Would you leave a high-paying consultancy job to run a startup? Shawn Cheong and Joseph Chua did – the two 28 year-olds left global management consultancy services giant Accenture and founded myTimeWall.com, an online social networking and life-blogging service mashup.
Shawn was working in Accenture as a consulting analyst when a certain thought struck him. “I realised that people simply lose track of their lives after a hard day at work, and even though there were the occasional significant events, they were easily forgotten after 2 months. This really affected me,” Shawn says. “How can I live my life without remembering anything about it?”
He decided there must be some sort of a system that can encourage his friends and co-workers to create these events, so that he could remember them. He roped in colleague and fellow Nanyang Technological Uuniversity (NTU) computer engineering graduate Joseph Chua – and myTimeWall.com was conceived.
Social Blogging on a Timeline
myTimeWall combines blogging, social networking elements and a timeline into what Shawn and Joseph like to call ‘social blogging on a timeline’. The premise is simple: A user can create an entry of a past event (up to 10 years back) on their own ‘TimeWall’. Anyone who was part of that event, say a birthday party three years ago, can be connected to the same entry and shared on the other person’s TimeWall. It’s a great collaborative way to institutionalize social collective memories.
An example of an event shared by various participants on one user's TimeWall.
Shawn insists myTimeWall is different from timeline-based microblogging services, such as, say, Plurk. “Perhaps the only similarity is we both have a timeline.” One difference that strikes you first is that microblogging services like Twitter, Tumblr or Plurk tends to focus on the current or the ‘now’ – myTimeWall is more retrospective in nature, allowing you to chronicle events in the past. It’s not inconceivable to turn your TimeWall into a collaborative social schedule, either.
Shawn believes that myTimeWall‘s value proposition is unique. “I will say there are no direct competitors,” he declares. “The existing social networks and blogging sites can be considered indirect competitors, although we are looking into how we can leverage off them and achieve synergy instead.” It’s a bold claim. The challenge is to educate users on the difference and finding a real, compelling use to eschew other services and use myTimeWall instead.
“Our main challenge is to reach out to users and let them understand the benefits of myTimeWall.” User acquisition is a priority, Shawn admits.
To grow their service, Shawn says there are plans to creating more value-added features and integrate with sites like Blogger.com and Facebook. “This will give our users a more complete experience, and also allow their existing blogs entries and photos to be showcased on their TimeWall and shared with the rest of their friends on myTimeWall.” As for their revenue model, Shawn says there are plans to host ads from sponsors and sell virtual goods.
Views on Entrepreneurship
Shawn says entrepreneurship is a lifelong journey that has no end.
“You can always make things better and there is always new ways to improve people’s lives. We have chosen this path because that is exactly what we enjoy.”
Make your business cards stand out from the rest. (Picture courtesy of MOO).
So the networking event’s over, you’re stumbling back half-drunk from all that free booze, and you’re half-cursing your arse luck over that pretty agency chick whose number you didn’t quite manage to get. All you’ve got is a hangover and a lousy bunch of business cards from people whose faces you’ve already forgotten.
Hold on to that thought.
The truth is that your business card remains your greatest networking tool, and possibly the only thing people can remember you with (other than a good impression). So how do you ensure your business cards stand out from the rest? Here are some thoughts:
1. Have a great design.
Consider carefully the image you are trying to present to the world. Eye-catching, yet clean and simple, design works best. For example, author, entrepreneur and venture capitalist Guy Kawasaki prefers his business cards simple with large fonts.
Make your business cards a conversation piece. For example, my friend Ben Koe has a great idea of turning your business card into a name tag for events. After all, these days it’s relatively easy to create fantastic, memorable business cards. Custom printing services such as MOO provide flexibility in allowing you to choose card stock or even having different images on each card. All this is done over the web and they even ship worldwide.
Before you go charging into designing and printing your name cards, however, you may want to check out the common business card mistakes that marketing guru Seth Godin has identified.
2. Give yourself an online presence.
Make it easy for people to search for information about you.
I highly recommend having a profile on business networking site LinkedIn, which can be a source of good sales and job leads. (I’ve previously written a short post on this.) Twitter‘s also great if you use it for professional purposes.
3. Include only the necessary.
Include only critical information so that people know what you do and how to contact you – name, address, contact numbers and website address. LinkedIn, Twitter and Skype IDs are recommended too, if you have them. Facebook? Not unless you want the world privy to your personal shenanigans.
Seriously, nobody really cares about your company’s mission statement, or that award you’ve won 10 years ago. Leave out your qualifications too, unless you’re really a doctor of the medical sort.
4. Make a good impression.
Needless to say, no matter how well-designed your business cards are, you’re not going to leave a good impression if you act like a jerk or buffoon. Remember your manners! If you’re not familiar with Asian customs, here’s a guide on exchanging business cards with Asians.
30 year-old Singaporean Jason Koh did something totally unthinkable for many in his generation – he eschewed his very respectable IT degree from an acclaimed Australian university, and a 6-year systems engineer job, to sell beancurd. Today he helps to run Rochor Beancurd House, which has two outlets in Singapore, selling one of the country’s quintessential breakfast and dessert food.
People often asks Jason why he doesn’t run his own IT business instead. The answer, he says, is simple.
“I love to interact with people and by running my own food business, I get to cook and see all sorts of people from all walks of life everyday,” he shares. “That is something I can never do when I just place myself in front of a monitor or just by meeting my office-based clients.”
That’s not to say his information technology education from the Queensland University of Technology is not put to good use. Jason is extremely active on popular microblogging service Twitter, constantly reaching out to and engaging a new generation of potential beancurd-eaters. Other than providing updates on events and new product launches, Twitter allows him to ‘keep up with the current trend and likings’. “We can also create loyal fans or followers who share the same ideas in life and food,” he says.
Humble Beginnings
The origins of Rochor Beancurd House, like the soya bean, are humble. Jason’s father, Xu Kun Ming, and his grandparents arrived in Singapore from China during the 1950s, and started a street stall selling soya bean milk and beancurd beside the Rochor seven-storey mall. From 1955 Mr Xu single-handedly touting soya bean milk from a pushcart, peddling along Rochor Road to Beach Road and Balestier Road. Hence the name Rochor Beancurd House.
The demographic of consumers who eat beancurd, Jason shares, have changed over the years. Back in the 60s, it was the middle-aged customer who liked their beancurd plain topped with sugar syrup. These days, however, it’s the choice dessert among teenagers, who are adventurous and prefer their beancurd with different flavorings. “There are many new dessert shops offering different toppings for beancurd,” he says, “Rochor Beancurd House chooses to differentiate itself by selling only traditional original tasting beancurd.” The only concession they’ve made is adding an option to serve it cold.
With 50 years experience of making and serving traditional beancurd, Rochor Beancurd has gained a relatively loyal customer base. Its beancurd has also been well-regarded in the local media for its smooth texture and taste, and Mr Xu have even been hailed by MakanSutra founder and food guru KF Seetoh as a “Singapore Street Food Master”.
Jason says the next steps for Rochor Beancurd is to work on its branding, and expansion by taking the business islandwide to provide convenience for customers. It’s currently in talks for its third outlet.
Jason’s also learnt, from his IT background and experience, how vital customer service is to the success of any business. Rochor Beancurd House’s motto is to ‘provide very good customer service at all times’. “We feel happy when we see smiles on our customers face, complimenting that our beancurd is nice and service is good.”
Views on Entrepreneurship
“I believe in my family recipe and I want to keep my father’s effort going. I want to build our family brand into a household brand in Singapore,” Jason says, matter-of-factly.
An important lesson he’s learnt is that champions take failure as a learning opportunity. “So take in all you can, and run with it. Be your best and don’t ever give up.”
“Success is a reality to those who pursue it,” he insists.
Rochor Beancurd House is located at:
a) 745 Geylang Road Lor 39 Singapore 389653
b) 432 Balestier Road #01-436 Singapore 329813
The National Research Foundation wants more high-tech incubators to set up in Singapore to spur innovation and entrepreneurship here. (Picture from Getty Images)
The National Research Foundation (NRF) recently announced a war kitty of S$50 million under the Technology Incubation Scheme (TIS) to attract both local and foreign technology incubator investors to set up in Singapore and spur the growth of early-stage, high-tech startups here. The scheme aims to provide up to 85 percent co-funding in each startup in the incubator’s portfolio up to a maximum of S$500,000. However, the incubator is required to invest the remaining amount of at least 15 percent, although there is an option for the incubator to buy out NRF’s share in the start-up within three years of investment.
The scheme is part of the S$360 million National Framework for Innovation and Enterprise (NFIE) announced in March 2008 to strengthen innovation and entrepreneurship in Singapore, and the NRF says it’s actually modelled after Israel’s successful Technological Incubator Programme. Proposals will be evaluated and selected by an expert panel formed by the NRF. Also, funded startups don’t have to be locally owned but need to operate from Singapore, and must be less than 5 years old.
