’t DIY.  Don’t do it yourself.  Once you know who you are, focus on what your good at and build a team around you that will compliment your weaknesses.  These are very important advice that an entrepreneur needs to know because those are the foundations.  If you don’t do that right, I don’t care how great your idea is, you will fail, just because your foundation was wrong.  That would be the best advice I would give to entrepreneurs.

Jay-R Patron:  If there was one message that you would like to give to our listeners or readers, out of all that has been discussed tonight, what would that message be?

Brian Quebengco:  I would like to tell your readers that they should always find the life that they love.  You’re given two options in life–you’re given a coloring book that has traces already in it, all you have to do is color within those traces; or you’re given a blank canvass sheet that you can just paint on and paint whatever you want.  Sadly a lot of people rather go through that coloring book and they’d like to stay within that comfort zone.  It’s scary knowing yourself sometimes.  I want to encourage people to know themselves and express themselves.  Get a canvass sheet and not be afraid and paint a life that is just theirs because that’s when you’re happy, that’s when you’re successful.  And I always believe that when you pursue your passion, one day someone will pay you for it.

Jay-R Patron:  That’s it.  Thanks you very much for your time.