In Conversation with Frank Levinson, Small World Group

The Small World Group, managed by Frank Levinson and his partner, Dean Haritos, is one of the seven designated technology venture incubators from the National Research Foundation (NRF) TIS Scheme. The technology focus of this company is on clean tech, optics and materials and it has begun operations in Singapore to start working with entrepreneurs to bring new tech companies to market. We sat down with Frank Levinson, one of the partners in Small World Group and chat with him on several subjects, from how he started Small World Group to the type of entrepreneurs which the incubator will be interested to fund. He will also share some of the earlier success stories he has with regards to incubation of tech companies and talks about the future plans of the Small World Group in Singapore. Read more

Laylio from Radioactive: Radio for the iPhone

Radioactive is a Singapore based company which recently develop a proprietary streaming platform that allows users to get broadcast quality radio into the mobile phone. They have launched their first product, Laylio, an iPhone app which allows anyone to tune to their favourite radio stations in Singapore. We review their latest product Laylio (which has been the number 1 download app on iTunes store for a couple of weeks) and thought that you want to check out this interesting product which was launched a month ago. Read more

How to write an executive summary in 24 hours

We present the slides for the talk in Start-Up@Singapore on the topic “How to write an executive in 24 hours”. It provides a comprehensive guide with examples to how one can write a 2-5 pages executive summary: (a) introduction, (b) problem/opportunity, (c) technology/service/product, (d) team, (e) route to market, (f) business strategies, (g) financials and (h) exit strategy. Read more

Why Entrepreneurs should not pay Investors to Pitch

Recently, I read that Angels Den from Europe has landed in Singapore. In their proposal, they are charging startups S$1499 upfront to pitch, and takes a 5% success fee. It also prompted response from local blogger DK that entrepreneurs should not pay investors to pitch. My stance is that entrepreneurs and start-ups should not pay investors to pitch and here are my opinions on this issue. Read more

5 Tech Entrepreneurship events that rocked SG in 2009

It’s that time of the year when we actually review what has gone past a turbulent year 2009 and probably a year after the financial crisis that rocked the world after the collapse of Lehman Brothers in Sep 2008. Of course, one of the key after effects is that fundraising for start-ups in the technology space become increasingly difficult this year. While we are beginning to see more and more acquisitions in the US tech space, the SG tech start-ups are still working towards a tough environment. In the technology entrepreneurship scene, significant incidents have shaped and brought forward new perspectives in Singapore. While we are about to start the new road ahead in 2010. Here are the top 5 tech entrepreneurship events that rocked SG in 2009 (in no order of preference): Read more

Fusion Garage Strikes Back: From CrunchPad to JooJoo

The very public fallout between US-based TechCrunch and Singapore-based Fusion Garage was publicised, analysed and critiqued to no end, but was just based solely on the TechCrunch side of things. Last Monday, Mike Arrington of TechCrunch made the declaration of the end of CrunchPad and claimed that they will file a litigation against Fusion Garage. Within the tech community across the world, we were left wondering what had happened and have been waiting to hear Fusion Garage’s side of the story. The long awaited media event from Fusion Garage finally happened about an hour ago as the CEO Chandrasekar Rathakrishnan, took the stage through a live streaming video conference and conveyed three main points: (1) the fallout with TechCrunch and reply to Mike Arrington’s claims, (2) a demo of JooJoo (it’s no longer called CrunchPad) and (3) the product specs and pricing of JooJoo. We offer a narrative account on what transpired during the live-tweeting that went along with the video conference from Chandra. Read more

RIP CrunchPad

The CrunchPad (the picture from the left sourced from TechCrunch), a product collaboration between TechCrunch and Fusion Garage has been one of the achievements hailed by many here in Singapore, giving hope that there might be something finally to go beyond Creative against Apple (where they lost the mp3 player war). However, we just received word from TechCrunch with the announcement from Michael Arrington making the declaration: “It’s a sad day at TechCrunch HQ. Hitting the publish button on this post, which makes all of this so…final…is a very hard thing to do. I’m enraged, embarrassed, and just…sad. The CrunchPad is now in the DeadPool.”. We review what has happened from the expose written by Mike Arrington Read more

A Conversation with Purnima Kochikar, VP Forum Nokia & Developer Communities

Forum Nokia is Nokia’s global developer community and support program for mobile developers. Unlike the other smartphone developer platforms, the developer communities for Nokia has to grapple with many types handsets from Nokia that come in all shapes and sizes and cater to different markets from developing countries like the BIIC (Brazil, India, Indonesia and China) to developed economies (UK, US, Singapore). Through a private meeting arranged by Text100, I sat down with Purnima Kochikar, the VP Forum Nokia and Developer Communities, who is currently based in Silicon Valley. We discussed various issues from the trends and observations from emerging markets, mobile apps with interesting stories to tell, and the issues with rising apps stores from different providers in the market. Read more

In Conversation with Wong Joon Ian, co-founder of Bloomerang

Bloomerang is a start-up founded by two founders, Zhiwen and Joon Ian. Their first product, BloomerHang® transforms clothes hangers into a novel, eco-friendly advertising platform. What’s more interesting, it is a product made of recycled cardboard and completely biodegradable and recyclable. The product even goes as far as ending the team as a finalist to the President’s Design Award Singapore 2009: Design of the Year. What’s the story behind this eco-conscious and ideas-driven startup? We caught Wong Joon Ian, one of the co-founders and sat down to interview him about the story behind Bloomerang, the process of getting the trademark and the challenges in position BloomerHang as an advertising platform.
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Building Online Communities for Non Profit Organizations

Barcamp Singapore 4 was just over. During the event, I made a presentation on “Building Online Communities for Non-Profit Organizations”, which focus on how non-profit organizations can either leveraging on existing large social networks (for e.g. Facebook Pages for Oxfam GB/US or Causes) or built their own to fulfil their strategic objectives (Kiva.org which focus on micro-lending for entrepreneurs in developing nations), for example, fundraising, creating awareness and canvassing community volunteers. Finally, I end with a local example, Give.SG, where one of the co-founders declared during my talk that their platform will be up soon within a month. One of the most important lessons which is not evident from the slides is that I focus on is that building online communities should be a means that can transition your cause into the offline and it is important to find a way to move offline to gather and canvass for your non-profit social cause. Here are the slides where you can check out the talk: Read more

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