According to certain sources, the NRF also revealed that while the total fund allocated is officially S$50 million, the amount can go up to S$75 million.
I agree with NRF‘s CEO Dr Francis Yeoh, who says that experienced mentors are very helpful to high-tech start-up entrepreneurs to guide them in the early and most risky stage of their companies’ development. However, the challenge is to find the right incubators that will add value to the entrepreneurship scene here, and that is going to hugely depend on who that panel comprises of.
Local serial entrepreneur Alex Toh believes that this scheme is targeting “wealthy, made-it entrepreneurs” to start and run these incubators, rather than traditional VCs. “Sand Hill needs to come down from the mountains and plough the fields themselves”, as he puts it. Yes, I can see local tech tycoon and Creative Technology boss Sim Wong Hoo signing up for this scheme already.
Another question that begs asking: what does this mean for incubators that currently administer the Media Development Authority’siJAM microfunding scheme? Thymos Capital‘s Bernard Leong, speaking in a personal capacity, said on Twitter that the iJAM incubators are close to the end of their contract with MDA on the scheme and this means those iJAM startups that decide to ramp up their operations are likely to follow up with the TIS incubators or NRF early-stage funds.
Whatever the case with MDA may be, both Bernard and Alex agrees that if the NRF‘s TIS scheme takes off, it will create more incubators that fill the 6-digit funding gap that’s severely lacking in Singapore.
BusinessWeek’s Valley GirlSarah Lacy shares a rare glimpse of the Silicon Valley ethos and culture that drives the thinking and drive of the many startups in that entrepreneurial hub. Through her narrative, she describes the factors within Silicon Valley ecosystem that make it tick – youth, drive, passion, the first Internet bust and the young, experienced Net entrepreneurs that served as mentors to a whole new generation of startups.
Contrary to the title, this book is not really about Google. It’s about the new paradigm shift in thinking that companies, brands and individuals need to adopt to deal with and survive in an increasingly connected world. Jarvis, previously the founding editor of Entertainment Weekly and currently an associate professor and director of the interactive journalism program at the City University of New York’s new Graduate School of Journalism, hypothesizes how different industries – utilities, manufacturing, transportation, retail and even insurance – would look if Google took over.
The editor of Wired and author of The Long Tail Chris Anderson comes back with a discourse on the phenomenon of free pricing as a revenue model. Despite being panned by some critics, this book is still an essential read to understand how different forms of pricing, and by extension marketing, matters for a product or service offering.
Silicon Valley startup isocket recently announced the closing of a US$2 million early stage funding round from a group of investors led by Tim Draper at Draper Fisher Jurvetson. I took the opportunity to talk to isocket founder and CEO John Ramey about the first commission-free, open platform for multiple forms of advertising that has already secured popular technology blog Techcrunch as its first customer.
isocket currently consists of only two people – other than John, there’s co-founder and CTO Zak Hassanein. “I founded isocket back in August, 2007 and Zak joined me shortly thereafter,” John says. “Both of us are successful repeat entrepreneurs, having started multiple businesses since we were 12 years old.”
In John’s last business (Maven Ventures, which he co-founded in 2005), he worked with alternative marketing for the real estate industry, employing tactics such as direct response marketing. Most of the marketing, he says, was “old media” that was very tedious and repetitive. “We started working on ways to make that process smoother, because frankly it was a pain.” As they started to solve that problem, they realized the “solution” they were working on was bigger than they thought it would be. “We decided to run with it full time, so we sold off our assets from the last business and ran with this one,” John recalls.
According to its website, isocket is an application that makes it easier to sell any kind of advertising, such as a website banner, mobile video or out-of-home digital sign. It claims to not keep a percentage of advertising sold, nor does it charge hidden fees or steep commissions. John says that isocket‘s first private beta targets “mid-tail web publishers”, websites who want to sell such advertising. They can be any site ranked from #200 to #100,000, he says. Techcrunch, their first user, is a perfect example.
Opportunities and Challenges
A key challenge isocket faced early on was basically the lack of resources to accomplish as much as they knew they could. “It was a struggle with no money or support for almost two years,” he says. “Some of the concepts we started talking about in 2007 are starting to be done by other people, so it was frustrating we didn’t have what we needed to execute them.”
John has grand plans for isocket and is glad to be working on a product that is generating a lot of public interest. “We love solving a real problem for real customers with a valuable product. At this stage, only three things matter: building the best team possible, taking care of our customers, and learning.”
Views on Entrepreneurship
John believes that entrepreneurship is a lifestyle choice, not a career choice. “There are days when it really sucks,” he elaborates. “Then there are moments that make it all worthwhile.”
“But for me, it’s not a choice – this is who I am and I can’t stop it. That doesn’t make me any better or smarter than anyone else, it just makes me different (perhaps even crazy).”
“In my mind, entrepreneurship is about self-actualization. Most people never learn who they are or where their limits lie. By biting off way more than I can chew and shooting for something huge, I’ll know what I’m capable of and who I am. It’s not an ego thing, it’s just my way of discovering.”
An important lesson John points out is this: to recognize the limits people have built into themselves. “Then get rid of them. Think different, go big, be genuine.”
The problem with search on the Internet is simply that there is far too much rubbish online.
One pet hate? Inauthentic third-party reseller websites. Worse, some of them actually mimic authentic sites, and can mine your data, hijack systems and generally make your (online) life miserable.
Here’s where SealCOS™ (Seal of a Certified Official Site) comes in: it’s a new form of identifying the correct, official websites for brands and organizations. They can apply for the SealCOS certification and, upon approval, can insert the SealCOS mark into their branding and official website platform. The SealCOS mark appears in website titles returned from the search query, offering a visible mark at the end of the meta tag that makes it simple for consumers to discern between official and inauthentic sites, helping them to cut back on search time.
“While the SealCOS mark functions primarily as a direct branding tool, it also allows consumers to search an item and easily find authentic brands that sell that product,” said Charles Chehebar, founder and CEO of SealCOS LLC. “Say you’re looking for a new set of leather luggage; simply search ‘leather luggage SealCOS,’ and the query will return official websites of legitimate brands that offer leather luggage. Most of the time, consumers take comfort in buying direct, rather than through third-party sites that can be less trustworthy – especially when they falsely claim to be official sites.”
Consumers can easily filter search results even further by inserting “SealCOS” as part of the query, to search through only the ‘official sites’. SealCOS says its certification can ease customer confusion and frustration, helping businesses convert sales lost to these factors, as well as help companies cut down on online advertising costs by standing out next to third party and reseller sites.
Now if only someone can work on eliminating all that Russian spam I’m getting.
For more information on the SealCOS mark and obtaining certification, you can visit their website.
Johnny C Taylor Jr, the author of The Trouble with HR.
The problem with human resources, as my wife puts it in half-jest, is that in many cases its practices are hardly human (she works in the human resource department for a large multinational company).
Johnny C. Taylor, Jr, who speaks extensively on business leadership and human resource, has a new book out called “The Trouble with HR: An Insider’s Guide to Finding and Keeping the Best People“, which (as you can imagine) covers some real issues with HR. For example, one of the ten hiring mistakes he mentioned in the book, and the greatest, relates to company culture. He says:
I knew a CEO of a start-up financial services company who hired an accounting manager based on her resume. He was impressed by her skills and background and knew she could do the job. But when he interviewed her, he had doubts about how she would fit into the culture. She came across in the interview as having an edge. He sensed that her attitude could be a problem, but he was so impressed by her resume that he ignored the telltale signs and erased his own doubts. On her first day on the job, she attended a meeting where she offended three of her colleagues. Angry, she stormed out of the meeting, leaving little room for compromise. Her first day was difficult, and it went downhill from there. She was replaced after six months. While a study by the American Management Association says replacement costs vary greatly depending on the job and salary, it estimates that most searches cost from 25 percent for lower-level positions to 200 percent of annual compensation for senior executives. Those costs include executive recruitment fees and customer service disruption.
And why is this important to you as a startup, you ask. Well it so happens that in order for your startup to grow, you need to hire. And you must hire well, since you cannot afford to make any hiring mistakes early in the life of your startup.
Impact Entrepreneurship Group, Canada's largest youth entrepreneurship program.
The Impact Entrepreneurship Group is Canada’s largest non-profit, student-run organization dedicated to encouraging the entrepreneurial spirit amongst youth in Canada and becoming a starting point and catalyst for youth interested in entrepreneurship and leadership. Since 2004, Impact has developed programs both at the national and local level that reach over 10 000 young people each year. Consisting of over 100 student volunteers nationwide, Impact is dedicated to driving the entrepreneurial spirit.
