That person is 19 year-old Anjney Midha, a Stanford University Computer Science and Economics undergraduate. Besides the prize money, he will also serve as a Digital Life Ambassador in the coming years. He plans to set up his own Internet social enterprise.

Four other interns were awarded S$1,000 in cash prizes — Joakim Twetman from Lund University, Michael Bergman, from Sundsta Älvkulle Gymnasiet, Richard Masters from City University, and Liu Wei from Georgia Tech University.

The Digital Life Academy is a 6-week summer internship program where participants spend six weeks in the MyCube office in Singapore to receive training in product development, project management, company formation, fundraising, marketing, and more. They also attended talks by speakers from Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft, as well as receive hands on experience in developing new business ideas.

33 interns from 19 countries were selected from over 15,000 candidates in more than 100 countries — which is not surprising considering the allowance, benefits, and experience the interns get.

This inaugural internship program is a marketing effort by MyCube, a startup that endeavors to build the “world’s first Social Exchange” which allows users to own, control, and monetize their digital data. Their service is currently in private beta. Recently, Black Ocean, the company’s key investor, has obtained majority ownership after another round of funding.

For tech-savvy entrepreneurs, however, there’s an online service that can assist you in finding that perfect match more quickly. Founder2be is a focused social network that connects you with potential co-founders. Although started in Finland, the service has attracted users from all around the globe.

Once I sign up, I’ll be asked to fill in your particulars, including the country I’m based in, my skillset, commitment level, and the type of partner I’m looking for. For instance, I could be a total tech goondu/idiot with decades of business experience who is on a lookout for a hotshot young developer familiar with Ruby on Rails.

After filling up my profile, I can then submit my idea on a bulletin board where others can rate or critique it. I can also look for a potential partner using Founder2be’s search function. It’s kind of like finding a potential life partner on a dating website, except that you key in vital statistics relevant to entrepreneurship.

This is the page where you can submit your ideas and get it critiqued.

So far, the service seems to have gotten much traction in the Western countries in America and Europe. In Southeast Asia, Singapore and Malaysia seem to be the hotspots, with about 130 entrepreneurs-in-waiting (as far as I can tell). I’m not sure how many are active users though. While Indonesia is an emerging nexus for entrepreneurship, Founder2be has gained very little traction there.

Founder2be is certainly a nifty website which should complement your efforts in finding a co-founder. What’s unclear though is how successful it has been, or even what sort of metrics it uses to measure effectiveness. And here’s a tip from me, taking a page off dating services like Lunch Actually — even if actual figures can’t be revealed, at least include testimonials from users about how this service has helped them.

Besides Founder2be, another online option to try out in the Singapore context would be Cofoundify, started by Jeffrey Paine, entrepreneur and executive director of angel investing and mentorship firm Battle Ventures. We’re not sure how active it is yet though, so stay tuned for more information as they come.

A more traditional avenue for finding a business partner (but no less useful) would be entrepreneurial networking events. Jason Ong of StartupLah, an organization dedicated to connecting technical founders with non-technical ones, is one such outlet. They organize the regular Lion City Startup Brekkie which gather aspiring and current entrepreneurs over breakfast on Saturday mornings.

If you’re a woman looking to dip your toes into starting a business, the Athena Network, a women-only networking organization, is something you can try. They will be launching their first networking event in Singapore in September. Places are limited but you can check out their Facebook Page for more details.

These events are just a drop in the ocean when it comes entrepreneurial-related events in Singapore and Malaysia. Do visit our events page for the latest in Singapore or check out this page on Entrepreneurs.my for events in Malaysia.

Note: SGE is proud to announce that we are now a partner with Founder2be through their Global Alliance Program, which aims to strengthen the ties and the support for start-ups on a global scale.

The EYA is the oldest annual award in Singapore that recognises the achievements of entrepreneurs. Started 23 years ago, past winners include Charles Wong of shoe retailer Charles & Keith, Ivan Lee of Thai food chain Thai Express, and Chan Chong Beng, chairman of interior wall-covering supplier Goodrich Global.

Awards for four sub-categories were presented: Enterprise, Info-Communications Technology, Innovation, and Social Contribution.

Jimmy was recently a judge for Martell’s The Ultimate Start-up Space competition, which awards the top startup with funding and office space. His company has been in the news a lot lately for registering record revenues and opening three new stores in Ion Orchard, 313 Somerset, and Marina Bay Sands.

The program is commissioned by the National Research Foundation (NRF) and will be screened on Channel NewsAsia starting from 6th September 2011. Selected questions will be answered by Frank during the program itself on the episode that will broadcast on 13th September.

