Achieving A Breakthrough In Fundraising

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January 21, 2009

One of the greatest resources for budding entrepreneurs is Stanford University’s Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders seminar series. Every week, the program invites thought leaders from various business sectors and industries to share their ideas and experiences with aspiring entrepreneurs around the world. There’s excellent content for entrepreneurs here. I’ve RSSed the audio podcasts on my iTunes for so long now that it’s never occurred to me to share this on this blog.

Thanks to Yi Chie for reminding me.

Speaking of thought leaders, the other resource you should check out is TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design). The greatest and best minds of their respective industries and fields congregate to share their ideas on this platform. I’ve got this RSSed as well. This is one series I’d pay to attend if it ever comes to this part of the world.

Youth Entrepreneurship In Singapore Gets Boost; Makes You Wish You Were Young

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January 20, 2009

If you’re young and interested in entrepreneurship, here’s good news for you:

The latest Civil Law (Amendment) Bill has just revised the age at which you can start and run a business from 21 to 18. So while you won’t be allowed into some drinking establishments in Singapore, you still can be a tycoon and buy and run them.

National enterprise development agency SPRING Singapore has also recently launched two new entrepreneurship schemes for young, budding entrepreneurs: the Young Entrepreneurs Scheme for Schools (YES! Schools) and the Young Entrepreneurship Scheme for Startups (YES! Startups). With YES! Schools, educational institutions will be able to tap funds to build a student entrepreneurship program so go ahead and bug your deans and professors to start if your school doesn’t already have a program in place. YES! Startups matches S$4 for every S$1 you raise for your first startup through self-funding, schools or any other third-party sources, up to a maximum of S$50,000.

If you’re still in school and want to start a business, check these schemes out.

Doom And Gloom For Small Businesses In Singapore; Buggered By Greedy Landlords And Hypocritical Public Sector

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January 18, 2009

According to a Straits Times story, 131 small businesses in Singapore closed down last year – an increase of almost 25 percent over 2007, with almost 40 percent of these shutting down from September to December. A check conducted by the paper with 47 businesses found that nearly a third of them had either closed or are planning to.

This is hardly surprising. The global recession that toppled huge financial institutions and the economies of some countries will find small, fledgling businesses easy prey. High rents and poor sales continue to plague local small businesses, especially in the retail and F&B industries.

Even worse, there seems to be no respite from exceedingly high rentals from landlords, and no support nor sympathy from the public sector either.

Just before US Airways Flight 1549 crashed into the Hudson river after hitting a flock of geese that took out both its engines, pilot Captain Chesley Sullenburger warned his passengers over the intercom to “brace for impact”.

This warning would be appropriate to small businesses during this economic turmoil as well.

MyLinkup.sg – Innovative Tuition Agency Goes Web 2.0; Conducts Questionable Blogging Contest?

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January 16, 2009

mylinkup.sg

Picking the right home tutor for your child is an extremely important process, and it can take a long time to find someone suitable. And of course it should – the last thing you want is to end up with a paedophile getting anywhere near your children. Or a sadist – I remember my mom got me a English tutor during my primary school days who had the penchant of punishing me by attaching clothes pegs to my ears when I failed to meet her exacting standards.

But I digress. MyLinkup.sg is a registered home tuition agency that not only helps to matchmake the right tutors to students’ needs, but also manages the administrative details between both parties. Tutors and students can sign up online for future matchups. That’s nothing special, I hear you say. What may be interesting, however, is the way its using the Web for business – engaging communities on Facebook, Friendster, LinkedIn and even Windows Live. How’s that for a mere tuition agency?

One thing I can’t quite agree with is its engagement of bloggers via a blogging contest. It may sound like a great way to get extra online publicity, but paying bloggers to blog about how wonderful your service is without them having to ever try out the service is damaging to the credibility of both your site and any bloggers who do write about you.

I recommend talking to a good social media consultant.

Lost Zombies Scare The Bejeezus Out Of The Rest Of Us

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January 15, 2009

lost zombies

Horror-inspired zombie fiction will never hit mainstream in a big way – does anyone even recall B-grade zombie flicks such as 28 Days Later? But that doesn’t stop the genre’s legion of rabid fans who insist that their choice of fare should be elevated into mainstream popular culture.

Cue in Ryan Leach, the founder of zombie-themed social network Lost Zombies. His site’s goal is to create the first-ever community-generated zombie documentary/mockumentary. “The site has your basic social network features, but what makes us different is that we push our users to submit zombie-related pictures, audio recordings, stories and video clips that we are going to be editing into a feature-length film,” says Leach. Whoa, a crowdsourced zombie fan flick? Creepy. Interestingly, Lost Zombies has roughly achieved about a third of its target of 1,000 video and 10,000 photo submissions so far.

But shouldn’t it be easier to garner more submissions? After all, some of us already resemble groaning, ambling, brain-eating zombies when woken up too early in the mornings.

You’ve GotVMail – Concentrating On A Specific Market Bring Rewards

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January 14, 2009

GotVMail

Siamak Taghaddos and David Hauser met while attending the entrepreneur program at Babson College, located near Boston. Iranian-born (but Boston-raised) Siamak and Manhattan native David had each been involved in previous startup ventures, and were frustrated by the lack of affordable phone solutions available to very small businesses and entrepreneurs to help grow their business. So they pooled some personal savings, along with some funding from friends and angel investors (but no venture funding), and founded GotVMail in 2003.

GotVMail’s virtual phone service basically provides businesses a full suite of communications services to run operations – a toll-free or local number, Web delivery of fax and voicemail messages, a customized main voice greeting, mailboxes for employees and departments, a dial-by-name directory, “follow me” call forwarding capability, for example. And the online service allows you to use any phone – iPhone, land line phones, cell phones, VoIP phones, SmartPhones — without needing to purchase equipment or sign any long-term service contracts.