Will a set-up to promote youth entrepreneurship here in Singapore work? I believe it can. There are local programmes like Startup@Singapore (link) organized by the NUS Entrepreneurship Society, but I’ve argued earlier that entrepreneurship could be taught even as early as in primary school. More can be done to channel all that youthful energy and disruptive, creative minds to productive, entrepreneurial efforts. The question is who could, or should, take a proactive role in starting a holistic, comprehensive program such as the one run by Canada’s Impact.
In any case, if you’re an aspiring young entrepreneur based in Canada, do check out some of the programs and activities it organizes:
Impact National Conference (November 20-21st 2009)
During Global Entrepreneurship Week, and as Impact’s flagship event, the annual Impact Conference attracts the 500 best and brightest high school, university and college students from leading academic institutions across Canada to learn about entrepreneurship and connect with prominent industry leaders.
Global Youth Entrepreneurship Congress (November 20-21st 2009)
Modeled after Y-Combinator in California, Impact Ventures aims to provide seed funding and a 12-week mentorship program to three entrepreneurs in hopes to bring ideas to creation.
MicroCredit Competition
The MicroCredit Competition is a nation-wide challenge amongst high schools to see how much students can fundraise using $100 in only a single week with all proceeds going to the charity of the high school’s choice.
Altimeter set to climb higher with three new partners.
Consulting firm Altimeter Group today announced that Internet pioneer Deborah Schultz, and former Forrester Research analysts R “Ray” Wang and Jeremiah Owyang will join founding partner Charlene Li in the firm’s San Mateo, Calif., headquarters, forming an incredibly formidable team.
As part of the firm’s expansion, Altimeter Group also announced the launch of “The Hanger,” a physical space intended to bring together the ecosystem of emerging technologies, thought leaders, business and service providers to innovate and bring new ideas to life.
Here’s a great e-guide on starting a business during the current economic downturn by Irish entrepreneur Feargal Byrne, the founder of e-learning software company Brain Power Ltd. He recently set up LostJobStartBusiness.com, a site that helps people who have lost their jobs to start their own business.
isocket socking it to traditional online advertising networks.
Online advertising is going to take a new twist.
New Silicon Valley startup and advertising platform isocket announces the closing of a US$2 million early stage funding round from a group of investors led by Tim Draper at Draper Fisher Jurvetson. Built by a team of experienced advertising entrepreneurs led by CEO and founder John Ramey, isocket is the first commission-free, open platform for multiple forms of advertising.
isocket recently went live in May this year via the launch of an invitation-only beta testing with leading technology blog TechCrunch, their first customer. TechCrunch announced their intention to depart from existing ad networks in favor of using isocket to power their in-house advertising direct sales.
1. You own a shoe shop. You buy shoes at $10 per pair, and sell them at $20 per pair. Your shop rental costs $1000 per day. How many pairs of shoes do you have to sell before you cover the cost of your shop rental?
2. One worker can work 10-man hours per day. It takes 2 hours to produce a pair of shoes. How many workers do you need to produce 100 pairs of shoes in 4 days? How about in 4 hours?
We may gotten it all wrong when we talk about teaching entrepreneurship to our youth.
Entrepreneurship festivals, talks and courses for youth are all well and good, but we need to aim younger. A lot younger. The thing is, we first need to teach simple money management and business concepts to children as young as those in primary school. And it only takes simple tweaking of the existing curriculum to do so, if we just change our teaching materials and classes to incorporate questions like those above instead.
The only problem is, the Singapore education system, and our educators, may not exactly be among the most entrepreneurial.
Change this, and we may yet see a whole new generation of entrepreneurs.
As with most practices in Asia, when it comes to business etiquette dealing with Asians can be very confusing to those who are not familiar with the inhabitants from this part of the world.
Let’s take the practice of exchanging business cards, for example. In Asia, this initial phase in a formal, introductory business meeting can almost be an elaborate ritual! To the people you met, your business card helps to form initial impressions they have about you, and in many Asian cultures there are certain protocols – some of it unspoken – to follow that exhibit the proper respect when swopping business cards.
Although such protocols may differ depending on an individual’s culture, here’s a general guide to help you navigate the pitfalls when exchanging business cards during your first meeting with Asians:
– Always bring enough cards for a business meeting (or networking event)! Not having enough cards shows that you’re ill-prepared.
– Stand when exchanging business cards.
– It’s polite to give each person a slight bow, or a nod of the head, before or after you exchange your cards. The more senior or higher-ranked, the deeper the bow.
– Offer your business card first, especially if you’re more junior.
– Follow rank protocol by present your business card to the highest-ranked person first, followed by the next most senior, and so on.
– In Asia, it’s a sign of respect to exchange gifts with both hands, and it’s no exception for business cards, so try to keep your hands free.
– You can use your right hand if you’re encumbered, but never use your left hand especially when dealing with someone from an Islamic culture.
– Exchange cards with one individual at a time.
– Once you receive a business card, spend just a bit of time to pick out the person’s name, position and status.
– It’s good to read and acknowledge the full name of the other person. It’s perfectly alright to ask for the person’s surname, as it’s easy to confuse an Asian’s first and last names.
– It is considered bad form to scribble on name cards in their presence.
– In formal meetings, address a person by his last name. First names are seldom used except among close friends.
– It’s acceptable to lay the cards on the table in front of you in an orderly fashion, or keep them in your card holder. Don’t stack them up on the table, or worse, throw them around.
– Never, ever forget to take the business cards with you when the meeting ends. Leaving their cards behind signifies that you’re not interested in working with them.
Startups in Asia finally gets schwag of their own.
Earlier in March, I mentioned that an Asian version of StartupSchwag.com will surface by April this year. AsiaVentureSchwag.com has finally launched this month (four months later than expected), and co-founder Ng Cheng Wei unveils the e-commerce subscription service focusing on startup merchandise.
The concept is basically simple. Like StartupSchwag.com, visitors who subscribe to their service gets a schwag-bag monthly, each containing a random T-shirt with the logo of a startup emblazoned on it, as well as other schwag – promotional freebies such as stickers.
Cheng Wei says they will start to market their service from the middle of the month, mainly through Facebook and online media. They are finalizing subscriptions for Issue 1 in the beginning of September, so members who subscribe now can expect to get their schwag in the mail sometime in the middle of next month. The first T-shirt will feature CrunchPad, a mobile device developed by Singapore startup Fusion Garage and funded by TechCrunch‘s Michael Arrington himself.
AsiaVentureSchwag.com's first T-shirt will feature CrunchPad, a mobile device developed by a Singaporean startup.
“The subscription model allows us to keep a very low working capital in this business, regardless of volume,” Cheng Wei says of the self-funded startup’s revenue model. “We’re aiming to hit 500-600 subscribers by the end of the year so there’ll be some tremendous costs savings which will be passed on (subscribers) in the form of more and better schwag.” After the initial launch, they’ll looking at supporting the subscription service with an ala carte e-commerce shop, and organizing a pageant to “model” their products.
AsiaVentureSchwag.com has been mainly reaching Asian startups through personal contacts and by emailing them. “The good thing with startups is that they’re really friendly and personal, so nobody who has received an AsiaVentureSchwag.com greeting email in their mailbox has rejected us,” Cheng Wei sighs in relief. AsiaVentureSchwag.com has more than ten logos lined up currently, and are on a lookout for more.
Building a Community of Startups
Cheng Wei shares that he spent most of his life wanting to be a journalist, until fellow co-founder Jeffrey Paine – who initially came up with the idea for AsiaVentureSchwag.com – introduced him to the world of startups and entrepreneurship. (I’ve previously asked Jeffrey about how entrepreneurs can seek funding.)
“He’s my mentor and a venture capitalist. I’ve been learning about the startup industry under him,” says Cheng Wei, currently a freshman at Singapore Management University (SMU). “He’s currently based in Dubai, so he’s left most of AsiaVentureSchwag.com in my hands for the past months.”
In the long term, Cheng Wei says they intend to start other peripheral services and a community-based platform for Asian startups. “We really love startups! We have plans for a bigger community within Singapore and Asia – we’ve seen how vibrant the startup industry is in the States, and we’re out to bring this same vibrancy into our home ground. There’s really a dearth of this in our region, and we’re out to fix that problem.” (I can’t agree more, as I pointed out in a previous blog post.)
Cheng Wei points out that if people are willing to shift their focus from the online coverage that seems centered on the United States, to what’s happening in Asia, they will realize that there are startups waiting to be discovered here. “There’s much to be proud of,” he says. That’s where the schwag comes in – it helps to drive awareness of and publicity for new startups in this region.
Views on Entrepreneurship
Cheng Wei says working on AsiaVentureSchwag.com feels more like a hobby and less like a business. “It’s fun interacting with the founders and finding out more about their businesses.”
“Entrepreneurship elevates a career to being more than a job,” he says. “It’s hard to describe, but I think it’s only when you have a vested interest in a startup that you are able to find this spark in you that pulls you into the business.”
