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
“Design can never be complete because design solves people’s problems, and people are constantly changing,” said Kevin Fox, a product designer of Mozilla Labs, in concluding the Rainmakers LIVE! 2011 mini-conference in Silicon Valley. Read more
Filed under Contributors Corner, Special CommentaryTags: AOL, Bagcheck, Garry Tan, IDA, inDinero, Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore, Jason Putorti, Jessica Mah, Kevin Fox, Luke Wroblewski, Mozilla Labs, Posterous, Rainmakers LIVE!, Rainmakers LIVE! 2011, Surveylicious, Votizen, Y Combinator
This Thursday, the Startup Roots Speaker Series will have as speaker Derek Sivers, founder of former president of CD Baby. One of the people behind it, Neoteny Labs’ James Chan, had a chance to interview Derek Sivers by email.
James Chan writes: Read more
Surveylicious is a mobile geo-location survey platform which allows businesses to collect customer feedback in real-time. It was one of the tech companies selected by the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA) to visit New York City (NYC) for a week, from 9 to 13 May (related talk from NYCEDC in March). The purpose of this trip was to give companies a chance to learn firsthand about NYC’s business environment, to meet with NYC business leaders and to learn more about available resources for expanding their ventures to the city. Read more
Angel investor and professor Dr. Wong Poh Kam here provides an overview of the angel investing scene in Singapore. An extended version of this article will appear as a chapter in a forthcoming book on Angel Investing in Asia, edited by John Lo.
As in other newly industrialized economies in Asia, business angel investing in early stage start-up companies has been relatively new in Singapore. This is due to the fact that the phenomenon of high tech start-ups is itself relatively new in Singapore, having really taken off only since the late-1990s as the Singapore economy began its shift towards a knowledge-based, innovation-driven economy. While business angel investment deals are known to have existed in the 1980s and early 1990s, they were mainly in the traditional trading and manufacturing sectors, as was found in a study of 29 angel investors. Read more
In an interview with AsianScientist, Asia and Middle East early stage fund, Neoteny Labs‘ Joichi Ito speaks about his new role as the next Executive Director of MIT Media Lab.
When MIT announced last week on April 25 that Joichi (‘Joi’) Ito had been appointed the next Executive Director of the MIT Media Lab, it sent ripples through the technology world. Read more
If you belong to the camp that believes in business plan competitions, there are three main ones in Singapore: Start-Up@Singapore National Business Plan Competition, Ideas.Inc and the Lee Kuan Yew Global Business Plan Competition. Here’s two side-by-side comparisons of the three, with prize money, timelines and dates. Read more
I came across this question “What do Small Business Owners think of Groupon” on Quora (the user-generated online question and answer site) recently. The responses offered an interesting perspective. Most of us have views that favour the social shopping sites because we tend to believe that the discount coupons help consumers save money. For the merchants, we think that the coupons ensure some revenue.
The crux of the Quora thread questions the benefits of social shopping for both consumers and merchants. With social shopping sites, consumers are now expecting bargains every day. From an economic perspective, the consumers become extremely price-sensitive, choosing to only purchase at heavily discounted prices. Read more
This article was contributed by the team at Ideas.Inc, an annual business competition organised by the Nanyang Technopreneurship Center.
To most of us, watching anime or reading manga is just a past time, and beyond dressing up in our favourite character’s costumes, and collecting memorabilia, there really isn’t much else to do. But Sylvia Yao and Wu Di, both manga fanatics and gaming enthusiasts, decided they had to do something manga-related to fill the void that the growing social gaming scene had left behind. Read more
This article was contributed by the team at Ideas.Inc, an annual business competition organised by the Nanyang Technopreneurship Center.
The Einstein that you are has drafted the perfect business plan loaded with forecasts and good vibes. You have a good feeling that this is gonna work because you have spent more than what it is usually required in carefully conceptualizing and researching on your business idea. Yet, there’s one thing left in order to kick the inertia. No prize for guessing the F-word. That’s right – FUNDING. Read more