It’s an attractive deal for small business setups, and indeed Siamak and David pretty much planned it that way. Instead of creating a phone system that tried to be “everything to everyone”, they focused on a specific niche – entrepreneurs who want their businesses to sound bigger than they are and more professional. With this specific go-to-market plan, perhaps it wasn’t too surprising that they were profitable by their second month of operation.

Today GotVMail has served more than 60,000 small businesses, achieved the #66 ranking on Inc. Magazine’s 2007 listing of the fastest growing private companies in the US, and earned Siamak and David numerous young entrepreneur awards.

Not bad for young entrepreneurs who are not yet 30 years old.

Entrepreneurs’ Organization: Entrepreneurs View 2009 With Cautious Optimism

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January 13, 2009

According to the latest findings from Entrepreneurs’ Organization, if you’re an entrepreneur you are likely to be:

1. Concerned about the current economic climate, but are confident about surviving the crisis. Seven out of ten entrepreneurs believe you will ride out the recession. Interestingly, almost half of you anticipate an increase of revenues in 2009!

2. Concerned about obtaining funding. Money, money, money, it’s not so funny.

3. Ready to embrace “green”. Despite depressed economic conditions, more than one third of you will increase “green” commitments while 45 percent will maintain current commitment levels. Mother Earth, and the rest of humankind, will thank you for this.

4. Want to do good. Nearly a quarter of you will increase your priority for corporate social responsibility. About 60 percent of you will maintain your CSR commitments.

5. Think that the time for starting a business is as good as any. One in five of you is more likely to start a business now compared to last year, while more than half of you think it is equally as likely.

Download the full report, or check out the press release.

Event: Seven Keys To Being A Successful Serial Entrepreneur

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January 13, 2009

dan lejerskar

Dan Lejerskar is a serial entrepreneur, starting several successful companies including PFAB, a real estate development company, Prosolvia AB, a publicly-traded simulation compay, e-commerce and interactive 3D company RealityBUY Inc. Currently the co-founder, chairman and executive vice president of EON Reality Inc, Romania-born Lejerskar will be sharing his 19 years experience as a successful serial entrepreneur in an Infocomm Live event on 21 January 2009 from 6.30-9.30pm organized by the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA), in partnership with E27 and The Digital Movement.

Find out more here or register for the event here.

In Conversation: Heather Chi, Food For All

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January 13, 2009

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Most people don’t experience hunger in food-crazy Singapore. A look around the perpetually crowded food courts and coffee shops around the island reveal that food is certainly abundant and that there’s a lot of food wastage instead.

But the youths from Food for All intends to change Singaporeans’ mind about that. Food for All is an anti-hunger youth collective that intends to bring everyone in Singapore who is interested in, and tackling, on food issues together in dialogue. Its main work revolves around conducting research – such as its annual report on “Critical Food Issues in Singapore” – and assista Central Singapore to do a nationwide survey on food rations in Singapore. It is currently looking into establishing a food bank in Singapore, for food suppliers to deposit their excess stock, to be redistributed to the community.

I chatted with the young founder of Food for All, Heather Chi, on social entrepreneurship:

Q. Why did you want to start something like this? Tell us a little about the inspiration behind Food for All.

You can actually read about my story on my blog here. Basically, I became very interested in food issues after recovering from an eating disorder and got myself involved in a community project distributing food rations to poor people in Singapore, and was quite stricken by the extent of hunger and poverty in the country. I did more research and discovered a wide range of food issues, many of which like food security, food safety, hunger and food wastage, are very relevant to Singapore and the region. Food for All is a community and a space I have created for those like me, in Singapore, who are concerned about these issues and want to do something about it.

Q. Tell us a little bit about yourself, your passions and why you think it is important to contribute back to society.

I call myself an incorrigible pursuer of happiness because it’s true! I find great joy in creating opportunities for both myself and others to fill social gaps using our best skills – be they in event organizing, research, writing, art…even Facebooking! And that is essentially what Food for All is about. I believe each of us would be much happier if we use our best skills to create the greatest personal and community value we can – and that’s what drives me.

Q. Share some of the challenges that you’ve faced so far with regards to the initiative. How about opportunities?

Challenge #1 is volunteer management. I have had quite a bit of difficulties managing the teams when team members (including myself) frequently fly overseas or have very busy schedules. Indeed, many people in the social scene today are the same guys attending all the conferences and networking lunches, and are involved in 347640559 projects! This challenge, however, has encouraged me to adopt a very different approach to bringing people on board. Nowadays, I ‘date’ everyone who wants to come on board Food for All – meet them over a cuppa to find out why they are interested in food issues and the organizations – as well as exactly what they’d be interested to be involved with and to what extent. I try to give people what they want – which I guess is pretty new for an NGO! This has really enabled me to get to know people better, and develop real friendships – which help cement longer-term relationships and commitments.

Challenge #2 – “Resources for the Small Fry”. There are quite alot of funds available for community projects in Singapore but you need to ‘get yourself together’ and ‘get a safety label’, i.e. you have to be registered as a society (or better yet, charity) with a respectable Board of Directors, independent auditors, etc. None of my initiatives are close to this stage – which has really forced us to ‘go guerilla’: (a) finding mentors and financers – including unconventional ones like cafes – with a sincere and strong interest in our ideas, (b) using open source, free software (Joomla) and popular social networks (Facebook) to organize the team and publicize events, (c) occupying cosy cafes as temporary offices… and building up real credibility through doing solid work!

Q. If there’s something in this world that you’d like to change, what would it be and how would you go about achieving this?