“I find that most startup founders say goodbye to monday blues, because they’re loving every minute of (their work).”
Tibesti - Online classifieds and social network mashup.
Tibesti.com, launched last month, is a new and unique social network designed to connect people around particular interests, and enables users to earn cash while talking about, recommending and showcasing their favorite products. In fact, according to the site, users can make up to 50 percent of the commissions generated from the sales on their profile pages and elsewhere on the site.
“Whether a dog lover, sports fanatic or an interior design enthusiast, Tibesti makes it easy for users to exchange ideas and recommend top products to others with similar interests,” says Mike Hale, chairman, CEO and co-founder of Tibesti. “We offer consumers the ability to earn money by sharing information and experiences about products reflective of their lifestyle.”
“Tibesti will be very appealing to today’s enthusiastic shoppers who often recommend products to friends anyway,” he adds.
Other interesting features include “Expert Reviews” from more than 120 experts in their fields – such as chef Scott Leibfried from Hell’s Kitchen and video games journalist John Gaudiosi – in categories such as beauty, electronics and fashion, as well as “World’s Most Expensive“, which highlights the most ridiculously expensive stuff in our wacky world. (I didn’t know that there’s a bikini that costs $30 million.)
Tibesti allows members to showcase and recommend up to 100 products, thereafter it charges them a subscription fee to list more. It currently has access to more than 20 million products. Its business model involves three components – subscriptions, online advertising and commissions from third-party vendors such as Apple,AT&T, BestBuy, eBay, Netflix etc.
Founding Team
The key founding members of Tibesti are veterans in their respective fields. Prior to founding Tibesti, CEO Mike Hale was part of the team that founded Starz Encore, where he served as executive vice president and chief marketing officer. President and co-founder Adit Reddy is a 15-year veteran of information architecture and programming who played an integral role in developing elaborate user interfaces and infrastructure technology for several leading companies, including Intertainer where he helped develop IP video streaming and interactive video.
Tibesti is headquartered in Los Angeles, California.
Ilan Ofek, CEO and founder of Visual Factory, a 3D immersive social network startup.
Founder and CEO of Visual Factory, Ilan Ofek, is a 20-year veteran in the defense industry whose last role was as ST Electronics‘s CTO for Training & Simulation Systems, and these days he brings his knowledge in image understanding, simulation systems and advanced artificial intelligence to build his 3D immersive social network startup.
Ilan founded Visual Factory in Singapore when he recognized the growth opportunities for the country’s booming interactive digital media (IDM) market, largely driven by the massive interest and investment from the Media Development Authority of Singapore in growing this sector. Ilan then brought Shamim Akhtar on board as CTO and a member of the board – the expert in computer graphics worked on the design and development of the game engines and renderers. Ilan also pulled in Gerald Lui, with his experience with project management, to develop the startup’s business and markets. Together, the three of them comprise Visual Factory‘s core team.
Ilan with his core team members - Shamim Akhtar (L) and Gerald Lui.
A Virtual Community Platform
“The existing solutions in the digital media industry seems to be like in bits and pieces,” says Ilan, “which spells out a great enormous potential fro an entrepreneur to build the next-generation 3D composing tool.” Which is exactly what Visual Factory did with MagicStitch.
MagicStitch is developed as a set of tools for professionals and non-professionals alike to create their own 3D immersive solutions – a technology enabler for the IDM market, if you like. The virtual community platform allows the creation of products supported with 3D immersive graphics, geo-tagged information, a multi-user environment and even an internal economy.
MagicStitch's instruction page.
“This is the first time any user can create a 3D immersive world, be it an exhibition, a social network, a cityscape or anything else virtual in such a simple way and as easy as a game,” Ilan explains. “In our current business model, we are targeting to bring the successful markets, such as museums, galleries and exhibitions to the next phase of being e-engaged in a virtual world complemented by Web 2.0 features and moving into a Web 3.0 environment.”
“The most important thing is (that) our technology, unlike other engines in the market, supports a vast array of data formats and allows for fast deployment of market-focused applications,” says Ilan. “Last but not least, our products provide non-professionals with an easy-to-use game-like toolkit to deploy their own content, which is a big thing for the global virtual world market space.”
A 3D avatar exploring a virtual museum.
The largely self-funded startup sees Singapore, China and Europe as key markets. Thanks to some help from MDA – who also provided them with a grant to develop the platform – Visual Factory has already landed and is currently managing two projects: a virtual museum for the Singapore’s National Heritage Board, and an “e-town” for the various government culture, recreation and sports agencies to experiment with 3D content.
These days, the company is seeking additional funding to invest in marketing.
On Entrepreneurship
Ilan feels that patience and perseverance are an entrepreneur’s bread and butter. “Rome was not built in a single day, it takes time. But you must stick to your strategic decisions.”
He’s also a strong believer in teamwork. “In such a small company, every person sets the tone in his domain. The management must work as an arrowhead, with full trust (in each other).”
Ilan wants to take this opportunity to thank their wives for believing in them. “Without our supportive spouses, we can never make it this far.”
ArticleBuff.com - An online exchange for writing talent.
Andrew Elliot is a self-confessed serial entrepreneur and, he readily admits, one who has ‘failed’ often. The founder of ArticleBuff – an online marketplace and resource site for writers – has previously started many other online ventures that have either spluttered to a halt or sold off at fire-sale prices, but he chooses to view those experiences positively.
“I do not see those past ventures as (true) failures,” states Andrew. “I use them to understand what I did wrong, and how I can better myself as a businessman and entrepreneur.”
Learning From Failure
In fact, the inspiration for ArticleBuff stemmed from a previous failure. One of Andrew’s ventures was an automobile blog, and he was looking for someone who could contribute an article or two to the blog. He found a self-proclaimed US-based freelance automotive enthusiast on a popular online freelance job-matching site, and agreed on a fee and key deliverables. When the deadline arrived, however, he found that the quality of work was simply not up to par.
So Andrew thought – what if he could have seen the writing before he paid up? “But I didn’t stop there and began thinking about a contest style format where I could choose from a range of entries, provide feedback and choose the one that best suits what I needed.”
“I later learned that this was called crowdsourcing.”
The idea for ArticleBuff was thus born, and funnily enough it began like how most ventures are rumored to start – on a napkin. “Clichéd, I know,” Andrew laughs. “However clichéd it may be, we have created a business that helps solve a problem for employers and writers.”
Sourcing For Writing Talent
Like most good ideas, the concept for ArticleBuff is inherently simple. Writers search for projects on the site that employers put up and submit their work, employers pick from the submissions and decide which one they will pay for. It’s crowdsourcing of writing talent like what CrowdSPRING is for creative ideas and Phokki is for digital art.
ArticleBuff‘s unique selling point is compelling – it alleviates the risk involved with normal freelance sites by allowing the user to preview a range of work submitted by talented writers before deciding on which to award the prize money to. As for its revenue model, it simply charges employers a nominal one-time fee to post a project. No commissions are taken. “It is absolutely free for writers to join and enter a project.”
“We target two types of users; writers and employers. The writers can be anybody, from well-established blog writers who want guest blog post work to non-established freelancers looking to make a little extra money,” Andrew explains. “On the employer end we are looking for blog owners who need something written as well as website owners who just need a piece of copy written or a full-blown press release.”
Andrew admits that signups on the site has been low to date, but in his defence, he says that they’ve only recently announced their public beta and has just begun their marketing.
Users Come First
To grow the site, ArticleBuff is already looking at improvements to its user interface and graphics. It is also looking to add a forum at a later date.
“For the most part, however, we just want to keep to the needs of our users first and provide a great environment for employers and writers to get work done.” In fact, Andrew says the biggest lesson he’s learnt throughout his entire career as an entrepreneur is that the user comes first, no matter what. “That’s why I love sites like UserVoice because the potential to listen to your users is amazing.”
Andrew declares that ArticleBuff‘s greatest achievement has been that they’ve not had outside venture capitalists or angel investors throwing money at them, and that’s how they want it to be.
“We want to be able to call the shots without having to answer to investors because, to be honest, investors don’t always do what’s best for the user like we want to. We understand and respect investors to the utmost, however it was just not for us. We personally wanted to be able to always make sure the user came first, which we felt would be in jeopardy if we took on investors.”
The ArticleBuff team is a collage of different cultures and backgrounds, with coders based in Michigan and Vietnam while Andrew himself is based in Orange County, California. “By using freelancers and family connections we were able to keep costs down in a project that would have otherwise cost twice to three times as much.” The startup is currently self-funded with money from Andrew and some of his friends. He is unwilling to disclose the actual amount funded, except to say it totals less than US$500,000.
