Singapore-based mobile location-based marketing solutions provider Chlkboard last week opened its API to developers, allowing them to push contextual location-relevant ads into their own mobile services. Through their platform, it offers a 60-40 revenue split on ads served from its current list of 180-plus retailers, which runs the gamut of services from supermarket giant Carrefour to independent sushi chain The Standing Sushi Bar, based on click-through rates.
Develepors who have tried out Chlkboard‘s API commented on its simplicity and ease-of-use. Mobile games developer AzukiSoft (whom we interviewed earlier) has tried it with their flagship iPhone game Piecehunters, as well as Windows Mobile-based game “Ramen Rush”. “Having tried literally hundreds of APIs, Chlkboard‘s API stands out with regards to ease of implementation,” says Gibson Tang, Azukisoft’s founder.
Azukisoft's Ramen Rush game for Windows Mobile phones integrates advertising - served by Chlkboard into the gameplay itself.
Similarly, local mobile services development shop 2359 Media added a new sales section to their popular retail mobile application SG Malls, which aggregates store information from all Singapore shopping malls, so that users can discover sales promotions around them. “With the bulk of Chlkboard advertisers coming from local retail and F&B outlets, these advertisements are actually relevant content for the users of the application. Hence, it was a natural decision for us to integrate Chlkboard and enhance the experience for our users,” says 2359 Media co-founder Wong Hong Ting.
SG Malls lists nearby promotions through ads served by Chlkboard.
“In the near future, we will also be integrating Chlkboard into our regional focused applications as well, together with their plans to expand to Malaysia and Indonesia.” Hong Ting believes that social location-based marketing requires a company that actually understands local ways of business and the circles of influence within that market in order to succeed. “With the business category being at its infancy, we think that Chlkboard has had a good start in terms of market adoption, and look forward to how the team iterates the product as the market begins to pick-up,” he says.
“Location-based marketing has good market potential, but it must provide value to the user which can involve filtering of advertisements based on context and other variables,” adds Azukisoft’s Tang.
The second of the special episodes that line up for Echelon 2010, we have Jeffrey Paine, from Founder Institute and also a managing partner at Battle Ventures. We speak to him regarding the opening of Founder Institute and how the course has been ongoing in Singapore for the past few weeks. As Jeff is moderating the panel “Mentorship, Investment and New Funding Models” in the coming Echelon 2010, we discuss with him on the issues which he might cover and also his thoughts on the current trend where the micro venture capital model is becoming a new wave in creating start-ups with low cost and high effective return.
[powerpress]
This article was first posted at ThisWeekInAsia, a podcast that caters to what’s the hot and interesting news dominating the web and tech landscape in Asia, and a fellow media partner of Echelon 2010.
What’s the story behind Chlkboard and what followed after the launch of the first beta in 21 days? Joining us in ThisWeekInAsia in conjunction with Echelon 2010, Saumil Nanavati, CEO and co-founder of Chlkboard came on our virtual studio and share with Chew Lin and Daniel Cerventus more on the local mobile ad network and his thoughts on the speed that start-ups need to innovate in today’s world. Of course, above all, we ask him what he will look forward to in the coming Echelon 2010 conference which he will attending. Coming on board for this interview on behalf of his other co-founder, Bernard, who is a host to the show and a speaker on the panel “Mobile Applications: the State of Play“, we will hear more about the mobile advertising space in the coming Echelon 2010.
This article was first posted at ThisWeekInAsia, a podcast that caters to what’s the hot and interesting news dominating the web and tech landscape in Asia, and a fellow media partner of Echelon 2010.
Are entrepreneurs born or made? Steve Welch, the founder of Mitos Group and co-founder of DreamIt Ventures, has an idea. His new book, “We Are All Born Entrepreneurs“, chronicles the struggles and successes of men and women across the United States who overcame amazing odds to build successful businesses from scratch in the quest for the American Dream.
“I compiled over a dozen stories that I believe provide learning experiences for aspiring entrepreneurs and also answered the question of why so many of us find purpose in entrepreneurship,” says Welch, an Eisenhower Fellow. During his interviews with entrepreneurs across the country, Welch realized that although each had pursued a different path, there were certain traits and skills that successful entrepreneurs seem to possess.
During his work with young entrepreneurs in Philadelphia-based DreamIt Ventures, Welch became frustrated with what was being emphasized in MBA schools. “Too often I saw entrepreneurs focusing on raising money, as if raising money was the validation of a viable business.” It’s a clear sticking point with Welch, who had bootstrapped his first business Mitos in 2001. Without ever raising outside money, Steve built Mitos into a global company in the biotech manufacturing field before selling it to Parker Hannifin, a Fortune 500 company, in 2007.
“My goal in this book is not to provide a road map for entrepreneurs, but rather a realistic understanding of the skills that need to be developed to build a business from scratch, while at the same time providing insight into the tricks and traps that other successful entrepreneurs have identified.”
Regional telecommunications provider SingTel is looking for interesting mobile applications to buy or license, so if you’re a developer or company in this mobile applications development space, you may be interested in this upcoming i.MATCH BizMatch event.
In particular, SingTel Idea Factory is looking for mobile applications that cover natural speech recognition, games, next-generation user interfaces, e-books, image recognition and cloud gaming. Interest participants can also request for an exclusive opportunity to pitch directly to the SingTel Idea Factory principal, Loo Cheng Chuan, during the event.
New JamiQ CEO Arvind Sethumadhavan to take the social media monitoring solutions provider to new heights.
Many startup founders find it very difficult to hand over the reins of their company into more seasoned hands, but Singapore-based startup JamiQ has done it not just once, but twice, since it was first founded in 2008. Last week the social media monitoring solutions provider announced the appointment of Arvind Sethumadhavan as chief executive officer, who will be responsible for strategic sales and partnerships globally as well as drive the vision for JamiQ’s social media monitoring offerings.
Prior to joining JamiQ, Sethumadhavan spent 10 years as a partner at Mindshare Asia Pacific and CEO of GroupM Business Science Asia Pacific. He takes over from JamiQ co-founder Benjamin Koe, who will take on a sales and product development role. Koe himself took over the CEO role from fellow co-founder Kelvin Quee in August 2008 when he first joined the fledgling startup.
The JamiQ team has been speaking with Sethumadhavan for over half a year and came to the mutual agreement that he would make the perfect CEO for the growing company based on his background in marketing research and analytics. “Arvind brings a wealth of experience and expertise in the field of marketing and data analysis. He is the perfect leader our company needs to bring it to the next level,” says Koe. “Arvind in a true visionary and the plans we have mapped out for our next-generation solutions will ensure client are able to extract maximum mileage from their marketing strategies, both online and offline.”
Koe says the transition has been natural – he says JamiQ‘s philosophy has always been to “hire smarter and more capable people than yourself”. “Being the founder is a great way to begin, but it takes a lot more expertise and experience to take the company to the next level,” he says.
