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In May 2006, a Filipino business man from the plastic industry Jimmy Dy together with his partners, Willy Ngo who owns a bus company and Mayette Cidro-Cubil who is acting as the chief operations officer, started a business named SYOBnow, Inc. SYOBnow Inc. stands for Start your Online Business Now. Its primary goal is to help other people start their own business particularly the small entities and people who want to have sideline business without leaving their jobs. SYOBnow, Inc. has connected both buyers and sellers together through the first Philippine online place of marketing goods and services. This has been possible through their virtual office which is the Web portal.

The idea on the business came upon Dy when he was in Shanghai in 2005. Dy had realized the impact of the Internet to the business industry and thought that the Philippines would harness the same technology. Though, Dy thought that it would take around five more years before the Philippines would be ready of his idea. But the realization of his idea occurred much earlier than the projected time because of the fast growth of the Filipino net surfers.

With the capital of 3 million pesos and a preparation for seven months, the business had started. About 65 percent of the capital went to the development costs. A project manager and seven developers from Minsk, Belarus where subcontracted to create the business-to-business portal platform, SYOBnow.com. With compliance to the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), SYOBnow.com uses the Linux- Apache- SQL- PHP or LAMP web development infrastructure. Because the Philippine is known as one of the texting capitals, SYOBnow.com added SMS capacity to the portal features which allows SMS inquiries to the sellers from the buyers’ computers. With this, SYOBnow.com becomes not just a trading company but an online marketplace. This allows buyers and sellers to post and promote their business or search and find other opportunities.

An information technology (IT) administrator with the help of three executive sales all based in the Philippines handles SYOBnow.com operations. Coordination with the IT department in Minsk is made to go all over the contents uploaded on the site. This is to ensure that obscene contents are avoided. The sale executives are in charge in the processing of offline registration and assisting prospective members.

SYOBnow.com cost around P10 a day and will be paid annually for the amount of 3,650 PHP. Once payment is made, you will be tagged as premium member wherein you can avail of the privileges offered by the site such as posting of more products and leads, receiving online inquiries which are received and sent through SMS alerts, priority postings on the portal search results, their on mini website within SYOBnow.com, and up to 10 megabytes free emails. On the other hand, free membership is also offered with lesser privileges. Free sellers can post limited products and services to sell and search, contact and send to buyers. Free buyers can use the portal’s search tools, post and send inquiries to the seller of the product they want to avail.

SYOBnow.com market continues its rapid growth. According to Dy, the greatest challenge for the business when they were starting is on how to educate people on the benefits of going online because numbers of Filipinos still prefer the conventional way trading . SYOBnow.com plans to expand throughout English speaking counties in Southeast Asia. It has provided facility for Filipinos to do business-to-business transactions online and achieve their dream of having their own business without giving up their current work.