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
Amobee, a US-based digital advertising company owned by SingTel, has announced today the acquisition of AdJitsu, the standalone 3D mobile advertising business unit of Cooliris.
This purchase enables Amobee to leverage on AdJitsu’s technology to create greater innovation in 3D mobile ads. Amobee will also collaborate with ad networks, premium publishers, brands and agencies to create 3D ad units. Read more
Before Perx co-founders Andrew Roth and Jon Sugihara started work on their loyalty card mobile app, which is now the market leader in Singapore, they ran successful daily deals site PLAYhawaii.com. It was on track to generate US$2M in revenue a year.
Based in Hawaii, they expanded their business to Asia, founding Maiplay last year with Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin as an investor and advisor. They launched in Jakarta and Singapore, entering a heated field dominated by Groupon.
However, they dumped their daily deals business within months. They sold PLAYhawaii.com and launched their loyalty card mobile app in October 2011. They’re now based in Singapore.
What sparked the change was their belief that daily deals is a lousy way to acquire loyal customers for merchants. The hunch paid off: At the time of the interview, Perx had close to 40,000 registered users, and about 400 merchants in Singapore, with 10 to 20 new locations each week.
Their partner merchants are not lightweights either. Big brands like Popeyes, Famous Amos, and Dunkin Donuts have come on board. With pole position in the country secured (around!, Pointpal, and Squiryl are competitors), they are now working with a partner to scale their business to other parts of Asia.
“When we call merchants, we really had to tell them not to hang up as we’re not a daily deals company.”
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 was on 4th May, 2012.
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 was on 4th May, 2012.
PricePanda, an online price comparison site, will be the next new business from Rocket Internet to land in Southeast Asia, according to Indonesia tech blog DailySocial.
Although the websites are not ready, the company has already reserved domain names for Singapore, Malaysia, Philippines, and Vietnam.
DailySocial has also learnt that the service will launch once they have secured enough local e-commerce partners, which will supplement the Samwer Brothers-owned ones like Zalora and Lazada. 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
While technology has enabled us to capture thousands of photos and upload them onto various social networks, they haven’t quite help us to make sense of these memories yet.
At least, that’s what one of the JFDI Bootcamp startups, Gradeful, had to share with us.
According to the team, social networks on mobile such as Path, Instagram and Facebook don’t cater well to families’ needs. The lack of privacy, fragmentation across devices and networks and a general sense of “okay, so I’ve taken a picture of my family, what’s next?” are some of the key pain points that parents face.
Que Remember, Gradeful’s mobile app that’s useful for families when it comes to curating memories. It acts as a scrapbook for all the moments you’ve recorded on your smartphone and helps you to create new memories by suggesting interesting, new activities to try together as a family. Once that’s done, you have a choice to upload them onto your Facebook timeline as a digital photo book and celebrate these memories with your loved ones. Read more
As a student bitten by the wanderlust bug, Flocations sure calls out to me. It is a travel discovery app that aims to help visitors discover new places based on a predetermined budget.
Throughout the JFDI-Innov8 2012 Bootcamp, the Singapore-based team had been iterating their product, with much focus on improving its user experience. They overhauled their entire site last month. Here is a round up of three key features they have:
