Gwendolyn Regina T - Co-Founder and Editor-in-Chief
Apart from SGE, Gwen is also a Partner at Thymos Capital, where she focuses on early stage investments in technology firms. She has had two exits out of her investments via the firm, one of which is iHipo. A frequent judge for business competitions both locally and overseas, she graduated from the National University of Singapore. Gwen also spent some time in Silicon Valley and studied in Stanford University under the NUS Overseas College programme. Gwen is a mentor at Spanish incubator Tetuan Valley, Polish incubator Gamma Rebels, the Singapore Ambassador for the Sandbox network and the Singapore curator for StartupDigest. She enjoys languages, travelling, dance and adventure sports. Gwen can be found on LinkedIn and Twitter.
The writer's posts
I’ll be hanging out in Bangkok (Thailand) with several entrepreneurs, developers, designers and other cool people (tomorrow!) Thursday 15 Dec from 9pm onwards around Muse and the surrounding Thonglor area. Big thanks to my friends Tony Yang (self-proclaimed trash collector) and Jakob Lykkegaard Pedersen (who sold Pagemodo to Webs) for putting this session together! We’ll also be partying with my fellow Singaporean, Mike from SmartSpace (SGE’s partner).
If you’re in the area, do join us. We are meeting at Muse Tonglor soi 10 at 9pm. RSVP to this Facebook event page for updates.
I’ll also be dropping by Bangkok Startup Weekend from Friday evening to Sunday evening – much thanks to the good folks at JFDI.asia: Erin, Meng and Hugh! If you still haven’t, you should apply to their upcoming 100-day bootcamp.
For the first time ever, the South by Southwest (SXSW) Interactive section of the larger SXSW Conferences and Festivals (including Music and Film) saw official Singapore representation earlier this March.
Held yearly in Austin, Texas, SXSW is a place where people meet, new technology showcased, ideas exchanged and new ones emerge.
It was my first time attending the festivities this year, which happened to coincide with the aforementioned first official Singapore delegation. There was a Singapore pavilion which had the startups showcasing their products and even a Singapore party one evening [check out pictures].
Having had a large hand in making the Singapore pavilion happen this year and being encouraged by the results, the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA) is planning for another Singapore presence at SXSW 2012.
Drawing on lessons learnt from the 2011 festival, there are some changes planned for the 2012. In lieu of a pavilion space, each participating startup will get a 10’x10’ booth of their own. The vision is to have enough companies to form a Singapore Alley that visitors will walk through. This will provide stronger brand identity for individual companies and yet be covered under the umbrella of Singapore’s brand name.
IDA will also look into a SXSW Block Party to draw visitors to the booths, and is planning to work with partners to facilitate personalized 1-to-1 meetings between Singapore startups and SXSW attendees. At the same time, VentureBeat, an influential US tech blog, will select and conduct video interviews the most interesting Singapore startups.
Timeline: Singapore Delegation At SXSW
Singapore Alley Exhibition: 12-15th March 2012
The cost for each start-up is estimated to be US$500 to cover booth space, advertisement, booth setup and related marketing activities. Startups will need to cover their own airfare, transport, SXSW Interactive passes and accommodation. IDA is required to make a decision very soon, so for those who are interested, please send an email to ida_startup@ida.gov.sg.
Update: Due to overwhelming demand, we’ll be shifting the venue to Hackerspace, 70A Bussorah Street. See you there!
Next Tuesday 29th November at 930pm, join us for drinks with Sheel Tyle and Abhijeet Muzumdar from 100-year old VC firm, Bessemer Venture Partners. Yes, one hundred years old: Bessemer was founded back in 1911! The firm has an extensive portfolio and some of the companies include Skype, LinkedIn, Yelp, VeriSign, Staples, Hunch (acquired by eBay just this week) and many others.