Understanding The Social Media Scene
Koe says that the market for social media monitoring solutions “has been brilliant” this year, with interest coming in from clients in marketing functions across advertising, digital marketing, public relations and customer service, especially from the consumer electronics, hospitality and the finance industries, as well as the government. Clients are beginning to understand that listening and analyzing what is being said is increasingly important for any brand that cares about the local and regional market, he adds. The interest in social media monitoring has certainly grown since we last spoke to the team.
“We are only beginning to scratch the surface and uncovering the true potential of gathering insights from the social media, however I am very proud about the foundation the team have laid at JamiQ and very excited about the possibilities,” says Sethumadhavan.
“We envision a future where the actionable insights extracted by our solutions will dramatically change the way businesses in Asia make strategic marketing decisions.”
Muecs combines traditional orienteering with social gaming elements.
echelon 2010 is right round the corner, and we take the chance to catch up with Muecs, one of the technology companies that will feature at the upcoming web technology event.
Hong Kong-based Muecs, short for ”Make You an E-Communication Site”, is a startup focusing on web and mobile applications. It recently released a SaaS enterprise collaboration tool called Mulaboration end of 2009, and is an incubatee at Hong Kong Science Park’s Incubation Programme. Benjamin Law, Muecs‘ founder and executive director, explains that his company will be unveiling a new location-based service (LBS) with social gaming elements at echelon 2010.
Mobile Social Gaming Takes A Location-Based Spin
A location-based service and social gaming mash-up is not a new technology or idea – take Foursquare, for example. But Benjamin and fellow co-founder Billy Leung’s love for video games and travel inspired them to put together a mobile service that combined traditional orienteering with a social massive multiplayer online (MMO) game. Using a smartphone, a user playing Muecs can earn points and obtain achievements by completing in-game quests, which in turn unlock hidden items that the user can trade for special offers from sponsors. A snapshot function also allows a user to capture interesting snapshots, which is also made into a game element. These snapshots can also be shared on Facebook and Twitter.
“Another benefit of using Muecs will be taking the information as location knowledge base,” Benjamin, who has a background in computer science, reveals. “We are trying to bring the user-generated contents, for example, snapshots or the activities in spots to update the information on places.”
Muecs recently launched its beta site, with its mobile versions on iPhone, Android and Windows Mobile to be released from June 2010. The first to launch, unsurprisingly, will be on the iPhone. Benjamin admits that the most challenging part in the whole development is waiting for Apple to approve its mobile application on the App Store, of which the process can take up to three weeks to complete.
Benjamin says he first heard of echelon 2010 from a Hong Kong startup community. He says the timing is fortuitous – perfect for showing the mobile versions of its service. “Hopefully,” Benjamin says, “it lets us to find potential partners and investors.” Muecs is currently angel-backed as well as self-funded by the founders, to the tune of approximately US$150,000.
Entrepreneurship Is Exciting
Entrepreneurship is exciting, says Benjamin. “From the technical to business executive job role, you do something that never happened before.” He says he personally loves challenges, and keeps him going at work.
“I think people should use their time to do sometime what they passionate on when they were young.” It’s the key reason why he chose to quit his job to start Muecs.
Launched in April 2010, VoucherWOW features a daily deal at an incredible price every day on its site, which can range from restaurant discounts, special retail offers – basically anything that Singapore has to offer. Customers only get the deal of the day if a minimum number of people sign up, which VoucherWOW hopes will encourage them to spread the word about the deal with their friends and family. The last we checked, there was an offer for a special fitness checkup at 90 percent off (it hit the minimum of five customers, so the deal was on).
VoucherWOW aims to be the leading “TimeOut meets group-buying” website in Southeast Asia, and views itself as a marketing platform for small- and medium-sized businesses that want to reach a social, local, and trend-setting crowd. “For our customers, it’s a great platform to discover their city at up to 90% off,” says co-founder Alice Wong, who adds that the group who founded VoucherWOW are a living example of their target demographic, and are looking for like-minded individuals who like to try new things with their friends.
(Buying) Power To The People
If the customer is king, then collective group-buying must be the new emperor in residence. Starting with Dell Swarm (which was certainly innovative in its time), services that tap on the power of group-buying power is on the rise, as can be seen with the current hype over U.S.-based Groupon. Similarly, in Singapore, other than VoucherWOW, there’s also the newly-launched Deal.com.sg as well as the upcoming Voucherous, which will compete in a similar space. There’s also a rumored Snatch.com.sg (if so I’d advise them to change their name or Googling them could be… interesting).
Alice agrees that there is currently little to differentiate VoucherWOW from the rest as it stands, but she believes their technology will give them an edge. “There are similar concepts entering the market who often underestimate the technology behind to really scale the business,” says Alice. She adds that they’ve built a platform that will allow them to scale their model rapidly across geographical locations, languages, and multi-million user markets – she’s even confident that VoucherWOW‘s platform is more powerful than that deployed by leading competitors in other parts of the world.
“We believe that we will manage to quickly differentiate ourselves by new location-based technologies when we scale in the region and the type of offers we feature for our customers.” She refuses to disclose what LBS technologies they are looking at. Personally, it’ll be interesting to see VoucherWOW tie up with a mobile location-based marketing service like Chlkboard (which I checked out earlier).
Alice says VoucherWOW is funded by the people behind 42 Ventures, a Singapore-based incubator and early-stage venture capital firm, although she declines to reveal the exact amount or the company’s valuation. She adds that VoucherWOW‘s revenue model is simple – once an offer closes, they collect the money from their customers upfront and cut the business a check. “We make money by keeping a percentage of each voucher sold – so there’s no risk for the business or any upfront costs.”
An Entrepreneur Is A Problem-Solver
VoucherWOW co-founder Alice Wong believes entrepreneurs must be problem-solvers.
“I can’t speak for everyone, but entrepreneurship is a lifestyle and once you make a lifestyle decision that is right you feel it immediately, whether it is moving to a new city or country or going full-time as an entrepreneur,” Alice shares. She says two related characteristics are required for the entrepreneur: being able to deal well with uncertainty and unstructured agile environments, and being a problem solver.
“As companies grow and become more structured, these skills become less and less essential… but at the beginning they are key”, she adds.
Successful people are able to make good choices and identify opportunities which others can’t see, Gladwell says, but more importantly, successful people made those choices because they were looking to seek satisfaction and meaning in their work, and not because they were in pursuit of material success. It’ll be interesting to see how that message resonates with materialistic Singaporeans.
I missed Gladwell when he was recently in town for Business Evangelism 2010 (though I must still extend my thanks to Pat Law for trying to get me a ticket). Hopefully I don’t miss out this time.
Windows-based Gygan follows the freemium model typical of similar services. Its free version offers 4GB of downloading, with a 1GB of bonus downloading every month. Its premium monthly download subscription starts at US$5 for 10GB of download transfer space. There is no cap on uploading so both free and premium subscribers can have unlimited uploads of any file size or type. Unlike Dropbox, however, Gygan doesn’t offer file synchronization online and across computers.
