The 4th State of Our Site
July 27, 2009 by Gwendolyn Regina T
A new beginning. That’s what this 4th State of Our Site is about. The beautiful picture above signifies how I see SGEntrepreneurs (SGE) – as a seedling with much more room to sprout and bloom. Yes, we are 4 years old, but we are also very young in many other ways.
When Bernard, Weichang and myself started SGEntrepreneurs.com those few years ago, it was only something we did out of passion and on a part-time basis. But we have since focused our energies and several months ago, incorporated a company that legally solidifies our commitment to growing SGE. While Bernard has primarily been the main driving force behind SGE, he has since taken more of a backseat with me stepping up to be Chief Editor (and Managing Director).
I continue to juggle my role as an investor (outside of SGE) and the editorial and managerial duties required by the site. And as always, we maintain a neutral stance and do not allow any conflict of interest to sway articles one way or the other on SGE. We adhere to the policy of disclosure when companies in articles have had some other prior dealing with us (for example, the most common case is when Bernard and my firm, Thymos Capital has invested in the company).
Over The Past Year
Over the years, we have had several changes to the look and feel of the site. As recently as a few months ago, we had another revamp of our site to attempt to make it a little easier to navigate the various topics and themes. I thought the new version was great as it was a step up from our previous, but now we are yet again working on another new iteration of the site. (We are never ever fully satisfied.) So do watch out for the change.
Back in Oct 2006. One of the earlier iterations of the site.
We also continued to attend the many entrepreneurial, technology-focused, forward-thinking and multi-disciplinary events organized by our partners and friends in Singapore and Malaysia. Events like BarCamp Singapore, BarCamp KL and Johor, TEDxKL (where Bernard met acclaimed film director Yasmin Ahmad who just a few days ago left this world – may her soul rest in peace), TEDxSentosa, Blogout and Web In Travel particularly stood out in their scale and engagement of a wide diversity of peoples.
Adding to the breadth of articles and authorship of SGE, we brought on a few other guest contributors like entrepreneur and venture capitalist, William Klippgen (sold his company to Yahoo! for around 0.5B euros!) and Aaron Chua, member of the founding team of the Interactive Digital Media Programme Office.
To stay true to our underlying goal of helping startups, one way SGE did so again was through teaming up with Microsoft in their Microsoft BizSpark programme to provide young companies with free software, support and network to jumpstart their businesses.
Over this past year, we have also been privileged to have had the opportunity to work with sponsors such as the Action Community of Entrepreneurship (ACE), iHipo, DeveloperWerkz, CoWork.asia, ManyTutors, Foundation for Youth Social Entrepreneurship and Social Networking World Forum Asia. We thank them for their support and look forward to continue engaging them and new sponsors who may come into the SGE family.
Moving Forward
On April Fool’s this year, we had a mini hoax of our own whereby we collaborated with Malaysia Entrepreneurs (MYE) to make it seem as if I were to be their new Chief Editor. While that did fool a few people with some Malaysians even asking to meet the “new MYE Chief Editor” (me) at BarCamp KL, it wasn’t to be.
At that time, all we wanted to do was to test the plausibility of that engagement in people’s minds. Though I thought that I had made it as ridiculous as I could with apparent diving holidays sponsored by MYE, we realized that some actually embraced the idea. In the months ahead, SGE and MYE will be exploring deeper partnership opportunities to serve the community better and we hope to share these plans with you soon.
Helping us in this endeavor is new addition to the SGE team, Nicholas Aaron Khoo. Nicholas is a web developer, gadget geek turned serial entrepreneur and now blogger and social media aficionado. We are happy to have him as an investor and advisor and we are excited to work with him in charting SGE’s journey moving forward.
To old and new beginnings.
Popular Articles Over The Year
- How To Handle Negative Media Coverage
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Images courtesy of Sir Mervs and HVargas.
Find out more about SGE’s research arm: SGE Insights, providing customized in-depth research reports to help you navigate the business of technology in Asia.
About The Author
Gwendolyn Regina T - Co-Founder and Editor-in-Chief
Gwen is the co-founder and editor-in-chief of SGE. Previously, she was a partner of early stage technology investment firm, Thymos Capital and she has had two exits, one of which is iHipo. She is also an investor in Padlet, a Y-Combinator startup. Gwen also sits on the Board of Advisors for the Singapore Innovation & Productivity Institute, Steering Commmittee for the Singapore Infocomm Technology Federation Awards 2013, and Board of Advisors for Social Media Week 2013. A frequent public speaker, mentor and judge at various startup bootcamps, events and competitions, Gwen loves meeting founders, developers, designers and scientists across all ages. An alumnus of the National University of Singapore and its University Scholars Programme, Gwen also spent some time in Silicon Valley and is a graduate of the NUS-Stanford University overseas college programme. She is also a mentor at Polish tech startup incubator Gamma Rebels, the Singapore curator for US-headquartered StartupDigest and the Singapore Ambassador for the Sandbox Network - the leading global network of innovators under 30. Gwen has also been a Worldwide Judge for Imagine Cup - the premier student technology competition helmed by Microsoft. She has also spoken in Hong Kong at one of its largest youth conferences, MaD Asia, and was recently in Austria to help envision the future of the country's economy in 2032 on invitation from an Austrian governmental organization. Gwen speaks 3.25 languages, loves physics, travelling, dance and adventure sports. She can be found on LinkedIn and Twitter.
Read other posts by Gwendolyn Regina T
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