This October, Singapore will play host to the first-ever Digital Fashion Week (DFW), a fashion show that sets itself apart by being livestream-only — a first in fashion history, touts the organizers.
This means that you won’t see any front row VIPs scrutinizing the models up close. Yes, no Anna Wintour-type tastemakers or wealthy celebrities.
In addition, this fashion week will let live viewers pre-order their favorite looks immediately after they spot it on the runway, and have it delivered to their doorstep within weeks. The show will feature the Spring/Summer 2013 collections from Singapore’s distinguished designers, as well as an unannounced guest designer.
When Daniel Charles, the founder and CEO of Global Racing Schools, first decided to get into the racing business, he wanted to open a race track in Singapore. But he realized it would cost about half a billion dollars.
“That may not be the best place to start,” he thought. He decided to scale down, and considered starting a go-cart track instead. But that proved too daunting as well.
Finally, he settled on becoming a dealer for motorsports products. Slogging his way through, Daniel, at 25 years old now, has built Global Racing Schools into a company that connects leisure and professional racers to driving experiences by over 200 suppliers in 20 countries.
“I remember an entrepreneur talking on television about the right way to get into an industry: ‘Don’t focus on getting the whole body in. Start with the toe’,” he says, “if you want to be a DJ, start by carrying amps around. If you want to be the next Zuckerberg, start by hanging around the right places and events.”
Today, the young entrepreneur has offices in Singapore, Australia, and the United States. The avid Formula One fan, looking every bit a professional racer himself with designer shades, watch, and a racing polo-tee, has handled between two to three thousand customers ever since the company was started in 2008. Read more
Details matter, says Richard Branson, the English business magnate that runs his Virgin Group of over 400 companies. He uses the analogy of a chef running his restaurant personally and how the quality of food often beats a chain of restaurants.
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Joe Gebbia shares the story of how Airbnb was founded at The Next Web Conference 2012. Founded in August 2008, the San Francisco-based company is a community marketplace for people to list, discover, and book unique spaces around the world via the web or mobile phones. It has over 110,000 unique listings available in more than 13,000 cities and 181 countries. Airbnb has raised US$120M from investors such as Sequoia Capital and Greylock Partners.
By now, Chumby’s demise is well known among fans and tech enthusiasts alike. The US company was most well known for its Chumby devices, which are intelligent, Internet-connected versions of otherwise dumb objects. However, it fell by the wayside soon after Apple changed the consumer electronics industry with the iPhone and the iPad.
In reaction, Chumby pivoted to producing a software platform for smart TVs, but that didn’t work out either. Their journey ended officially in late April. Andrew “bunnie” Huang, or just bunnie as he is often called, had front row seats to the San Diego company’s fall. He was serving as its co-founder and vice-president for hardware engineering.
Recently, we visited the Singapore-based entrepreneur for an interview, revealing some interesting insights about the inner workings of Chumby. Read more
Watching each startup deliver their pitch at the JFDI-Innov8 2012 Bootcamp Demo Day, I get the sense of witnessing a child taking her first tentative steps or going to school for the very first time.
At the accelerator program, the first of its kind in Singapore, promising entrepreneurs, who had nothing but ideas, had to undergo an intense regimen of mentoring, training, and product development.
Mentors in the bootcamp came from all around the world as well as from Singapore, consisting of entrepreneurs who have gone through the whole agonizing process of creating a product people actually want.
Glancing across the room, amidst the glaring stage lights and about a hundred curious investors, those very same mentors are egging the startups on stage to succeed. The incubatees took turns to demostrate their products: Refined, refreshed, and in some cases, completely rehashed after the 100-day bootcamp. Read more
There are so many online travel startups around that it’s sometimes hard to differentiate them from one another.
The latest to enter this space is Trafflers, which is founded by a group of Dutch geeks: Koh San Ngai, Kenneth Touw, Gherry Harahap, and Giovanni Martina. Trafflers is essentially an online group travel planner that aims to make the process more fun and intelligent. They are currently incubatees at the JFDI-Innov8 2012 Bootcamp.
The secret sauce that sets them apart from other startups like Hipmunk and Wanderfly is the end result of the founders’ Natural Language Processing backgrounds. Essentially, Trafflers can analyze the interactions between travel buddies who are using the app and then make recommendations based on the conversations and behavior. Read more
While the judges huddled for an hour to decide the winners of the second Startup Weekend Manila, an unlikely person kept the crowd thoroughly entertained.
Call it the first Standup Weekend ever. SW Manila participant Jerome Punzalan came out swinging like Manny Pacquiao, dropping one joke after another, leaving the packed room exploding in laughter and applause. Chants of “More, more!” followed after each punchline.
You would think everyone would be sullen after 54 hours of preparing their pitches, but it turned out that they had an extra fuel tank for the final stretch, with the finishing line clearly in sight.
Finally, the judges streamed back in one by one, and it was time to announce the winners. Read more
I remember the time, over a decade ago, when Magic: The Gathering trading cards were the rage. Boys would play them below apartment blocks and on hidden corners of shopping malls.
They’re so addictive that my school would punish any student caught playing them while in school uniform. Newspapers sensationalized about the evils of these collectible cards, much like they do now with World of Warcraft.
While I think much of this negative hype towards games are overblown, Kark, one of twelve incubatees at Singapore’s JFDI-Innov8 Bootcamp, is taking the message seriously and has embarked on a mission to make games less harmful to kids. They’re achieving this by making educational trading cards that interact with smartphones through companion mobile apps.
“Children love games, but they don’t benefit. Only developers do,” says CEO and serial entrepreneur Sindhu Prabowo Dilaksono, who heads a team of four Indonesian co-founders.
“Doing educational apps is one way of making money without feeling guilty.” Read more
It was a bad day for Wild Honey, a popular all-breakfast restaurant in Mandarin Gallery, Singapore.
A customer named Gary Tan posted a complaint on the company’s Facebook Page alleging that he has been discriminated against.
Apparently, his request to get a corner table for three for himself and a guest was rejected. However, a foreigner that came in later was able to do the same. Think Rosa Parks, 21st Century version.
What really pissed people off, however, was the response from Guy Wachs, the restaurant’s founder. He said: “Dear sir, we have an international staff including many Singaporeans and respect all people. We deeply regret your remark (emphasis mine). Guy Wachs, Director.”
A screenshot was captured of the comments, which was apparently deleted. It caught fire on the forums (examples here and here) since yesterday: Read more
This October, Singapore will play host to the first-ever Digital Fashion Week (DFW), a fashion show that sets itself apart by being livestream-only — a first in fashion history, touts the organizers.