What Goes Up, Must Come Down
Gygan promises upload and download speeds to be quicker than any file sharing service currently available on the market. “A lot of file sharing services on the market have peak times and incent their users to upload and download during the off-times” said Vitaly Petritchkovitch, CEO of Gygan. “That’s the simplistic beauty of Gygan — you don’t have to wait for peak times to be over. Tens of thousands of users can all access the network simultaneously, at any time, with no slow-downs.”
Online Startup Veterans
Gygan is founded by Vitaly Petritchkovitch and Shamir Nandy. 29-year old Vitaly is not new to the world of online startups. After graduating from Toronto’s Ryerson University with a degree in IT management and system development with a minor in eCommerce in 2003, Vitaly started Simply Audiobooks, a Netflix-style online audio book rental service, with three other people. When Shamir Nandy was hired on as a developer in 2005, the two became friends, and eventually business partners.
Vitaly and Shamir left Simply Audiobooks late 2008 to start Pricist Inc, building and launching restaurant-finding mobile application MealChase, as well as face2face, a Facebook application that makes it easy to plan group get-togethers with friends.
They started work on Gygan in July 2009, finally culminating in its beta launch in March 2010.
Inside Larry & Sergey's Brain looks at the two men behind Internet monolith Google.
It’s probably safe to say that nobody really knows what goes on inside the minds of Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, but author Richard L. Brandt certainly tries with his book, “Inside Larry and Sergey’s Brain“.
I first wrote about wanting to review the book months ago, and finally got down to completing what is certainly an eye-opening read.
Brandt looks at Page’s and Brin’s backgrounds, their academic brilliance as well as their humble beginnings as Internet entrepreneurs. Note to startup founders – if there is one key takeaway from this book, who you start your company with matters a big deal. Brandt highlights the incredible synergy between the two founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, and how well they complement each others’ strengths. He’s also quick to show that the Google founders also understood their weaknesses, hence the hiring of the seasoned Eric Schmidt as CEO.
Misunderstood Geniuses
Brandt constantly portrays Brin and Page as misunderstood geek geniuses – i.e. the world just ‘doesn’t get them’. Two cases in point. The first is Google‘s contentious “Don’t Be Evil” motto, which has been hotly criticized by detractors (such as Apple‘s CEO Steve Jobs, who allegedly called Google’s motto “bullshit” during one of their recent townhall meetings at One Infinite Loop).
I love the way Brandt juxtaposes his narrative with the story of the Library of Alexandria, and compares the search giant to the ancient center of intellectual thought in Egypt that reigned as the greatest library in the world until its destruction.
One thing is for sure – Google has certainly cemented itself in the history books. If history is written by the victors, the path to victory is also littered with the detritus of many dead Internet search engines – those who never had the fortune of tapping inside Larry & Sergey’s brains.
James shares that he grew up with a chip on his shoulder as the son of a poor first-generation immigrant to the United States from South Korea. His father didn’t speak English, and they were constantly bullied as an Asian family in a predominantly white neighborhood. But the discrimination gave him a purpose, and he resolved as a child to improve his lot in life.
2. Have chutzpah.
James Sun says to be an “active opportunist’. He recalls that as an 11-year old, he once brazenly approached the owner of a small window-cleaning business and demanded a deal. James wanted a 30-percent commission in return for confirmed sales leads from a section of his neighborhood – in jest the owner bargained him down to 25-percent, which James readily accepted.
With that deal in hand, James corralled the other kids in the neighborhood as sales runners and soon the business of the window-cleaning company exploded. He didn’t quite yet achieve financial independence, but it was a great start.
3. Invest your time carefully.
James made an interesting observation while running around his neighborhood selling window-cleaning services. He realized that people of poor families had a predictable daily routine – they got off work around 4 or 5, came home, grabbed a beer, and watched some TV. People from richer families had a different one – they would get off work around 5 or 6, came home, grabbed a drink, and proceeded to read – usually reading materials like the Wall Street Journal. So at age 13, he went away thinking to himself: “Reading Wall Street Journal will make me rich.” James would later put his financial knowledge to good use – he started his own brokerage firm, and the rest the say, is history.
James put this down to a matter of investing time in the right things. “Everybody is given the same amount of time – 24 hours – in a day,” he says. What you do with it, matters.
4. Be memorable.
James shares his experience during the auditions for Donald Trump’s The Apprentice in 2007. He was shopping in a Seattle mall one day when he spotted a long queue – and found out that it was for the final round of auditions for the reality TV show. So there he was, clad in T-shirt and jeans, amongst a crowd of smartly-suited hopefuls, that he decided to audition. He was so different – Asian, young, somewhat cocky – that he made an impression with the interviewers. Of course, it’s not about going around in T-shirt and jeans (whatever you think of Mark Zuckerberg’s success), but being memorable counts.
James disagrees with the efficient market theory, which states that one cannot consistently outperform the market i.e. “you cannot be better than average”. He says it’s widespread thinking like this that keeps people from achieving their best.
5. Just do it.
James says “ideas are cheap; execution is expensive”, sharing the story of Sun Tzu and the 360 concubines to prove the point. He also posits – do the possible today, and soon you’ll be able to do the impossible.
Thank you to Fly Entertainment for the kind invite to this luncheon seminar.
Columbus, Ohio-based LogoMyWay.com is a community site that revolves around client-commissioned contests for crowd-sourced professional logo designs. LogoMyWay.com was started by veteran serial entrepreneur Joe Daley, who has built and launched around 50 online companies to date.
One of the challenges Daley faced having started many websites or ideas was a real need to find good professional logos designed at a reasonable price for each of them – hence, LogoMyWay. “I thought it would be a great idea to connect designers from all over the world to clients needing logo designs. There are other logo contest sites but none that make it 100-percent mandatory to prepay all logo contests.”
“By having all contests prepaid the designers work much harder and produce much higher quality than other contest sites,” adds Daley.
Using LogoMyWay is simple. A client signs up to launch a logo competition, fills out a detailed contest brief explaining their business and the kind of logo their looking for, and sets a prize between US$200 to US$1,000 and the contest duration.
Response from LogoMyWay‘s designer community can be fast and furious. “Clients can expect to receive logo concepts within a few hours of launching their logo contest,” Daley grins. When logo entries are received from designers, the client then uses an administrative interface to decide on the winner. Each logo contest provides a free legal contract which gives the client full legal ownership of their new logo design, and the client will receive full working, vector-format files of the logo design for any corporate use.
The advantage of using LogoMyWay, says Daley, is being able to tap on the creativity of its pool of over 5,000 designers from all over the world, unlike using a traditional creative agency with a limited number of designers to work with. LogoMyWay works pretty much the same way as how Prova crowdsources advertising designs, or ArticleBuff does when it comes to article writing. Another advantage for clients is its money-back guarantee policy. If a contest does not receive more than 40 entries to choose from, LogoMyWay will fully refund the client.