Bring the control of food production, distribution and consumption to the people! Few people realize how extensively these processes have been outsourced (97% of our food is imported from mass production farms in developing countries and developed countries employing seasonal workers from developing countries… and a majority of our local F&B outlets are staffed by migrants too!) and this leads to a disconnection with the land upon which our food as grown, as well as the people who’ve shed blood, sweat and tears to get this food to us. I’ve actually produced a relatively comprehensive food report with a list of things anyone anywhere can do, with respect to a wide range of food issues, to intervene in the current system and make a change.

Q. How do you think the current economic downturn will impact on Food for All?

Since the economic downturn and period of inflation, I have been invited a number of times to talk about food inflation, the implications of this and how we can help mitigate the situation – many people are concerned about the rising food prices and we’re actively trying to compile a directory of food rations programmes in Singapore, as well as places people can get free food. These are only temporary measures though – a longer-term plan would be to look at how we can move around the current disintegrated food distribution system with middlemen (especially large retailers) and their high mark-ups!

Q. Does living in materialistic Singapore make us insensitive to social needs? How do you think we can encourage more youth to contribute back to society?

I don’t think so actually. Many other countries that are ‘materialistic’ like the UK and US, have a large proportion of youth doing sincere and committed community work. I believe the problems are self-censorship and apathy, which in part come from the comfortable life we lead here, as well as fears about stepping out, breaking from the norm, making a change. More opportunities need to be opened to youth but more importantly, these need to be opportunities that do not compromise the ability of youth to live a safe and fulfilling life. At Food for All, we always try to make things exciting – try our 3am food waste escapades! – but we find Singaporeans tend to be quite conservative themselves!

Q. Any last comments you’d like to share?

Try to make maximum impact with minimum cost and effort. Haha this is my motto actually! Very Singaporean but it’s amazing how much you can get done sticking to this!

Heather Chi, founder of Food for All

Ten Things You Can Do For A Better 2009

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January 6, 2009

By all accounts, 2009 is shaping up to be a very bad year. The global financial crisis that has wiped out billions of dollars and seen tens of thousands of jobs lost continues to stalk us from last year into 2009.

But don’t let that get us down. Here are ten things you can do for a better 2009:

1. Pick up a new skill. It’s a good time to learn something useful that will add value to your overall skill set. How about learning a new language? If nothing else, learn accounting to help keep your books in order. Most of us – including entrepreneurs! – fail when it comes to basic book-keeping.

2. Pay it forward. Once a day, do something good for someone without expecting anything in return. Help an old lady cross the road. Recommend a trusted service provider or vendor to a business contact. And you don’t even need to spend any money – a smile does wonders to light up someone else’s day. Karma aside, the feel-good factor is an adrenaline rush.

3. Finish what you’ve started. Focus on completing something that you’ve conveniently left aside for some time now. It could be that you haven’t updated your website for a while. Or perhaps it’s the long overdue maintenance works for your home. Finish it!

4. Network. Join business and social networking events to meet more people. Extend your circle of friends, business contacts and acquaintances. You’ll never know when you may need them.

5. Be more knowledgeable. Read more books. Subscribe to a good current affairs magazine. Personally, I subscribe to Monocle and found that my world view has changed since the day I picked my first copy up. Knowledge is power.

6. Start a side project. Do something totally different on the side that will give you another perspective in life. Start a blogshop. Support a cause. Found a social initiative to save the last remaining mangrove swamp in your hometown from reclaimation. My friend Kelvin Quee may be the co-founder of local startup JamiQ, but he also runs Interesthink and that makes him a lot more complete than most people I know.

7. Forgive one person who’ve wronged you in 2008. Seriously, this sounds like mumbo-jumbo but forgiving someone for an injustice done to you does really help you psychologically. Drop that weight off your shoulder and concentrate on the real issues in life.

8. Give up one vice. Smoking, drinking, whoring, gambling, porn, whatever. The amount of time and money you save can be channelled to something more positive.

9. Be more involved in your community. Be a volunteer in your neighbourhood. Join the volunteer corps, or even helping out at the soup kitchen. There’s never a better time to give back to society. I’m considering joining my neighbourhood watch to look out for crime around my district.

10. Maintain a positive outlook in life. Carry yourself with confidence and a positive vibe. People who are positive naturally attracts others to them. Nobody likes a dour person with a face that can sour milk.

Granted, doing any or all of the above will not help you single-handedly rebuild the world’s financial systems. But at least you can look back and feel some satisfaction that you’ve made a difference to YOUR life at the end of 2009.

Happy New Year!

Promeoh.com – Making Shopping For Bargains Easy

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January 4, 2009

promeoh logo

Shopping is a very big deal in Singapore, and shopping for bargains in crowded malls is possibly the most popular form of bloodsport all Singaporeans participate in. But as Vaasu Gavarasana found out, there wasn’t a single comprehensive resource on the latest information on shopping promotions anywhere in the market. A consumer had to look through a lot of places – newspapers, brochures, mailers or online sites – before forming a picture of what’s available. To take that “pain” away, Vaasu founded Promeoh.

The idea first came to Vaasu when he was asked for shopping advice by a friend who was visiting Singapore. Realizing that there was an opportunity, he quit his job, sourced technology, sounded out some marketing gurus and came up with the concept. Promeoh basically aims to provide consumers with comprehensive, updated information on sales promotions so that they can identify the deals that most interest them and go shopping well equipped with this information.

“We are not an e-commerce site – our objective is basically to provide information,” says D. Sriram, Singapore-based Promeoh‘s CEO. “The big new idea here is getting marketers a proper database of consumer reactions to different kinds of promotions and creating an engine for planning and executing sales promotions.”

