Greed Will Be The Death Of Singapore’s Food Culture Last night, I ordered dinner at a foodcourt in a shopping mall. It tasted appalling. Perhaps I should have hesitated when I saw the mainland Chinese cook manning the kitchen. Before you raise your heckles, I have nothing against foreign talent. And I don’t expect authentic kick-ass cuisine from a foodcourt chain. But I do expect to get what I pay for. My main gripe is this: I believe that gross greed and commercialization is killing Singapore’s highly-prized food culture. Greed, ranging from exorbitant rentals to the now accepted practice of cutting corners in the name of “cost-effectiveness”, has resulted in the legions of unskilled labourers manning our foodcourts, restaurants and hawker centres. Cooking our food, many of them, rather badly. My mom and her generational peers still wax lyrical over how wonderful the food they grew up with used to taste in the “good old days”. Sadly for them - and the rest of us - many of the true culinary artisans of their time have either retired or been driven out by many of these chain eateries. I don’t blame these workers. They are giving us EXACTLY what their meagre salary and training allows. I blame greed - the kind of greed that maximizes profits at all costs, and just providing the barest minimum of standards you can get away with. Singapore has always prided itself as a cosmopolitan food haven, and even promoted as such by the local tourism authority. With the proliferation of such sub-standardness, I worry that this may no longer be the case. It’s ironic how we’re trying to export Singaporean food culture overseas - such as the Tiger Beer Chilli Crab Festival in Dubai - when our food industry is hurtling towards mediocrity. If you’re a local entrepreneur in the food business, I beseech you. Take pride in the food you serve, train the people you have, and honor the customers you serve by giving them the best that you can. You can still be profitable - and best yet - help Singapore to reclaim our reputation as a food destination. Singapore Press Holdings Eats Up Shareinvestor.com Singapore’s media powerhouse Singapore Press Holdings yesterday completed the acquisition of local web-based share trading platform Shareinvestor.com, founded by ex-doctor Michael Leong, for S$12 million and a further S$6 million if certain financial targets are met. Singapore Press Holdings will be retaining Shareinvestor.com’s entire management team. Dr. Leong previously wrote a book on entrepreneurship called “Be An Entrepreneur!”. Seasoned Entrepreneurs On Opportunities In Tough Times I just came back from the ACE BlueSky Exchange & Evening event “Challenging Times & Managing Challenges” organized by ACE and Hong Leong Finance, which is part of the Global Entrepreneurship Week series of events. The event featured a panel with Tracy Chua from Hong Leong Finance, Mohamed Abdul Jaleel of MES Group of Companies, Francis Koh of Koh Brothers Group, and Benedict Soh of Kingsmen Creatives, and facilitated by Professor Annie Koh, Dean of Executive & Professional Education from Singapore Management University. I’m excerpting some key ideas from the conversations by the panelists that apply to new startups and early entrepreneurs (note that this is not verbatim): (On financing, the current credit crunch and how banks are reining in credit facilities) Mohamed: You need to work very hard and convince friends to support you when you go to the bank. Francis: Talk to your bank. They are also worried. Communicate with your banks so that they know what you are doing. They will then be more willing to maintain and/or extend their credit to you. Benedict: Financial institutions are not my favorite. When you meet bankers, make sure you can prove to them you are able to repay. Surprisingly it was easier and more pleasant experience of getting help from the Government. Tracy: Lenders are looking for same thing. If you don’t have a track record, you must have a business plan. If you come prepared, you’re better able to convince us so that we can convince the credit committee. (On the surprise announcement of support from the Government, and their own wish list) Mohamed: Property and income tax cuts. Francis: Same as Mohamed. The Government should say how much they will spend to prop up the market. That gives us confidence. Benedict: We can afford more public spending. I hope for the lowering the cost of doing business - electronic road pricing (ERP), electricity costs etc. (On the current recession and financial crisis) Mohamed: This scale of this crisis has frightened us. We have to redesign our lifestyles and get mentally prepared. Get in touch with clients and make sure everything is healthy. Francis: It will be more severe than the crisis of 1997. What worries me is that Singapore entered recession before even the US. The tsunami has not reached us yet. We have understand to our clients better, to know if their business is ok and gauge the impact. We have to give our suppliers confidence and secure terms of credit. Business partners have different opinions as well so you need to talk with them to come up with a solution. Internal communications with your staff is critical - they like to know what’s going on so communicate is important. Watch your profit and cash flow - many companies during the previous crises were profitable but were not cash-flow healthy and thus went bankrupt. Benedict: I think Singapore is better prepared this time. We are in a better position. Why? Although we started recession before the US, Singapore was experiencing 6 to 7 per cent growth. The US was growing at around 2 to 3 per cent, but much of that growth was not real. Many local companies are still doing well. (On retrenchment) Mohamed: No retrenchment. See if there is a need to revise salaries, but retrenchment is not an option. Francis: The construction business is still ok at the moment. Streamline operations, increase productivity and control expansion - if anything happens, then you’re better prepared in times of crisis. It’s more important to manage the change. Another strategy is diversification. If done correctly, it manages risk. Benedict: I agree. Throughout our history we’ve never retrenched, and only frozen recruitment. (On when a startup should go for financing) Mohamed: It depends on the business you’re in. (Opportunities for people to start business in Singapore) Benedict: Go into a space in which you’re more qualified for a better chance. Any business is a good business Francis: You must have passion. You’re better able to reach a certain level if you’re passionate. Do something you have the passion in. But passion alone is not enough. Benedict: The word passion is overused - it’s X-rated in my company. When you talk about entrepreneurship, you make your business plan by looking at the opportunity and the market. (On identifying the right partners to start a business) Francis: Get to know them well first. It’s just like marriage. It’s easy to marry, difficult to divorce. Better to first know them as a friend, and know their character. Find out whether you have chemistry, whether you can solve challenges together. Benedict: Setting the ground rules is most important - who can do what, and who calls the shots. Discuss the prospects, shortcomings and the worst-case scenarios. Mohamed: I’ve no experience with partners. If you think you can work hard alone, try it out. A partner must be understanding, and able to tolerate what the other partner command or decide. Francis: When you come into a partnership, always plan an exit strategy. Not that you plan to split up with a business partner, but you need to set up the procedure for separating which is very important to save a relationship after the separation. (On succession planning) Francis: In a listed company, there must be a succession plan. It is impossible to keep a company within the family. Benedict: When we talk about company succession, there must be a separation with ownership and the organization. An organization must be structured and organized to run with or without the founder. (Wise words for aspiring entrepreneurs) Tracy: Seek funding from family members first. Also consider government micro loans. Mohamed: Work very hard, focus is very important. Be sincere in your business. Keep your staff close to you. Francis: Plan well. Have character - what are your values in life? Be thrifty. Benedict: There’s good business is everywhere. You just have to make a differentiation. I’m not supportive of those fresh from school to start a business. You need to work for someone else, so you know how to deal with people who work for you in the future. Look after your people well, and they will look after you. *A big thanks to SPRING Singapore’s Veron Huang for inviting me. Singapore Property Tycoon Gives S$5 Million, Encourages Technopreneurship Local property tycoon Chua Thian Poh, who’s head kahuna of Ho Bee Group and also president of the Singapore Chinese Chamber of Commerce and Industry (SCCCI), gave S$5 million to the National Technological University (NTU) to set up an entrepreneurship fund. The government matched Chua’s contribution dollar-for-dollar, giving