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
It was not a happy year for big bookstores.
In August and September 2011, Borders closed both its outlets in Wheelock Place and Parkway Parade. In October, Computer Book Centre, at Funan IT Mall, followed suit, becoming an exclusively online business.
More bad news followed in December: Home-grown book retailer Page One announced that it will close its store in VivoCity on 19th February this year in VivoCity due to high rentals. The company has been incurring major losses since its opening in 2006. Read more
Filed under Featured, Innovation & Technology, News Stop, Retail, Special Commentary, Technology, WebTags: booksactually, borders, harris bookstore, pageone, the pigeonhole, woods in the books
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:
Read more
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
For those of you who have been following the tech startup scene closely, you would have heard of Arnon Kohavi, an Israeli investor who tried but failed to set up a venture capital firm in Chile. As a result, he shifted his new fund, Yarden VC, to Singapore.
Writing to US tech blog TheNextWeb, he talked about the reasons why he left the Latin American country after six months, and highlighted the many drawbacks of the startup environment over there. This was after he proclaimed that “the next Skype, Facebook or MercadoLibre will have to come out of Chile.”
The interview sparked off an intense debate.
A Start-Up Chile participant wrote in to TheNextWeb to express disappointment at Arnon, questioning his commitment to Latin America. Sarah Lacy, formerly a columnist at TechCrunch, went even further, suggesting that Arnon is a fraud.
“Arnon Kohavi. Remember that name, don’t give him money and don’t let him invest in your startup,” she warned in her acerbic article. 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
With China and India hogging the limelight when it comes to entrepreneurship, it’s easy to forget that something is brewing in Southeast Asia.
Quietly but steadily, geek culture within the region is maturing, creating a suitable environment to nurture the next generation of technology entrepreneurs. A key indicator of this trend is the rise of permanent spaces which provide a comfortable environment for entrepreneurs and geeks to experiment and develop their ideas.
The first of these spaces to emerge is Hackerspace.sg, which was set up as an entirely community funded and supported initiative in 2009.
Photo: Guests interacting with Sheel (center-left) and Abhijeet (center-right) from Bessemer Venture Partners. Read more
Filed under Featured, Funding, Innovation & Technology, Networks & Networking, Special Commentary, Technology, Venture Capital & Private Equity, WebTags: Abhijeet Muzumdar, Bessemer, Bessemer Venture Partners, bvp, Chillin' With, Sheel Tyle
Depending on who you speak to, QR codes are either a passing fad or the next big thing. I believe it’s somewhere in the middle.
QR codes are beginning to enter the mainstream in Singapore, driven by the mass adoption and usage of smartphones, and I expect this trend to continue in 2012.
But while critics might argue that NFC technology will supplant QR codes, I wholeheartedly disagree. Although NFC trials are slated to start in Singapore this year, I’d wager that mainstream adoption is at least one year away (depending on whether the iPhone 5 adopts NFC). It’s likely that QR codes will remain the de facto bridge between outdoor and digital marketing for some time. Read more
Filed under Featured, Innovation & Technology, Marketing & Branding, Mobile, Special Commentary, Technology, Toolkit, WebTags: beetagg, bit.ly, goo.gl, google goggles, Mobile Marketing Association, nfc, qr code, qropit, redlaser, responsive design, shopsaavy, tagloop, Tony Tan
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
Recently, comScore, a leader in digital business analytics, has released a report documenting the key social media trends for 2011. What is clear is that social networking sites have become one of the main channels for businesses to engage existing customers and win over new ones. So, it’s important that entrepreneurs keep abreast about the current state of social networking, adopt their online strategies to suit the current environment, and anticipate future trends.
Here are several key points summarized from the full report.
1) Social networking has emerged globally as the activity which Internet users spend the most time on.
Social networking sites are reaching 82 percent of the global Internet population, or 1.2 billion users. The activity now accounts for 19 percent of time spent online, making it the most popular activity on the Internet. That’s a huge jump from a mere six percent in 2007. Social networking is followed closely behind by search/navigation, retail, and communication. Read more