Views on Entrepreneurship
One lesson he’s learnt, Andrew says, is that when building a business it’s critical to work at solving a problem or illicit such a strong feeling from a person that they are willing to purchase your product, instead of focusing solely on money. It’s something Andrew learnt from MJ DeMarco, the former founder and CEO of Limos.com and current owner of Fastlanetomillions.com, and he urges anyone wanting to create a business online to think similarly.
“I view entrepreneurship as a way to ultimately give back to the community,” says Andrew. “The way I want to do this is by providing services and products that solve a problem or a need; the money is just a nice bonus.”
It’s also about passion, he adds, as he wouldn’t be just as happy if he just slogged away at a normal job. “The challenge of creating something out of nothing is a huge draw and coupled with the will to succeed can only mean this isn’t going to be my first Internet startup,” Andrew predicts.
Ever heard of a ‘mutual fund’ for bloggers? Probably not, but that’s only because Mumbai, India-based Blogertizeworld has just reintroduced a concept that died some three years ago.
Getting Pixellated
Founded by 23-year old Dushyant Bhatia, Blogertizeworld is based on the idea called pixel advertising, first introduced in the UK around 2005, which is a form of display advertising on the web where the cost of each advertisement is calculated dependent on the number of pixels it occupies. “But it died within months due to a lack of a sustainable business model,” says Dushyant, who explains that there were more than 5,000 similar sites trying to capitalize on the success of the first few pixel-based sites during its peak.
Despite its ominious past, Dushyant – a recent graduate in accounting and finance from the University of Mumbai – decided after some research in March 2008 that pixel advertising was a possible avenue to help him raise funds to run an online business.
“The concept of the site is similar to that of a mutual fund where the cost of running this website is distributed among a large pool of bloggers,” Dushyant explains. Bloggers purchase ad space under various categories for a fixed period of three years. Pixel blocks are available in four different sizes – 2000, 4000, 6000 & 8000 pixels – where the larger the button, the higher it is placed thereby attracting more visitors, and in turn, resulting in increased ad revenue.
Dushyant says that Blogertizeworld‘s profit-sharing element divests a certain proportion of total profits after tax from the revenue generated by its various services to its network of bloggers, which amount differs depending on various factors. “The concept would be similar to that of a dividend being distributed by a public company to its equity shareholders, (except) that the bloggers advertising with us do not own stakes in this company,” Dushyant explains.
Beyond Advertising
Some of the various services offered by Blogertizeworld.
Dushyant adds that his site has many services other blogger communities may not offer. For example, some of the incentives include affiliate links to its online shopping portal, an option to open an online store free for a year, and participation in an online advertising network exchange to clear excess ad inventories. It even has podcast publishing services and regular newsletter updates on specialized areas such as technology or business.
As a result, Blogertizeworld has received over 1,800 blogger registrations – 1,000 of those within two months through a special promotion – and also sold some US$50,000 worth of advertising inventory so far, which Dushyant feels is something to be proud of. “How many seven month-old startups can boast of that?”
An interesting statistic – over 75 percent of the bloggers advertising with Blogertizeworld come from India, Malaysia, US and the UK.
Opportunities and Challenges
But it hasn’t been an easy journey – there were no takers for the idea during its initial months. Many bloggers were interested, but none wanted to be the first to invest in the website.
Publicity was scarce too – no startup blogs wanted to cover the new five-man startup. “That’s when I realized that instead of approaching (Indian startup blogs), attracting bloggers worldwide via social media could be a better option.” Social media is an integral part of Blogertizeworld‘s marketing strategy – it’s experimented with Internet marketers to some degree of success, as well as collaborations with blogger forums and blog networks such as a tie-up with Indiblogger.in, one of India’s leading blog networks.
Dushyant’s realistic when it comes to the competition. “The range of our service offerings is so huge, we’re bound to have at least two to three competitors for each avenue we explore. We’re still new and are concentrating on getting our baby steps right.” As a self-funded startup, Blogertizeworld‘s initial investment was put into covering development costs with a portion of the ad-space proceeds reinvested into marketing the site.
One of its growth strategies involve collaborations or acquisitions with cash-strapped medium-sized startups in India, US, UK and Israel to grow its user base, but Dushyant declines to reveal further with regards to its plans.
Views on Entrepreneurship
“Having the entrepreneurial spirit means wanting to run a business the way you run your life. And wanting to run your life the way you run your business,” says Dushyant, who believes that trying to achieve entrepreneurial success comes with an opportunity cost.. “Successful entrepreneurs feel that a life without risk is a life without living.”
Dushyant advises wannabe-entrepreneurs to start young. “Experiment with a couple of small online or offline ventures while in college because that’s when one has few responsibilities and lots of free time.” For those who are working and intend to switch to self-employment, Dushyant believes that sufficient knowledge and experience in the area you’re pursuing is crucial as ‘you have more to lose’.
“One quality that serves us well is perseverance. It’s a quality one must have to achieve success and happiness. Eddie Arcaro (American jockey who is the only rider to have won the US Triple Crown twice) had to ride in 301 races before he finally won one.”
Josh Bochner, CEO and founder of FriendShopper.com.
Have you always felt lonely while shopping online? Have you ever wished you could ask for someone’s opinion before buying that dress on Amazon?
If you have, Josh Bochner, the CEO and founder of Boston, Massachusetts-based Friendshopper.com, promises to revolutionize your online shopping experience. Friendshopper is an online social shopping platform that connects friends in a real-time web environment so that you don’t have to shop alone.
“The goal of Friendshopper is to bring back the fun and interactivity that was always part of the shopping experience, before e-commerce was born,” said says Josh. “While some call themselves ‘social shopping’ websites by aspiring to create a mash-up of social networking and shopping, we believe that shopping is, at its essence, a social experience. We’ve targeted that experience and re-created it for the web.” Josh says Friendshopper differs from its closest competitors, Kaboodle.com and Thisnext.com, because it works on bringing users a live shopping experience as opposed to just creating an open social shopping network.
Online Shopping Made Easy – and Social
FriendShopper.com - A new way to shop online.
Friendshopper focuses on real-time content sharing so friends shopping online can instantaneously share finds, interact, view and add friends to conversations and search retailers and products – all from the comfort of the browser window. Users can manipulate integrated social tools like instant messaging and content sharing in a highly targeted, custom-built environment meant to simulate the live shopping experience. Indeed, the site claims to be the first to offer the social perks of shopping in real-time on the web.
An example of how it works: After signing up, shoppers simply drag-and-drop a Friendshopper bookmarklet into their browser toolbars. As they surf any online storefront they can click the bookmarklet button whenever they find an item they would like to save or share with friends, and Friendshopper will simply add the item to a user’s page. Clicking on another button allows the user to instantaneously share that item with a friend, along with notifications and thumbnail images.
Beginnings
Josh’s online pedigree is impressive. He was previously a web manager overseeing operations at online gift registry service MyRegistry.com, as well as an internet marketing consultant and web development specialist for eight years. He’s also been working on Jigadig.com, an auction search engine that aggregates results from eBay, Overstock and Ubid.
He says the opportunity to start Friendshopper was exciting because it wasn’t just another idea that can potentially earn nice revenues.He was looking for an industry that was lacking a new and interactive experience when he stumbled on online shopping. “I’m an internet entrepreneur, my brain is always going,” he laughs.
When Josh compared online shopping and its offline experience, it was, as he describes it, blatant that shopping lost its social and interactive elements when e-commerce came about. “Friendshopper would transform the way people shop online, really giving them a new experience that is more fun. The shopping and e-commerce industry is where the revenue is generated online, so I wasn’t worried about where the profits would come from; I am more focused on providing the right experience,” he says.
Other than Josh, the Friendshopper team – all mid-to-late twenties – consists of Argentinian-based developer Daniel Magliola and as well as a small team of developers based in Santa Monica, California.
Strategies, Opportunities and Challenges
According to Josh Friendshopper has four revenue streams planned, of which two are currently implemented. “One is the product search, which we partner with Shopzilla and have a revenue share agreement. The other is our store search and building affiliate relationships.” Two other possible revenue sources will be based around its Shoplication merchant program and recommended/sponsored products.
Josh, who is married with three children, admits that his key challenge is keeping the venture afloat. “It’s not easy bootstrapping especially with a family. Taking no salary for over a year, raising money to pay everyone else and working part time to keep the sharks away is a big challenge when starting a web business today.” Josh says he’s extremely thankful that he’s been able to get to this point so far, and is looking forward to building more new features that will ‘knock the socks off everyone watching and using the site’.
“We’re going to keep our eye on the ball, staying true to our unique selling point (USP). I’ve seen many entrepreneurs launch great ideas and diversify so fast that the core functionality and company was diluted. I don’t want that to happen,” he explains.
“We’re always looking to push the bar and will launch new features, often and aggressively. We’ll listen to what our users want.” They’ll be working on public relations and its Shoplication merchant program for merchant partners as a growth strategy, Josh adds.
Friendshopper has two private investors with some US$65,000 pumped into the venture to date, and is currently raising a new round.