Both Sriram and founder Vaasu are advertising folks who quit their jobs to start Promeoh. Sriram has some 18 years of experience and was also formerly CEO, Asia-Pacific for Starcom Mediavest Group. Vaasu also spent a similar 18 years in advertising, and was last regional VP at McCann Erickson. He started Promeoh because, as he put it, he wants to “actually live and breathe solutions instead of recommending them and walking away”.

“To us, entrepreneurship is all about finding ways to create value – for our customers and our consumers. If we can do that, we succeed, if we don’t, we fail – and either outcome is acceptable to us as the result of what we do,” says Sriram.

Promeoh’s key USP is also its greatest challenge

Sriram declares that a “comprehensive listing of promotions is our USP and is what will bring users back”. “There may be better places for a specific category – so people who only want that specific category might find that its better to go look in a superstore than on our site – but the next time around, when they shop for furniture, or a TV, or bedsheets, or anything else at all, Promeoh is the only place likely to have it all,” he explains. “Our goal is not necessarily to be the best in every category, but to be the best generalist across categories, and to be the best generalist across all promotion types.” At present Promeoh has between 1500-2000 promotions listed at any point in time (often a few hundred will expire over the weekend so the number fluctuates quite a bit).

However, searching for promotions on Promeoh can be difficult and confusing, and its search engine’s algorithms leaves a lot to be desired. For example, when looking for mobile phones, a keyword search for “phone” fails to return any result. Only when you search “mobile” do you understand why: mobile phones are classified under mobile handsets or mobile smartphones so apparently the engine checks the first word in the search string instead of within the entire string. This is counter-intuitive, and some natural language processing technology is seriously needed here to make the engine work a whole lot better (and smarter). And why isn’t there a way to search for an exact item, say a Blackberry Bold?

Aside from the relatively unattractive design of the site (which can be easily improved), this is potentially the deal-breaker for Promeoh.

Sriram admits that they accelerated their launch to “try and help shoppers over Christmas and New Year and while its pretty much there, there’s a couple of bugs here and there which we’re sorting out on the fly”. One of the key challenges it faces, says Sriram, is that without adequate money some features have to be put on hold and having to work with a smaller content team than is ideal. “But the biggest challenge is trying to get advertisers to give us the time of day since we are a small part of their lives and not the most important thing on their to-do lists.”

Opportunities in times of recession

One of the bright points, Sriram noted, is that given the current recession they are actually finding it easier than expected to get traffic and repeat visits. “We now have an initial visitor base of around 11000 – on that base we need to start selling listing packages to large retailers and use that funding to add features to our product, promote to a larger base and grow into the 100,000+ visitor base at which we would seriously challenge other places where promotions get advertised.”

“Also, our early traffic is giving us some great data on what appeals to consumers which we’re hoping to use to bring in advertising dollars.”

Promeoh is currently fully privately funded through friends, family and associates. “At this point we’ve spent about S$500,000 to develop and launch and expect to use up another S$300,000 by June 2009. Having said that, we’re funded adequately to survive another few months without revenue, and we should be starting to make some money by January.”

Being Smart

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December 29, 2008

Most people think Levi Strauss invented the blue jean. Actually, it was Jacob Youphes (aka Jacob Davis), a Latvian immmigrant to the United States who approached Strauss with the idea of using copper rivets to reinforce denim work pants. Strauss, who knew a good idea when he saw one, accepted Davi’s offer to file for a joint patent and the Levis jeans was born. They sold many pairs of those tough jeans to gold prospectors during the California Gold Rush.

Thomas Alva Edison was credited with inventing the light bulb, but he actually bought over a patent from Henry Woodward who was an early pioneer in the development of the incandescent lamp. Edison did, however, spot an opportunity in the market and created the Edison Electric Light Company (now General Electric) to benefit from it. He even formed a joint venture with a British competitor (Joseph Swan), who had been awarded a patent one year before his, in order to avoid a potentially costly legal battle.

Lesson 1: You don’t have to be smart to be smart. Sometimes you just have to recognize when someone else is smart and leverage from it.

Lesson 2: You don’t have to be the first to invent something. You just need to be able to see the value in something and find a market for it.

Lesson 3: Intellectual property rights can be a pain. Learn to work with the system.

Merry Christmas; Pledge Your Support For Underprivileged Children

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December 29, 2008

Now that the Christmas presents opened and the feasting is done, spare a thought for the needy this festive season. Drop by Samsung Hope and pledge your support for underprivileged children. There’s no donation required – simply pledge your support and Samsung will donate some US$700,000 to various children charities in the region.

Have a merry Christmas!

(Disclaimer: I work for Samsung .)

Of 65 Bits, Nine Geeks And A Hundred Kick-Ass Episodes

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December 27, 2008

Geeks in Singapore rejoice! Tech podcasters Tech65 yesterday celebrated the live recording of their 100th episode with great cheer at Geek Terminal, along with a rabid audience of many regulars in the social media scene in Singapore. The original crew of four – whom I spoke to earlier in June this year – has now grown to a team of nine, and includes familiar local bloggers such as Nicole, DK and Hisham. With this expanded team, Tech65 will finally be able to put up written reviews of the *awesome* stuff they feature in their podcasts.

Interesting, the team also unveiled a new channel – Gear65 – which is a video podcast that checks out the latest gadgets and other tech toys known to bring orgasmic pleasure to grown boys (and girls).

Traditional media watch out – you’re in danger of letting a bunch of young punks pwn you in this space. Woot!

An Upcoming, And Hopefully Interesting, Project

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December 20, 2008

I’m currently organizing a project which I hope will add value to Singapore’s entrepreneurial, and technopreneurial, scene.

