While the Internet is commonly being seen as distinct and separate from real life, that notion is increasingly being challenged. Augmented reality, as well as mobile commerce technologies like QR codes and NFC, are blurring the lines between the physical and virtual world, allowing consumers to transit seamlessly between both.
This trend is happening in the events space as well. Startups in Asia are at the frontier of this revolution, arming event organizers and participants with digital tools that enhance productivity and foster personal connections.
Here, we’ll look at just how these Singapore-based startups are shaping the way events are organized and merging them with the digital world.
What cheeses off entrepreneurs the most about business banks in Singapore? To find out, we did an informal poll on Facebook and got some answers: a huge chunk highlighted cost transaction fees as a bugbear, while poor service attitude and slow response times received a lot of enthusiastic nods.
We got a hint of these concerns from another group of entrepreneurs we surveyed a while ago. Many of them have been held back by long waiting times and queries that went buried. My own experience with UOB wasn’t ecstasy either. I attempted to contact them an entire Friday afternoon, and they virtually ignored me.
For overworked entrepreneurs who don’t have a lot of time to waste, such service standards are unacceptable. So I spoke to a few more entrepreneurs to find out what they have to say. Their responses below. Read more
Do Singapore banks measure up in the eyes of start-up entrepreneurs?
In Singapore, it looks like OCBC is the most popular bank among start-up entrepreneurs for creating a business account. That is the result of a poll SGE did on Facebook and LinkedIn in which 127 entrepreneurs responded.
Here’s what we asked them: “As a start-up founder in Singapore, which bank do you go to and set up your local account?”
Actually, OCBC is the leading bank by a mile at 45 percent of the respondents. The others, DBS (17 percent), UOB (15 percent), and Standard Chartered (13 percent), were not even close.
With such a yawning gap, it’s easy to assume that OCBC is the best choice for every entrepreneur — but that’s not necessary the case. To find out more, we dug a little deeper, speaking to entrepreneurs and comparing the different banks ourselves. Read more
Plenty of cloud services lets you store, share, and sync files across multiple devices. Dropbox and Google Docs are perhaps the most popular ones — but both have features that each other lack.
Dropbox has an offline client that lets users drop files into a special folder which will then be synced to an online account. But they can’t create Word documents and other files using Dropbox. On the other hand, while Google Docs has cloud storage and file editing capabilities, it has very limited offline functionality — users can only view files but not much else.
People who use both Google Docs/Apps and Dropbox have clamored for an integration of both apps for a long time. In comes Insync, a new online service started by Singapore and Philippines-based entrepreneur Terence Pua that hopes to bridge that gap by offering Dropbox-like features to Google Docs. Read more
Filed under Featured, Great Business Ideas, Innovation & Technology, Services, Technology, WebTags: cloud storage, Dropbox, Google Apps, google docs, insync, Philippines
Remember the blurry old days when software was sold in boxes? If you were born in early 80’s, you might even have had the joy of installing software from floppy disks. Gladly, those times are past us.
Setting up a website, building a customer database, sending out newsletters and many other impractical tasks have become affordable for everyone, at a fraction of the costs 20 years ago, thanks to a plethora of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) businesses.
Here you’ll find a brief overview of web-based services that you can start using today to help bootstrap your company. Read more
Filed under Featured, Innovation & Technology, Services, Technology, Toolkit, WebTags: 99designs, adobe business catalyst, big cartel, clicktale, Cloud Computing, cloud solutions, constant contact, cotweet, crazy egg, crowdspring, ezsuite, freshbooks, get satisfaction, Google Analytics, Google Apps, highrise, hootsuite, kissmetrics, madmimi, Magento, mailchimp, pipelinedeals, saas, saasu, salesforce, Shopify, socialbro, software-as-a-service, sortfoliow, surveymonkey, tender support, TheEZSuite.com, tweetdeck, UserVoice, virb, Volusion, woothemes, Wordpress, wufooc, xero, yahoo! web analytics, zendesk, zimbra, zoho
This is the third article from the “Mistakes made, lessons learnt” series. Check out all the articles here.
Biggest mistake made: Assuming that everyone will think highly of his idea and participate.
Most memorable setback: Having only two clients in the first year of business. Read more
Filed under Featured, Great Business Ideas, Innovation & Technology, Interviews, Retail, Services, TechnologyTags: inspiring entrepreneurs, mistakes made lessons learnt, Ng chin leng, SingaporeBrides, singaporemotherhood
Too often, businesses treat their customers as a statistic, or worse, a cash cow to be milked. But such an attitude may not be healthy in the long run: It may even harm a brand since a customer’s moos… I mean, feedback is treated as nothing more than noise.
For startups especially, listening to customers is crucial for iterating your product, which is why they deserve an equal pedestal alongside your colleagues and the investors that you’re seeking to fund your company. Read more
So you’re an aspiring entrepreneur looking to step up a blogshop selling apparel, shoes, catfood, or anything your awesome mind can conjure up. You’ll be happy to know that LiveJournal and Blogger, trusty old venerables in Internet time, are no longer your only options — a new kid on the block has arrived.
The EZ Suite is a new website creation tool by PayPal and Singapore Post that’s built from the ground up for e-commerce. Available only in Singapore at the moment, it is targeted at startup founders with lots of passion but little technical know-how, and its interface is designed for ease of use with step-by-step instructions and illustrations. The whole process of stepping up shop is broken into six distinct steps, ensuring that you don’t miss out on crucial bits. Read more
Filed under Featured, Innovation & Technology, Retail, Services, Technology, Toolkit, WebTags: Blogshop, connaxion, E-Commerce, ezsuite, LiveJournal, PayPal, singapore blogshop, SingPost
In a startup company, you are insanely busy. With so much going on, you can become blind to how you are spending company money. This is the second of a two-part series (read part one here) on bookkeeping techniques that will start you off on becoming a black belt in managing money.
Bookkeeping, very simply, is the recording of a company’s financial transactions, which include sales, purchases, income, and payments. Here are some tips on how to get it right the first time. Read more
In a startup company, you are insanely busy. With so much going on, you can become blind to how you are spending company money. This is the first of a two-part series (see part two here) on bookkeeping techniques that will start you off on becoming a black belt in managing money.
Bookkeeping, very simply, is the recording of a company’s financial transactions, which include sales, purchases, income, and payments. Here are some tips on how to get it right the first time. Read more
