Review of E27 SG: Startup Republic : Sept 13

Just yesterday night was our partners, E27 SG’s third event and SGEntrepreneurs is glad to have been there to support the event. With around 150 attendees tossing ideas and comments around while munching on pizzas and drinks, the event proved to be yet another success for this young organization. Here, we look at what went on during the event.

The RSVP list on the wiki for E27 SG’s “unconference”: Startup Republic, held in the heart of the city at the SMU campus was overwhelming – way bigger than what the organizers thought would be. At any one time, there were at least two concurrent discussion groups going on at the same time as part of Startup Republic.

At first only two seminars were planned: a brainstorming session on Web 2.0 led by ASES-INSEAD, and a presentation of several local Web 2.0 startups (blurbme.com, woolert.com, ping.sg, bookjetty.com). However, though Startup Republic was supposed to be centered around Web 2.0, upon talking to quite a few of the attendees, the organizers of E27 realized that not all of the participants knew what Web 2.0 was – many were in fact totally clueless. So, to keep with the notion of the informal and user-focused nature of the unconference, two new discussions were pulled outta the magician’s hat: (1) Introduction to Web 2.0 (2) Online Education.

The brainstorming session on Web 2.0 attempted to define what exactly Web 2.0 means and answers from the crowd varied from “making profits” to geek-speak like “Ajax”, and “folksonomy”. While a clear answer might not have been gotten after the session, it certainly did give participants food for thought and to increase their geek vocabulary with such a word as “folksonomy”!

The live demos of the four startups and the casual manner with which the speakers shared their experiences, made the session highly interactive and fun to be at. (Podcasts were also being coordinated by podcastgearguide.com, links at bottom).

(1) Find a problem and solve it! Don’t just sit around waiting for life to get better; stand up and do it yourself. That’s exactly what the startups that presented got started. Ming You of blurbme.com, shared with us how he was motivated to start this social life (restaurants, nightlife, etc) review site because of a previous bad experience. He had been exasperated from being unable to find a good restaurant to bring his date to, and decided that set up a site that melded social networks with reviews! Don’t need to email or text all your friends asking for advice and suggestions as to where’s good to go – just go online and see what they have written about it. The site rests on the assumption that you are more likely to trust your friend’s opinion than that of a stranger.

Same went for the other startups. Bookjetty.com saw the trouble to be taken when one wants to check if a book that they saw on Amazon.com is available at the National Library Board (NLB) for borrowing (you gotta first check Amazon, then key in the ISBN or title or keyword in NLB’s search engine, and thereafter verify that it is the book you want, only to find out that it’s “out on loan”). Bookjetty saves you the hassle and allows you to immediately find the book, see how popular it is (through review stars as on Amazon’s website), and whether it is available at the various branches of NLB. Pretty nifty I must say!

(2) A one-person show is possible. Three out of four of the startups were one-person shows – and they are doing well!

(3) You can be an entrepreneur and still be in school! Ping.sg and Woolert.com both showed how you can straddle both fields. U-Zyn of Ping.sg is still in NUS, and Woolert.com’s team is still in SMU.

Picture 1: Small intense discussions by participants

Picture 2: U-Zyn of Ping.sg presenting

Picture 3: (from left) Ming You of blurbme.com, Herryanto Siatono of BookJetty.com, member of audience, Joe Goh of FunkeeMonk

Concurrent with the above presentations of the startups, an online education discussion group was led by Coen Ching. He got the group talking about trends in online education and how to make money from them. Key topics discussed were some of the forms of online education (Wikipedia, ebooks, webcasts, virtual classroom, forums etc) and how to generate content (could get professors from local universities to contribute little mini bite-sized 101 introductory pieces to a subject and thereafter learning would take place through questions posed on the forum by users. Comments from the floor also noted that money might not come from the actual end-user/learner when it might actually be the parents of these learners who would be choosing and thus paying for this online education.

Picture 4: Online education discussion led by Coen

While that’s from the actual unconference itself, what else can we learn the managing of it?

(1) Be prepared for less-than-expected turnout, as well as more-than-expected-and-highly-satisfying-to-know huge turnout! Which was what exactly happened at the event. It was a nice surprise but this nice surprise created a pretty chaotic situation whereby the organizers had to change rooms to accommodate everyone. And the discussion group on Web 2.0 and startup presentations were overflowing with people (which looks infinitely better than a 50% filled room).

(2) Communication, communication! Handling a large crowd ain’t easy, especially when you find it hard to find your fellow organizers amidst all the black/dyed-haired Singaporean dudes. Talk to quickly pass the word on what needs to be done and split up jobscopes clearly. Don’t leave room for ambiguity. In such a situation, unclear communication leads to things not done.

(3) Use your cellphone (and network)! The author received a call while on her way to the event to grab something needed for it! And so she did.

All in all, E27 SG again brought together the local entrepreneurial community and especially those involved in the Web 2.0 field. It was good meeting everyone in a chaotic and thus casual setting – rather than traditional formal seminars and conferences where everything is planned and run like clockwork. Hurray for chaos!

 

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