Views on Entrepreneurship
Josh says he chose the entrepreneurial path because he has many other goals in life that he’d like to achieve which needs his time. “A salaried job won’t allow me the freedom to explore them, I’ll get lost in the 9-to-5. I’ve been hoping being an entrepreneur will pay off well one day or that the Internet would help automate much of my day-to-day.”
He reveals that he’s learnt so many personal and business lessons that he’s actually in the process of putting them all into a book. One of the business lessons about partnerships and raising money over the years, which he has applied to Friendshopper, is to ‘not get desperate’ and settling for less.
His biggest lesson? “It’s all faith. I can only do my best and my higher power takes care of the rest. I needed to learn that to be able to let go and give attention to the rest of my life.”
“That doesn’t mean you don’t have to work damned hard!”
Josh’s tip for other entrepreneurs: “Don’t give up, but don’t hurt anyone to get there.”
The Express IN Music team – Adriel Chan, Wee Wei Jie, Tiffany Yew and Jerry Chen.
Music may make the world go round, but everyone knows the music business can be tough. Yet this not stopping the young entrepreneurs at ExpressINMusic, an online service that matches those who need personalized music with those who can make it. Started by four enterprising youths – Adriel Chan (24-years old), Wee Wei Jie (25), Tiffany Yew (24) and Jerry Chen (24 ) – Singapore-based ExpressINMusic is, to hear them describe it, a platform that ‘connects your needs in delivering your message emotionally through original music’.
“(It’s for the) couple in love wanting to pen their personal story in a song or a company with a branding purpose to touch the hearts of its targeted audience,” says Jerry Chen, who handles business development. “With the personalised song, you can meaningfully deliver your message effectively without the worries of legality issues like copyright infringements too.”
Its premise is simple. Simple define a story and emotions that you wish to convey through a song on the site, and hope some musicians on their network will express interest and post samples, select the one you like best and finally have the song produced. Sounds easy enough, but I reckon the devil is in the details.
A Passion for Music
Jerry, the startup’s spokesperson, says that everyone in his team has a keen interest in music and entrepreneurship and believe people should look into local tutors and take up music as well. He shares that the inspiration for ExpressINMusic came out of the blue one night as he was reading a newspaper article about a composer and his passion for music. Having always been interested in music, he came upon the idea of writing original songs for couples who were getting married and shared this idea with a buddy. “But both of us were not composers… (so) the idea of outsourcing music requests to a network of musicians out there came about.”
Jerry believes that the key USP of ExpressINMusic is the wide network of musicians they can tap into, resulting in time and cost savings for clients. To substantiate his point, Jerry explains that the average original song production can cost anything from $1,500 to $5,000 and above, while their song production by ExpressINMusic is pegged at either $600 or $1,500 depending on the package chosen. In addition, the time taken for the industry average in song composition to production takes around three months, while ExpressINMusic can deliver it in just five weeks on average.
“When a music request is submitted, the client will be able to hear many different song pieces and find one that suits them best. The quantity is here,” Jerry assures. “And there is also the high quality amidst the quantity of musicians in our database. Given that we are able to form credible partnerships with local sound engineers and music schools, the quality of music works certainly prevails.”
With this service, Jerry says, ExpressINMusic can also offer Singapore musicians the opportunity for greater exposure. “People say that you can’t survive in Singapore doing arts and music – we want to prove that wrong.” He also reveals that they intend to go regional and overseas gradually. I’m somewhat surprised of the strong focus on local musicians and their gradual expansion plans. I would’ve thought for rapid adoption and scalability they’d need to open up the service as wide as possible.
ExpressINMusic believes there is potential in the “love” market – couples getting married, or during courtship. To further grow their business, Jerry says the service will also look at the B2B (business-to-business) market, especially in the area of film and media production as well as advertising. Its business model relies largely on a commission basis.
ExpressINMusic is funded by SPRING Singapore and various private investors – Jerry declines to reveal the actual amount except that it is to the tune of a five-digit figure – but is looking for additional funding opportunities. The startup is also looking to expand its team. “We have business coming in and need to cope with many aspects such as design and some administrative work.”
On Entrepreneurship
If there’s anything that Jerry believes about entrepreneurship, it is that ‘action speaks louder than words. “If there’s an opportunity, and you really want it, go for it! Merely saying that you want the opportunity is not going to get you anywhere,” he encourages. “Don’t wait for things to happen. As an entrepreneur, you make things happen!
“I have come a long way but there’s a longer journey ahead with more learning experiences. I now realize that you have to learn from failure to be successful.”
“Put in the effort and go through the pain. Then sweet success will come.”
BlueSky Festival 2009 by Action Community for Entrepreneurs (ACE)
SPRING Singapore today announced the launch of an entrepreneurship training scheme for PMETs (professionals, managers, executives and technicians) at the ACE BlueSky Festival 2009. SPRING will set aside a total of S$500,000 which will be used to support up to 70% of course fees offered at participating local polytechnics under this scheme for PMETs who qualify.
The aim of this scheme is to equip PMETs (especially those who have been affected by the existing economic downturn) who aspire to be entrepreneurs with relevant skills to be better prepared to start and run a business. According to SPRING, the curriculum will adopt a mix of theoretical and practical components to provide an all-round training that includes sharing sessions with established businesses and entrepreneurs as well as mentorship and incubation opportunities. Courses are expected to start between August and September.
So if you’re a down-and-out PMET who happen to want to start your own business, watch this space. More details to be announced by SPRING at a later date.
Co-founders Anshul Jain and Ashok Patro of ThoughtBuzz.
How do we measure social media? That question may seem simple, but startup ThoughtBuzz was founded just to answer that question.
Singapore-based ThoughtBuzz was originally conceived in February 2009 by three guys – all with IT experience and with ages ranging from 25 to 29 – with the aim of providing users with a way to manage their profiles on multiple social networks. However, as co-founder Anshul Jain admitted, he and his partner Ashok Patro soon realized that such tools were already available and many were actually pretty good. “So we decided that this wasn’t the right way to go,” he remembers. “We then decided to shift focus to social media measurement when during our research we came across how increasingly important social media is to brands and companies.”
Measuring Online Buzz
According to its website ThoughtBuzz provides social media intelligence services through its flexible dashboard – with a list of features such as automatic sentiment analysis and demographic analysis – that allows marketing and communications professionals to monitor social media in real-time. “We help companies in discovering trends so that they can make use of them for their brands. Our user is anyone who wants to know what’s being said and written about them on social media.”
“Almost all companies make use of social media some way or the other, and they have no certain way to measure their ROI (return on investment),” he adds. “This is where we believe we can help them and provide them with a platform to measure the impact and success of their social media campaigns.” I’m not sure if I agree that all companies should engage in social media, but of course any tool that allows its accurate measurement is sorely needed.
Anshul says ThoughtBuzz‘s key USP is that it provides speed and relevancy of results. “We believe that though social media is an extremely good channel for connecting with consumers, it has its pitfalls. How do you identify spammers or collect only relevant data? These are some questions that we had to answer in order to differentiate our product,” he elaborates.
Anshul says to date they have slowly but steadily cultivated a group of interested clients who are beta testing their product and waiting for its launch. “Our product has also undergone significant changes since February 2009 based on the feedback received and we are hoping that we are our building a solid and relevant product in the market.”
He says that their main challenge is identifying the relevant factors for measuring social media. “Should we try to include everything or give what’s most important to our customers? How much customization to offer, how to present the data so that it’s useful are some of the questions that we face on an everyday basis.”
Starting up in Singapore
The founders decided to base its operations in Singapore because, as Anshul puts it, the country ‘greatly encourages entrepreneurship’. “People here are very forthcoming towards new ideas. Also this being a developed market, the quality of feedback is very high and this helps us in building a solid product.”
“The best part about entrepreneurship is you get to do what you want and how you want,” says Ashok. “You handle real clients and have real deadlines. If you win all credits to you and if you lose then also you are responsible. But the satisfaction you get after fulfilling the market needs and meeting the expectations of your clients is something which always pushes you forward.”
“We have made many business plans, financial projections and strategies as an assignment during our student life. Buts it’s real fun and challenging to actually execute them. After our MBA we were all charged up to do something of our own and try out the various skills and tools we have learnt during our professional and academic life.”
“ThoughtBuzz is the outcome of all these and our successful execution towards our dream of doing something good and useful.”
“Starting something is not easy. There is a lot to think about and it does take its toll on you. But there is nothing more rewarding than to see your own enterprise take shape.”
ad:tech Singapore may be over, but if you’re interested to learn more about the latest in social networking and marketing trends in the Asia Pacific region there’s the upcoming Social Networking World Forum Asia. Organized by Bristol-based events company Six Degrees, this two-day conference dedicated to all things social networking will take place in Singapore on 22nd and 23rd September this year.
