The investment, announced by the startup today, was made as part of i.JAM Reload, a Singapore government co-investment scheme. Wish Ronquillo, creative director at mig33, has come on board as LoveByte’s advisor. The funds will be used to accelerate the startup’s operations and growth in the next six to nine months. With over 20,000 users already, the investment would go some way towards paying for server costs, and more besides.
Steve Sng, founder of LoveByte, noted the support of incubator space Plug-In@Blk71 while his team was bootstrapping. It provided hot desks, a supportive and helpful community, as well as open pitch sessions for startups.
Singaporean Steven Goh was on Interpol’s wanted list for being a black hat hacker.
But the law grabbed him by the tail. Nine years ago, He was arrested by Singapore’s Criminal Investigation Department (CID) for coordinating a large-scale global botnet — which involves infiltrating a massive number of computers through malicious software. He was 17.
Steven thought he was going to jail, but fate yielded him a second chance. The CID decided to let him off with a stern warning after two years of investigation. He secured a place in the National University of Singapore too. Steven then decided to channel his independent streak towards something entirely different.
“The day I spent in lock-up was the day I turned into an entrepreneur,” said the NOC alumnus.
Today, he is the founder of Spawt, a free mobile app for iOS and Android that helps users discover experiences around them. Steven bills it as an “intelligent and social city guide” that aims to be the “Google of real life”. It is targeted at the United States and Singapore market. Read more
FashionSpace, a Singapore-based social publishing platform for fashion, has received a six-figure investor from existing backer Crystal Horse Investments (CHI) and a private investor, it announced on 31st May in a press release.
This round is on top of the S$250k (US$200k) seed funding it received from CHI in August last year.
The latest round coincides with the startup’s first anniversary. It was launched in May last year in conjunction with Audi Fashion Week. Read more
“I’m a good boss, I really am,” John Fearon, founder and CEO of DropMySite, tells me, in full earshot of his employee at their office in Block 71, Ayer Rajar Crescent, considered the nexus of Singapore’s technology startup scene.
He was making a point about how he’d be a bad subordinate but a good leader who is comfortable with starting things.
“I’m one of those that can go into the room and self-combust.”
With all his self-confidence (whenever he speaks at conferences, he start with,”Hi, I’m amazing”), it’s easy to assume that John, who comes from South Africa, has a string of successful businesses to stand on. Not at all.
I prod him about the number of failed businesses he had.
(Photo: John being featured in an Amazon Web Services video)
John struggles to find his words, which is a rarity. He’d lost count, but finally arrived at an initial figure: Five. Read more
Google Southeast Asia’s senior conversion specialist, Vinoaj Vijeyakummar, has left the search company to become the head of product development at Dropmyemail, a service owned by Singapore startup DropMySite, reported techcircle.
The company is started by ex-marketing professional John Fearon. Dropmyemail is a service that lets users back-up their emails on the cloud. It has amassed 500,000 users within two months of its launch, John claims. Read more
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.
Here are some interesting startup news snippets from Malaysia, not only in its capital, Kuala Lumpur, but also other startup hubs such as Penang, Malacca, and many more. Read more
Singapore-based Crystal Horse Investments announced that they have pumped in an undisclosed sum of second round funds into Malaysia-based Ocision, which owns and manages iBilik, a short term rentals site in the vein of AirBnb and Roomorama. Read more
LoveByte is spurned no more. After receiving little love from investors, the startup, which has developed a private social network for lovers, received a 6-figure seed funding from Crystal Horse Investments and Ruvento Ventures.
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