How to pivot successfully

Our first product, a 3D chat world

One of the trickier points in a startup’s life is knowing when to pivot or when to keep on your current path. Often, the decision is easy: you launch a minimum viable product, lets say a butterfly spotting app, and get zero traction — not even your girlfriend, mum or random butterfly lover in Romania wants to use it.

Easy decision.

But what when your original idea has gained users and revenue, but isn’t growing fast enough. Then what?

That was the situation I found myself in with my own startup, Frenzoo. We’d taken time to build our first product, a web 3D chat community. We had awesome technology and starting from a 2009 launch at Echelon (go Singapore!) had quietly grown to hundreds of thousands of users in US, Asia and around the world (read: SGE’s coverage of Frenzoo). Read more

Ideas for Asia’s travel innovators… from the West

A wave of innovation is sweeping through the online travel industry. While the traditional travel companies are falling over themselves to produce their first mobile site, or their very own iPhone app, elsewhere, online innovators are looking to make changes to travel fundamentals, from better ways to discover travel destinations to new ways to purchase hotels and flights.

The resurgence in interest in online travel is not limited to the West. There are companies right here in Asia looking to get started in online travel as well. However, while Asia now sports its own share of Airbnb clones and Kayak wannabes, we’ve yet to see any uniquely Asian travel innovators arise.

It’s only a matter of time before they appear, but what form will they take? Will they provide us with Asian versions of existing models, or will it be something we can’t foresee, something completely new?

In an attempt to gain some possible insights in what might be coming, here’s a quick look at some of today’s more interesting travel innovators, all of which are based in either North America or Europe. Read more

Don’t compete with the same old mindset and approach

“Moneyball” the movie was based on the book of the same title written by Michael Lewis published in 2003, and revolves around the Oakland Athletics baseball team and its general manager Billy Beane (played by Brad Pitt)

In short, the Oscar-nominated movie is about Beane’s successful attempt in putting together a baseball club on a comparatively small budget by employing computer-generated analysis of player statistics never/rarely looked at or regarded with any significance by baseball scouts, with the assistance of Peter Brand (played by Jonah Hill).

For the average moviegoer outside of the United States where baseball does not exist as a staple sport, Moneyball seems like a movie that isn’t worth a trip to the theaters. Read more

Countries that tax your company to death — and those that don’t

Entrepreneurs residing in Singapore and Hong Kong experience no burdensome taxes, according to a paper published by Grant Thornton.

Titled Grant Thornton International Business Report 2010, the paper sought the perceptions of owners and directors of PHBs (privately held businesses) on the issue of tax in their respective country.

The global study, which covered 36 key economies worldwide, found entrepreneurs residing in Singapore and Hong Kong are among the most satisfied with their country’s tax system. Entrepreneurs interviewed from the remaining economies felt burdened by at least one category of taxation in their country. Read more

Want to sell your business? Attract retailers to your product

A client approached us recently to help sell his business. He designs, manufactures and sells designer greeting cards.

He has run the company for a few years and found it difficult to run multiple companies, so he has decided to sell one and focus on running the other.

He approached us for advice on how to sell his company and value his business. To begin, we collected a few facts so we could get a sense of what kind of business we are selling. Read more

Insights from Crystal Jade’s Chairman and CEO Ip Yiu Tung

In the restaurant-eat-restaurant world of the F&B industry, few local brands have stood out as clearly as Crystal Jade, one of the market leaders in Singapore. Celebrating its 20th anniversary last year with a refreshing of its identity that involves extensive refurbishments at its restaurants, Crystal Jade enjoyed a turnover of S$240M (US$189M) in 2010.

Over the last three years, it has expanded aggressively, investing S$25M (together with partners) to open 39 new outlets across Asia. This year, the F&B group will sink in a further S$17M to open 17 new outlets across eight cities. These efforts helped it to achieve a targeted 10 percent to 15 percent yearly growth in sales.

Beginning from a single outlet in Cairnhill in 1991 — which was closed and reopened with a Kitchen outlet in Shaw Plaza and a Palace outlet in Ngee Ann City – the group now has more than 100 outlets sprawled across 18 cities in nine countries. Half of these are in Singapore while the other 50 are in China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia and more. Read more

Ten websites to learn Ruby on Rails for free

What do Amazon, IBM, Kickstarter and Twitter have in common, other than being great technology companies?

They all use Ruby on Rails. With so many things going for it, it’s an attractive framework that allows you to deploy web apps quickly and effectively. That’s enough to make you want to pick up Ruby on Rails!

So, I’ve put together ten good sites where you can pick up the framework as a newbie without paying a single cent. These resources will not transform you into a super programmer, but they’re enough for you to create a working application. Read more

Tech Start-ups in Singapore: The Role of Venture Capital and Angel Investors

Professor Dr. Wong Poh Kam here provides an overview of role of Venture Capital and Angel Investors in teh-startups scene in Singapore. It has been republished here with permission. A more detailed version of this will be published in the Annual SVCA Directory 2011/12

High-technology entrepreneurship has been identified as an important driver of Singapore’s knowledge-based economy, and increased policy attention has been given to encouraging the formation and nurturing of high-tech start-ups, especially those with significant intellectual property (IP). To this end, in 2010 the National Research Foundation (NRF) engaged me, as director of the NUS Entrepreneurship Centre, to conduct a study of high-tech start-ups in Singapore. While the survey covers many aspects of the high tech start-up dynamics, including characteristics of the founders, their sources of technology and funding, growth strategies, performance and challenges, this blog highlights some salient findings on only one aspect of the survey: the performance of start-ups that have received funding from venture capitalists or angel investors versus those that did not. Read more

Reizo: Undressing the story behind a fashion entrepreneur

This article is syndicated from MoneySmart, an online finance publication for the masses.

Reizo is a custom tailoring house, located at Wilkie Edge. Just a few years old, they already have a faithful following by delivering quality at affordable prices. REIZO’s custom suits suggest a wine-sniffing, caviar-munching elegance, which sets you a head above your less dressed colleagues.

At the helm of Reizo is young entrepreneur Vishnu Vasudeven. Graduating from NUS with a major in finance, he gave up a comfy bank job to create Reizo. In his own words:

“I wanted to do something different. I tried internships (at the bank) and didn’t like it. I wanted to start my own thing.” Read more

Google DevFest Singapore 2011 – Creating a connected future

Google organized their annual DevFest last month, and it was quite an eye opener to see how they’re placing their bets on HTML5, Chrome, Ice-Cream Sandwich (ICS), and Google+.

Having only attended the first part of the event, I got to sit in at the sessions where Google showed off these new technologies.

Here are some takeaways. Read more