Learn from some of the largest global brands who are using social media effectively in their marketing and public relations strategies, as well as hear from the regional heads of some of the most popular social networking platforms such as Friendster, QQ and MySpace on their plans for the region.
To register or find out more about the event, you can download the event brochure or call the booking hotline +44 (0) 117 321 8303. Alternatively you can register for the free exhibition-only pass here. Early bird registration ends 21st August. Readers of this blog get a 15% discount – just quote that you’re a reader of Young Upstarts.
You can follow news of the event on Twitter at @SocialNetworkWF.
Lior is one of the co-founders of Status Search, a social status search engine currently in beta that allows users to perform searches within Twitter and Facebook status updates. The founders are all 20-something entrepreneurs who have worked in successful Israeli start-ups (such as Aniboom and 5min) in the past. Status Search is Lior’s second startup – his first was Veedda in 2007. Lior was even once named as one of the “Most Promising Entrepreneurs in Israel” by TheMarker business magazine for 2008!
Status Search is currently in private beta, but you can sign up for an account at their site.
So how is the service different from, say, the search function you can find within Facebook? “Status Search is for anything you would prefer searching in your friends’ updates rather than on the web: books, vacations, flights, beer, a party, a job and much more,” says Lior. He explains that the basic philosophy behind the service is that there so much valuable information within social networks that a search engine for that information can be very useful.
“When we present people the option to search their friends status updates, they immediately see how they can benefit from it. People know search and the value they can get from it.” Lior adds that people who use more than one social network are those most likely to benefit from Status Search. He admits, however, that one key challenge is to educate the market about searching their friends status updates.
It has, after a month in private beta, signed up about 400 users that perform around 550 searches a day.
Lior says their business model revolves around partnering with big websites and portals who are looking to integrate their social search service and incorporate that functionally to their users, and do a revenue share with them. “We’re already talking with a few and looking to talk to anyone who is interested in offering this kind of search engine to their users,” he reveals.
Status Search is currently self-funded and is trying to reach profitability on its own. “We’re talking to some investors these days but we’re waiting for a good deal. We’re not in a hurry,” says Lior.
Piecehunters, an iPhone game developed by AzukiSoft.
You can argue that, as a child, Gibson Tang was already entrepreneurial. After all, his first experience at making money was when he sold answers to math homework to his classmates in Primary school. “There’s a thrill of making money from my own hard work,” he laughs. Now 33 years-old, Gibson is today the founder of AzukiSoft, a two-person game development outfit that produced the casual Piecehunters iPhone game.
Piecehunters is a gem-matching puzzle-type game targets casual gamers of ages from children to young, working adults. Gibson says Piecehunters will especially appeal to people who do not want to invest too much time and effort into a complicated game, yet would like something entertaining to fill their time. Development for Piecehunters started in September 2008, when iTunes was officially launched in Singapore. The game was finally submitted to Apple‘s App Store in March 2009. Currently there is the Lite version for free, and a paid premium version at the price of US$2.99.
Piecehunters: Puzzle-based game fun with combat elements.
In the Beginning
Gibson’s background is in computer engineering, and started off his career working in the Republic of Singapore Navy for six years. That stint with the navy was followed by a year in a local insurance company developing web-based applications, and later with a small local game company worked on mobile, Flash and PC games. “One day after a long day at work (at the local game company), I was on the bus getting bored (and) wondering why can’t I develop mobile games that can be played in short sessions for people looking to kill time?” Inspired, he started and incorporated AzukiSoft.
He took on a partner – with a background in business and finance – earlier this year who will work with him on a part-time basis. “Our backgrounds are as different as chalk and cheese,” he laughs. “But we share common ground in wanting to shape our own future by running our own business.” He declines to name her, however, revealing only that she is currently doing sales and marketing for a China-based company.
Gibson says he wished he had roped his business partner in earlier. “She has offered a lot of insight from a casual player perspective. I did not notice such insights since I have been playing hardcore games for so long that it has kind of clouded my view on how a game for casual players should be.”
“She is a non-technical person (who) likes to play simple games. I constantly have to modify my game so that it will be something that she likes to play,” he says. “Her business training has also contributed a lot to opening my eyes regarding the business side of running a company.”
On Customer Feedback and Development
Gibson admits it was a big culture shock moving from a pure Microsoft Windows development background to developing an iPhone game with an entirely new programming language and development tools. “I have never touched the Mac OS before,” he insists. In the end, he says, they’ve managed to product a game to be proud of and have come to appreciate the beauty of the Mac OS X.
“Piecehunters started out as a single player game, but midway through the development cycle we discovered that the game could have a social gaming angle to it,” Gibson recalls. “We launched it early in order to get customer feedback and ideas for potential social gaming features to be incorporated.”
Gibson is a strong believer in customer feedback, and a big fan of the “customer development” approach advocated by Eric Ries (author, entrepreneur and previously a venture advisor at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers). “As a small startup, there are a lot of unknowns about the product viability, direction etc. So customer feedback will be very important in helping us to shape the direction and vision of our game to make it a game that casual players want to play.”
“Fire up iTunes, download my game and give it a try. Then drop me an email at my personal email address gibtang[at]gmail[dot]com if you have any feedback about the game.”
With this approach, Gibson says they have solicited a whole plethora of social gaming features from early testers which they plan to incorporate them into the game. “We intend to roll out new features and patches every week to keep the game up to date in line with player feedback, and grow a community based around the game.” Gibson says they have recently submitted their latest iteration of the game, Version 1.05, to Apple for review.
To date, Piecehunters has been downloaded some 5,000 times, at an average of around 1,500 downloads per week despite the lack of a marketing campaign. “We feel that we have hit the right spot… players who have downloaded my game have emailed me to feedback on how much they like the game.”
As a growth strategy, Gibson plans to extend Piecehunters over to other platforms such as Google’s Android and Facebook. He says this will help to increase the viral effect of the game as they use multiple platforms to help spread the word.
Gibson says he’s not daunted by the recession and is focused on its positive aspects, such as the lowering of commercial rental rates. “I may contemplate renting a small office space sometime down the road when I feel the timing is right,” he adds.
AzukiSoft is currently funded by Thymos Capital to the tune of S$55,000 for their game project. “The rest of the expenses are paid out from my own pocket,” says Gibson.
On Entrepreneurship
Gibson says he chose the entrepreneurial path as he prefers to be unconventional. “My first career choice was to be a rock guitarist in a rock metal band years ago, and I would spend countless hours and money on my guitar. Then I realized that I also like to play and analyze games. That was when I stumbled onto the game development path.”
He shares that being an entrepreneur is tough and he believes the best ones are those who firmly believe in teamwork. “No one can master everything, so an entrepreneur must be able to make up for those deficiencies by working with the right people,” he explains, which was a reason why he brought on his partner.
“Singapore’s push on entrepreneurship is a right move as entrepreneurship can be a potential growth factor for Singapore, plus my partner always wanted to have a product that she can proudly refer to as Made-in-Singapore instead of Made-in-China!”
“One thing about entrepreneurship is that sometimes, you just have to believe in yourself. When I decided to embark upon the game development career path close to ten years ago, there was no game development industry in Singapore. And yet I told myself that I should give it a try and after all, the worst thing that could happen is that I will fail. That’s it.”
“Being able to accept failure if it happens is important for an entrepreneur.”
I first came across online photo-hosting service Phlook.com at Unconference 2008. Founders Ng Wee Kiat and Justine Ho was pitching their idea to the audience but, at that time, I wasn’t sure if the World Wide Web needed another Flickr clone.
Wee Kiat assures me that a lot has happened since then. “During the Unconference 2008, our products were still very basic. In the subsequent few months, we continued to develop and fine-tune our products. Currently, any photos uploaded to Phlook will automatically be integrated with features that probably no other websites are offering,” he says.
Phlooking Around
Photo-hosting service Phlook.
Wee Kiat explains that the key benefit of Phlook is the interactivity that are available to photos uploaded on their site, which users can be easily be published on their websites or blogs.
“We were toying with the idea of online photo printing in the beginning, but then as we explored further, we realized working on the digital photos themselves would be so much more fun and useful,” Wee Kiat explains. “We saw photos and images on sites with doodling and captions written on them by the authors but viewers can only add simple text comments on another space. We felt that this limit the potential of interaction so we created photo interfaces where users just need to upload their photos and then simply by copying and pasting an auto-generated embed code, Phlook‘s interactive features will automatically appear with their photos right on their own websites.”
It’s easier to show than to explain in words. Below is the photo I took of some, ahem, very pretty babes at the Samsung booth during the recent CommunicAsia 2009. As you can see, Phlook adds a layer of interactivity you don’t get from photos embedded via Flickr. You can zoom in, zoom out, and even vote for the photo. Nifty.