Slated to start sometime in January 2009, it will be a series of regular events that will bring together interested parties – entrepreneurs, investors, service providers and even students – based in Singapore for meaningful, yet casual, small-group discussions about entrepreneurship and innovation.

If you fall into any of the above categories and are interested to participate, drop me an email at daniel at youngupstarts dot com with the subject header “Young Upstarts Secret Project 2009”.

Note that participants in this project will strictly be by invite-only, and participation is NOT free.

TANGS In Second Life, Makes Virtual Worlds Fashionable

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December 20, 2008

tangs facade

Virtual TANGS

You don’t usually expect fashion retailers to be online trailblazers, yet local retail giant TANGS announced this week that it will be opening its next store – in 3D virtual world Second Life created by Linden Labs.

Virtual TANGS, to be officially launched in March 2009, will basically be a 3-dimensional replica of the retailer’s iconic 76 year-old flagship store on Orchard Road and hopes to bring beauty, fashion and lifestyle merchandise that Singapore has come to love into the virtual world. TANGS also teamed up with local Singapore startup and virtual world financial services provider First Meta™, making it easier for Second Life inhabitants to be able to purchase virtual fashion modelled from the retailer’s in-house fashion brands.

tangs models

Virtual clothes, modelled from real-life in-house lines

The acceptance of virtual worlds is still relatively low in Asia – for example, the number of Singaporeans on Second Life is estimated at around 1,500. I can’t foresee that virtual TANGS to be as packed as its real-world counterpart, but kudos to TANGS for being the first lifestyle retailer in Asia for attempting something like this on such a scale.

Philip Rosedale would be impressed.

You can read more from this TODAY story.

Moot.com – Woot, A WiFi-based Social Networking Service!

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December 16, 2008

Image courtesy of Moot.com

I got an email from André Mlonyeni, CEO of Ground Control Labs introducing his company’s social networking service Moot.com. Moot connects people within the same WiFi network, usually around a location – such as cafés, school campuses or libraries – and allows them to interact with one another and share stuff peer-to-peer. One of the best things about Moot, Mlonyeni points out, is the fact that “as no mobile operator or ISPs are involved… users will not be monitored by any third party.” Cool stuff.

The Moot team currently consists of five people – three developers, one marketing guy and Mlonyeni – based in Oslo, Norway, three of whom are former employees of Norway telecommunications service provider Telenor. It turns out Mlonyeni himself was Telenor‘s former chief of research. “We’re a small company trying to bring social networking out of the virtual space and into the streets,” says Mlonyeni. “The main idea behind the concept is giving people new impulses based on the place they are and the context they’re in and the tools for broadcasting their personality and file sharing.”

“Therefore we designed this application for local interaction, where people can chat, share and express themselves digitally to other people in their physical surroundings.”

The key benefit for the user, Mlonyeni says, is the ability to communicate digitally with his surroundings without having any prior knowledge to the details of other people. “All Moot users nearby appear on the screen available for communication and sharing. Another benefit is that Moot is totally free. We are targeting the ‘Facebook-generation’.”

Moot is currently in beta. Mlonyeni shares that one key challenge it recently overcame was to ensure good encryption and authentication for its users when they communicate locally and directly with each other without a server. Their key growth strategy moving forward is to penetrate more terminals and platforms, and develop a user profile page that provides users with a history of their Moot events.

It’s a social networking service of a very different take, and not purely Web or mobile- focused like most others. Moot may target Facebook users, but I can see it used in other ways – It’ll kick ass in a classroom, or in a seminar or workshop.

Moot is funded by Norwegian investors to the sum of around US$1.3 million to date.

PS: I love its branding and the cool artwork!

André Mlonyeni, Moot.com

Singapore Location-Based Mobile Service MyWobile.com Announces Beta

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December 15, 2008

mywobile

Singapore startup MyWobile.com today announced the beta launch of its location-based social networking mobile application. The application integrates social networking with location-aware services that focuses around online commerce, advertising and in the near future, gaming. It allows you to track where your friends are, find the latest special offers and events around you, and even form communities by location.

All Symbian Series 60 3rd edition are supported in the current version, and support for other platforms such as Windows Mobile will be made available soon.

MyWobile is backed by local startup incubator Azione Capital.

LeapFish.com – Swimming With The Big Kahunas Of Search

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December 14, 2008

Google and Yahoo! may be the big boys of search today, but that hasn’t stopped other new search engines such as Cuil from popping up to challenge these incumbents. The most recent entrant is multi-dimensional search aggregator LeapFish.com, announced just last month, that promises to “conveniently surprise users with new-found search information as it combines the best of the web in a single search”.

Type in a search term and LeapFish delivers relevant results from Google, Yahoo!, and MSN, along with blogs, news, Q&A, videos, images and even sites like Ebay and YouTube, all in a single interface.

“LeapFish offers a one-stop convenient solution for more complex searches by querying the web’s most sought-after destinations and rendering the results to users in a surprisingly easy-to-use format,” saya Behnam Behrouzi, President and CEO of LeapFish. He explains that convenience comes in two ways – LeapFish keeps users up to date by offering search results from internet authorities people already care about, and the engine conveniently surprises users with information that they wouldn’t have normally been aware of had they used a traditional engine. “(Hence) users have a more well-rounded set of results per search query.”

Behrouzi believes that accessibility to relevant information is become more and more difficult and fragmented due to the sheer nature of the vastness of the Internet, the variety of the authorities online and the continuous birth of new authorities online. This is the problem LeapFish was created to solve, Behrouzi says, by innovating and delivering value to end users by helping defragment the accessibility of the growing web and keep users abreast of the latest information from across the Internet with minimal work.