NTU a $10 million war chest for funding interactions between technopreneurship and innovation students with overseas talent, such as overseas educational tours for local students or facilitate the visits of successful entrepreneurs to the university. That’s also a lot of beer money. For more, read the Straits Times article here. Locomi.com - Three Friends, Three Places And One Startup Food can unite people. In the case of Sumit Shah, Ravi Bhushan and Siddharth Vanchinathan - the founders of Locomi.com - also discovered that the love for food can be a source of innovation, and the basis for a startup venture. I first heard of Locomi on Plurk, when co-founder Ravi was asking around for interns, so I caught up with him for a chat. He tells me the three of them, who met in India’s elite La Martiniere Calcutta, are foodies to the core and loved discovering great but unknown places to eat and hang out. Even after they went ways after graduation - Sumit headed to the University of Southern California (USC) in the States, Ravi to the Singapore Management University (SMU) in Singapore, and Sid to Manipal University in India - they kept in close touch and continued sharing on the best places to eat in their respective countries, scouring online food review sites like Yum.sg, Hungrygowhere.com, Yelp.com, CitySeach.com, Burrp.com. Identifying the pain point “While these are excellent tools to search for reviews of local destinations, many people in our social circle didn’t frequent them. This meant that it wasn’t possible to share a new discovery with them or see the places they liked and recommended. Neither was it very easy to see how close by a place was, unless one was very good with addresses,” Ravi tells me. Inspired, the three thrashed around some ideas and came up with what Ravi says was the “rather laughable solution of making yet another social network”, which would integrate local destinations and adding what they figured would be a key USP to the site. “That’s a story for a different day,” Ravis laughs, “Lets just say it was a lot tougher than we imagined. We were unable to find the talent we needed to make our vision a reality, and building the kind of community we envisaged would have been a mammoth task.” That idea didn’t last long. The three friends figured that they needed to add a new dimension to existing social networks rather than reinventing the wheel, and leverage on existing social graphs instead. The result was Locomi.com, the beta version of which is now on Facebook. “We started development in May, 2008 and have been working at breakneck speed since then to develop the application.” Shaping the idea “We developed Locomi for Facebook first because that’s where most of our social circle is. To get Locomi to the stage where it currently is, we had to get a lot of data from different sources, sift through it and clean it up. We developed an algorithm which used landmarks, addresses and a lot of other parameters to pinpoint the data on Google Maps with a fair degree of accuracy. The result is that we have quickly been able to launch Locomi in Singapore as well as seven cities in India - Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata, Delhi, Ahmedabad, Pune and Bangalore.” When you open Locomi, users are first asked to plot their home location. The app takes you to the explore segment that shows you various destinations around your locality and allows you to discover new places around you. Places are divided into 4 categories - Food & Beverages, Shopping, Entertainment and Utilities. You can review and rate places, and read reviews from others. “We believe that people would be more encouraged to visit a new place that’s been recommended by a friend rather than by an unknown person. The latest reviews and ratings are pushed out to users in a city, while an easy to use search interface means that they can easily find what they are looking for. Users can invite others to hang out at a local destination, recommend a place to a friend, or reminisce about a place they recently visited together,” Ravi explains. It surprises me that all three cofounders are based in different parts of the world. Ravi graduates from SMU this year with degrees in Information Systems Management and Business Management and works part-time on Locomi for now in the area of business development.  CTO Sumit, recently graduated from USC, California in December with a degree in Computer Science and a minor in Management, is based out of Kolkata, India and works on Locomi on a full-time basis. Siddharth, the third co-founder who is in charge of user experience, also graduated this year with a degree in Electronics and Communication Engineering from Manipal University and is based in Bangalore. “We are really happy that we have the team that we do. Each one of us brings special skill sets to the table. Moreover, since we are all high school friends, we find it quite comfortable working with one another.” Locomi is currently self-funded with some S$25,000 from friends and family. The team currently has two full-time developers and two data analysts, besides the three founding members. “We have always been using every cent like its the last. We will be needing funding though, to take Locomi to newer platforms. We are currently seeking out some form of angel or government funding.” The company aims to start pitching for its first round of private funding next year. In such bleak economic times, I wish them a healthy dose of luck. Future roadmap Ravi says Locomi is currently working on expanding to other platforms, with OpenSocial and Friendster versions of the application on the immediate horizon. They are also looking at developing a version for the iPhone, especially with its location-aware capabilities. “On the feature front, we are also looking to add more interactivity to the application by introducing quizzes, besides also integrating citywide events and latest deals as key components of the application. Next steps also include expansion into second-tier Indian cities and places across the Asia Pacific.” “We realize that space we are operating in is a crowded one. While most companies in this space concentrate their efforts on search, we are more focused on discovery. We believe that the true potential of Locomi lies in its ability to leverage a user’s existing social graph to discover the most exciting destinations around town. This was always the core focus of our application and we hope this draws the users in.” RentSpace.sg Goes Live, Makes It Easy To Find Temporary Accommodation The Real Group launches Rentspace.sg, an online full-featured map-based search engine that makes it easy for users find apartments and rooms for rent in Singapore. Currently with around one thousand listings, the site allows users to simply key in landmarks such as schools, neighborhoods or roads and will return a map with all the available rental units available in a one-kilometer radius. Rentspace.sg is The Real Group’s second online service, the first being HomeSpace.sg (a similar engine that returns homes for sale rather those for rent). Global Entrepreneurship Week, 17 to 23 November 2008 17-23 November this year marks the Global Entrepreneurship Week (also known as The Week, for short), in which 75 countries all around the world coordinate an entire week of events that celebrate innovation, creativity and entrepreneurship. In Singapore, NUS Enterprise and Action Community for Entrepreneurship (ACE) will host a series of activities that will hopefully give those amongst us with entrepreneurial desires or tendencies a proverbial kick in the butt. I’m highly recommending The Week to three kinds of people: 1. The seasoned entrepreneur. You’ve seen it all, but you’ve recently hit a brick wall, come up with blanks, or found the going increasingly tougher. Go to The Week and get excited all over again. Soak in the enthusiasm and the passion from other veterans and the young guns alike. 2. The new entrepreneur. You’ve just started your venture and you’re brimming with energy, ideas and zeal. Find out what other entrepreneurs are up to, look for mentors who can help guide your startup or find mutually-beneficial partners at The Week. 3. The could-be entrepreneur. You’ve always wondered what it’ll be like to start your own business, or if you’re cut out to do your own thing. Go to The Week and find out if you’re right for it. Two events in particular to look out for: Monday, 17 Nov, 7-9pm - ACE BlueSky Exchange & Evening networking event, ‘Challenging Times & Managing Challenges’. The event features a panel of speakers from various industries to discuss the current economic outlook and share their strategies and approaches in steering companies in such turbulent times. Click here for more information. Saturday, 22 Nov, 9am-5pm - ‘Speednetworking the Globe’, organized by The Digital Movement (TDM), will feature speednetworking sessions between technology startups from Singapore, Silicon Valley and Stockholm, conducted totally through online chats and video links. Check the wiki out for more updates. I’m definitely looking forward to it. For more information on Global Entrepreneurship Week activities around the world, check out UnleashingIdeas.org. For activities specific to Singapore, click here instead. *This is a sponsored review brought to you by BLOG2u. Reinventing Customer Service What if customer service folks were among the most highly-paid in a business? Or if businesses hired the best and the brightest to handle customer service? What happens if customer service personnel are empowered to make decisions? Would that change the level of customer service? I reckon it will, but I don’t think this will ever happen here in Singapore. Stealth Mode - A Silent Way For A Startup To Die During one of the recent events I attended, I spoke to this guy working in a new local startup who proudly declared, “We’re in stealth mode.” Stealth mode. Wow I don’t really know that means, but doesn’t that sound cool? When I asked him in greater detail about why his venture was in ’stealth mode’ he couldn’t answer me. “I can’t tell you what we do, our web service is in a really competitive space,” he explains. If you’re such competitive a space you’re screwed already, bro. And if you don’t have an answer, I can think of a few: 1. You don’t have a clue what you’re doing. 2. You have a vague idea which you don’t know how to articulate anyway. 3. You probably don’t have an investor and are embarrassed. Heck, you probably don’t even have a target market. OnStartups.com names a few real reasons why startups won’t talk. On the other hand, David Beisel argues that there are legitimate reasons for startups to remain covert. Mark Fletcher of Bloglines pointed out in 2005 that he believes stealth mode for web startups is the kiss of death. He says three months is all a startup should stay in stealth mode while it works out the kinks before its beta launch. I agree with his assessment. It’s probably more advisable to get your product out quickly, and test it often with your users. Otherwise your ’stealthed’ startup may just die silently in its infancy. How An Alumni Helped Unigo.com Get Off The Ground Being an entrepreneur is hard, but for a student entrepreneur, things can get immeasurably harder. With no money and armed only with an idea, where can a young entrepreneur find funding and support? For Jordan Goldman, founder of Unigo.com, his answer - and salvation - lay in his college alumni. The recent graduate from Wesleyan University had an idea of a wholly student-contributed online college resource where other future students can get unbiased advice on the colleges they were thinking to apply in. “Choosing what college you go to is an enormous decision. It’s stressful, it’s incredibly expensive, in many cases entire families save for years and (everyone has to) chip in,” says 26 year-old Goldman. “Up until very recently the best way to make this four-year, $50,000 to $250,000 decision was to buy a college guidebook.” When Goldman was 18 years old, he came up with an idea to help make those guidebooks a little bit better - he created a series of 100 per cent student-written college guidebooks called the Students’ Guide to Colleges, published in a couple of editions by Penguin Books. The Idea About a year after he stopped doing the guide, Goldman realized the limitations of print guidebooks – each college only got a small number of pages, with no photos, no videos, no interactivity.  For a decision this important, that resource didn’t seem helpful enough. “High school students and parents needed more accurate, authentic, honest information.  And college students needed a place where they could really represent their college lives - if they loved their school, if they had issues with it, if they were someplace in-between.” “The internet provided the opportunity to create an enormous, comprehensive and totally free resource that could help everyone.” Goldman proceeded to hire an 18-person editorial team for Unigo, and spent about three months researching 250 colleges.  “We hired interns on the ground, who really believed in what we were trying to accomplish and who helped corroborate our research.”  For the next 5 months, Unigo evangelized to students one by one, asking them to be part of creating a ‘crowd-sourced’ student resource.  “We put in extra effort to ensure we received reviews from students from every major, extracurricular, gender, race, religion, political affiliation, sexual orientation and more … students who love their school, who have issues with it, or have mixed feelings.” In the end, more than 15,000 students from these 250 colleges had contributed more than 35,000 pieces of content.  In some cases, a full 10 per cent of the student body took part.  Goldman explains that such a volume of reviews Unigo allows them to tap on the wisdom of crowds. “If we have 150 reviews of a college, you can search by a variety of criteria.  You can say, only show me reviews by English majors, or African-American students, or politically right-wing students at a left-wing institution … so you can see a school from the eyes of someone who’s just like you.” Unigo - The collaborative students’ guide to colleges Unigo launched on 17th September this year, and offers a slightly different site for high school students and college students. High school students get access to an enormous amount of free and honest information about each college such as editorial overviews, reviews, photos, videos, documents and more. For college students, Unigo gives them tools to create content about their college life - reviews, videos, photos, upload class notes, academic writing, creative writing, campus journalism. “They can write blogs, interact in forums, create profiles and message their classmates and other prospective students. Anyone with the right .edu email address can create content about their school,” says Goldman, who was recently interviewed in the New York Times for his startup. Funding Goldman started working on the idea for Unigo when he was 23 and recently graduated from college. He decided to just go for it and lived on his meagre savings while he worked on developing his idea further. Goldman recounts how he managed to stretch his savings - which he thought would last six months - into one and a half years. “At a certain point I starting growing more and more frugal - dividing Chinese food lunch specials into two or three meals, living in the cheapest sublets I could find and sleeping on people’s couches – to make the money last as long as it possibly could, so I could take the idea as far as I could.” The English major one day realized that there were a lot of really amazing alumni living in New York City. What if he was able to tap on their expertise? “So I went into Wesleyan’s alumni database and emailed lots of knowledgeable people in NYC, asking them if I could buy them dinner while they listened to the idea and told me what they thought.” And respond they did, even if some were complete strangers. The alumni were willing to be incredibly helpful, and over time, and after meeting with lots of alumni, their advice helped Goldman’s plan get better and better. “Literally two or three weeks before my last dollars were set to run out, some alumni came together and actually pitched in the initial funds to start building the website.” Being open to good advice Goldman thinks that the advice he received from the Wesleyan alumni was as important, if not more important, than their funding of Unigo. One challenge, he shares, was recognizing that the ideas had plenty of flaws in the beginning. “People would listen, and nod their heads, then go on to rip it apart.” They said things like “you didn’t think of this, what would you do in this scenario, this part doesn’t make sense”, Goldman remembers. “Sometimes that can be hard to hear, especially if you’re living only on your savings, with everyone telling you to get a real job while you’re trying your best to keep at it to get your idea off the ground.” “But in the end, it’s actually the best thing in the world, those people who pick your idea apart.  You have to kind of put yourself aside, and listen to what they’re saying, then go home and take out your pen and go ‘okay, they identified a hole, how do I fill that hole now?’.  Once you’ve done that, ask them to sit down with you a month later and test out your patch, see if it holds. If it doesn’t, try again.” Goldman says he probably had 50 or 100 of those ‘hole-finding’ lunches before the idea evolved enough to raise funds to create Unigo – trying out ideas, testing them, getting shot down and building them up. “You really do learn from that process.  And your idea gets immeasurably stronger.  Not being defensive and opening up was one of the hardest - and most worthwhile - things that got done.” Jordan Goldman, founder of Unigo.com It Pays To Follow Your Passion (Most Of The Time) Passion makes things happen. This is never so clearly evident as with Finnish video-making cult hero Timo Vuorensola or Hugh Hancock of Strange Company. Timo created Star Wreck, a Star Trek parody, while Hugh was responsible for Bloodspell, a feature-length machinima film made using the gaming engine from Neverwinter Nights. The two of them, along with Iolo Jones of TV Everywhere, shared some insights behind what drives them in an exclusive new media discussion at the Singapore Digital Media Festival 2008. They certainly didn’t start their creations for monetary reward, although they are now somewhat rather compensated for their efforts. Unfortunately such thinking is not quite so prevalent here in Singapore. Some of the bloggers present at the discussion, including me, bemoan the fact that many UGC creators here are simply too fixated on financial rewards -  or as Coleman Yee points out, extrinsic motivation - instead. Timo shares how Star Wreck was in some part funded by unemployment and student welfare checks from the Finnish government. (OK, we don’t have the dole here so this option is out of the question for us Singaporeans.) But Timo and Hugh will still advise us to follow our passion. Passion got them to where they are today after all. From L: Timo Vuorensola, Iolo Jones and Hugh Hancock IDMPO Makes It Ten With SiTF The Singapore Infocomm Technology Federation (SiTF) today announced itself as IDM Research and Development Programme Office (IDMPO)’s new sleeping partner. SiTF will act as an incubator by administering IDMPO’s microfunding scheme for individuals and startups in the interactive digital media space, and its members will offer mentoring with their technological and business expertise. With this new tie-up, IDMPO now has a network of 10 incubators that will collectively nurture some 450 startups in Singapore over the next few years. Existing incubators have funded some 90 projects of which 15 have been completed. About four have received private investment. It will be interesting to see how an industry association of more than 400 corporate members - many of whom are competitors in their respective industries - can make sense and value add to the growing numbers of local startups. Weigend Says Companies Are Losing Control I was at the Singapore Management University this evening for the Shaw Foundation Distinguished Faculty Lecture Series to hear ex-Amazon chief scientist Andreas Weigend speak on the topic The New Business Model: “Me-Business”. Weigend shares that there are three kinds of companies - the “E-Business” or one that is focused on itself and on control, the “Me-Business” (the customer-centric business), and finally the “We-Business”, one which acknowledges that its customers are now bypassing the company and talking to one another i.e. becoming a community. You can find out more of what he presented in his blog post here. He argues that the company who is stuck in the first category will struggle. Businesses who understand that the balance of power has shifted to the consumer and ride that wave will survive and even prosper. The old ways of thinking are gone, Weigend says. There’s also a panel session that follows, comprising of Michael Issenberg, Chairman and COO of Accor Asia Pacific, OCBC Bank’s Senior Executive Vice President and Head of Global Consumer Financial Services Andrew Lee, Executive Vice President (Consumer) and CEO of Singtel Mobile Quek Peck Leng, and chaired by Assoc Professor John Davis from SMU’s Lee Kong Chian School of Business. Wow. It feels like a disused library with so many stuffy titles. From L: SMU's John Davis, Andrew Lee of OCBC, Andreas Weigend, Quek Peck Leng of Singtel Mobile and Accor's Michael Issenberg At least the conversational was humorous at times. OCBC’s Lee candidly jibes that his company is in a legacy business that is stuck in the first category. He’s not totally convinced on the We-Business, but certainly agrees that his company can work on being more customer-centric. Singtel Mobile’s Quek and Accor’s Issenberg argues that companies have to be all three - since they are profit-oriented after all. Quek says that his users are increasingly demanding customization of their mobile usage, but this means that his company increasingly loses control. The rest agrees. Weigend jests that the idea of ‘control’ is so last millenium, and the whole audience laughs. I leave at that point, and rush across for the Singapore Digital Media Festival’s opening night at the National Museum conveniently located across the road from SMU. Just as well I was late - it was basically a digital media onslaught, mostly 10-minute film shorts, for more than two hours. Honestly I wasn’t too impressed - most of them being overly-slick productions. Red vs. Blue (a machinima film built around the Halo engine) was irreverently fun though, and the Metropolitan Opera Live in HD was suitably impressive. I left halfway through the program; I was that tired. It’s been a busy, busy day. I’m looking forward to the actual DM Fest proper tomorrow, though. The Developer Is Everybody’s New Best Friend I had the opportunity to meet Jeff Roberto of Friendster over lunch today, along with Ben Koe of JamiQ, Howie Chang from TDM, Michael Lim of Comiqs, Mohan Belani of E27 and Ridzuan Ashim of Widgeo.us. Jeff, who was in town for yesterday’s Google DevFest (Google’s first-ever Hackathon in Southeast Asia), shared with us the latest developments on Friendster’s developer program and the company’s support of Google’s OpenSocial. He explains why developers should port their apps to Friendster and the various monetization models they can employ on its platform. No surprises here - advertising is by far still the most viable revenue source. Interestingly, Friendster can and will tie developers up with brand advertisers for specialized marketing campaigns. So it seems like everyone’s trying to open up their platforms and make friends with developers of all stripes. Local developers for some time have already been hard at work developing apps for both Facebook (check out the Facebook App Developers group) as well as the iPhone. Nokia will engage local developers with Forum Nokia on 31st October. Crowdsourcing applications is the ‘in’ thing. Friendster's Jeff Roberto shares that Friendster still kicks Facebook's ass in Southeast Asia Flex-ing His Developer Muscle: A Chat With Seesmic’s Hu Shun Jie Flex developer Hu Shun Jie from online video microblogging service Seesmic (think a video version of Twitter) is taking some time off his extremely busy schedule to speak on a panel discussion on “Web 2.0 and Building Online Communities” at the upcoming Singapore Digital Media Festival 2008. I had the opportunity to ask him a few questions (and deprive him of some much-needed sleep): Q. Tell us a little about your role in Seesmic. In Seesmic we have people in Germany, Romania, France, US and of course Singapore! Unfortunately I am the only one here. My main role is mostly building plugins and applications that “exist out of Seesmic” website. For example, the Seesmic Threaded Player, Seesmic recorders for Seesmic-powered blogs, and the recently published video player for Washington Post. It is a great job as I am able to mingle some of the best developers from all over the world. Working with them makes me learn a lot and I am able to develop both my developer as well as my interpersonal skills. Q. What got you interested in Flex and RIA (Rich Internet Application)? I was always interested in moving graphics and animations. I started off as a C# .NET developer in 2004 but at the same time, interested to create more interactive web applications. Flash was the answer at that time but creating applications without Flex is really a daunting task that requires massive effort. When Flex 2.0 arrived, it was really god-sent. I can now develop applications with twice the speed and half the code. Having an object-orientated programming background, coding in Actionscript 3.0 becomes real neat and straightforward. Together with the arrival of AIR, the proliferation of third-party APIs, as well as growth and stabilization of open source libraries and various frameworks for Flex and Actionscript 3.0, every piece of the puzzle began to fit. The realm of RIA has arrived! We are seeing web and desktop applications moving closer and closer to one another and users are able to enjoy features that is impossible prior to RIA. Q. Tell us a little bit about yourself. I graduated from the National University of Singapore (NUS). I began my career in late 2004 when I taught in 3dsense Media School on Flash MX and Actionscript 2.0, while taking up freelance jobs of my own. When I graduated in 2006, I joined them as their Technical Media Director, continued as their Actionscript instructor as well as improved their existing courses. At the end of 2006, I decided that development was where my passion belonged and joined local startup (now defunct) Radixs where I worked on VelvetPuffin, a social networking client with Actionscript 2.0. In early 2007, I got more deeply involved in Flex and AIR with my pet project AirTalkr. At the end of that year, I got to know Johann, the CTO of Seesmic, through a very casual conversation. That’s how I got into Seesmic. Q. What it was like when you were growing up, and how did you develop your interest in technologies? I have been in love with animations and websites since secondary school. I self taught myself some HTML way back in the 90s. When my junior college lecturer used 3D Studio MAX for our physics lessons, it intrigued me into learning 3D and animation. I did my own self study of modeling and 3d animation and then enrolled into 3dsense Media School to continue learning 3D. It was then that I met with their directors and subsequently I begin to teach Flash and Actionscript there. Q. Tell us a little about your involvement with the Singapore Flex Usergroup and The Actionscript Conference. I am currently the manager of the Singapore Flex Usergroup (FUG), and the founder of The Actionscript Conference. FUG started in November 2007 and its goal is to increase the local awareness of Flex, as well as helping the local developers community in knowing each other and learn Flex together.  We have monthly meetings and it is amazing how much we have grow over the last year. We are one of the most active user groups in Singapore now. The Actionscript Conference is an initiative by FUG to fill in the “conference void” in the local Flash community since MAX ceased to be held in Singapore from 2006. Q. So you code at work, code in your spare time, and even have an active blog! Where do you find the time? Lots of coffee and lesser sleep! I work from home and that saves me a lot of time. I usually blog early in the morning, and limit each blogging session to two hours. However, I still wish we have 48 hours a day! Q. What advice would you give someone, such as a student, who wants to start the next big thing in Web 2.0? I believe someone who wants to break into Web 2.0 has to be in the world of Web 2.0 itself! To win over your users, you have to be a user yourself. Start blogging, post videos and photos on your Facebook account, explore other Web 2.0 sites. If achieving something is difficult for a technically-inclined, then it will be impossible for the otherwise. Understand your users, talk with your users and make friends with them. Do not think that “if you build it, they will come”. What is important is “they come and keep coming back”! Begin to work on your small ideas and not be afraid of competitors. Having something is always better than nothing. Get talented partners, put 200% effort into it, and build the next killer application. For students, I will suggest they start building experimental applications on their own. The applications do not need to be big. Start small, and gain experience as you go along. Get an internship in some Web 2.0 company overseas and learn from your seniors. The advantage of being a student is that they can be very focused, they have access to a lot of software (that is) either free or at a very low cost, and of course, they can afford to make mistakes, and learn from them! Zapoint.com - Talent Management Gets Zapped Anybody who’s worked in human resources and have sorted through hundreds of resumes from job applicants know how painfully tedious this part of the hiring process is. Chris Twyman saw the opportunity to solve this age-old problem after completing a project for a strategy consulting firm looking at efficiency in the recruitment industry, and founded Zapoint.com in 2007 with a mission to change the manner by which talent is captured, consumed and managed. “(Have you tried) reading a pile of 100 resumes and making an effective evaluation? I decided if I could turn resumes into numbers I could provide a new tool for resume comparison,” says the founder and CEO of Brookline, Massachusetts-based Zapoint. Twyman previously spent 12 years working in the software industry - most recently at CA Inc - and is not new to entrepreneurship, having formed UrbanFox, a UK-based startup providing online trading solutions to telecommunications carriers. Fast forward one year later and Twyman’s team has developed what the company calls ‘the industry’s first true Web 2.0 talent platform’. The system is based around a patent-pending talent algorithm that quantifies an individuals skills and achievements into an objective and common ‘talent currency’, whose basis can used for objective comparison and removes the ambiguity and subjectivity that plagues much of today’s HR practices. Twyman turns evasive when asked how Zapoint’s talent algorithm works. “Can’t do that… it’s our secret sauce. Like I said it converts skills and achievements into numbers so we can rank talent.” Twyman put the system to the test, pitting it against a recruiter in ranking 100 resumes. “He took 4 days to read and rank the results we did the same in 4 seconds.” He says the real genesis started the day Google acquired YouTube. “I could see that Web 2.0 technology could really add value and Zapoint could be a part of that growth.” Essentially, Zapoint changes a person’s resume into a dynamic LifeChart, a graphical resume that captures and presents the data in a much more digestible format. “For the first time, talent can be ranked… the process is interactive and it empowers both the recruiter and the professional.” Tyman shares that this has tremendous benefits for everybody in the value chain. “Professionals get instant feedback on how they compare to peers. Recruiters get to manage their applicants in a more efficient way. Businesses can benchmark the skills and achievements of their employees.” Twyman names Success Factors, online job boards and - cheekily - Microsoft Word as Zapoint’s key competitors. Twyman shares his simple philosophy on putting a great team together. He basically looked around the business school he had attended - Hult International Business School in Cambridge, Massachusetts - for people who are ’start-up ready to go the extra mile’. “A great example is Joe Brooks. His background is in real estate but his aptitude and competency has meant he is perfect for the role.” Brooks is Zapoint’s Chief Technology Officer and its head of development. Brooks was keen to work in an entrepreneurial and dynamic startup environment after graduating with his MBA, where his skills and experience - he worked in London for 7 years in real estate - could be readily applied and stretched. Having worked previously in an industry with relatively high staff turnover, Joe was keen to work on developing talent management solutions to help companies identify, retain and manage the skills within their organizations. “(Joe) is the classic example of hiring the best and they will achieve,” Twyman says. Twyman first funded his venture with his own money - once that ran out he asked angels to participate. His first angels ended on his advisory board and, according to him, are some of “the best HR brains in Boston”. At time of writing, Zapoint found a great VC firm and is rolling towards a Series B. Despite the current world economy, Twyman is optimistic about Zapoint weathering the storm. “Talent management is so high on (company) agendas right now. They cannot afford to lose their best people.” Twyman has reason to be optimistic - the company names Sovereign Bank, Direct TV and (Twyman’s and Brook’s alma mater) Hult University amongst its clients and already estimates a revenue of around US$500,000 this year. He’s also looking at growing his team from the current 15 to 40 by the end of this year. He aims to get everyone ‘zapping’ their resumes. “If we get that into the vernacular then we have done our job…we are on our way,” he says. Chris Twyman, founder and CEO of Zapoint.com YoungUpstarts Is Now Two Two years ago this date, this blog put up its first post. Reading it again, I’m pleasantly reminded that YoungUpstarts has stuck quite closely to its mission and intent for promoting entrepreneurial thinking and a “can-do” spirit. There have been some changes along the way - an incorporation of a more technology focus and an experimentation of different writing styles, for example - but the focus remains the same. There will be more changes (hopefully mostly positive ones!) to this blog. Regular readers would have noticed in recent posts that I’ve included a more international slant to the startups I’m covering. This will continue. I’m giving YoungUpstarts a present for its 2nd anniversary - a new logo! I hope you like it too. I’d like to take this opportunity to thank two of my most ardent readers, Jeffrey of QuantitatiVC.com and Walter of Coolinsights, for helping me shape this blog along and contributing some of its more thought-provoking comments. It wouldn’t have been the same without you. Thanks for the support, guys! How Would You Invest S$10,000? It’s not a very big amount, but I asked three people - an entrepreneur and two investors - what they would do with $10,000 Singapore dollars in these economically-challenging times. Independent consultant Natasha Golding, of The Right Words, says all the negative news of bank collapses makes her so nervous she’d use the money to clear all my personal debt or pay off a chunk of her mortgage. A more entrepreneurial option, she thinks, is to invest in a cheap but stylish boutique hotel in Hanoi. “Bangkok has several such places but I’ve not yet found any in Hanoi. Personally I like staying in them and business-wise they make a lot of sense. I’d want to invest in a Vietnamese business which has vision, business sense and some other money, (after all) 10K isn’t that much,” she says. Another idea Golding has which she can invest the money in is a “What technology do I need?” website. This service would help you work out exactly which devices, laptops, PDAs, mobiles, etc., are the best for you based on what you need to be able to do. “You’d tell it: “I want to check emails on the go, type using a full size keyboard and not carry anything bigger then a box of chocolates” or “I want the latest thing everyone’s talking about”. It’d tell you what your options are, how much they’d cost and it’d link you to user reviews. It’ll be clever enough to suggest using multiple devices to achieve your needs, or low-fi solutions like carrying a notebook.” She says the 10K will help pay for some serious research which can form the basis of a business proposal to investors. Jeffrey Paine of QuantitatiVC advises anyone to invest the money in a new business with partners or start their own business, preferably a high-tech business or one in the mobile space since startup costs can be pretty low. “I will not invest in publicly traded stocks unless I know the company very well, for example knowing the industry inside out, have talked to the company’s customer base AND to be close to the management team - including knowing who the CEO’s wife is and where she does her nails,” Paine half-jests. Another option, he says, is to invest in someone else’s startup and just forget about the money since it is capital you are willing to risk losing. “The upside is way more than what a stock market can bring you; it can also be fun. The problem in Singapore is there are not many such early stage deals that can give you a 7X return in 12 months ala del.icio.us,” Paine says. Nicholas Chan of business incubator Azione Capital would use the money to expand his operations, including looking at niche areas in modernizing current brick and mortar businesses, set up an automated online trade of unique Asian products to Europe and the US, or fund consulting work with companies within the Southeast Asia region. “Assuming I have unlimited knowledge, connections and capabilities but still (have to work) within the 10K cap, I would look into R&D into exploring enhancements on some fundamental or primitive sources of energy.” Otherwise Chan will just plonk the money into forex and commodities, use the money as bridging loans to a small business or put the funds into a friend’s trading company. I’d invest in a startup if I had S$10,000. What would you do? Time For Toilet Talk Jack Sim, founder of World Toilet Organization. (Jim Orca, TIME) Jack Sim, a largely forgotten son of Singapore, is far more famous outside of our country than within. The social entrepreneur and founder of the World Toilet Organization was recently recognized and lauded in TIME magazine’s Oct 6, 2008 Heroes of the Environment special report. We’re proud of you, Jack. We want clean toilets, and we want more of them! DMFest 2008: A Spirited Pre-Event Discussion On User-Generated Content I was invited to a pre-event session for the Singapore Digital Media Festival 2008 by the kind folks of PR outfit Text100, where I had the opportunity to meet some of the festival’s speakers and panelists such as Muvee COO Philip Morgan, Ultimate Video FX director Stefano Vergilli, Seesmic Flex developer Hu Shunjie, as well as the creative director and co-founder of Magma Studios Chris Jones. Also present were familiar faces and friends in Singapore’s social media scene - Walter Lim, Daniel Tsou and Chinmay “NTT” Pendharkar of Tech65.org, Benjamin Koe, Coleman Yee, Bernard Leong, and fellow TDMer Andrew Peters. After an introduction by Ivan Ho and Anthony Fu from the DMFest organising committeee, we launched into a discussion on the state of user-generated content (UGC) in Singapore. With the quality of the people present - panelists and media socialists alike - we were in for an extremely fun and intellectually-stimulating debate. Here are some of the points that were raised: - Proliferation of technology and tools allows the the creation of UGC on a scale like never before i.e. machinima. - Opportunities for collaborative projects between traditional media owners and the social media can lead to great content. - Still too much noise, and too little signal: for every UGC gem that has commercial or viral potential, thousands of others fade into oblivion. - It’s by far easier for traditional media companies to adopt the tools and methods for creating UGC than for independent UGC-developers to find a revenue model. - It’s a free market. Freemium models can exist, but by-and-large users in Asia and Singapore will not pay for content. - Too much fixation by companies and media buyers on quantity rather than quality when it comes to measurement i.e. how many views on YouTube. DMFest 2008 will take place in Singapore on 30 and 31 October, and promises a showcase of thought leaders in the digital media world. If it’s going to be anything like the discussion tonight, DMFest will be a blast. A Big Hello To Patrick of EnterVenture.com Here’s a shout-out to Patrick Cushing who writes at NYC-based EnterVenture.com, for counting my blog amongst the sites to follow on entrepreneurship and startups in Asia. It’s heartwarming to find like-minded people around the world who share a similar passion, and also a testament to collaborative social media tools that allows us to connect with one another. Salesconx.com - Good Ol’ Fashioned Sales Leads, Virtually Sales is a key function in any company, and SalesConx.com CEO Evan Sohn believes that his company can help other small to medium businesses strive for better results in this area. SalesConx.com is essentially an online marketplace for sales leads and referrals, somewhat like Leadvine.com (which we recently featured). However, instead of crowdsourcing various leads of sorts - sales, recruitment, partnerships etc - from the entire community at large as Leadvine.com does, at SalesConx.com you get sales leads from qualified sales experts to reach targeted decision makers from a wide range of different industries. These “selling experts” undergo a stringent selection process by SalesConx.com - applicants require at least three years of sales experience and have to be invited by a current member - before they can join, which ensures the quality of leads you get. A qualified introduction to a prospective buyer, partner or investor is priceless, especially if it’s made by someone who’s worked with them directly before. Heck, it’s way better than cold-calling for sure. Think of SalesConx.com as a virtual throwback to good old-fashioned referrals and networking, in an online sort of way. Users place a listing on the site, and determine the price for an introduction to a potential prospect for as little as US$50. They only pay upon completed transactions - there are no subscription, maintenance or licensing fees of any sort as a SalesConx.com member. “As a small business owner, head of sales and marketing finding the decision maker and actually getting in front of the decision maker has always been a challenge. While it is very easy to find the name of the decision maker, getting a meeting with the client is another story,” says Sohn. “There was a time when a salesperson was at the heart of every transaction. “E-commerce, online transactions and inside sales teams have for the most part disintermediated selling professionals from the overall process.” Sohn believes that sales has always been about building relationships and delivering value to the client, and the revenue and commission elements should always come secondary to delivering quality and consistency. “I felt that if we could bring (sales professionals) back into the fold and capitalize on their experiences that we could deliver incredible value to our clients.” “We are consistently adding features to our site and processes to our operation that improves are entire value chain.” SalesConx.com came into the media limelight late last year and early this year, where it was featured in Fast Company (story), CNET (story), VentureBeat (story) and KillerStartups.com (story). Sohn says one of the key lessons he learnt from his previous ventures in Brainchild, Informedix and Omnipod was to surround himself with great people - a great board, a great management team, great partners and great employees. Sohn’s CTO, Nicholas Dinatale, worked with him years ago at a previous venture. “His business sense and keen understanding of small business needs and online e-commerce were essential elements for the business. The rest of the team at SalesConx are energetic, enthusiastic and bright young people with limited experience but incredible winning attitudes,” Sohn shares. SalesConx also attracted the founders and investors of Gerson Lehrman including Mark Gerson, Thomas Lehrman as well as serial entrepreneurs like Jeffrey Stewart. Sohn agrees the economic climate looks bleak at the moment, and believes the best way companies can weather the storm is to grow revenues, contain cost and increasing one’s productivity. In a difficult market such as the one we are in, Sohn says, sales become even more critical and clients go to them seeking to improve their productivity by gaining access to their target decision makers. He’s optimistic about SalesConx’s