GROWING up in the farming town of Iguig in the Cagayan Valley, Dado Banatao walked to school barefoot. His father was a rice farmer, his mother a housekeeper. Today, he is regarded as the Filipino version of Bill Gates, designing breakthrough chip technology in Silicon Valley that lowered the cost of manufacturing personal computers and allowed them to run faster and become more powerful. In 1996, Intel bought out one of his many startup companies for a reported $430 million.

          Gaita Fores, on the other hand, grew up an heredera or heiress – the granddaughter of J. Amado Araneta, who owns the Araneta commercial complex or Cubao as we know it. The Assumptionista and Certified Public Accountant held glamorous jobs, one of which was a stint in the licensing department of the designer, Valentino in New York. Today, Fores is no longer known as an appendage of her illustrious family or her high-flying employers. As culinary maven, Fores now makes P240 million a year running the Italian restaurants, Cibo, Café Bola, Pepato and its allied businesses.

          Then, there’s Jollibee’s Tony Tan Caktiong who worked as a busboy in his father’s Chinese restaurant in Davao. And SM’s Henry Sy who risked the security of an already thriving chain of retail stores by buying large tracts of land in sleepy, out-of-the-way locales to build his humongous malls. Or what about the Zobel de Ayala family, who at the turn of the millennium, downgraded its focus on the real estate business to invest in Globe Telecom, among others?

          They are among the 50 leading lights of business profiled in the book, GO NeGOsyo, Joey Concepcion’s 50 Inspiring Entrepreneurial Stories. The book is part of the education component of Concepcion’s Philippine Center for Entrepreneurship, a non-stock, non-profit group he formed after being appointed by President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo as her consultant for entrepreneurship in 2005. Since then, the Center has mounted entrepreneurship summits, thematic trade fairs, regional expos, and aired its own TV program.

          He also wrote the foreword of the book, defining an “entrepreneurial spirit” and identifying the three types of entrepreneurs– the classic entrepreneur, the corporate entrepreneur and the social entrepreneur. All three types are represented in the book.

          As are a range of enterprises, from retail (Folded and Hung’s Ronald Pineda), to food (French Baker’s John Lu Koa) to tech (Chikka Asia’s Dennis Mendiola) to telecom (PLDT’s Manny Pangilinan) to design (furniture designer Budji Layug).

         Happee Toothpaste’s Cecilio Pedro went head-to-head with the well-entrenched global brand Colgate when the latter junked their contract with Pedro who supplied the giant with collapsible aluminum toothpaste tubes. Seeing that his business would soon be made obsolete, Pedro decided to use his existing facilities to manufacture his own toothpaste.

         On a backpacking trip to Europe, Jay Aldeguer of Island Souvenirs, a chain of souvenir T-shirt shops, said he brought home T-shirts as pasalubong because they were lighter and more practical. Which got him thinking why the souvenir T-shirt market in the Philippines sported designs that hadn’t changed in 10 years. So he decided to make his own.

          TV host Paolo Bediones understood his popularity had a sell-by date. “Showbiz is temporary, period!” he told writer Arnel Ramos. “Iilan lang ang Sharon Cuneta, ang Vilma Santos, Aga Muhlach…. Wala akong delusions of grandeur that I can last that long….” So Paolo invested his lucrative showbiz earnings on as many as eight businesses, including a dental center that provides everything from bleaching, veneering and orthodontic work, to a marketing company to a privilege card. His secret to going where he does? He should like his ventures, he said, and they have to be “something where I can employ people and hopefully affect their lives.”

          For Gaita Fores, it was recognizing Italian food was what she really liked to do in spite of her CPA background. As it was for Ben Colayco, a passionate gamer who was unsure about what to do until his father, Nonoy saw the opportunity of making money off gaming during a trip to Korea. Together they turned the online role-playing game Ragnarok into a local phenomenon and managed to get gamers to pay for the privilege of playing.

          As Prof. Ferreria says in his foreword: “The entrepreneurial spirit can be made and can be developed regardless of age gender, social status, economic status, etc. But it must start with the discovery of the self and the willingness to be the best that one can be….They continuously ask, ‘Why not?’” ?

To order, contact the Secretariat, Philippine Center for Entrepreneurship, 5F RFM Bldg, Pioneer corner Sheridan Sts., Mandaluyong City, Philippines. Tel (+632) 634.5609, 637.9347, 637.9229. Or visit www.gonegosyo.org for more information.