Behrouzi points out that LeapFish does not intend to compete against Google or Yahoo!, but instead seeks to leverage what is already working and wanted online. “LeapFish utilizes what already works to capture the breadth and variety of the web and lends more accessibility to what is already valuable to us in the vastness of the Internet,” he says. “We seek to integrate them as indexers in the multi-dimensional search aggregator that we have developed.” Of course, the fact that LeapFish will gun for the same lucrative online advertising market was conveniently left unsaid.

LeapFish‘s search algorithm utilizes proprietary hyper-threading technology to communicate with all major online portals simultaneously to deliver the various search results from a single search query. The current version of LeapFish queries a preset list of online authorities in each search request, including Google, Yahoo!, YouTube, Yahoo! News, Associated Press, Yahoo! Answers, Ebay, Amazon, Accuweather and WikiHow.

“Future releases will allow LeapFish to intelligently decipher the search term entered and deliver the most relevant search widgets from a growing list of over 200 currently being developed,” Behrouzi reveals on its future growth strategies. “Users will receive instant results from relevant online authorities in maps, music, real estate, social sites and more, based on the search term they enter.” It is also developing an affiliate marketing system that allows webmasters to monetize their existing websites by integrating a widget into their sites, earning revenue based on the number of unique searches their visitors perform using the LeapFish search widget.

LeapFish is backed by DotNext Inc. which is also funded by Behrouzi, who previously co-founded Reply.com. There are no outside investors.

FiveSprockets.com – Creating User-Generated Video Content, Professionally

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December 7, 2008

President, founder and CEO of FiveSprockets.com Randy Ullrich always had a passion for filmmaking. The son of a Screen Actors Guild Hollywood actress, Ullrich was an aspiring actor as a child and even made a film when he was only ten years old. Recently he authored two full-feature screenplays, one of which was a 2005 Fade-In quarterfinalist.

It was this deep passion and understanding of the industry that allowed Ullrich to identify some of the problems that many aspiring filmmakers face during production. “I participated on several short film shoots and observed aspiring filmmakers and crews making what seemed like lots of mistakes and running very inefficiently. Through my own personal studies and experience, I also knew that filmmaking was (really) a ‘collaborative endeavor’,” Ullrich says.

He recognized that the current tools available to media producers were decidedly narrow in focus and non-synergistic, and hence didn’t truly meet all the needs of professional and aspiring producers. “I looked at many of the software tools being applied to media production, and noticed that they were non-collaborative by design. Conversely, the Web – particularly with the advancement of second-generation tools – is built for collaboration.” Ullrich saw the gap as a potential opportunity, and the idea for FiveSprockets was born. This was in March 2007.

The FiveSprockets USP

Combining his professional expertise with his long-time passion for film (he had more than 20 years experience leading early and mature-stage software/Web companies), Ullrich proceeded to design FiveSprockets as a collaborative platform to support the five phases of media production – story development and scriptwriting, pre-production; production; post-production; and marketing and distribution. FiveSprockets positions itself as a “virtual production studio,” offering filmmakers and digital-media producers the tools, such as on-demand software, they need to make better media, more efficiently and profitably, anywhere they are. For example, tools such as vScripter, a story development and scriptwriting software, and vProductionOffice, a production management software, allows users to work on projects in a collaborative manner. There are even job boards to help producers find suitable cast and crew. It is especially suited to digital media projects, such as the creation of Webisodes or Mobisodes.

After raising an angel round of financing in early 2008, a private alpha of FiveSprockets was released in the spring and the public beta went live in September 2008. “My first investors were people I had known and/or done work with for several years. They knew I would work very hard to make FiveSprockets a success and thought that our business strategy was a sound one.”

“FiveSprockets’ target market is anyone who needs to make video or film, which is a lot of people these days! From feature/short films, to corporate industrials and training, to advertising, millions of people work professionally in motion-picture media production, and many more aspire to create digital video. To grow our user base, we are using a combination of traditional marketing methods, along with newer, social-media based marketing techniques,” says Ullrich.

User-Generated Content

Ullrich credits user-generated content (UGC) as one of the drivers that led to FiveSprockets‘ existence. “We want to help people do that better and we do that by giving our users Hollywood’s tried and true tools and business processes so that they can make better user-generated content.”

Today Ullrich manages all strategy, corporate development and operations for FiveSprockets, but still insists on having a hand in product development. And his team loves the film industry as much as he does. “I was really interested in recruiting people who (not only) had the technical or creative skills needed, but also had a strong interest in video and film. This was so the team would have the same passion for FiveSprockets that I do.”

“What’s resulted is that several key folks who are either employees or consultants are filmmakers, screenwriters, or related, and the passion is directly influencing FiveSprockets‘ strong and dedicated team.”

FiveSprockets recently unveiled several enhancements to its virtual production studio, including a new suite of script formats, improved profile features and direct access for users to ProtectRite®, an online service for time sealed intellectual-property registration. This partnership with ProtectRite enabled FiveSprockets users to access the ProtectRite service directly from vScripter, FiveSprockets online story development and scriptwriting software.

“The latest enhancements to FiveSprockets help us meet the needs of a wider group of media creators,” Ullrich says. He reveals that their product roadmap includes some plans to help content creators monetize their content, although that will only happen in due time.

Economic Crisis and Opportunity

Ullrich admits that the economy may be bleak at the moment, but it is unlikely to affect FiveSprockets much. “We’ve kept our operating costs very low since inception, which is reflective more of our personalities than the existing economic climate. FiveSprockets is riding the wave of video user-generated content, which is only growing stronger. We’re weathering this storm by keeping our operating costs low, and by having a compelling offering to ride it out.”