30-year old Wee Kiat, a graduate of National University of Singapore (NUS) with a Bachelor and Masters degree in Mechanical Engineering, at first knew nothing about computing. “I was clueless about even basic HTML then, but I decided to pick up the knowledge during my free time.” His partner Justine, now 32, graduated with a Bachelor in University of New South Wales and a Master of System Analysis from NUS. The co-founders met when they were previously colleagues at a German multinational company.
“In a way, I was inspired after I started reading all the tech and web startup blogs such as Techcrunch.” These days, however, Phlook finds itself the attention of tech blogs and has been featured on Mashable, Microsoft StartupZone, and Widget Labs.
He describes the World Wide Web as a place where ‘nothing seems to be impossible to be created’. “Our imagination is probably the only limitation”, he muses. He’s glad, he says, to see the growth of web startup community in Singapore, and looks forward to seeing more successful local websites making a mark on the world map in the near future.
According to their site statistics, Phlook currently has more than 3,500 users. “It is always very fulfilling to hear directly from some of the users how innovative and useful they think our photo features are, especially after they discovered how easy it is to enjoy the same features right on their own websites,” Wee Kiat says. “The key challenge, I would say, is how to constantly keep innovating and understanding the needs of users.”
To grow the service, Phlook is reaching out to companies to offer its platform where these companies can host their ad-hoc photo sharing activities for photo competitions. “In fact, the current low in the economy has created an opportunity for us because while companies are cutting back on their spendings and we are providing a platform that they can organize photo contests as highly interactive marketing campaign at a fraction of the cost if they were to build their own,” says Wee Kiat. Just a few months into starting this service, they have hosted photo contests for companies such as HP.
Wee Kiat reveals that one of his regrets is that Phlook should have paid more attention to PR, marketing and promotions at the beginning. “Both Justine and me are very much developers. So when it comes to the aspect of marketing, it was another tough journey of changing mindset and learning from scratch,” he explains. “We are starting to better grasp this aspect, but if we have started learning and equipping ourselves with marketing knowledge and mindset right from the start, we may have saved ourselves some more precious time!”
Wee Kiat says there’s a special thrill and challenge in starting and running your own business. “This can never be experienced while working for others. My dad has built a successful career with his own company and that inspires me further.”
“One most important lesson I have learnt is humility. When thrown into a new startup where everything has to start from zero, it didn’t take me long to realized that I need to be humble enough to admit mistakes, accept failures and learn from them.”
Scott Goodstein, external online director for the Obama presidential campaign.
Thanks to the team at ad:tech and Upstream Asia, I had the opportunity – along with a few other bloggers – to have a quick chat with Scott Goodstein who stopped by Singapore to give a keynote presentation at the recent ad:tech Singapore.
Goodstein, the external online director for Barack Obama’s presidential campaign, was responsible for planning and implementing the now president’s online outreach efforts, Obama for America. Since joining the campaign in February 2007 Goodstein successfully employed the latest in social networking tools and mobile technologies to engage Americans, helping to drive the presidential campaign’s key objectives of canvassing votes and raising funds.
So what made Obama’s online and mobile campaign such a smashing success? If I had to distil the conversation about Obama’s online campaign with Goodstein into key takeaway marketing lessons, it would be this:
It had the 3Ms – The Man, The Manner, and The Message.
Goodstein admits that the online campaign wouldn’t have worked as well if the man in question wasn’t Barack Obama. “It really was about the message and the messenger. There is no way to deny that it was Barack Obama as a candidate, with the right set of circumstances and the right change message.”
That message of hope and change came at a time when Americans were sick of the status quo and, as Scott puts it, the most divisive time for American politics he’s ever seen in his lifetime. The message of hope, he says, was really where America wanted to be. “All of a sudden, there was a candidate who’s talking about something different, a vision.”
And the charismatic manner that Obama brought was refreshing, and indeed, needed.
It was about building, connecting and engaging communities.
Popular marketing guru Seth Godin, in a podcast interview with Accidental Creative, talked about communities – what he calls tribes – and how Obama did something really difficult in assembling a tribe who would otherwise would never have existed.
Goodstein tells a powerful story on exactly how the use of online networking tools allowed exactly that, the galvanizing of communities of voters and enabling them to connect with one another. “People would bring food to the long lines (of voters) because they saw it on blogs or heard it on Twitter, because (the voters) can’t get out of line,” he recounts. “This encouraged those, the people who haven’t yet voted, to look forward to the voting process.”
Another great example of this can be found in Clay Shirky‘s recent presentation at TED, who spoke about how Obama’s online campaign allowed conversations to happen between Obama and his supporters. Convene, not control, your communities – as Shirky puts it.
“Businesses have to willing to engage in a two-way conversations in a unique way and can no longer just send out a press release and put a radio or TV spot one way… it’s a tough thing for businesses.”
It told a story that was consistent and authentic.
Goodstein shares that it was an effort to make sure that the online campaign was consistent with the overall presidential campaign. At one point, he says, they had to stop people from changing the content on the campaign website. “The front page of Barack Obama and his family photo, we just put it right there. At the end of the day, that’s what people wanted to see. Two of our opponents changed their websites all the time, buried the basic information (people were looking for).”
“Hillary (Clinton)’s campaign did some things that didn’t really ring authentic (to the American public). They did a lot of spoofs and things that were scripted, but didn’t ring authentic to the conversation.”
“Our videos were either speeches (of Obama’s) or videos about the movement. It fit our image and who Barack Obama was.”
It supported the big picture.
One of the comments Goodstein made really struck was how his online team viewed themselves, that they were but a part of the greater whole and did not work in isolation. “We saw ourselves as a service organization. Our job was to be of service to the finance department, the field department, and the communications team.” They were regularly in touch with the other teams, for example, running down to the policy people to ensure that messages were consistent throughout.
“We didn’t do technology for technology’s sake,” he states.
It set the right goals.
Goodstein was very careful to not put a return-on-investment (ROI) target on essentially a new initiative. “Social networking hasn’t been around or used that long on political campaigns. To put that type of false commitment on an ROI on it, to me, didn’t make sense,” Scott said. “Basically as long as one made enough money to pay for the program, anything else on top of it will be gravy.”
Instead, they created a list of goals that they wanted to achieve and where they wanted to be, as opposed to using existing ROI methods used for traditional outreach methods such as direct mail.
It assigned the right amount of resources.
Scott points out that many underestimate the amount of resources that is needed in a campaign. “Campaigns at the end of the day are about time, people and money. If it’s costing you time and people and even if it’s not costing you money, you’re probably still not spending your time and people wisely.”
“For the people who say that all the social networks are free, sure, but consider the number of staff and amount of training that goes into it to make sure that we’re really running it as an embassy of the campaign.”
“We trained a small army of volunteers on how to answer questions, so that the answer that you got off on a MySpace page, YouTube, a text message, email or call will essentially be the same… that takes a lot of training.”
Goodstein with bloggers at ad:tech Singapore: (Left to Right) Bjorn Lee, Daniel Goh, Bernard Leong, Scott Goodstein, Mohan Belani, Dorothy Poon, Daryl Tay, Saurabh Pandey and Shalabh Pandey.
You can read more about the session with Scott Goodstein from the other bloggers present:
The Infocomm Singapore booth at CommunicAsia 2009.
CommunicAsia – one of Asia’s premier exhibitions on communications and information technology – isn’t exactly the place to find Singapore startups, being more of a stomping ground for SMEs and MNCs to network and solicit business.
So it was a surprise when I ran into a few familiar faces there. Most of the other startups, were sequestered in Hall 3 under Infocomm Development Authority (IDA) of Singapore‘s Infocomm Singapore booth:
Goh Yiping (centre) of Human Network Labs.
The first I ran into – Goh Yiping of Human Network Labs. On the final day of the exhibition, she had the opportunity to share with Minister for Community Development, Youth and Sports (MYCS) Dr. Vivian Balakrishnan, who stopped by for a short chat while touring the booths.
OrSiSo‘s CEO Thorben Linneberg was not at his booth, due to an unfortunate bike accident last week. I hear it wasn’t too serious. (I’ve previously covered OrSiSo here.) Get well soon, Thorben!
I finally had the chance to say hi to Phokki‘s Sean Seah, whose startup had a booth there. I’ve previously featured them but have never met Sean face-to-face. Sean – a really decent chap, and I found out Phokki‘s not his first nor only startup – even introduced me to guys from Juzz4Security, whom I plan to feature in an upcoming post. Other startups who had booths there included MyWobile and iTwin.
A few other startups even participated in the founding of Mobile Alliance. But I’m sure I’ve missed out on some of the rest.
I’m hoping to see more local startups at CommunicAsia next year!
by Sarah Lacy
by Jeff Jarvis
“, which (as you can imagine) covers some real issues with HR. For example, one of the ten hiring mistakes he mentioned in the book, and the greatest, relates to company culture. He says:
