Singapore needs Silicon Valley’s open source culture, says Meng Weng Wong of JFDI

Meng Weng Wong, a serial entrepreneur, founded JFDI with Hugh Mason in 2010 with a vision of nurturing the untapped entrepreneurial talent in South-East Asia. You just have to spend 15 minutes with Meng over a glass of wine to realize how imaginative, passionate and dedicated he is about this mission. His dreams are gargantuesque in scale, but, at the same time, concrete and actionable.

After graduating from UPenn, Meng spent his early career in the United States  at pobox.com, where he helped to pioneer email by building the foundations that Hotmail and Gmail are still using today. He also co-founded Karmasphere, a big-data company.

Helping to create an innovation ecosystem from scratch, like Meng is doing at JFDI, takes guts and inspiration. It’s an important task: High-tech entrepreneurship, especially in ecosystems that don’t have a legacy of successful startups and communities that inspire, teach, and support, can be difficult. Read more

Startup university: Free online courses on tech entrepreneurship

Higher education, particularly in the United States, is being disrupted. As university fees soar and incomes contract, people are calling into question the value of a college degree. Against this backdrop, websites like Udacity, edX, and Coursera have emerged to do something once unthinkable: Offer up quality courses from top universities to millions of students — free-of-charge.

Entrepreneurs in Asia who don’t have access to these universities are poised to benefit. Some of these websites offer lectures that are relevant to tech startups. Universities are also putting courses up directly on YouTube, which too has become a great resource for entrepreneurial education.

The downside to these courses is that many of them are customized for American audiences. Asian entrepreneurs will find that face vastly different challenges from their American counterparts. Therefore, besides ‘attending’ these lectures, they’ll need to contextualize the lessons for themselves and obtain firsthand information on their startup environment. Read more

Can meditation impact entrepreneurship and the world? Google’s happiness guru thinks so

Chade-Meng Tan, Google employee #107, smiled the moment he spotted the SGE team at the lobby of Orchard Parksuites, a stately service residence located in the heart of Orchard Road in Singapore.

Although here on holiday to visit family and friends, the jovial “zen master of Google” had been giving talks about his latest book, “Search Inside Yourself”, which he hopes will bring about the conditions for world peace.

Wearing a slightly faded Google Earth T-shirt, the Nanyang Technological University (NTU) alumnus seemed at ease while talking in an odd mix of Singlish and American twang. He explained the intricate workings of the brain, shared stories about Buddha to illustrate insights, and cracked jokes whenever he could.

Meng is an atypical Singaporean. When Google went public, he became multi-millionaire rich. His official job title, Jolly Good Fellow, started as a joke.  But he stayed on at the company, transitioning from an engineer into the Head of Personal Growth at GoogleEDU, the search giant’s workforce development program. Read more

Video: Tim Draper on women entrepreneurs

Here’s a video interview with Tim Draper, manager director of Silicon Valley venture capital firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson. He talks about the differences between male and female entrepreneurs, how women tend to make really good people managers but tend to be less stubborn in pursuing their ideas since they are more peer-oriented. Let us know whether you agree with him!

How businesses in Singapore are going green

The adoption of green practices among entrepreneurs could become the new black in 2012. With natural resources dwindling, the quest for more sustainable business practices that generate profits will remain a pressing issue for years to come.

In addition, as more consumers are willing to spend more on green products, the boon to an organization’s profitability can be substantial. As such, companies know that taking the plunge into green business practices is necessary to add to their company’s overall value.

Green Future Solutions, a Singapore-based business that promotes environmental awareness and action, provides consultancy services to help SMEs reduce costs, increase revenue, and become more sustainable. Read more

5 common myths successful CEOs like to tell you

Whether it’s in an interview in the trade magazines, in the college newspaper or on TV, CEOs of successful businesses like to paint a picture that belies the truth.

In some cases, it’s a romantic veneer over how hard they work, or how calculated they go about their management and this exists in part because the public wants an easily-digestible story of how to achieve results, or that it generally makes for a good uplifting reading.

Nobody likes to read a story of a struggle that includes constant repetition, problem-solving, manufacturing defects and late deliveries — it’s just “boring”. Read: Can’t sell newspapers or fill a business school auditorium.

The reality of it is much harsher yet simpler.

Read on for five common myths you’ll come across in interviews from successful CEOs (which you have to take with a generous pinch of salt): Read more

Indonesia’s Jamu Queen: Journey of a princess turned entrepreneur

The garage has long been the birthplace of many great companies — Apple, Google, Hewlett-Packard, to name a few. Even Walt Disney got his start producing his first animated series, “The Alice Comedies” in his uncle’s garage before forming his own studio.

Closer to home, the humble garage also witnessed the birth of PT Mustika Ratu, Indonesia’s famed herbal medicine (or jamu) brand, in the early seventies.

The business caused many to raise their eyebrows, because not only was the person behind it a woman, she was also a direct descendant of the royal Javanese family, one who was actually raised within the walls of a kraton (Javanese palace).

It was unheard of for someone of her status to work, let alone start a business and as Dr BRA. [1] Mooryati Soedibyo readily admits, the reaction from her family was far from encouraging. “Initially, my family did not support my decision to become a business woman as it was against our ancient traditions,” she recalls.

“Only through my own determination and hard work was I able to persevere and overcome this challenge, which actually helped motivate me to become successful on my own.” Read more

Vickers Venture Partners’ Jeff Chi seeks young, talented, world-changing entrepreneurs

Gwen and I caught up with Dr Jeff Chi of Vickers Venture Partners (VVP) at the sidelines of DEMO Asia to catch his views on the startup scene here in Asia. Jeff is currently based out of both Singapore and China and he is always looking for “young talented entrepreneurs with a dream to change the world”. 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

5 tips from female entrepreneurs

While the term, ‘entrepreneur’,  typically conjures the image of a male like Steve Jobs, Bill Gates or Mark Zuckerberg, we’ve come to see that the ladies are not leaving it for men to claim full ownership of the word.

In fact, females may be better than their male counterparts in certain areas. A Co.Exist article asserts that females are intuitive systems-thinkers, care more about solutions than who gets credit, are experts on collaboration, and are good at seeking balance.

There are certainly many things we can learn from them. To help you along, we’ve distilled a list of useful tips from female entrepreneurs in Singapore and around the region to guide you if you’re embarking on the road less traveled.

1. Understand why you are doing this.

Most ventures don’t succeed on the first try.

The reality is that behind every successful entrepreneur, there was a lot of learning from failed experiences. Understanding the reasons behind your decision to become an entrepreneur will help you to learn better from your mistakes and give you the confidence to keep going.

Social entrepreneur Carol Chyau co-founded a lifestyle brand that promotes sustainable income in rural China called Shokay (Read: Five lessons from an experienced social entrepreneur).

Shokay designs and sells products made from soft yak down sourced by Tibetan herders.

Although Carol and her partner had zero knowledge in the fibre industry, they perservered and drowned themselves with knowledge from books, mentors and Google search results.

It took them patience and sheer grit to become experts in the field, having to tweak their business model several times before hitting the ground running.

What motivated these Harvard graduates to choose this path instead of a comfortable corporate career?

“I’m not doing this because I am more philanthropic than other people out there, nor because I’m particularly altruistic. For me, it’s about a sense of responsibility. I just believe that as lucky as we are to have so much, we should give back even more,” she answered.

Be honest with yourself. If you’re doing it to attract hot chicks like in “The Social Network”, then it’s probably not the best motivation.

2. Don’t be afraid to get out of the building and validate your business idea.

An idea for a product means nothing if your customers don’t really need it.

Testing your business idea quickly by talking to potential clients will give you a clearer idea of customers’ needs.

Elfaine Tan, founder of The Sample Store, left her office job a few months after graduation. She had an idea to set up an on-line store that distributes and sells samples and wanted to validate it (read: Age and gender do not define your chance at success).

Determined, she relentlessly cold-called brand marketers at their offices and arranged for meetings. Her idea was spot on. After presenting her idea to her clients, they were convinced to try the platform.

The result? The Sample Store has to date, successfully distributed close to 500,000 branded product samples to an audience of over 78,000 people.

3. When being called stubborn, take it as a compliment.

There is no doubt that you will meet your fair share of nay-sayers on your entrepreneurial journey. How much you want to be affected by their opinions though, is up to you.

Sheryl Tay of The Baby Specialist, a company that rents hospital-grade baby equipment, was eager to prove them wrong (read: Making every mum’s baby her business).

“It was especially stressful when others gave doubtful comments about whether the business would work. But looking back, I think it was those very comments that fueled me to prove that my idea would work. Always have an open mind and take criticism in your stride,” she advises.

4. Learn to hold contradictory values together.

Being passionate about your work is no doubt a important component to innovation. At the same time, entrepreneurs should also be able to realistically understand the risks and actionable needs involved in their business.

Tan Siok Siok, director of Twittamentary (read: An Entrepreneur’s Journey Into The Real Time Web) and co-founder of online video network Kinetic ONE, aptly describes this process.

“I always find that as an entrepreneur you have to hold contradictory values together. For example, you have to have a big picture and be a visionary and yet concentrate on the short term goals of the start-up. You are impatient because of the time pressure, but yet patient because you know you have to build one thing at a time. What helps me is that I’m passionate about what I do, so it’s not like I’m being forced to do it. I’m focused and narrow things down to specific targets to make sure that I always make it something I can work on,” she says.

5. Don’t quit when things are just getting started.

Sometimes when one door closes, another one opens. We just have to look harder and not let one person dictate what we can or cannot do.

Gillian Tan, founder of local production company Munkysuperstar Pictures, manages clicknetwork.tv, an online video network that offers hip, fun, and edgy entertainment programming (read: Being a female director has its merits).

She started her company  working out of a room in her mother’s office, equipped with an old Mac she used for editing.

The test pilot that she produced later became popular local reality dating show “Eye For A Guy”.

While the shows gained in popularity, it wasn’t long before an obstacle appeared in her way.

“Back in 2007, we were supposed to produce season 2 of a Channel 5 show called ‘Girls Out Loud’, but it was cancelled at the last minute due to some complaints from the public,” she said.

Faced with this minor setback, Gillian and Girls Out Loud hosts Rosalyn and Wendy decided to pack up their bags and take a short road trip to Malaysia.

Recalling the events that followed, “I shot some videos of Rosalyn and Wendy and that ended up on YouTube. Somehow it caught on and people were writing in telling us to produce more videos. I then decided to put these videos onto a website instead. The road trip videos ended up being the first videos on clicknetwork.tv.”

In just four years, clicknetwork.tv has become a viral hit with audiences and garnered over 23 million video views and counting. Had Gillian felt defeated when Channel 5 told her she could not longer produce her shows, she would never have started clicknetwork.tv.

We hope these tips have been a helpful summary of our Women in Entrepreneurship series thus far. Write in to us if you know any other female entrepreneurs with an interesting story to share.