“Also, note that many of the Internet successes over the last few years were started during the last economic crisis of 2000 through 2002. Economic downturns can be a great time to be a start-up,” Ullrich reminds us.

randy ullrich

Randy Ullrich, president, founder and CEO of FiveSprockets

An Old Man And His Craft

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December 1, 2008

old man

During my vacation to Hong Kong last week, I made a day trip with my wife to nearby Macau. As we walked past Senado Square, I saw this very old man slaving away over his charcoal-fired oven in his dark side-alley shopfront. He was painstakingly making egg rolls, dropping 5 small balls of egg batter each time in each cast iron griddle. When they were done, he’d pop the piping-hot pastry out and drop them into a metal tray.

The smell was heavenly, and we bought a pound of these simple egg pastries for 10 Macau dollars. Some shops down the row, there was the far more famous Pastelaria Koi Kei, which has grown to a chain of stores all over Macau (and swarmed by tourists). They sold the same egg rolls, in multiple flavours, in fantastic packaging.

I couldn’t help but think what would happen when the old man passed on. In all likelihood, his craft and his skill will go with him. I wonder if he ever regretted not expanding like his competitors?

I don’t have the answer, but I mourn the day when we lose all these skilled craftsmen when we move with the times.

CountSpin.com – Getting Into The Spin Of Things

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December 1, 2008

countspin

CountSpin is a live auction portal that revolves around (pardon the pun) falling prices. It’s eBay with a twist – at any one time, an item is up for sale and its bid price falls as time goes by. This continues until someone bids for the item, or its price reaches zero. So yes, technically you can get something for free (not inclusive of US$20 shipping and handling). The site is essentially a deep discounter, perfect during a bleak economy when consumers are very price-sensitive and are looking out for bargains.

CountSpin‘s a somewhat unique and entertaining way to shop, and can also be mildly addictive. However, the novelty does wear thin after a while. For starters, only one item is ever up for sale. Also, CountSpin admits that the biggest criticism it has is the lack of variety in the merchandise, with the site predominantly selling only men’s watches as of now and that has restricted its growth. It currently has less than 500 users since its beta introduction over a month ago. Interestingly, many of these users buy on the site to resell on eBay.

Unsurprisingly, CountSpin will be increasing the variety of merchandise over time to attract larger audiences. One key demographic it is targeting are female shoppers, and so will look to add perfumes, cosmetic, accessories, jewellery, and kitchenware in the future.

Started by Suraj Daryanani and Jay Gupta, CountSpin is self-funded and plans to grow organically. Both founders are based in Asia. Jay has a consulting and training background while Suraj is a serial entrepreneur with a background in banking. CountSpin is their first launched venture, and there are others are in the pipeline.

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Away to Hong Kong!

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November 25, 2008

I’m finally going on vacation! I’ll be in Hong Kong from 26 November to 30 November, so let me apologize if I’m unable to reply to your emails during this period.

Microsoft Gets Into The Game With BizSpark

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November 23, 2008

Microsoft finally announces its BizSpark startup support program in Singapore, which was earlier unveiled on 8 November in San Francisco. In a press event this week, Microsoft Singapore’s managing director Jessica Tan gave an overview of the software giant’s local software economy initiatives while platform evangelist John Fernandes showed the nuts and bolts of the BizSpark program to the local press.

Essentially, BizSpark allows startups that are developing software-based products or services (and meet the program’s eligbility requirements) to get access to current full-featured Microsoft development tools and licenses of server products, with no upfront costs and minimal requirements. In addition, these startups will get professional support from Microsoft and its network of community-driven, entrepreneur-focused organizations.

If you’re an incubator or other similar organization within the local software ecosystem that is engaged with supporting high-potential, early stage startups, you can also consider signing up to be a BizSpark Network Partner.

Also, you may want to check out Microsoft’s Startup Zone.

Greed Will Be The Death Of Singapore’s Food Culture

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November 18, 2008

Last night, I ordered dinner at a foodcourt in a shopping mall.

It tasted appalling. Perhaps I should have hesitated when I saw the mainland Chinese cook manning the kitchen.

Before you raise your heckles, I have nothing against foreign talent. And I don’t expect authentic kick-ass cuisine from a foodcourt chain. But I do expect to get what I pay for.

My main gripe is this:

I believe that gross greed and commercialization is killing Singapore’s highly-prized food culture.

Greed, ranging from exorbitant rentals to the now accepted practice of cutting corners in the name of “cost-effectiveness”, has resulted in the legions of unskilled labourers manning our foodcourts, restaurants and hawker centres. Cooking our food, many of them, rather badly.

My mom and her generational peers still wax lyrical over how wonderful the food they grew up with used to taste in the “good old days”. Sadly for them – and the rest of us – many of the true culinary artisans of their time have either retired or been driven out by many of these chain eateries.

I don’t blame these workers. They are giving us EXACTLY what their meagre salary and training allows. I blame greed – the kind of greed that maximizes profits at all costs, and just providing the barest minimum of standards you can get away with.

Singapore has always prided itself as a cosmopolitan food haven, and even promoted as such by the local tourism authority. With the proliferation of such sub-standardness, I worry that this may no longer be the case. It’s ironic how we’re trying to export Singaporean food culture overseas – such as the Tiger Beer Chilli Crab Festival in Dubai – when our food industry is hurtling towards mediocrity.

If you’re a local entrepreneur in the food business, I beseech you. Take pride in the food you serve, train the people you have, and honor the customers you serve by giving them the best that you can. You can still be profitable – and best yet – help Singapore to reclaim our reputation as a food destination.

Singapore Press Holdings Eats Up Shareinvestor.com

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November 18, 2008

Singapore’s media powerhouse Singapore Press Holdings yesterday completed the acquisition of local web-based share trading platform Shareinvestor.com, founded by ex-doctor Michael Leong, for S$12 million and a further S$6 million if certain financial targets are met. Singapore Press Holdings will be retaining Shareinvestor.com‘s entire management team.

