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.

DFW is a company set up by Keyis Ng and Charina Widjaja, and both used to work under Singapore celebrity singer Dick Lee in the advertising industry. Keyis also runs STORM Creative Events Agency, a public relations company.

In addition to the live coverage of the show and the backstage buzz, DFW will interview designers, models, hair and makeup artists, as well as performers from fringe events, feature live commentaries by key fashion figures and pre-show performances by international artistes.

Fashionistas can also download a mobile app to check out the livestreams, videos, photos, and even shop for items.

Fashion designers will be able to receive immediate feedback, both good and bad, from viewers. Pre-orders made by customers will give fashion entrepreneurs quick market insights about the pieces that sell.

In conjunction with the fashion show, an online B2B platform called DFW Digital Showroom will also be launched. Designers will be able to display lookbook images and pre-recorded videos on the platform, which is targeted at the press, buyers, and retailers.

Keyis is aiming for seven million viewers for this inaugural show, and he plans to announce DFW for other major cities soon. This is not the first time he has live streamed a fashion event.

His previous project, Fashforward.com, gave users virtual front-row seats to traditional fashion events. In May 2011, he and his team garnered some 500,000 visitors from 90 countries within a week.

“We aim to harness technology and creativity to promote home-grown designers in each city to the global audiences by capitalizing on the hype generated from the fashion shows. The buzz created will then be directly converted into sales and sync the fashion communication cycle with its retail cycle,” he says.

While there’s no telling how DFW will perform — so much depends on execution — an event like this is a refreshing take on an elitist industry that is dependent on upper echelon tastemakers to set the tone for an entire season.

For example, critically acclaimed documentary The September Issue shows that a single woman, Anna Wintour, who is the authoritative editor-in-chief of American Vogue, can singlehandedly decide what will be trendy in a US$300B global industry. Young designers anointed by Anna are put on a fast track to success.

However, ground-up initiatives like the DFW turn the industry upside down by giving independent designers more visibility, and letting ordinary consumers be the tastemakers for once.

Is seven million viewers an attainable goal? Maybe not. But props to them for aiming high.

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.

A basic driving package at a race track starts from around US$600, while an aspiring professional can fork up to US$3,000 a day. Global Racing Schools takes a cut of the revenue from their partners in Europe, America, and Asia. Corporate clients have turned out to be his biggest customers.

Recently, the company has even begun offering Ice Driving experiences in countries like Mongolia, Canada, and Finland.

While there are websites offering similar driving experiences, they are usually confined to a country, say, France. He isn’t aware of a company in Asia that’s offering these packages in various exotic locales.

“Don’t focus on how much money you will make; find something you’re passionate about. If you just look at money, you will forget that you won’t make money for a very long time.”

Daniel epitomizes the old-school, gut-it-out, learn-as-you-go kind of entrepreneur; a throwback to an earlier time. With no mentors, outside investment, or industry knowledge, he jumped into the dealership fray against grey heads with more experience, armed with nothing but savings from his previous businesses and his dream of building a global racing empire.

“There was no one to guide me or incubate my business. I didn’t know anyone in the industry either. When I showed up on the scene, everyone asked, ‘who’s this new kid on the block?’”

Being young certainly was a disadvantage, and people tended not to take him seriously. He had no grounds to stand on.

Being young also meant that while his friends were out partying and having fun, Daniel would be going on business trips and attending meetings.

“I didn’t have much fun. What kept me going was the joy that comes from creating something new,” he says.

The rough idea for Global Racing Schools came to him while he was still in Nanyang Polytechnic.

A client in his dealership business, who has been buying motorsports products for his child, asked Daniel if he knew where his child could train to become a professional racer.

Since there are so many schools and courses around the world, with so many locations and dates, the challenge is to sieve through all of them and find the quality ones.

Daniel realized that this pain point is something he can address. He worked on his business even while serving his two-year mandatory National Service stint in the Army. Since he worked regular hours as an engineer, he had time to execute on his business after work hours.

Global Racing School essentially serves two kinds of customers: First, corporations and individuals looking for unique experiences to gift someone, and second, aspiring professional racers looking for advice, consultation, and management.

Since it could cost up to US$8M to train a child from the age of six to become a Formula One driver, securing the right partners and racing schools is critically important.