Other special guests that will be introduced on the show include Joi Ito, founder of early stage fund and incubator Neoteny Labs (now heading LinkedIn Japan), Dr Francis Yeoh, CEO of NRF, international investors Tim Draper and Michael Moritz, and many more.

Besides, investors, entrepreneurs, university academics, and engineers will be featured. The four key sectors highlighted will be: Interactive and digital media, biomedical and clean tech.

In Channel NewsAsia’s own words, the program seeks to show how “Singapore’s supportive enterprise ecosystem helps them incubate an idea to life — from seeding to raising money, from expansion hype to the exit plan. The series also seeks to inspire risk taking  in Singapore, which many international global investors regard as Asia’s best launch pad for innovative businesses.”

Please share some lessons learned in developing entrepreneurship in Singapore over the past twenty years – Dr Tony Tan from Office of Dr Tony Tan on Vimeo:

Singapore was forged on risk-taking. How can we encourage self belief and self confidence? from Office of Dr Tony Tan on Vimeo:

How can Singaporean firms achieve the scale needed for success? – Dr Tony Tan from Office of Dr Tony Tan on Vimeo:

Singaporeans don’t seem to have a global perspective. How can we address this? – Dr Tony Tan from Office of Dr Tony Tan on Vimeo:

How can the govt address the talent shortage in Singapore, especially if bigger companies come in and poach from local companies from Office of Dr Tony Tan on Vimeo:

For more videos on the session, visit Dr Tony Tan’s page on Vimeo.

For half-an-hour, Singapore presidential aspirant Dr Tony Tan sat under the spotlight, his glistening white mane emphasizing his 71 years of age and extensive experience in both the private and public sector.

Displaying the calm and measured demeanor of an elder statesman, he took in a barrage of questions from 30 odd entrepreneurs and investors regarding the state of innovation in Singapore. Held at The Pigeonhole Cafe on August 3, the question and answer session is part of a regular SGE event called Chillin’ With — which gathers innovators in a casual setting to connect with one another. The moderators were SGE chief editor Gwendolyn Regina Tan and lead developer Isaac Timothy Tay.

Photo: This is not the first time Dr Tony Tan (left) has engaged entrepreneurs like Gwendolyn (center) and Isaac, co-founder and lead developer of SGE respectively.

Feedback from the floor was congenial at first, and then became more candid, sincere, and hard-hitting as the evening wore on. It was, after all, a rare opportunity to meet with a former deputy prime minister and potential president.  In Singapore, the president serves a mostly ceremonial and symbolic role with little executive authority, although they wield soft power. The elections are scheduled for August 27.

While many issues were raised, two resonated most with the crowd. One major bugbear was what they perceive as the poor implementation of government funding for startups. Aileen Sim, co-founder and CEO of First Meta, cited her example. While her company has benefited from some government grants, it has also “suffered damages” from others.

“And speaking with at least ten other entrepreneurs I know that have taken government grants, the general consensus is that…they sound very generous and they’re great, and they’re well meaning, well-intentioned. However, a lot of times the execution of it ends up having unforeseen side effects,” she said.

For example, while startups want to spend as little money as possible in their operations and product development, they will receive more reimbursement from the government agency only if they spend more.

Dr Tan acknowledged this as one of the weaknesses of government funding in startups, which sees a clash between the need for civil servants to account for public money and the need for entrepreneurs to have free rein.

“That is where we have to try to move towards an ecosystem where there is eventually more money from private sector, from various funds, so that different people can exercise judgment,” he said.

He did highlight, however, that the Singapore National Research Foundation’s model does mitigate the bureaucratic problem. Through its NRF TIS scheme, the foundation funds a startup on a 50-50 basis together with a venture capitalist. This allows the NRF to piggyback on the VC’s expertise as well as vested interest in seeing his funds generate returns.

“I think this type of arrangement is much more effective than having a group of civil servants sitting around in a committee trying to decide whether startup A or startup B will succeed,” he added.

However, Dr Wong Poh Kam, an angel investor and professor at the National University of Singapore Business School, pointed out that the government still micromanages in their involvement with investors.

“You spend a lot of time trying to convince the bureaucrats that some of these rules do not work,” he added.

Terence Swee, founder and CEO of Muvee, also shared his troubles with government funding. After securing series A funding from the now-defunct Temasek Capital in 2002, he was rejected by another grant simply because he did not meet the requirement that at least 50% of the company was in Singaporean hands.