future. “We are adding new selling experts every day as companies around the country are reducing their sales forces.” SalesConx CEO Evan Sohn Hibernater.com - An Idea Out Of Cold Storage Sometimes it’s good to revisit an old idea. That’s what Chua Khim Teck, founder of Hibernater.com, did when he took an idea he was working on when he was still in school and gave it new life. Hibernater’s concept is simple - it allows user to put their work states into ‘hibernation’, a process which allows them to save their work profiles, such as documents and the websites they have been surfing on with and resume the profiles with one simple click on a different computer or work station. “I was thinking for a final year project back in Ngee Ann Polytechnic in 2003-04 and I thought about what I need to “routinely” do everyday for my work. I realized that saving and resuming my stuff when I was about to log off the computer was quite a hassle to me.” He says people he initially spoke to were against the idea, since most people carried laptops. “But I held on to the fact that a lot of people in this world do not own laptops like we do, such as those in less-developed countries. Even for people who own laptops, there are several disadvantages to bringing the laptops everywhere we go, such as losing the laptops and the additional load of carrying a laptop around,” Chua explains. After graduation, Chua and his team mate Thien Rong tried to develop Hibernater into a commercial product, but they were forced to put their plans on hold when they were drafted for National Service. Hibernater was, ironically, left in hibernation for more than two years as they served out their military service. When they finally left National Service and entered Nanyang Technological University, they rebuilt Hibernater with newer techology and submitted it for the 2007 Microsoft Imagine Cup. They didn’t manage to enter the finals, but Hibernater received great feedback from some of the judges. Soon after, the team met Nicholas Chan from Azione Capital and managed to secure some funds. “There’s a huge silent majority market that is still sticking to desktop-bound applications,” says Chan, founder of the privately-held business incubator, who sees Hibernater operating in the vast majority of Asia which is still under-served by IT. Chan thinks Hibernater will be most effective in serving consumers “at the bottom of the pyramid” as it allows multiple users to share a single computer and yet provide each of them a private “virtual space”. “Besides,” Chan says, “I was impressed by the Hibernater team’s great attitude and humility.” Hibernater received from Azione Capital a seed funding S$62,000, which included S$50,000 from the Media Development Authority of Singapore (MDA)’s iJAM microfunding. Hibernater announced its beta launch in Sep 2008. One of the challenges they have is in improving Hibernater’s user interface. “It is important to have a user-friendly interface so that users can easily use the service,” says Khim Teck, but he shares that improvements are in the works. “We will be adding more support to as much applications as we can, and more enhancements to the interface will be done. More storage, over the web Hibernation, and so on,” Chua says. Chua Khim Teck of Hibernater Freelancezone.com.sg - Name Says It All First there was Jorbb.com - which we recently featured - and now Freelancezone.com.sg. It seems that casual job sites in Singapore are sprouting out of the ground like mushrooms after a downpour to challenge traditional print classifieds. Launched in early July 2008, Freelancezone.com.sg is owned by e-commerce company Dovalize Pte Ltd and provides online tools for freelance service providers and potential employers to find one another. Freelancers can list their services on the site where service buyers can search and contact the service providers. Freelance service buyers can also post job ads and receive the application via job bids or direct contact from service providers. According to Freelancezone.com.sg, the site has attracted more than a thousand freelancers from Singapore and Malaysia within the first three months of its launch, signing up under various industries such as account and finance, admin and human resource, information techology and web development and education and training. It’s hard to identify Freelancezone.com.sg’s unique selling point, but I guess another job site in Singapore won’t hurt considering the economic outlook. Social Media Breakfast 4 - A New Hope For New Media in Singapore And so I was up early last Saturday morning for Social Media Breakfast 4 at the theatrette in URA Centre where I was invited to participate in a panel discussion on “Corporate Adoption of Social Media” along with Derrick Koh of Lenovo, Supriya Addanki of Text 100 and fellow bloggers Benjamin Koe of local startup JamiQ and Pat Law of Arc Worldwide. Moderated by Willy Foo of LiveStudios, the panel shared our experiences of how companies we work in or worked with have engaged the new media. I spotted a number of executives of companies from big and small among the crowd - Canon Singapore, local retail giant Tangs and HBO Asia, among others. It was heartening to note that companies are finally beginning to take more attention of the burgeoning local new media scene and this can only bode well for its future here. Speaking to a crowd of more than 50 people intent on soaking up - or picking apart - every word you say, I must admit, can be an incredibly stimulating if harrowing experience. More so the fact I was only asked the morning before if I’d like to join the panel, and hence my unpreparedness. Forgive me for my initial jitteriness! I’d wished I could have stayed longer for the networking session after (but the wife was waiting and it was a Saturday after all). You can find an excellent summary of the event here. ShowNearby.com - It’s All About Location, Location, Location Online location-based information services are all the rage now with Singapore-based startups, and one of the more recent to emerge is ShowNearby.com.  Launched in March this year, it adds a twist to the usual directory-like business information and mapping features by incorporating social networking features for a difference. Like other similar services such as fellow startup Gothere.sg or former incumbent Streetdirectory.com  - until its recent legal woes with the Singapore Land Authority - you can search for places, map information, directions and even calculate distances on ShowNearby.com. What sets it slightly apart from the others is that ShowNearby.com also works on a user-generated basis. Register as a user, and you can contribute comments and reviews of places, services and anything else interesting of note which are then added to their database. Photos and comments can be tagged to locations, and you can even search for people around an area, such as your neighbourhood. You can create events for friends and relatives or attend any event you’re interested in. Its revenue model focuses on providing targeted and relevant proximity-based advertising to businesses. ShowNearby.com was founded by 25-year old Douglas Gan, an eight-year veteran in the Internet business. Douglas previously founded web hosting companies Purehostings Internet Solutions and OhGenki.com, which he has successfully sold off to Skydio.com and RobertJSteiner.com respectively. It’s interesting to note that despite their fewer resources, startups such as ShowNearby.com and Gothere.sg are able to provide online geo-based location services that far supercedes the pathetic StreetMap@Singapore mapping service from the Singapore Land Authority. For more information on ShowNearby.com, contact ask at shownearby dot com. The Great Book of Ideas Fredrik Härén holding The Idea Book. Which book: 1. To date sold 150,000 copies in the author’s home country of Sweden, 2. Sold 3,000 copies in a month in Iceland (which in a country with a population of 300,000 makes it one for every 100 Icelanders), 3. Will be translated and launched in Iran, Sri Lanka and Laos before it hits the United States, France and Germany, 4. Was launched tonight in Singapore? Fredrik Härén’s The Idea Book, that is. Launching the book in the biggest bookstore in Singapore would have been the most logical thing to do, but that would have been out of character for Fredrik Härén - he’s one who’ve always tried to do things different. Instead he picked probably the smallest one - local independent bookstore Books Actually, which is tucked away in a quiet corner in Ann Siang Hill for his launch. “We try to make (the book) different, sell it different(ly), and get people to use it in different ways,” Fredrik says. The Idea Book is a combination of a motivational book on creativity and a notebook.  