“Suppliers will always tell you they can do it. But only we know what they can do, from a neutral standpoint. We know the pros and cons of the partners we work with.”

The challenge with building Global Racing Schools was that he was focusing on a niche market seeking for global experiences.

He had to build from scratch a network with suppliers. With a limited marketing budget, he used Google Adwords and SEO techniques to target customers. It took three years before he finally turned a profit.

“When the whole world doesn’t believe in you, you have to believe in yourself. Don’t focus on how much money you will make; find something you’re passionate about. If you just look at money, you will forget that you won’t make money for a very long time,” he says.

Moving forward, Daniel hopes to establish offices in more countries. While most of his customers come from Singapore, he believes that by having a sales force to meet corporate clients in more places, he will be able to dramatically widen his client base.

Starting a business is something that has always been in Daniel’s bones. In Primary school, he would sell drawing blocks and rent neckties to students that did not bring them. He has even founded a tuition center and a restaurant, which he has since shut down.

Daniel is now working on his fifth company, this time in the fashion line.

To this day, aside from the $5,000 capital he started out with, he has never needed another cash injection. He starts his next business from the money he made from the previous one.

While he isn’t close to building his race track yet, he is certainly one step closer to that ideal.

Video curated by Business.me, a place to share and discover videos about business.

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.

1) They lacked the mentality needed to be a successful hardware company.

The original Chumby: An Internet alarm clock with a touchscreen.

Andrew highlighted the unique challenges faced by hardware companies that set them apart from software companies. For one, getting early stage venture capital funding is difficult, since the sort of hockey stick growth desired by investors is difficult to attain for hardware companies due to the need to ship physical units to physical retail stores.

Hardware companies also need to deal with the holiday sales cycle that is part and parcel of the consumer electronics industry. In the United States, for example, sales of computer game titles during Christmas season can be ten times more than an equivalent span of time in the summer (this in-depth interview has more).

Television sets are extremely vulnerable to the sales cycle, since they are big ticket items that are purchased by families only once in a while. Christmas season is usually the preferred time to get one, since major sporting events like SuperBowl and March Madness are held early the following year.

In the case of Chumby, they found it challenging to adhere to the “ship or die” rule, since they are more of a software company with a hardware component.

Bunnie explains: “Culturally, it was hard for me to put across the fact that if you miss one cycle you’re going to have to struggle until you reach the next. There’s the sort of mentality that says, well, if you miss the Christmas season, it’s okay because there’re online sales and online retail channels. There were doubts about whether is it really the case that so much happens in Q4.”

2) They couldn’t pivot quickly enough because of too much soul-searching within the executive leadership.

When the iPhone became popular, they were in a state of denial. At first, they didn’t think the smartphone from Apple would be a competitor, but they were wrong. Although Chumby developed ‘widgets’, they had difficulty explaining the concept to consumers. Apple came along and changed the game with ‘apps’. Soon, every smartphone had them. Chumby was blindsided.

They embarked on the task of adopting to the terminology of apps. They changed the references on their website, but even that took the team some time to get used to. The concept of pivoting was culturally difficult for the company. As a result , they took too long to execute on their new strategy of creating app platforms for smart TVs.

“It took us a year to get into the space. There was some debate about how to do it. We actually did pretty well, but if only we moved a little quicker, a little faster. When we started executing it was fine. But at the top level there was some soul-searching, wandering; we went into staff meetings wondering about a lot of thing,” he says, ”We should have had more crisp decision making.”

3) With so many moving parts to their company, getting consensus from the various leads was a challenge.

ChumbyOne: Same as the original, except with a plastic casing.

Chumby’s products spanned hardware, software, and the cloud. So they had many managers that took care of different elements of a product, and consensus was necessary from everyone of them to move the company forward. Even if one piece could not agree to the new strategy, it could hold back the entire team.

“In a software startup, on the other hand, you have one or two people making the decisions, they tell a few minions to go this way, and you change,” he says.

Transitioning from touchscreen app interfaces to a smart TV design was hard, since apps for smartphones require touches while televisions had the remote control. Not only must the team change the user interface, they also had to create a new distribution method, style of Flash, server integration, and the whole vertical stack.

Things would have been easier if they started on smart TVs from day one. But pivoting meant that a lot of past work had to be undone.