Daley says it’s hard to tell what their biggest challenge was in developing LogoMyWay because they had so many hurdles to overcome. “The programming behind the site was very challenging and tedious. (We) always kept in mind that the site needed to be scalable, user-friendly and easy-to-use.” Once the site was built, Daley says, the challenge was to manage the fine balance between recruiting a goodly pool of designers while ensuring there were enough logo contests to keep them occupied. LogoMyWay has so far launched logo contests valued over US$600,000 in just one year, with its pool of designers creating more than 250,000 logos.
Some of the professional, high-quality work on LogoMyWay.
A 15-year Entrepreneurial Journey
Daley started his entrepreneurial journey by managing his family-owned restaurant after high school for seven years, and later moved to running an automobile window tinting business around 1995. During the winter months when the auto business was slower, Daley would toy with the idea of making money online.
His first successful website was an online greeting card site that quickly grew to be ranked as a top 10 most popular greeting card site in the world, with over 500,000 page views daily. That website soon became a launching pad for many more successful online companies that Daley’s built over the years.
Today, Logomyway is mostly self-funded by Daley – aside from a few small investors – with the money he’s accumulated over his entrepreneurial years.
Learning To Let Go
As an entrepreneur for around 15 years now and launching and building a phenomenal number of startups, Daley believes one of the most important things for entrepreneurs to learn is when to move on to the next project. “If you see that a trend has fallen off and one of your sites will probably never succeed, you better move on to the next project until you hit one that people are interested in.”
“I have seen too many companies in the past that continued to dump money and time into an online business that never had a chance to grow because the market was slowing down or gone completely.” Daley has an example of his own. He was CEO of SRC Technologies that built an anti-spyware application called Spybouncer in 2004. It sold over 120,000 copies at US$30 each, with sales reaching US$4 million in just a few years. However, when Microsoft and Google launched their own free version of spyware removal programs, sales pretty much came to a halt around 2007.
“Choose your business very carefully by doing research and tracking trends. When you think you have found your niche and the business is growing after your first marketing campaign, hit it hard and don’t give up on it.” His advice to anyone wanting to starting a business is to find something that you have a real passion for and love doing.
“Once you find it put a plan together and start building your business… Think things through before executing and never give up!”
Each chapter features amazing stories of young people who’ve taken control of their destiny. Donna ends off each chapter with an “Upstart Playlist”, in which she distills their stories into simple lessons that you can take away with.
It’s the book I wished I’ve written.
If you’re an aspiring young entrepreneur, social entrepreneur or even an intrapreneur, and you can pick only one entrepreneurship book to read – this is the one.
Let’s say you like the content on a certain web page, and want to share it with others. You can share its URL, but that wouldn’t allow you to annotate or comment on it. Enter Webklipper.
Webklipper is an interesting web annotation tool that lets you extract the content from an existing web page into a new one called a ‘klip’ that allows you to add highlights and comments, and generating a unique URL for easy sharing with others (you can also create a brand-new page to do the same).
Using this site as an example of how Webklipper would work.
People say necessity is the mother of invention. It’s never more true for Webklipper. Some months back burrp! founder Deap Ubhi wanted to share a section of a lengthy blog article with Avlesh Singh, and the only way to do that was to copy-and-paste in email. So they brainstormed and envisioned ‘a tool which lets you highlight a section of any webpage and gives you a permanent URL to the highlighted page which you can share with your friends’. The idea for Webklipper was thus born, and Avlesh started work on the service in January 2010.
Sorting out the technology for Webklipper to get it working across different browsers and platforms have been challenging, painful and time consuming, Avlesh reveals. Persistence pays, he says. Thankfully he’s helped by some 2,500 beta testers trying out Webklipper.
Like most online applications, the key challenge for Webklipper is distribution – ‘making sure that users who need Webklipper know about it’. Surprisingly, there was a use for Webklipper Avlesh didn’t quite expect – as a collaboration tool. Avlesh noticed that designers ‘would create an HTML layout, go to Webklipper and invite his colleagues to comment on the design’. Their colleagues would then visit the klip and give their feedback, or highlights on specific sections i.e. “the logo isn’t looking good”, “lot of whitespace here” etc. You can imagine that micro-blogging tools such as Twitter (or even better, an enterprise one like Yammer), will make Webklipper‘s collaborative features infinitely more powerful.
Added features and functionality should also help – Webklipper has released browser plugins which makes it convenient for users to use the tool without going to the Webklipper home page. Site owners can also install a widget that let site visitors annotate and comment on on their sites and track them.
Now, he says, he’s finally comfortable to go live.
Entrepreneurship Is Not About Having Your Own Company
Avlesh Singh developed Webklipper to solve a very 'personal need'.
Webklipper has pretty much been a solo effort, but Avlesh recently quit his day job to try and formalize Webklipper into a company. He admits the decision to leave a paying job was a difficult one, but he ‘has immense faith and belief in the idea behind Webklipper‘.
He is in the process of putting together his core team and is currently trying to raise money. He has had a few meetings with various VC firms to date, but declines to reveal details till a deal goes through.
Avlesh, who’s never had a company of his own until founding Webklipper, says most people have wrong misconceptions about the concept of entrepreneurship. “(The) word is generally confused with ‘having your own company’. I don’t essentially agree with that. I have been entrepreneurial while working for someone else too.”
“It’s not a buzzword,” he adds. “It’s in you, built-in. Find and explore (it).”
Creately founders (from left) Charanjit Singh, Chandika Jayasundara and Nick Foster.
Creately.com is a project management tool that helps teams manage and deliver their projects. Positioned as an easy-to-use collaborative diagramming application, it has built-in features for built-in reviewing, easy collaboration, comprehensive diagramming functions and shapes for just about any type of diagram.
Creately was founded two years ago by Charanjit Singh, Chandika Jayasundara and Nick Foster and started as a vision for a new visual way to work with complex data. They submitted their idea to the Melbourne University Entrepreneurship Challenge and, lo-and-behold, won. Soon the team put together some money and sent Chandika off to Sri Lanka to form a development team. On their end, Charanjit and Nick got down to planning the nitty-gritty that needs to be done for a startup to be successful.
A Visual Collaborative Project Management Tool
Web-based Creately.com works in-browser, which make it convenient for project teams whose members are constantly on the go.
The web-based application works with a browser and allows project team members to share, review and update project designs easily. Creately‘s central repository with an extensive library of object sets, templates allows for ease-of-use. Essentially, users can work on visual artefacts that are part of any project that someone else in the team undertakes.
“Most of today’s team collaboration software is purely text-based. Creately is the missing link in the plethora of text-based collaboration platforms that have seen a dramatic uptake in the last few years,” posits Charanjit. “We also felt customers would benefit from having rich diagrams that contained data and behaviours, that could be manipulated visually giving them a very rich and interactive interface to overcome the problems of information overload.”
“We believe there is latent demand for visual interfaces that make working with data and disparate systems easier and more interactive.”
At a most basic level – Creately aims to make communication clearer. “Providing a collaborative diagramming platform which is easy to use and integrates into your existing ways of working helps our customers get their message across to team members and customers – saving them time and money.” Charanjit says the real value of Creately comes to the fore when it is integrated into a service like Google Docs or even SocialWok.