What was vexing, however, was that the many of the shares were foreign simply because they were held by Temasek Capital through a BVI vehicle.

“You can’t get more Singaporean than that,” he quipped.

Switching gears, Terence highlighted the second major issue — Startups have difficulty attracting talent in Singapore, and the government may have to shoulder some of the blame. Although they are actively encouraging entrepreneurship in the country to “let a thousand flowers bloom”, the government is also working hard to attract the Googles and LinkedIns of the world to set up shop in Singapore by giving them tax breaks.

Here’s the problem: These companies would come to Singapore to hire, say, 200 engineers, but there simply isn’t enough talent to go around. As a result, they poach staff from startups who can’t afford attractive pay packages.

“Maybe you’re 30 plus years old and you’re still working at a startup and you’re kind of underpaid. At some point, if somebody comes and double your salary, you’re like: I’ve got two parents, I’m the only son; It’s a tough choice. You have bills to pay, you want to buy a condo and your Toyota Corolla.”

The audience engaged in earnest conversation with the former Deputy Prime Minister.

“It will be better if you tell Google that if they come in, they must bring in 200 of their guys, and let us poach from them. And then you get your ecosystem. Right now they are emptying out the vessel,” Terence said.

Therefore, despite the displeasure among some Singaporeans towards foreign workers, he believes that more radical steps must be taken by the government to attract them.

In response, Dr Tan echoed his views that labor shortage is a problem the government has to manage. Indiscriminately bringing in MNCs also have the side effect of driving up labor costs since they can offer more attractive renumeration and force other companies to match them. And already, the cost of doing business here is already among the highest in the world, noted Dr Tan. So if the cost goes up too much, doing business in Singapore would not be viable.

“Agencies and ministries like MTI (Ministry of Trade and Industry) and EDB (Economic Development Board) who are responsible for bringing foreign investments here should keep in mind the limited pool of labour which is available,” he said, even as the government is trying hard to train and educate more Singaporean workers. Overall, Dr Tan expressed that while no system is perfect, Singaporeans are already quite fortunate. Unemployment rate is very low, whereas in Spain it could go up to 15 to 20%.

While he certainly got an earful from the audience, some lingering doubt remained over whether feedback collected by the government would amount to anything.

Tay Eu-Yen, co-founder of nightspot The Butter Factory (read our interview with them), has felt let down by the government’s past attempt to gather feedback. She asked Dr Tan if communication channels could be improved, and he replied:

“Well, we’ve got the feedback channel. We’ve got committees set up by the government from time to time. I don’t know how effective this is…”

“Not effective,” interjected an investor in the room. Everyone nodded and laughed. “It’s done to say: ‘we’ve done it.’”

To reinforce the prevailing sentiment, Yen talked about her futile involvement with the Ministry of Manpower’s consultation for a white paper for health and safety rules.

“I think at the end of it unfortunately it wasted a lot of the industry’s time because there were no changes, and the white paper passed without amendment anyway,” she said.

Nonetheless, Dr Tan remained diplomatic and cited this event, which will be put online in video, as an example of a feedback channel.

“I think it will be very good for some of our ministers actually to listen in. I may even go one step further and recommend the Minister for Trade and Industry or Minister of State to come and have a session with you all. This kind of session is helpful to policymakers and they’ve got to make time and effort to come here,” he said to an approving audience.

With just a few minutes to spare, the moderators squeezed in one last question, this time on something more personal: What is your greatest regret?

“Many of them. Maybe a small thing is… my father died very young, well (before) the stage when Singapore was growing, so I think he never saw all of the great things we’ve done, he never got to see his grandchildren, great-grandchildren. I think that’s a pity; my mother was more fortunate, she lived to a ripe old age. At the end of the day, the things that give you the greatest joy, the greatest regret, are always the personal things, nothing else can substitute for that.”

Dr Tan engages with Pierre Hennes (left), investor at Upstream Ventures, just before he leaves.