We’ll be meeting at Hackerspace (Arab Street area) (70A Bussorah Street) for drinks at 930pm. Please register here to allow us to plan the logistics a little better. Read more
US-founded organization, Girls in Tech is launching its Singapore chapter this Thursday 24th of November. Founder and CEO Adriana Gascoigne has just relocated to Singapore (welcome, Adriana!) and GIT Singapore’s managing director, Rosa will be kicking off GIT here on this tiny island with an “informational meeting” (women-only). Read more
Wildfire Pte Ltd, a Singapore Word-of-Mouth Marketing company with operations in China, received the Most Innovative Company Award 2011 in the Interactive Digital Media category from the Singapore Venture Capital Association (SVCA) at the annual Gala Dinner event two weeks ago.
SGE wrote about Wildfire (XingXingHuo in Mandarin) before (exactly one year ago!) when they received their Series A.
A few days ago at the TechVenture 2011 Gala Dinner, I happened to sit next to one of the founders, Christoph Zrenner. We got talking and here we catch up on their progress. Read more
Singapore-based fund Jungle Ventures launches its inaugural fund by leading a SGD 1M (USD 780K) investment round into mobile media solutions provider Cinemacraft. Joining the round were Jayesh Parekh, Founder, Sony Entertainment Television; Jai Maroo, Director, Shemaroo Entertainment; Devesh Chetty, Director, RGM Media and Takuro Wakabayashi, Xseed Partners. Read more
Having always been a LEGO fan, Bjorn Lee can now count visiting toy stores and revisiting aspects of his childhood as part of his work. Together with co-founders Jarrold Ong and Fadly Mahdar, he just announced the seed round raise of their new mobile learning game platform for kids, Stickery, whose mission is to “make mobile games that are not just fun for kids, but useful for parents.”
Stickery’s USD 325K seed round consists of Google Ventures, 500 Startups and several strategic investors from the United States, Europe and Asia. This also coincides with the launch of the game: “Mermaid Waters: Adventures of Hana & Cory” (iTunes) for iOS. This game is the first of a serialized adventure and learning platform for preschool children and their parents.
Both Bjorn and Jarrold are old friends and ex-schoolmates of mine from the Stanford-NUS Overseas College program so it was exciting to speak to them again on this new venture of theirs. Here we have a mini Q&A with Bjorn, CEO of Stickery. Read more
Shaping the World of 2050 with an Entrepreneurial Impact. With a theme like that and a 130-strong list of think-tank members consisting of entrepreneurs, experts, academics and politicians from over 60 countries, the upcoming 4th World Entrepreneurship Forum (WEF) looks like it has a recipe for much exchange of best practices and experiences.
The Forum is the first global think-tank focused on entrepreneurship as a creator of wealth and social justice. Founded in 2008, WEF has been held in Lyon, France for the past three years and this is the first time it is being held outside its home city. Due to take place in Singapore this 2-5 November 2011, this Forum is a culmination of a series of Regional Forums and Junior Forums that took place over the past several months. Read more
Startup Weekend is here in Singapore again. If you’re not familiar, a global phenomenon, Startup Weekends are 54-hour events where digital developers, designers, marketers, product managers and startup enthusiasts come together to share ideas, form teams, build products, and launch startup businesses.
One difference this time is that Startup Weekend round 3 is backed heavily by telco, SingTel and organized by JFDI incubator. JFDI and Singtell Innov8 has teamed up to launch the JFDI-Innov8 100-day bootcamp starting in January 2012 and the team is on a regional tour to find the best startups for the bootcamp.
Startup Weekend is one such source. As such, the team that creates the most commercially viable prototype at this upcoming 54-hour event, a SGD 15K (USD 11.6K) investment and a guaranteed place in the JFDI-Innov8 2012 bootcamp awaits them. Read more
This Friday we will be chilling with Brian Wey, Director of Product, Zong, which was acquired by PayPal in early July for USD 240M. At the same time, we’ll also be joining the folks behind JFDI as they are having their official launch of their JFDI-Innov8 100-day bootcamp. If you’re interested to join us, please sign up here.