But the team at Creately has a larger vision for the company. They’ve built its underlying technology – even patenting parts of it – that deploys smart shapes (which Creately calls Knowledge Objects or KObjects) that reflect the status and changes in data, properties or behaviors. For example, you could define a KObject to represent network connectivity – when network connectivity experiences a change, the smart shape will change correspondingly to give users a visual form of feedback. “This allows us to quickly build domain specific shapes with built-in intelligence that will be useful across many industries,” explains Charanjit.
Understanding Your Customer
The last two years have been exciting for the team. They introduced Creately at DemoFall ’08 and TechCrunch50 in 2008, and finally launched to the public late last year, earning favorable reviews from the technical press.
One of the key challenges the team at Creately faced was trying to understand their target customer – who they are, what they want and how better to serve their needs. For this purpose, they make extensive use of surveys, customer idea forums, as well as online tracking tools such as Kissmetrics, Google Analytics and CrazyEgg. They’ve even experimented on their pricing. In fact, Creately started by targeting regular consumers, but along the way found that corporate and business users were more willing (and able) to pay for such collaborative project tools. Since then they’ve made a strategic decision to focus on business customers and fine-tuned their go-to-market strategy accordingly.
Today, every new customer Creately wins is an achievement and should to be celebrated, says Charanjit. “Every customer touch point is monitored, measured and improved because we want our customer to not just get a software application but experience the Creately difference that we’re very proud of.”
Charanjit says the fast changing technology landscape is both a challenge as well as an opportunity for agile startups. “Everyday we are faced with new opportunities in our space, and it can sometimes be challenging to stay focused on our game plan when everything around you is changing so quickly.” They have recently launched an API and are now working with some large collaboration platforms to build direct integration into Creately.
Creately is funded with money from friends and family, and the team is working hard to keep costs low. Charanjit admits, however, that in order to fully achieve their vision they would need external funding. “This year we plan to raise money from angels and VCs to take the product to the next level. We want to build a self-sustaining company but also understand that when a market opportunity presents itself – you need to do what it takes to capitalise on it.”
Peer Support Group
Charanjit is currently signed up in the first cohort of Founder Institute Singapore. He says that the Founder Institute program is one of the better things thats happened for the local Internet entrepreneurship scene. “I’ve always felt the biggest challenge in Singapore is not the lack of support from the government or the lack of capability in our people,” Charanjit explains. “It’s the lack of mentors and like-minded peers that an entrepreneur needs to surround himself for success.” He says he doesn’t know anyone in his peer group who’s also ventured down the entrepreneurial route, which can be a stumbling block.
“A lot of what I’ve learnt at Founder Institute I have personally experienced over the last 2 years and having mentors and peers to discuss our challenges has been a real boon. We have also found it to be a great place to network and meet some great guys.”
Views on Entrepreneurship
“I love Singapore as my home. But I… would never have started an Internet start-up living here.”
Starting a business takes passion, courage, the right peer group and sheer hard work, says Charanjit. “The ability to chart my own destiny through my own willpower and create something new that can contribute to the advancement of society are the key attractions for me.”
“I love Singapore as my home. But I will be the first to admit that I would never have started an Internet start-up living here,” he says.
Charanjit believes that the world would be a lesser place without entrepreneurs. “Entrepreneurs are the grease that oil the wheels of commerce and enterprise,” he says. “Entrepreneurship lets me exploit my passion for technology to build something that can fill an under-served need – and do it better than the next guy.”
“Being an entrepreneur means building something that is at least an order of magnitude or two greater than the self – creating value for my business, employees, community and myself in the process.”
He’s acutely aware of the risk of failure – starting on the entrepreneurial journey in his mid-30s, with a new family to boot. “The support of my spouse has been instrumental in me taking the plunge – and for all the blood, sweat and tears – I could now never not be an entrepreneur for the rest of my life.”
“The daily challenges, constant learning and striving to make the ‘impossible’ happen are worth far more than the risks.”
James Sun was runner-up in NBC's The Apprentice in 2007, the first Asian to reach the finals.
Entrepreneur, investor, television personality, inspirational speaker. Most certainly a heartthrob as well.
We’re talking about James Sun, the Korean American who’s better known as one of the finalists of Donald Trump‘s The Apprentice in 2007. He was the first Asian to reach the finals and even emerged as runner-up in that hit reality show. For Singaporeans, you may know him as the host of BBC TV programme Sun Tzu – War On Business that was featured on ChannelNews Asia.
Guess what – James will be swinging by Singapore and will be sharing his secrets of success at a luncheon seminar hosted by local artiste management firm Fly Entertainment on 6 May 2010:
Why should you listen to this 32-year old young punk, you ask? Let’s see:
He’s founder and chairman of location search engine GeoPage.com,
James’ rubbed shoulders with Donald Trump and Barack Obama,
He started his own investment firm at 18 with US$5,000 and became a self-made millionaire at age 22, and
Did I mention he’s good-looking? (Sorry ladies, he’s taken)
Thanks to Fly Entertainment, we have TWO tickets (worth $98 each) to give away! Simply write a comment on what you’d like to learn from James at this lunchtime seminar, and you’ll be able to meet this walking success story in person if we pick you as one of the two winners.
Contest ends this Friday, 30 April 2010. Winners will be notified by email on Monday, 3 May 2010.
OFO - Office Furniture Online - lets you buy or sell second-hand office furniture online.
Entrepreneurs who are starting out always look out to reduce costs and save money so they won’t have to borrow money or rely on online credit cards in the future. When it comes to setting up an office, OFO, an e-commerce site that trades in second-hand office furniture, believes it can help.
Singapore-based OFO – or Office Furniture Online – was started by the team behind Ebizsurf.com.sg, who first got the inspiration when they were trying to sell off their own office furniture.
“We were trying to change some of our office furniture and realised there was no easy and direct avenue to sell them off,” says Gary Ong, director of sales for OFO, adding that listings on online classifieds, with their varied product categories, also invariably get lost. In addition, from their experience on Ebizsurf, a lot of companies have trouble discarding their furniture when they move office. The folks at OFO also recognized that there was a market for used office furniture, especially amongst startup entrepreneurs who are conscious of their startup costs, and focused on these new business owners.
“As entrepreneurs running small-scale businesses, we know the value of savings and are often on the look out for good deals when it comes to office supplies, furniture, equipment and other materials.” Gary says a business owner can often save up to 60 percent off retail prices when buying used.
As Good As New
Not only does OFO‘s online service act as an online clearing house for those looking to buy new or used office furniture, it also allows business owners to post up surplus office products for sale. OFO works on a premium listing model, but is currently free for users to list their products.
Gary reveals that companies that dispose of used office furniture are usually large multi-national corporations who are in the process of moving to a new office, renovating or consolidating their operations. The furniture these companies discard are not only branded – Gary counts brands like Herman Miller, Haworth, and Steelcase amongst others – but have only been used for a few years and still in very good condition. “Throwing away good furniture is a bad idea and a huge waste,” says Gary, who used to be in advertising sales for a publishing firm. “Not only are the furniture still usable but I think I can do greater good to the Earth if it is being reused.”
