The Third State of Our Blog

A few days back, Gwen and Weichang notified me that our blog is finally reaching our third birthday and our official birthday is 18 July (the day which we registered the domain). Hence it is that time of the year to have the third state of our blog. Believe it or not, our blog has already made it to the third year and we are still growing. Instead of really talking about things which we did this year or not, I like to use this third state of the blog to open up how SGE has maintained its position over the years with her partners, and the many more things which we hope to do within the two years or more.

In the last year, SGE has more or less transitioned from a start-up blog to a normal group blog that services the community. We have streamlined our focus towards the technology entrepreneurship and remains committed to market the events organized by different communities, from our partners: E27 (Garag3), The Digital Movement, Singapore PHP User Group (which will transition to an official society soon), and many others that helped to service Singapore like the Start-Up@Singapore competition. With the rising tides of social media, we are beginning to bring Tech65, the Geek Goddess Show and E-Conversations to bring the elements of audio and video which gives a different feel for our audience. Our Facebook group has already surpassed the other groups on user numbers now at 1000+, and we have passed a quarter of a million unique visitors and half a million page views over the course of the year. We do hope that we will hit the tipping point sometime in the future and reach a million unique visitors within the next two years. Yes, we have made an April Fool’s day joke out of TechCrunch and organized an event with one of TechCrunch editors last month too.

Yet, deep in our hearts, we still think that we are far away from where we really want to go. Let me tell you a few things that people have often asked during community meetings. Why do SGE not have their own events? The answer is that most entrepreneurs (including ourselves) have too much things to do, and we thought that it is better that we can help with the content and bring the awareness of events online organized by our partners. After all, if we are not good as practitioners, then what we say on this site would not be so credible. Speaking of which, one of the co-founders Weichang was recently featured in Zaobao for graduating with his honours in physics, overcoming his cancer illness and have started three businesses successfully on his own.

We consolidated our core competency that we are committed to content and not the rest. We have started publishing press releases for innovative tech companies and venture capital because we are filling a gap that traditional media (like Business Times) do not want to go. We are not against simple businesses by removing their comments because they are often spamming the blog with their advertisements. Sincerely, we want this to be a forum to discuss business issues and not an advertising platform. Other than committed to quality of content, we also want to ensure that the quality of comments and the way how the rest of community view the blog: credible and professional. We believe that this strategic focus is right, otherwise, the government bodies (ACE, SPRING) will not have added us to their resources links. That’s what separates us from the “me-too” sites who failed to replicate what we do.

We don’t want to rest on our laurels and continue to believe in a win-win approach. We work with our partners and groups in Singapore, particularly in helping people to be aware of events and bringing together mainly on the entrepreneurship in the tech sector and service those who happens to be in the niche business of entrepreneurship.

When we first started, no one believed that a business blog like this can create impact and value for the community. In fact, I was ridiculed by some in NUS and government officials that starting a blog like this is the dumbest idea possible. Today, we see people like Prof Wong Poh Kam, director of NUS Entrepreneurship Centre, have followed our lead to start blogging about issues in entrepreneurship and the government websites have acknowledged our presence here.

That is what entrepreneurship is all about: the determination and passion to start something against what others think and in the process convince the detractors that your ideas are correct. So, we have succeeded in a way as a small enterprise (thankfully to a group of contributors and partners who some of them have made it on their own as entrepreneurs) and remained the pioneers of the journey even if the rest who followed after do not acknowledge what we have done.

So what will we like to see in the next two years? In fact, we do have some thoughts and ideas about how we should move forward.

• - A new theme design for the site: Yes, we know that our present theme has been stuck here for almost one year two months. We like to have more features for the site to allow more interaction among readers.
• - Working with groups beyond the shores of Singapore: In fact, we are slowly reaching out to the other Asian countries around us, particularly our neighbour across the causeway. So, watch this space.
• - More content on how to start a business: We really hope to have professionals and practitioners writing for us and see the need to help young entrepreneurs to grow. We have seen all the nominees for Asian young entrepreneurs in Business Week all have done their interviews in SGE, and we hope to see more out there.
• - A possible gathering?: Actually, the founders (Gwen, Weichang and I) hope that we can amass the resources someday to hire an event management group to do an event someday. We thought about it but we usually end up not moving forward because maintenance work for the site is too much to do. In case you do not know, Weichang has spent time to do the backend maintenance like upgrading the site and ensure that our bills to the hosting server are paid while Gwen is busy with her editorial work behind the scenes.

Personally for me, I hope to pass to on the baton of my current role within the next two years and be a chief evangelist for the site, where new people can come and move this blog or site to the next frontier.

We thank all our friends and partners, and many out there for their growing support to our site, and we wish everyone well. As entrepreneurs, we want to remain optimistic and hope that something will grow in the future here in this little red dot.

Yours sincerely,
BL
on behalf of the founders of SG Entrepreneurs

Related posts:

1. Event: ACE BlueSky Festival 2008
2. Interview with Daniel CerVentus of Malaysia Entrepreneurs
3. Start-Up@Singapore Young Entrepreneurs Workshop – Make Ideas Happen!
4. NUS Entrepreneurship Week – Unconventional Thursday, 22 January 2009
5. NUS Entrepreneurship Week – Discover, Explore and Unleash the Entrepreneur in you!