“A lot of people had to go back and rip up their code. There’s a lot of inertia inside and it was very difficult to get over that.”

Reflecting on whether they could have done things better, bunnie says that consensus making is an art, and it really depends on the team composition and personality. For example, in the instance where the company’s management board is split 3-2, the two that disagree with you can be the ones putting in the most money, so even a majority vote wouldn’t work.

To orientate everyone in the same direction, the visionary needs to have strong beliefs, although using a hammer to bash through things will not always work.

“You have to get the right tools, sometimes you need persuasion, sometimes facts, and sometimes fear. It depends on the personality of people you’re working with.”

4) Adobe’s abandonment of Flash was the last nail in the coffin.

The Chumby8: An Internet photo frame + tablet

The tech landscape has changed a lot since the company started in 2006. While Apple’s entry into the mobile phone space caused Chumby to pivot once, Adobe’s abandonment of Flash indicated that it was time to give up.

Although they were making moves internally to adopt HTML5, it was not happening fast enough. Already, a lot of other platforms are adopting HTML5, and Chumby itself would need another infusion of capital to pivot one more time.

Bunnie realized that since there was already so much money invested in the venture, it does not make sense to pivot again. Instead, clearing the table and starting afresh was the better option, if one can stomach doing a new startup.

“Our Investors said, this is it. Maybe some bridge money can come through, but we found ourselves saying, someone has to buy us or we go out of business. It’s like gravity, you can’t defy it  for too long.”

Chumby sought out acquirers, but even that proved to be a challenge. Despite the hype about Instagram’s acquisition of Facebook, the market as a whole was sluggish. Consumer spending has not soared, and the economy was not booming.

In a white-hot market, people will bid and play off one another. Chumby had expected a whole cast of characters to be natural acquirers, including tier one OEM partners whose products would be affected if they went bust.

“Except that all of them are hurting so badly right now in terms of cash and ability to execute. Chumby put their technology into the Sony Dash, for example. There are a lot of those out there. But Sony just laid off 10,000 people. How can you justify an acquisition of technology when you fire so many staff? The macroeconomic picture was poor for companies and our partners.”

In the end, Technicolor bought some of their assets. Despite leaving the investors with a substantial amount of debt, it was still a fair outcome because very few people ended up without a job.

“It wasn’t like we laid them off and left them on the streets. The same office had the same people, just a new boss.”

Photo: Joi Ito, Spiegel

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.

And they rocked. The consensus among the attendees was that the pitches were polished and well-delivered. There wasn’t a single bad pitch.

Business ideas were solid and addressed valid pain points, although some were concerned about how easy it is to copy some of those products.

But the fact that the presentations were nice and shiny isn’t an accident. The pitches were appalling at first, Edgar Hardless, CEO of Singtel Innov8,  and vastly improved only with much coaching. Many of the startups pivoted after much critical feedback as well.

An extreme example is Gradeful, a mobile app for dads, which pivoted on Day 80 to become Remember, a mobile photo scrapbook for families. HobbyMash, too, pivoted in Day 50 to become FamilyKo, after realizing that it would be hard to monetize their original idea.

At the end of the pitches, the startups went to their corners and waited as investors flocked to find out more about the teams and their products.

While there was quite a lot of variety in the 11 teams, SoLoMo, a term which I use grudgingly, is still very much alive and well. Most of the startups have some element of each, and it looks set to be the wave of the future.

Analytical tools featured big as well in startups like TradeGecko, Stubb (formerly Qryo), and FetchFans, indicating how businesses are increasingly embracing data-driven decision-making.

What is surprising to me are the amount of family and child-oriented startups around. FamilyKo and Remember deal with the themes of using mobile devices to bridge the divide between children and their busy or geographically distant parents. Kark and Wildby revolve around educating children in interactive and age-appropriate ways.

From what I have seen and heard, many of the teams have generated great interest and buzz from investors, and some were oversubscribed.

Angel investing is a little like playing Poker -- lots of educated guesses.

The value of the Bootcamp in sharpening the various ideas was apparent. According to Amit Anand, managing partner of Jungle Ventures, incubators like JFDI.Asia fills a gap in the ideation stage, identifying great problems to solve (video interview).

Granted, there is room for improvement, such as balancing between frank feedback and more gentle guidance, but Demo Day was the best send-off possible.