Views on Entrepreneurship
Gary Ong, director of sales for OFO, knew entrepreneurship was his calling.
Entrepreneurship, Gary says, is tough. “Ever watched (HBO‘s) Band of Brothers? When the troops leaving the landing craft get shredded by bullets? It feels like that at times.”
Gary says that while ‘passion’ is pretty much a cliched answer when it comes to describing a trait that will lead to a successful entrepreneur, it’s actually true. “You need to be passionate about what you are doing, that is the drug that would take you further, higher and keeps you going like a steam train during late nights, and when you realize your wallet is beginning to look empty and when everybody thinks you are wasting your time.”
Gary knew entrepreneurship was his calling. “I always knew I wanted to walk this path, I knew it was going to be tough, I knew it was going to be dirty, I knew it was going to be a big challenge.” He’s thankful he actually knows what he wants, and that he had a great business mentor who has guided him along the way and brought him back to reality whenever the situation called for it.
This leads us to an important lesson he’s learnt: to listen hard.
“Before you start your venture and during your venture, a lot of people would have a lot to say. Listen… they might know something you do not. Take it in and think carefully about what they say, process the information and decide if it is something you need or can work with. So listen and do not forget.”
“Along the way, you would also meet a lot of the naysayers, whose vision are not as far as yours and can only see their toes. Never ever let them put you down, listen, take it with a pinch of salt and remember you always knew what you wanted.”
Jamie Koh and Cherilyn Tan wins the Martell VSOP "The Ultimate Start-up Space" challenge with their idea, The Chupitos Bar.
Four months and two rounds later, The Chupitos Bar, an idea for a concept bar by Jamie Koh and Cherilyn Tan, has beaten over 200 other entries and nine other finalists to win Martell VSOP’s The Ultimate “The Ultimate Start-up Space” challenge. Both in their twenties, the firm friends won a grand prize that included the start-up space in Clarke Quay, one of Singapore’s most vibrant entertainment districts, rent-free for a period of six months and a funding of S$20,000 to live out their dream.
“The overwhelming number of business submissions proved to us that entrepreneurship is very much alive in Singapore,” said Liya Zhang, marketing director of Pernod Ricard Singapore, which oversees the Martell VSOP brand here. She added that the overwhelming response proved that there are many business ideas in Singapore that are in need of financial and mentoring support.
So What Now?
Now with S20,000 in their pocket and a 3-meter by 10-meter space in a prime location, the question for The Chupitos Bar is: what next? Many startups make the critical mistake of making the winning of a business plan competition or entrepreneurship challenge the end-all and be-all of their plans, and fail to keep a mid- to long-term view of their business. After all, S$20,000 doesn’t go very far in the F&B industry.
For Jamie and Cherilyn, the journey has only just begun.
It’s tough sorting through all that real-time online chatter in the form of tweets and such, but Santa Monica, California-based Sency believes its real-time search engine can help.
Proliferation of User-Generated Content
Sency is founded by Evan Britton, who was inspired when he went to the first-ever Twitter conference in Los Angeles eight months ago. It was where he learnt that Twitter gave out its data stream via its API and, with 50 million updates to Twitter daily, there is ‘a ton of data out there’.
Sency is built for the everyday Internet user in mind, according to Britton, for those who ‘want to search the real time web in a simple and easy manner’.
“User-generated content continues to become more prevalent across the web as more and more users post information online, explains Britton, who has been in Internet marketing for over ten years. “Such information has spawned ‘real-time search’ as a powerful way to navigate the web.” Traditional search engines scour the web for relevant websites, Britton points out, while real time search engines return the most recent conversations, comments, and links posted by online users.
Sency's two tabs shows what's being said on any given topic as well as topics and links that are currently trending.
Sency‘s two tabbed approach differentiates it from other similar services. One tab, “What’s Being Said’, lets users see what’s being said right now on any given topic. The other tab, Today’s Most Popular Links, shows you the most popular links today for any given keyword. Its homepage updates several times each day, giving users a quick idea of what topics and links are trending at that point in time.
You can find out more in this video:
Sency currently gets some 100,000 visitors per month, and looks set to grow further. To do that, Britton says it is important for them to keep the user in mind, and focus on improving the site. “(We need) to be able to get the word out to as many users as possible. And, the most important factor will be if users come back to Sency on their own – repeat visits and loyal users is how we can grow the site to the next level.” It recently launched language support in Spanish, German, French and Italian.
Views on Entrepreneurship
Evan Britton, founder of Sency.com
Britton has been an entrepreneur for several years, and over that period, he has learnt that absolute focus is a must. “You must focus on what you are trying to do. It takes both hard work and passion to truly make an impact with whatever you are trying to do,” he says.
It’s officially World Entrepreneurship Day (WED) on 16th April 2010, and there will be an entire slew of activities taking place in 22 countries around the world participating in this 24-hour, worldwide celebration of entrepreneurship and innovation.
World Entrepreneurship Day (WED) aims to infuse entrepreneurial optimisim and remind the world that it is entrepreneurs who consistently and courageously led economies in recession back to prosperity i.e. save the world.
On this day, you’ll find individuals, high schools, universities, corporations and entrepreneurial organizations organizing activities on their own accord so do check out what’s happening in your country and participate if you can.
Founders at a session of Founder Institute Singapore facing the heat from the rest of the class.
The mood in the classroom was slightly tense; the five men standing nervously in front as they endured the scrutiny of their fellow classmates. Not only were they being asked difficult questions, the honest feedback they were getting when they did answer, in many cases, can be downright depressing and ego-deflating.
Welcome to the ‘HotSeat’ – possibly the most frightening, yet the most fruitful, time at a session of Founder Institute Singapore.
“It is a good-sized class to have in the first program,” says Paine. “Once we demonstrate success, The Founder Institute will have more prominence in Singapore’s startup ecosystem.” Most of the people who sign up are aged around 28 to 32, and unsurprisingly, was predominantly male (there was only one female in the class). The majority of the participants come from the ICT industry, with a few having started businesses in the past, while some are currently running their own businesses, and the rest are planning to launch a new business.
Class Is In Session
A Founder Institute Singapore session is typically three hours long (there are 12 sessions in each intake), in which three to four mentors share on a particular topic at every session. The entrepreneurs – called founders whether or not they have an existing venture – are then expected to tap the insights and experience of the mentors by asking specific questions about their own ventures related to the topic in question. The sessions then end with the ‘HotSeat’, where three to five founders are called up to the front of the class where they have to pitch their ideas – and where they hear blunt, but constructive, feedback.
Steve Melhuish, founder of local property portal PropertyGuru, sharing with FI founders on the importance of research.
