While more venture capitalists and early stage funds have started investing in Asia, startups are finding it challenging to keep track of all of them.
To help you deal with this opacity, we at SGE have released VentureDex, an interactive web directory of over 100 startup investment firms with an interest in the region. The website serves as a signpost that assists startup founders in deciding which investors to reach out to. Read more
For regular readers of SGE, this next person I want to highlight in our Faces of SGE series should be a very familiar face.
It has been quite a journey for SGE the last two years: Sometime in the middle, I went full-time and we brought on fresh grad, Terence Lee as an Assistant Editor, full-time as well. Since then, Terence’s face has been like the Microsoft virtual paperclip man, popping up everywhere – on Google searches and all – just without that annoyance factor.
I’ve been so privileged to have had him come to us via a referral from a friend, Shihan – who happens to be Terence’s co-founder in New Nation (a reader of theirs called the site “The Onion of Singapore”). And I’ve been even more privileged to have had the opportunity to work with him over the last 1.5 years.
And during this journey, we have rebranded to SGE.io, launched our new research arm, SGE Insights and expanded our team.
Terence has being an awesome writer and assistant editor over the last 1.5 years, but that is changing now.
I am very happy to announce that Terence is now officially now stepping up to be Editor at SGE.
He will continue to help steer SGE forward in our plans and manage our growing editorial team. I look forward to the exciting times ahead, but first, I present to you Terence Lee, Editor, SGE: Read more
Sometime in the middle of last year, a certain Stephanie Sutanto emailed the early stage fund that I used to run, asking for internship positions. I told her that we were no longer looking for people but SGE was. I also told her that I was scooting off the next day and would be completely uncontactable for two weeks on a meditation course so we would have to chat immediately. We did, and therein lies the story of how Steph joined us.
Now Steph is back in Los Angeles in the USA, completing her college studies but she continues to help us here at SGE.
It has been awesome having her and I thought you should know more about this dynamic young lady. And, for our readers in LA, do reach out to Steph to find out more about SGE and Asia’s tech scene! Read more
At SGE, we always strive to unearth the most promising startups from around Asia and place it in front of you, our dear reader. At the same time, there is also so much innovation happening around the world we track on a daily basis and for key ones that we think you should know, we share them on our Twitter and Facebook accounts.
However, we are still hungry to serve our audience better – to help you keep your finger on the pulse of global innovation.
So we have taken a step further by partnering with Polish venture capital firm, HardGamma and its accelerator program, GammaRebels, to have them curate interesting companies that they come across and for SGE to feature them. For a start, SGE will have a section dedicated to featuring their portfolio companies.
I have been volunteering my time by mentoring at GammaRebels since their pioneer batch of startups more than a year ago and recently did another round of Skype calls with the second batch of startups. 
And I continue to be impressed by what the Google for Entrepreneurs-partnered accelerator have done for the Polish startup scene, especially after a recent trip to visit the new HardGamma and GammaRebels office and speaking at their launch.
So look forward to hearing about some outside-Asia innovation and startups from time to time!
We love working with dynamic, talented and passionate folks and one of our latest additions to our team, Albert is just like that.
SGE welcomes Albert Mai on board our team, focused on scouting the Vietnam startup scene.
I first met Albert in Singapore many months ago and he is now back in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, running a startup and helping the local community grow through events. To help you to get to know Albert better, we have a mini Q&A with him here. Read more
Two weeks ago Minister-of-State Teo Ser Luck, Chairman of ACE, officially launched ASK ACE, an online mentoring platform that SGE built and is managing in partnership with ACE.
ASK ACE is a way for start-ups and the general public to get advice from ACE Mentors. Read more
7.4 years.
That’s how long SGE has been covering the Singapore and Southeast Asia startup and entrepreneurship scene. Check out how ugly one of the first few versions of our site was back in 2005:
Yes, when we first started those 7ish years ago, we were known as “Singapore Entrepreneurs” which gave us the “SG” in “SGE”. The blog was hosted on Blogger, displayed using one of those free templates (as can be seen above) and focused exclusively on the Singapore entrepreneurship scene, where all three co-founders were based.
How the blog started was a result of us seeing that traditional media wasn’t covering startups and having us all with some experience as entrepreneurs – Bernard with his biotech startup in the UK, Weichang with his tuition and retail companies and myself with a language translation business – we felt strongly that it is when entrepreneurs are starting out that they most need (online) publicity to be visible to potential customers and investors.
6 years on, we brought in our first full-time team member, Terence fresh out of university as Assistant Editor, and we have seen huge growth since then. Isaac and I even had the privilege of hosting the current Singapore President Dr Tony Tan (then Presidential candidate) in an invite-only dialogue session.
Today, SGE covers Southeast Asia and Asia-Pacific at large and looks at all things technology startup-related. To reflect this change definitively and well, to have a shorter domain name and Twitter handle, we are now SGE.io.
You can access all our content via http://SGE.io or http://SGEntrepreneurs.com, so don’t worry, nothing will change from your side. (Unfortunately, we can’t change our Facebook page as we have long busted the threshold of “likes” required, but we are thankful for all 17K++ of you.)
We look forward to your support as we continue covering the Asian tech startup scene and we hope that you like the less-of-a-mouthful, SGE.io.
Here’s to the next 7.4 years.
Recently, I wrote a post announcing that Facebook has set up an office in Singapore and shared about the jobs they were hiring for. A reader of SGEntrepreneurs wrote us an email pointing out an inconsistency in our treatment of job opportunities.
That is true. On hindsight, we should not have posted the job openings together with the news that Facebook was setting up an office here.
Facebook setting up shop in Singapore and hiring for jobs is indeed big news, news that leads to additional traffic for our site. However, since we have moved to a model where announcements for job opportunities for local startups are done in tandem with paid listings on the job board managed by us and promoted by our partners, this inconsistency with free publicity for jobs at Facebook is indeed glaring.
I have removed any mention of the current job opportunities offered in the post.
Moving forward, even though it will be big news when big boys like Facebook start a hiring spree in Singapore, we will not be covering it on SGE unless a paid listing is done on the job board like the rest of our local startups.
We have always been about building the local entrepreneurship community and promoting awareness of it. Important to achieving these goals is extending equal treatment to the local startups as well as to the bigger players.
I would like to thank our reader who cared enough to share with us his concerns.
Gwen
Launched just a few months ago by Chris McCann and Brendan McManus, the [Startup Digest] has grown from just 2 cities to over 32 and now has over 30K global subscribers! The [Startup Digest] is (usually) a weekly email digest of the best startup events in a city of your choice (you can also sign up for multiple cities), all delivered conveniently to your email inbox. For an example of a Digest, check out one of New York City’s.
Each city’s Digest is handpicked and curated by a member of that city’s startup community.
And…we are happy to announce that we will be curating the Singapore chapter of [Startup Digest]! Read more
I’m looking forward to this Wednesday because we at SGEntrepreneurs have teamed up with supperclub Singapore to get entrepreneurs like you In Bed With The Right Investor! Read more
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