Fredrik shares that only 10 per cent of his book’s sales come from bookstores - the rest are sold directly to companies and organisations. The reason, he says, is quite simple. Companies have a very small budget for buying books. On the other hand, they have huge stationery budgets. So by positioning the unique duality of his book, he’s been able to convince many companies to buy it for their staff. He’s already sold 1,000 copies to a statutory board here in Singapore. It’s one of those ideas that Kenny Leck, the owner of Books Actually, says “we’d wish we thought of but he beat us to it”. Fredrik’s just moved to Singapore and the reason, he says, is because he’s going to set up base here and translate the book into more than 100 languages - such as Korean, for example. He’s on the lookout for people who are excellent translators who are passionate about books, so if you’re interested you can contact him at fredrik dot haren at interesting dot org. MindMeister.com - Sharing Your Mind(Maps) Mindmeister.com is an amazing online collaborative mind-mapping tool that allows for multiple users to create and share mindmaps with one another. Integration with Skype makes this service even more powerful by allowing for real-time conversation and idea-sharing. It’s no wonder Mindmeister has won various awards including being one of Red Herring Europe’s Top 100 Startups in 2008. Looks like I’ll be using this quite often (it’ll help to somewhat overcome my short-term memory). Thanks to Ronnie and Pierre bringing Mindmeister to my attention! BlueStocking - Entrepreneurship And Girl Power In 2005 a friendship was formed between three Singaporean girls in Silicon Valley, California that would form the basis of Bluestocking, a fledging community that connects women in Singapore who have an interest in entrepreneurship. Raine Lai, Kat Neo and Janet Neo were in the United States through the NUS Overseas Colleges program, and found support in each other in what they call a “male-dominated entrepreneurial environment”. When they returned to Singapore, they realized there was a need for a close-knit network of women entrepreneurs who can enable and empower each other in their entrepreneurial journey. Partially influenced by the women who set up Women 2.0, and despite having full time jobs, Raine, Kat and Janet started Bluestocking. The term Bluestocking originated in the early 1750s, when a group of independently-minded women eschewed stultifying sessions of card playing and idle chatter and began to hold literary evenings that mimicked the established salons of Paris where well-known men of letters would be invited as guests to encourage discussion. A better (and shorter) description, would be women with intellectual interests involved in starting a social and educational movement. “Our group is set up not to inspire a feminist movement but rather to connect ladies who have interests in entrepreneurship in the context of Singapore,” explains Raine, who works as a compliance analyst at the Inland Revenue Authority of Singapore (IRAS). “We are keen to see more women in Singapore embarking on the entrepreneurship journey, facilitate them in their journey as well as to connect the successful entrepreneurs to aspiring ones.” Raine shares that Asians are the least entrepreneurial in the world, and female entrepreneurs, even less so - the number of women business owners per 100 male business owners in Asia and the Pacific is only 22 in the 1990s. This is the lowest among the scale with a high of 56 in Eastern Europe and a global average of 42.3.  “Despite the bid to encourage entrepreneurship with dedicated support groups set up and introduction of a multitude of incentives, it takes time to change cultures and mindset. Some of the business practices, such as benchmarking and best practices, are not exactly in tune with the promotion of entrepreneurship,” Raine says. All three agree that networking is important and vital to entrepreneurship and business. Bluestocking recently organized StepOut, a debut event attracting over thirty young women (and a smattering of men) who were interested to hear words of wisdom from three women entrepreneurs - Yiping Goh of near-field communications services provider Human Network Labs, Virginia Cha of private investment firm WOVE and Kim Faulkner from brand consultancy Activiste. “There is a demand among the community at large to network and share in an informal setting. We hope that Bluestocking will be the rightful platform for the female community (with) an incredible plethora of opportunities that will ultimately define their quest for success,” says Raine. StepOut is the first of many such networking sessions Bluestocking plans on organizing. “(StepOut) features the start-point of the entrepreneurship journey,” says Kat Neo, who works in Exploit Technologies, the marketing and commercialization arm of Singapore’s Agency of Science Technology and Research (A*STAR). “It celebrates the success of established female entrepreneurs, enriches the knowledge of green-horn entrepreneurs and encourages aspiring entrepreneurs to step out of their comfort zone.” The last in the trio, Janet, heads business development in Quaffs, a web2.0 social networking start-up based in Singapore. “As the first step is always the toughest, StepOut brings the community back to their entrepreneurship journey origin, to share, reminisce, remind and learn from one another,” says Kat. You can join Bluestocking on Ning.com, or find out more by contacting Raine at raine248 at gmail dot com. Ideablob.com - Sharing Ideas Makes The World A Better Place Being called a blobber doesn’t sound particularly flattering, but that doesn’t seem to bother the more than 70,000-strong community on Ideablob.com. The small business owners and entrepreneurs on the site are simply glad to find a place where they can share feedback and advice, bounce ideas off each other, and generally encourage one other along. There’s also an added incentive: Every month, the community votes on the best idea and the winner gets to walk away with US$10,000 to help their idea grow. Started in 2007, Ideablob.com was the brainchild of Advanta Corp’s Chief Innovation Officer, Ami Kassar. He was at the Kinnernet conference in Israel and chanced upon an animation from a young Israeli artist, Michal Levy. “I was blown away by her work. I thought to myself, if she had a place to bring her ideas and work to the masses, a place where she could find just a little bit of support and some capital, she would take off. That’s when Ideablob really took root,” says Kassar. Today Michal heads the creative marketing team at the Draper, Utah-based Advanta. Ideablob currently has over 4,000 ideas contributed by small business owners and entrepreneurs from all over the U.S. Each idea gets an average of four comments or other forms of feedback. Its membership is growing at a rate of around 13 per cent every month. Kassar denies that Ideablob is a commercial tactic to tap on the potentially lucrative small business and youth market, and to position credit as an option for entrepreneurs raising funds for their venture. “Ideablob is about helping entrepreneurs. I’m lucky to work for CEO that sees the value of Ideablob not as a way to tap into the youth market, but as a real tool that entrepreneurs can use,” he insists. “If people become more aware of Advanta through their Ideablob experience that would be fine, but that’s not what drives our efforts.” Regardless of its intent, the response to Ideablob has been, in Kassar’s own words, ‘awesome’ and ‘remarkably well-received’. The site even won the People’s Choice Award at DEMO in 2007. Advanta has given US$10,000 each to 11 deserving winners to date. One of the most recent winners, Jessica Rauch of Michigan, proposed The Generation Project to revolutionise educational philanthropy by allowing community members to share their personal passions with K-12 students in low-income areas. Rauch is but one of thousands of “blobbers” who thrive on sharing, creating and supporting ideas. “As I travel the country, it is really satisfying to meet people at conferences or small events that we host. They all have different stories of how they were able to connect and grow their idea through their experience on Ideablob,” says Kassar. “I just learned that a past finalist just sold his idea for $20,000.” Other blobbers talk about gaining more exposure, clients and support. “It’s very cool to be a part of helping entrepreneurs connect and grow their businesses.” They are continually looking to refine and grow the site, although there are no plans to extend Ideablob worldwide. “I would like to see small businesses owners more easily achieve their goals. That is really my focus. Starting and running a small business is a tremendously hard and rocky road. At the same time, small businesses are truly the heart of our economy,” muses Kassar. “Ideablob is meant for those people.” “Only a few will win the contest, but it is so much more than that. It’s about getting feedback, advice and exposure for your business or idea. If ideablob makes it a little easier for entrepreneurs to succeed, I won’t rest on that, but I’ll know we’re moving in the right direction,” Kassar adds. Kassar spearheads not only Ideablob, but also Advanta’s KivaB4B project, an initiative which encourages small businesses owners in the U.S. to support entrepreneurs in developing countries through online micro loans lender Kiva.org. He says he is constantly mulling over their next big project. “Ideablob is just the beginning.”