The ‘HotSeat’ is not for the faint-hearted. Some founders go through the pain of having an idea that they’ve nurtured for months, sometimes even years, get torn apart by the mentors and other founders. As one founder put it, the experience was ‘humbling’. But many of them appreciate being able to hear the different views from people of different backgrounds, cultures and expertise, which helps in their ‘ideation’ process.
Aaron Kong, 30, who signed up with the idea of starting his own venture, says the experience has been refreshing. “In Singapore, startups do not often get the opportunity to interact with serial entrepreneurs through formalized programs. Having been through two sessions and several group meetings so far, I am starting to value the input, structure and network opportunities The Founder Institute presents in relation to my business ideas.”
And the sessions don’t end in the classroom. The founders are put in groups and given weekly assignments, and are expected to meet outside of classes to discuss and complete their assignments.
Quality Mentors Make The Difference
The key attraction of the The Founder Institute program, as you can imagine, is the access that founders have to experienced mentors, many of them who are serial entrepreneurs in their own right. This is the program’s greatest strength but also its greatest weakness, for the quality of the mentors dictate how much founders can learn and hence, determine its success.
Battle Ventures managing partner Jeffrey Paine (right) chatting with Founder Institute mentors Andy Zain of Elasitas (left) and Batara Eto, founder of mixi.jp (2nd from left).
The Singapore program has put together some excellent mentors – the day we were there we observed Steve Melhuish of local property portal PropertyGuru, Andy Zain of Indonesia-based mobile solutions provider Elasitas and Batara Eto, co-founder of Japan social networking site mixi.jp, put founders through the paces on the importance of research. But it is also clear that an experienced entrepreneur does not a mentor make – some mentors can be limited by the extent of their experiences in their own particular fields, while others simply make poor communicators. I daresay the challenge for Founder Institute Singapore is not getting founders to sign up – but to convince the best mentors to sign up and share their experiences with founders.
So far, Founder Institute Singapore has gotten off to a flying start. For the sake of the Singapore startup ecosystem, I hope it’s able to maintain its momentum.
We’re listed at #38 (TechCrunch is #1 and VentureBeat #2) , some 30 places behind our favourite marketing guru Seth Godin. More importantly, we’re one of the very few startup blogs outside of the United States to list and the only one from Singapore.
Thanks for all your support! You made this happen.
To Succeed, Start Managing Employee Performance Right from the Start
When we’re in startup mode, it’s easy to put all our focus on market research, product development, financing, marketing and sales. What we often forget to focus on is setting up basic employee performance management processes to support the growth and success of both our business and our staff. Since our people ending up being our most strategic resource, and our only sustainable competitive advantage, it’s vital to have processes in place to maximize their performance right from the start.
There are three basic performance management processes every company should really have in place, regardless of their size:
1. Goal management
2. Regular feedback on performance
3. Performance based employee development
Effective goal management includes setting organizational goals, communicating these to all staff, establishing individual goals for staff that are linked to your higher level organizational goals, periodically reviewing progress on goals (individual and organizational) and communicating the status of goals up and down the reporting chain. Periodically, it can also be important to review goals to ensure they are still realistic and relevant – a rapidly changing business climate can make this imperative. Finally, it’s important to regularly review performance on goals and give each employee feedback on their contributions, so they know what they did right, and what they can improve. Formalizing this process is a great way to communicate company values and priorities, and ensure everyone is working collaboratively towards the same objectives.
Giving employees regular feedback on their performance is also important to everyone’s success. While we can and should do this informally, on an ongoing basis, it’s also important to setup a formal process for giving feedback. A formal process will give this activity the weight and value it deserves. A formal performance appraisal should ideally evaluate each employee’s performance of key competencies and their goals. It’s a vital way to manage employee performance, and identify, document and address any performance issues early on.
Finally, it’s important to establish development plans for our employees. The best employees are those who are continually developing and expanding their skills. Start by looking at each employee’s performance, and identify strengths and areas for improvement or expansion. You should do this in context with the company’s and the employee’s goals. Then put develop plans in place to help improve or expand the employee’s skills and expertise in needed areas. It’s important to then also look for improvements in performance to make sure the training has been effective.
“Basic performances management processes are vital to the success of your employee and your company.”
These basic performances management processes are vital to the success of your employee and your company. When your company is small, it might seem like a lot of extra work to do any of this formally – but remember, you’re setting precedents. It can be easier to evolve and change your processes as your company grows, than to implement new processes. Initially, you can probably manage these processes manually, using paper or electronic forms. As your company grows, you should investigate automating and integrating them using one of the many software tools available on the market today. Many will pay for themselves in terms of the time and paper you’ll save.
This post was contributed by Sean Conrad, a Certified Human Capital Strategist and Senior Product Analyst at Halogen Software, one of the leading providers of employee performance management solutions. He’s passionate about helping companies of all sizes improve their employee performance management practices. For more of his insights on talent management, read his posts on the Halogen blog, and to learn more about best practices visit Halogen’s Talent Management Centers of Excellence.
David Gash, the CEO of San Diego-based advertising design agency Prova Advertising, is also a big fan of crowdsourcing. In fact, he’s such a fan he’s built Prova‘s business model around community-sourced advertising design contributions.
Prova lets a business owner submits a brief, set a price they're willing to pay, and track over 30 designs crowdsourced from freelance designers as they are created, and only pay for the design they want.
The idea is simple – a business owner submits a brief for a ‘contest’, set a price they’re willing to pay, and track over 30 designs crowdsourced from freelance designers as they are created, and only pay for the design they want. Once a winning entry is chosen, the business owner downloads the new design. The ability for site visitors to look through current contests and designs, and rate the entries on Twitter and Facebook, adds a social element. It’s like crowdSPRING, with a twist.
Crowdsourcing Advertising Design
Gash started a web development firm straight out of high school, which he said was great because it taught him his entrepreneurial strengths and weaknesses. One of the things he realized early – he hated doing his own advertising. “It took me forever to create an ad, and once I was done, it wouldn’t attract the right client. It wasn’t until college that I learned the science behind advertising.”
After speaking with other small business owners, Gash found they had the same concerns with advertising. Most of the time, entrepreneurs on a tight budget has to create the advertisement themselves or hire a freelancer – since hiring an agency is likely too expensive – so many of them simply avoided advertising altogether.
“I thought I could create a better solution for small businesses everywhere,” says Gash. “Since every startup has a different budget, why can’t design work be created for different budgets?” So Gash proceeded to envision a service where it would be an arena where designers would compete based on skill. This was the start of Prova. “Prova was based on an idea to solve small businesses problem of poor quality advertising. It’s my goal to help businesses obtain agency quality advertisements at the price they pick.”
“Plus I get to help other people start doing what they love (ie. starting a business),” Gash adds.
For those who decry crowdsourcing as a way to get cheap or free labour, Gash says Prova ‘isn’t going to help you find cheap labor, it’s going to help you find better quality labor at the price you can afford’. He explains that unlike some other crowdsourcing services, his site is ‘based around increasing rates for designers’ instead of settling for bids. As a result, designers’ rates are based around what small businesses can afford.
