Bernard Leong - Co-Founder
Dr Bernard Leong is the co-founder of Chalkboard where he currently serves as the chief technology officer and is the architect behind the solution to help small and medium enterprises to market promotions.
Formerly a partner at Thymos Capital where he does early stage investments, his portfolio and specialization includes online social networks, mobile-web applications and games that leads to iHipo being acquired and also Lunch Actually (Eteract) raising next round of financing. His accolades include the Young Professional of the Year Award for the Singapore Computer Society 2010 and Outstanding Young Alumni for National University of Singapore 2007. His expertise includes technology and social media. Currently, Bernard also serves as an Entrepreneur-in-Residence with INSEAD Business School and also teaches entrepreneurship in NTU.
The writer's posts
Malaysia's digital economy is similar to Singapore and Brunei.
Recently, I was invited to speak on entrepreneurship and consumer Internet trends in a private event hosted by Penn Olson during Startups in Asia, which happened from 2nd to 4th February.
In this article, I will highlight additional perspectives to shed greater light on the ideas presented during my talk, which gave the audience a better grasp on the consumer internet space in Southeast Asia. Read more
Facebook is the ultimate acqhire company.
Acqhire is the new buzzword referring to an exit strategy when big tech companies purchase small companies, primarily as a talent recruitment strategy, sometimes with a significant signing bonus.
So far, to the best of my knowledge, it only happens in the US.
Facebook is probably the most well-known company involved in such takeover types. It started with several companies: Friendfeed, Beluga and most recently, Gowalla. Several investors (or tech pundits) for example, Mike Arrington & Jason Calacanis have provided their perspectives on the acqhire issue specifically on the Gowalla case. Hence I thought it might be interesting topic to examine in Asia.
In my own humble opinion, I don’t think that it will ever happen for tech companies in Asia and here are several reasons why:
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Recently, a comment from our current Singapore Minister of Law, K Shanmugam hints at the possibility of enacting laws that might be similar to the two pieces of legislation currently being debated in the US: the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and a sister bill the Protect IP Act (PIPA).
There has been strong resistance against both bills not just from many technology entrepreneurs from the start-up space but also from multi-national companies such as Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Twitter and Facebook.
The aim of this post is to explain what SOPA and PIPA really means for us and why we are not supportive of such legislation for economic reasons if our Minister of Law decides to propose it as a bill in the very near future. It’s not just a Singapore problem but a Southeast Asia problem if it gets passed thru in Singapore. Read more
Recently, a lunch treat with a couple of friends brought up an interesting discussion on how much we should pay interns in a start-up. Given the dearth of talent in Singapore as many claimed, one solution is to look for inexperienced and passionate people, and they usually come from the tertiary institutions (universities and polytechnics). The aim of this article is to establish some principles in setting up a reasonable pay scheme for interns in a start-up. Read more
If you can't smile after signing a deal, chances are that you've been screwed over. Photo: Candie_N
Here’s a situation which some entrepreneurs would go through. They decide to take in an investor or join an incubator program. In front of them, an investor asks for “x” % of equity. The entrepreneurs then speak to different people in the community to get some advice. The opinions will be diverse. They turn to US tech blogs, which give them a totally different picture. All this adds up to a lot of frustration.
Any entrepreneur has to deal with this potential scenario and negotiate in good faith with investors. To help you, here’s a checklist of things to do before getting an investment deal.
This second article of the series, adapted from an entrepreneurship course I’m teaching, introduces readers to: (a) the executive summary, (b) the business plan and (c) the elements that construct both documents: Technology/service/product description, management team, marketing plan, market segmentation, business strategy (business model), operations plan, financials and exit strategy.
This post is republished from my blog. Read more
“Startups don’t get killed by competitors, but by their own incompetence”
- Paul Graham in TC Disrupt 2011
After seeing over the years how up and coming entrepreneurs often drag on with a startup that is going nowhere, I realize that failure is not an option they want to think about.
Of course, if you are passionate about an idea and set about making your passion a business, having thoughts about “what if I fail” is a bad idea and definitely something investors don’t want. You’d be expected to put your heart and soul in the startup because it’s not about the founders but also the employees who work with you to build the idea into a sustainable enterprise. Read more
This first post of a multi-part series touches on the definition of entrepreneurship, the different forms of entrepreneurship, how countries measure growth of entrepreneurship activity, and the first toolkit: How to identify ideas and business opportunities.
I will also provide some interesting case studies, for example, the Aravind Eye Centre for social entrepreneurship. This series is based on the “MPS 812: Entrepreneurship” course I have been teaching in the School of Physical & Mathematical Sciences, Nanyang Technological University. This post is republished from my blog.
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Filed under ToolkitTags: Aravind Eye Center, entrepreneur, Entrepreneurship, entrepreneurship 101, Identifying Ideas & Business Opportunities, Intrapreneurship, Introduction, LifeSaver, Michael Pritchard, MPS 812, Social Entrepreneurship, TED Videos, Thulasiraj Ravilla
An interesting post from Willis Wee in Penn-Olson prompted me to provide some perspective on the issue of expansion. The question that most people ask: if I build a start-up from a country with a very small market size (say, Singapore but it can apply from Slovenia to Monaco), where should I expand the company to?
What I agree with Willis in his article, is that expansion to US is not a vanity exercise and his urging to entrepreneurs in a small market like Singapore to think about the Asian market in general. I am going to sketch out a few points which one should consider before expanding: Read more
My friend, Rama Mamuaya (aka @rampok) from DailySocial.net (the top tech & social media blog in Indonesia) wrote a tweet this morning, “How exactly does one measure a startup’s success? Exits?” I want to emphasize why exits are very important as a whole for the technology scene in Southeast Asia. It is one of the major reasons why top tier venture capital firms from US like Sequoia and Benchmark Capital and super angel investors from Silicon Valley only pump their money to China and India instead to an emerging market like Indonesia and its surroundings. I will explain why exits are important (as a metric) for the success of a start-up and how it impacts the venture financing in the entire region of Southeast Asia. Read more