At this point, there is still a lot for startups to do. The next step for them, naturally, is to secure funding, and whether they receive it could determine which country they would be based in.

Wayne Soh, business development manager at Plug and Play Singapore, believes that some companies might find it easier to raise money at home with their own contacts.

For angel investors, their challenge is to make educated guesses about which entrepreneurs to invest in, based on the very limited information they have about each startup: Current market positions, whether the product addresses a pain point, and whether the team is positioned to succeed.

It’s a bit like playing Poker, a fact I was reminded of when JFDI.Asia co-founder Meng Weng Wong gave us, the media, millions in Poker chips to play Fantasy Investor for a day.

It certainly isn’t an easy call to make. The ball is now in the courts of the investors and startups to work out partnerships that will take them to growth stage and beyond.

Additional reporting by Sharon Lourdes Paul. Photo album of the event here.

More coverage of JFDI-Innov8 Bootcamp and its startups here.

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.

Within Trafflers, individuals can plan details like flights, hotels, and travel destinations. All members of the group can suggest places they’d like to go, and Trafflers will then score each destination based on how they fit the group as a whole. This is done by analyzing each member’s interactions.

“A similar thing happens when you visit a physical travel agency. The travel agent sizes you up within ten seconds and gives you a recommendation based on your appearance,” says Koh San Ngai.

The co-founders bill Trafflers as a more complete solution than other travel startups. While Wanderfly, Hipmunk, and Kayak have been popular in the US, they only solve one particular aspect of travel planning, and not the entire process. Trafflers hopes to cover more ground.

Trafflers is also an attempt to make travel planning more fun and joyful with an attractive and simple interface that doesn’t have a steep learning curve.

After setting up a trip on Trafflers, friends will be able to see live updates of the planning in process, message one another on the platform, and receive recommendations on plane tickets based on their current location. When booking hotels and flights, they will be redirected to a partner site to do the reservation.

For now, users can only plan a series of cities they want to visit and not actual destinations within cities, which make the site more ideal for backpackers.

“We designed the site for ourselves,” says Kenneth.

The site has launched quietly for a while now with very little marketing, and is now seeing 100 users a day, Koh tells me.

Having browsed the site myself, I find that it could use more polish. For instance, whenever I update my itinerary, I fail to see the changes in my travel planner, unless I refresh the page. Sometimes, the “explore now” and “view your plan” buttons don’t show up, which means I can’t add new destinations or look at the overall plan. The site needs to be a little more responsive.

But these are early days for Trafflers yet, and I’m sure many more improvements are on the way.

The site has some features that I like too, such as the ability to search for destinations by both price and length of days. Koh also tells me that more functionality is on the way, such as displaying daily expenses estimates of destinations, which should prove to be a valuable addition.

More coverage of JFDI-Innov8 Bootcamp. The Bootcamp is a technology startup accelerator program in Singapore (part of the Global Accelerator Network) where participants build a prototype within 100 days. Demo Day is on 4th May, 2012.

Jerome Punzalan from SpinMeBuddy

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.

For those of you new to what Startup Weekend is about, it is essentially an event where participants, some complete strangers, form teams over 54 hours to hash out a business idea and pitch to a panel of judges.

Some came in with a startup idea already in the works, while others were salaried employees who just want to get a glimpse of what startup life is like.

The event, held from 27th April to 29th April at the MINT College in Taguig City, Metro Manila, saw over 200 participants from around the country, more than last year.

And while the inaugural SW Manila had mostly engineering talent, this year’s crowd had more business-oriented participants, which showed in some of the pitches.

Over 60 ideas were whittled down to just 29, through a process of voting. Participants whose ideas were not selected could still forge ahead, or choose to join another team. Mentors would then go around to guide the teams and ask the tough questions.

The final pitches on day three are the result of that intense process.

So, without further adieu, I present you the winners of this edition of Startup Weekend Manila:

People’s Choice: MentorsDojo

A website that links entrepreneurs in startups with mentors. They endured some tough questions from the judges about their business model and whether they are able to attain traction, but they did manage to win the hearts of the crowd.

Build-a-better-world prize: 1Share1Life.com

A web app that curates compelling stories about people in need and rallies donations from people via Facebook. What impressed me about this bunch was that they managed to get a real life story from a hospital and secure actual donations. The results of their hard work: 541 shares, 84,552 impressions, and more than 5,000 pesos ( US$118) in pledged donations.