“If you can afford to pay $300 for a postcard you will attract designers that are interested in receiving $300 for a postcard. If you can afford to pay $600, you’ll attract a lot more designers. This makes agency quality design work scalable to your unique budget.”
“We’re turning the tables on designers, so it’s get paid for your skill instead of get paid for your lowest bid. We want to tap a community of quality designers and pay them appropriate rates for their work.”
Helping Entrepreneurs
David Gash, founder of Prova, says he's an 'entrepreneur by trade'.
29-year old Gash proudly proclaims that he’s an entrepreneur by trade. “I love entrepreneurship. It’s what drives this country.”
The biggest lesson Gash has learned is to ‘launch before you’re ready’. “I heard a term called ready, fire, aim. It means, release before you think it’s ready. Then get feedback from your users and re-aim.”
“So launch early and launch often. I made the mistake of launching too late and lost out on several months of exposure.” Another lesson Gash has learned is to identify strengths and weaknesses. “If your weaknesses are important, find someone to work on that for you, or start working on it yourself now.”
As an entrepreneur, Gash experienced the feeling of being all alone. “It can be extremely hard and it’s quite common to be completely on your own. If you feel like no one understands you, you’re not alone.” To that end, Gash is creating a weekly blog dedicated to encouraging entrepreneurs called entrepreneurcouragement. “It’s a place where I’ll be transparent about how difficult it can be to start to follow your dream. We’ll offer advice and encouragement for anyone who needs it.”
“I’ll be honest about the fact no one in my life supports what I do. I have a great wife, but I can see in her eye that she would prefer if I had a stable job, so we could buy a house, settle down & *gulp* have kids. My parents are “looking out for my best interests” by warning me about the struggles of starting a business.”
“Often I want to throw in the towel, and I know other entrepreneurs feel the same way. The only thing that keeps me going is the idea that I’ve created a service that truly helps small business owners.”
Cardhub.com, a credit card comparison websites and gift card portal.
One of the ways to control your personal finances is to own the right credit card, but how do you select one most suited for your personal needs? CardHub.com, an online search tool that aims to redefine the way people search, compare and apply for credit cards, believes it has the answer.
Finding The Right Credit Card
CardHub‘s search engine allows users to find all kinds of (U.S.-based) credit card products, from student credit cards to small business credit cards and from rewards credit cards to balance transfer credit cards, and even prepaid cards and gift cards. An interactive credit card search tool allows them to customize their search and quickly narrow down to credit cards that match their specific criteria. Once users finds the credit card that most suits their needs, CardHub connects them directly with the respective credit card company. There’s also a comprehensive education center and a credit score estimator to further assist users.
Virginia-based CardHub.com is owned and operated by Evolution Finance, which was founded by Odysseas Papadimitriou. A veteran of the credit card industry – he worked for Capital One for almost eight years where he handled marketing strategy, business development and product development – Papadimitriou realized that every credit card company would (unsurprisingly) position its cards as the best option for consumers, making it difficult for consumers to choose. He recognized the need for a neutral, objective party to inform and help consumers on picking the right card for their needs.
Views on Entrepreneurship
Odysseas Papadimitriou, founder of Evolution Finance which owns Cardhub.com.
Papadimitriou compares entrepreneurship to ‘a rollercoaster’, with many ups and downs along the way. “When you’re starting your own company, every little detail matters. Something that may seem trivial can have a powerful impact on your business – both positive and negative,” says Papadimitriou. “This is true for every aspect of your business, from the people you work with and the details of your product to customer service and marketing.” An important lesson he’s learned is to take everything in stride. “It’s tempting to overreact when it’s your own business, but if you do this you will drive yourself crazy.”
“It’s best to take a step back and analyze everything with a level head,” advises Papadimitriou.
For aspiring entrepreneurs thinking to start their own business, Papadimitriou says it’s important to start in an industry in which you’re already a subject matter expert. “You put yourself at a serious competitive disadvantage if, on top of all the difficulties that come with being an entrepreneur, you have to learn the business too.”
Billy Jinks, 20-year old CEO of Lexani Limousines, rides the
We interviewed Billy Jinks some time back (read interview here), and almost a year down the road the 20-year old CEO of Lexani Limousines continues to maintain his Midas touch despite the recent economic challenges.
The travel industry has been hit hard in 2009 by the global economic malaise, and chauffeured transportation – the industry that Lexani Limousines operates in – was similarly affected. Travelers everywhere eschewed limousines and luxury sedan rides for cab rides or shuttle services, or avoided travel altogether, so Jinks knew he had to develop creative and strategic solutions to deal with a potential declining client pool. “The recession hit everyone in our industry hard, but that just meant that we were forced to really examine what aspects of our business needed to be refined in order to keep turning a profit,” Jinks says.
Thinking Out Of The Box
In 2009, Lexani relooked its business, selling off its under-utilized vehicles and tried to maintain its pool of experienced drivers. “By selling some of our less popular vehicles, we were able to strike a balance of staying busy while making a decent profit.”
Instead of looking purely at cost-cutting measures, Jinks also looked at ways to bolster Lexani‘s revenue. It offering weekday specials during their slow months, partnered with night-time hotspots to transport clients too inebriated to drive home, as well as using the services of a barter exchange, which allowed Lexani Limousines to trade limo rides for services needed for day-to-day business, like regular car washes. Thankfully, its profitable corporate business proved to be unaffected during the economic downturn, mostly because of its strong relationship with its accounts.
These efforts were not in vain – not only did the luxury chauffeur company escaped unscathed from the crisis, Lexani actually took in US$1.8 million in 2009, nearly US$500,000 more in revenue compared to 2008.
Lady Gaga, Grammy award winner for Best Electronic/Dance Album for The Fame. (Image courtesy of www.starpulse.com)
Plenty, it seems.
If you believe the hype, Lady Gaga is the savior of the modern world. Or at the very least, she represents the best in new thinking, digital-savviness and business smarts that the Wall Street Journal says will redefine the music industry. For sure, there’s a lot the rest of us can learn from the quirky glam rock star – calling her eccentric belittles her calculated, well-orchestrated image and clever market positioning – as well.
Here’s what some people have wrote about Lady Gaga’s brilliance and the lessons we can glean:
This article in TODAY, entitled “The Young and Enterprising”, highlighted results from a global survey that revealed an interesting statistic – more than 80 percent of students in Singapore want to start their own business. The Global University Entrepreneurial Spirits Student’s Survey, carried out in 2008 with nearly 64,000 students from 83 institutions in 19 countries, put Singapore third in rankings after Mexico and Africa.
Why is this result surprising? For decades, the Singapore education system has pumped out tens of thousands of compliant graduates best suited for staffing – stuffing – the many multinational companies (MNCs) that the government has convinced to set up shop on our shores. Yet increasingly, our youth are beginning to see that their future may not lie in a steady paycheck – which is also becoming less steady – in other people’s employment, but in their own hands.
I say this is a good thing. Screw productivity. Enterprise and entrepreneurship is the way to go.