Dr. Leong previously wrote a book on entrepreneurship called “Be An Entrepreneur!”.

Singapore Property Tycoon Gives S$5 Million, Encourages Technopreneurship

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November 12, 2008

Local property tycoon Chua Thian Poh, who’s head kahuna of Ho Bee Group and also president of the Singapore Chinese Chamber of Commerce and Industry (SCCCI), gave S$5 million to the National Technological University (NTU) to set up an entrepreneurship fund.

The government matched Chua’s contribution dollar-for-dollar, giving NTU a $10 million war chest for funding interactions between technopreneurship and innovation students with overseas talent, such as overseas educational tours for local students or facilitate the visits of successful entrepreneurs to the university.

That’s also a lot of beer money.

For more, read the Straits Times article here.

Locomi.com – Three Friends, Three Places And One Startup

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November 12, 2008

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Food can unite people. In the case of Sumit Shah, Ravi Bhushan and Siddharth Vanchinathan – the founders of Locomi.com – also discovered that the love for food can be a source of innovation, and the basis for a startup venture. I first heard of Locomi on Plurk, when co-founder Ravi was asking around for interns, so I caught up with him for a chat.

He tells me the three of them, who met in India’s elite La Martiniere Calcutta, are foodies to the core and loved discovering great but unknown places to eat and hang out. Even after they went ways after graduation – Sumit headed to the University of Southern California (USC) in the States, Ravi to the Singapore Management University (SMU) in Singapore, and Sid to Manipal University in India – they kept in close touch and continued sharing on the best places to eat in their respective countries, scouring online food review sites like Yum.sg, Hungrygowhere.com, Yelp.com, CitySeach.com, Burrp.com.

Identifying the pain point

“While these are excellent tools to search for reviews of local destinations, many people in our social circle didn’t frequent them. This meant that it wasn’t possible to share a new discovery with them or see the places they liked and recommended. Neither was it very easy to see how close by a place was, unless one was very good with addresses,” Ravi tells me.

Inspired, the three thrashed around some ideas and came up with what Ravi says was the “rather laughable solution of making yet another social network”, which would integrate local destinations and adding what they figured would be a key USP to the site. “That’s a story for a different day,” Ravis laughs, “Lets just say it was a lot tougher than we imagined. We were unable to find the talent we needed to make our vision a reality, and building the kind of community we envisaged would have been a mammoth task.”

That idea didn’t last long. The three friends figured that they needed to add a new dimension to existing social networks rather than reinventing the wheel, and leverage on existing social graphs instead. The result was Locomi.com, the beta version of which is now on Facebook. “We started development in May, 2008 and have been working at breakneck speed since then to develop the application.”

Shaping the idea

“We developed Locomi for Facebook first because that’s where most of our social circle is. To get Locomi to the stage where it currently is, we had to get a lot of data from different sources, sift through it and clean it up. We developed an algorithm which used landmarks, addresses and a lot of other parameters to pinpoint the data on Google Maps with a fair degree of accuracy. The result is that we have quickly been able to launch Locomi in Singapore as well as seven cities in India – Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata, Delhi, Ahmedabad, Pune and Bangalore.”

When you open Locomi, users are first asked to plot their home location. The app takes you to the explore segment that shows you various destinations around your locality and allows you to discover new places around you. Places are divided into 4 categories – Food & Beverages, Shopping, Entertainment and Utilities. You can review and rate places, and read reviews from others. “We believe that people would be more encouraged to visit a new place that’s been recommended by a friend rather than by an unknown person. The latest reviews and ratings are pushed out to users in a city, while an easy to use search interface means that they can easily find what they are looking for. Users can invite others to hang out at a local destination, recommend a place to a friend, or reminisce about a place they recently visited together,” Ravi explains.

It surprises me that all three cofounders are based in different parts of the world. Ravi graduates from SMU this year with degrees in Information Systems Management and Business Management and works part-time on Locomi for now in the area of business development. CTO Sumit, recently graduated from USC, California in December with a degree in Computer Science and a minor in Management, is based out of Kolkata, India and works on Locomi on a full-time basis. Siddharth, the third co-founder who is in charge of user experience, also graduated this year with a degree in Electronics and Communication Engineering from Manipal University and is based in Bangalore.

“We are really happy that we have the team that we do. Each one of us brings special skill sets to the table. Moreover, since we are all high school friends, we find it quite comfortable working with one another.”

Locomi is currently self-funded with some S$25,000 from friends and family. The team currently has two full-time developers and two data analysts, besides the three founding members.

“We have always been using every cent like its the last. We will be needing funding though, to take Locomi to newer platforms. We are currently seeking out some form of angel or government funding.” The company aims to start pitching for its first round of private funding next year. In such bleak economic times, I wish them a healthy dose of luck.

Future roadmap

Ravi says Locomi is currently working on expanding to other platforms, with OpenSocial and Friendster versions of the application on the immediate horizon. They are also looking at developing a version for the iPhone, especially with its location-aware capabilities. “On the feature front, we are also looking to add more interactivity to the application by introducing quizzes, besides also integrating citywide events and latest deals as key components of the application. Next steps also include expansion into second-tier Indian cities and places across the Asia Pacific.”

“We realize that space we are operating in is a crowded one. While most companies in this space concentrate their efforts on search, we are more focused on discovery. We believe that the true potential of Locomi lies in its ability to leverage a user’s existing social graph to discover the most exciting destinations around town. This was always the core focus of our application and we hope this draws the users in.”

RentSpace.sg Goes Live, Makes It Easy To Find Temporary Accommodation

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November 11, 2008