Best e-commerce prize: SpinMeBuddy

A web app for finding a random restaurant or things-to-do using a digital spin wheel. It’s location-based, so it shares relevant stuff based on where you are. It’s a fun and novel approach to location-based discovery. Credit to Jerome Punzalan for a great presentation too. When judge JoJo Flores asked him if the app is already working, Jerome replied: “It’s spinning, right?”

Classic.

Fourth prize: Sphere

They are working on digital and interactive choose-your-own adventure stories in the vein of the popular series kids used to love in the past. It could really sell if executed well, but I wonder how would they fare against computer games with strong story-telling elements?

Third prize and best Windows Phone app prize: Traqme

A mobile safety app that automatically tracks your last known location over constant intervals once activated. It is quite similar to SecQ.me from Malaysia, which made an appearance at DEMO Asia. And yes, you need permission to track the person, so wives who want to spy on errant husbands have to look elsewhere…

Second prize: RideFind

RideFind is a carpooling web service in the style of AirBnB. Users can find drivers near their area who are traveling to the desired destination. It’s a way for travelers to save costs.

First prize: Kiddle

A gamified web app that lets kids earn points and upgrade their avatars by completing tasks like household chores and homework. It’s not only makes mundane tasks more fun, but also bonds children to their parents.

The teams were judged based on business model, execution, and customer validation. Several of the participants had awesome ideas even though they didn’t win.

I particularly liked MyRemitHub, a one-stop online marketplace for remittance services, PayBillis, a mobile app that consolidates bills and lets users view and pay them in-app, and BabyFairy, a website that sends baby products to customers on a monthly basis for a flat fee.

The next Startup Weekend in the Philippines will be held in Cebu from 11th May to 13th May.

Photos of SW Manila Day One and Two
Photos of SW Manila Day Three
Articles about Startup Weekend

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.”

Describing the product in words doesn’t do it justice, but I’ll try (I requested for a video, but it wasn’t ready). The theme of their prototype is the weather, and the cards that come with the app has depictions of the sun, clouds, moon, or wind.

After you open up the app, a 2D landscape pops up. Whenever you wave one of the cards in front of the phone (say, the sun card, which has a QR code on it), the sun emerges in the landscape. Flash the cloud card, and a cloud appears.

What impressed me during the demo was the app’s interactivity. As you flash the card repeatedly, more clouds appear. You can move the clouds around with your fingers, or combine it with other clouds. When it gets too big, it starts to rain. Wave the wind card and these objects will be blown away.

It’s an easy way to teach kids aged five and above concepts like precipitation, or the fact that there’s only one sun (flash the sun card repeatedly does nothing, unlike the cloud card) for us in our solar system.

The team, which consists of CMO Daniel Simon, CCO Fithor Faris, and CTO Bullit Sesariza, has already begun testing their product with kids. The response has been positive so far.

“We thought they’ll be bored after 15 minutes. The session ended up lasting an hour,” says Sundhu.

Mapping out their product roadmap on the whiteboard, he tells me that Kark has 12 main apps lined up, and two expansions per app. Each edition would focus on a different theme, and would come with their own card pack. They hope to officially launch in August.

The company is unique in that it hopes to conquer both the retail marketplace and mobile app marketplace.

Sindhu says they will be distributing their cards to retail outlets in Indonesia: Convenience stores, bookstores, and especially toy stores. When kids buy those cards, they would be enticed to download the app, which would in turn drive them to purchase even more cards — a positive feedback loop.

Working with mobile carriers presents a huge opportunity for them as well. Instead of throwing used prepaid cards away, every one of them could become a keepsake if they’re made into collectible trading cards. There’s also massive potential in licensing popular cartoon characters, which will make their products even more appealing to kids.

Achieving all this would require a fair bit of funding for manufacturing. They’d also need to secure the right production and distribution partners.

Kark is certainly a startup to watch, as they were the winners of the Telkomsel Startup Bootcamp. And despite still being in the prototype stage (the final design of the cards has not been decided), they’ve already attracted a lot of attention from potential partners.