(Source: Neoteny Labs and video recorded by James Chan)

After going to a lot of business presentations at the university, I often see that the teams try to show the judges and investors that they can break even within a year. When they do that, we immediately know that they have eliminated themselves to be a credible start-up. Perhaps, it is easier to explain why investors don’t find the promise of being able to break even within a year to be realistic. Let me illustrate using a simple business case study. Imagine you start a business to produce a new textile product and you need to set up a factory. In a typical business school setting, you usually get the story from the team in the following manner. First, they claim that they need about a few million to set up the factory, and they usually assume that the factory will take them nine months to build. Then they followed with the claim that the factory can immediately produce the textile goods within 3 months, and generate enough yield to break even. Will you be gullible enough to invest in such a team? The answer is no. The reason why investors and judges know that it would fail, is the risk involved. First of all, it is not possible to get a factory up and running within 9 months. Even the machines (that you need to import for the production) require a while before the workers can maximize the output for the business. Hence it is not realistic to claim that you can break even within a year. Usually a 2-3 years period of breaking even sounds reasonable, and for those who may want to know, the horizon for a biotech start-up to break even goes even further to 5-7 years. Assessing the risk of your business is a matter of forecasting. Of course, risks are never absolute, but rather relative, in the sense that they can only be estimated on the basis of assumptions. Of course, one good way to assess risk is to look at the different scenarios that ensure that the future business development of the company are stress-tested in several conditions. In a business plan, that comes in the form of a cumulated cash flow projections. Let’s take a look at the cash flow diagram which we have drawn here.

Core Competency and Expansion of a business

The first thing I want to talk about is a company’s core competency. If your company sells a product that is totally new to the market and rely on a particular peripheral, the question for the team is whether the company should produce the peripheral. Without drawing the examples from the business plan competition, I will illustrate using the key and lock analogy (or hypothetical example of a technology product I dream up with). Suppose I have come up with a technology for a lock that can allow my mobile phone to open the door to my house, the question to ask is whether I should make the key for the house by creating a new mobile phone. Let me squeeze the analogy down further. Suppose your lock requires a chip to be inserted to every mobile phone, the question is whether you should create a new mobile phone.

Most young entrepreneurs will take up the most naive position of trying to be “Bill Gates” and try to create both the lock and the mobile phone (which is the key). I will attempt to convince you that you should not make a mobile phone for your lock and just focus on making the lock work seamlessly. In addition, I will suggest to you to license the chip to all mobile phone makers (Samsung, LG and Nokia). The naive entrepreneur will ask, “But if I sell the lock only, I can’t enter into the mobile phone market later.” I will tell the entrepreneur that there is no point in getting investment to manufacture a new mobile phone. It is a waste of resources and all the other mobile phone makers out there will beat your company to it. The way to get around this mentality is to focus on selling the locks and make sure that every phone has that functionality. Your company can focus the energy in selling more locks and innovating upon the lock and chip. The naive entrepreneur will counter that the company will be forever stuck in that phase of just building the lock.

Here is the part which most people don’t grasp and I am going to explain why some people succeed and some people don’t. The key to success in this hypothetical example, is to sell as many locks as possible and then earn enough revenue to acquire a mobile phone manufacturer. Then you can inherit the expertise of the company without the need of re-inventing the wheel. The moral of the story is to always focus on your core competency, keep the expansion in mind, and till you accumulate enough capital, then acquire without the need to reinvent the wheel.

While startups struggle to gain some big of recognition, big companies get into trouble because of too much recognition sometimes. Resident contributor, wannapreneur, looks at such a conundrum. But such a problem is better than not having any marketing success, ain’t it?

In the world of branding, it is often that the ultimate goal that marketing wants to pull off is to turn their product brands into a ubiquitous household name. To some extent, a number of brands have managed to pull this off. Firms like Google, Photoshop and Xerox come to mind as they have been so well-known. These well known names have even become verbs with the meaning “to search online”, “to manipulate digitally” and “to make copies”. In fact, there is an online database filled with examples of such proprietary eponyms.

However, at the same time, the legal teams of these companies are freaking out as they see this as an improper usages of their trademarks – possibly detrimental to their brand name’s integrity? They are beginning to set guidelines for the proper usage of their brand names, like Adobe is doing for their Photoshop product. A blog post regarding Google’s trademark also appeared in the The Official Google Blog. From the legal perspective, the danger lies in that if the brand name becomes too generic and becomes accepted by people in such a manner, it would cause them to become generic names that are not owned by anyone. In order to avoid losing their multi-million dollar trademarks in this manner, companies have to show that they are actively trying to stop their trademarks from gradually becoming generic and some possible avenues are to run advertisement campaigns to stregthen their brand names or to urge the public at large and sometimes writers specifically to make use of trademarks properly.

But, there is some doubt as to the effectiveness of such guidelines on external parties. Within these companies, it would be sensible and very possible for them to set protective rules on how these elements of their corporate identity (like logos and taglines) present a coherent and consistent image of the company. A sensible first step which any company should take.

So, paradoxically, what is probably the greatest measure of marketing success for companies may in fact turn out to be a great legal problem for them.

[ Also : Digg - The Photoshop trademark must never be used as a Verb ]