From left: CMO Daniel Simon, CCO Fithor Faris, CTO Bullit Sesariza, and CEO Sindhu Prabowo Dilaksono

The team also has the right blend of entrepreneurial, creative, technical, and industry experience. One of the startup’s founders, Bullit, came from the trading card industry, and knows the right manufacturers. They are even collaborating with an education consultant to make sure their games will benefit kids.

Among the startups at the Bootcamp, Kark has perhaps the most moving parts, unlike a run-of-the-mill mobile app company. The team is ambitious as well; they’re aiming to get a million customers one year after launch.

Hearing about what they have to say, and the plans they have in store (a lot of it is still in the discussion stage and not public knowledge), I think the company has a decent shot at carving a massive niche for themselves in the children’s education and gaming market, not just in Indonesia, but around the world.

More coverage of JFDI-Innov8 Bootcamp. The Bootcamp is a technology startup accelerator program in Singapore (part of the Global Accelerator Network) where participants build a prototype within 100 days. Demo Day is on 4th May, 2012.

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:

Some of you may be shocked by the venom thrown at foreigners in these forums. It’s a political issue, which I’m not going to dwell on, but here’s the gist of it: Many Singaporeans have been rather peeved lately by the government’s liberal immigration policies, and they feel like they’re not being taken cared of enough.

In this context, the tepid reaction towards the restaurant’s actions wasn’t surprising.

Regardless of who’s right or wrong here, there are many lessons startups can learn from this incident. While I’m certainly no customer service expert, I intend this article to be the start of a fruitful discussion — a departure from the mindless raging you see in the forums.

1) When interacting with customers on social media, think twice before posting anything.

The Internet forgets easily, but it doesn’t forgive. Deleted articles and comments are easily captured and live on for perpetuity. While Internet users are generally fickle-minded and move quickly from controversy to controversy, rest assured that any online misdemeanor, real or perceived, can be easily dug out online.

With that in mind, it really pays to think carefully about how you respond to angry customers. As slighted as you feel — and that’s understandable since your business is your baby — a badly handled PR situation could boomerang on you, a hundred times.

In Guy Wach’s case, perhaps that terse comment wasn’t the best way to deal with the situation. Perhaps he did it in a moment of anger, and angry heads are not rational.

2) For God’s sake, read the news.

This controversy might have been avoided had the owners been more careful about the cultural context they operate in. As far removed as it sounds, understand not only the business environment, but also the society in its entirety. This can really help you get customers.

Had the Wild Honey folks been sensitive to the anti-foreigner sentiments brewing in Singapore right now, they might not have responded the way they did.

Whether or not this favoritism towards foreigners is really happening, the managers might want to ensure it will never occur, given how Singaporeans despise it.

3) If you decide to apologize to a customer, remember to validate your staff too, especially if they did nothing wrong.

As an entrepreneur, you aren’t just a PR spokesperson. You’re an employer, leader, and cheerleader. It’s often the case that the customer thinks they are right when in fact the employees did nothing wrong. In such instances, be sure to also pull your staff aside and reassure them that you have their backs. Public chastisement can backfire and bring down company morale.

4) Deleting negative comments on Facebook doesn’t help.

Tempting as it might sound to delete the negative comments that flood your Facebook Page as a result of the negative backlash, remember that a Facebook Page does not work the same way as your company newsletter. It is not a one-way street.

Deleting comments willy-nilly might give the impression that you’re hiding something or being insincere. A balance has to be struck here: While there are comments that deserve to be deleted for whatever reasons — being racist, for example — others should stand because they’re valuable feedback.

You have to roll with the punches.

5) Customers are not always right, so there’s no need to bend over backwards for them.

You are providing a service, not a sweatshop. Customers make all sorts of demands, and a lot of them are unreasonable. In the age of social media, people like to make a huge song and dance about a company when they feel offended, so giving them what they want — an insensitive comment — is the surest route towards a PR disaster.

To defuse a tense situation when you feel they are unjustified, make your response as uncontroversial as possible, while giving the impression that you are dealing with the situation behind closed doors. No need to give a public account. Do apologize, but do it without saying that the errant customer is right.

An alternative approach to consider is to give them exactly what they want, and more besides. It is the “turn the other cheek” method.

A good case study would be this incident that occurred between OCBC Bank and a customer who demanded a cake on her birthday.

She literally got her cake and ate it. And some backlash of her own on the side.

OCBC Bank came out the winner.