“HackerSpace requires substantial dedication and effort, and thus can be considered to indicate the existence of a more developed and substantial geek community,” she wrote, adding that Hackerspaces are gaining momentum in Southeast Asia. These spaces are distinct in that they are independent from the government and large corporations.

Within a year, four new establishments arose in Indonesia, and they are located in the cities of Bandung, Surabaya, Yogyakarta, and Medan. Jakarta is on track to have one too.

HackerSpace Bandung was in fact inspired by HackerSpace.SG. A group of Bandung geeks visited Singapore and enjoyed the activities, venue, and vibe in what was nicknamed the “Zouk of Geekdom” (Zouk is a popular nightclub in Singapore). The Bandung establishment in turn inspired similar venues in other parts of Indonesia. Malaysia has two HackerSpaces in Kuala Lumpur and Johor Bahru. Vietnam and the Philippines too have their own establishments.

Zane also touched on the popularity of BarCamps in Southeast Asia, which in fact sowed the seeds for the genesis of HackerSpaces in the region. The first BarCamp was held in Singapore in 2007, and quickly spread to other parts of Southeast Asia. The initiators behind these meetings are usually geek entrepreneurs who, in exchange for their organizing efforts, receive new contacts, increased visibility and authority.

Malaysian BarCamps are described as “One big tech kenduri“, a Malay term which means celebration, religious ceremony, or feast. In Myanmar, the opening of BarCamp Yangon saw over 4,000 participants, making it the world’s largest event of its kind.

Online platforms have also arisen to serve as information sources for geeks and a first point of contact for someone from Silicon Valley who wants to know the local geek communities. Websites that Zane highlighted include: Dailysocial.net from Indonesia, Entrepreneurs.my from Malaysia, as well as e27.sg and SGE from Singapore.

To conclude, Zane highlighted existing tensions between local geeks and the environment they reside in. She noted that much of geek culture is adopted from the West, resulting in some discontent with local circumstances.

She quoted a Malaysian geek entrepreneur: “I am banana: yellow outside, white inside… I don’t belong here.”

In many cases, geek status is not entirely accepted by parents and not well-loved outside of the geek community. In the cases of Malaysia and Indonesia, infrastructure remains a problem; while in Singapore, its small market of five million and cultural incompatibilities are seen as troublesome.

“Geeks in Singapore often joke that Singapore is too perfect and controlled to actually have ‘space’ for the next big thing:  creative innovation that could shake the technological universe,” wrote Zane.

“Cultural explanations are sought to explain success or the lack of it. An excessive focus on prestige and success, risk aversion and unwillingness to share new ideas and collaborate, is often mentioned as the reason why the Singaporean cultural environment is not well-fitted for entrepreneurship.”

It also marks ten years since the Singapore government established an Economic Review Committee to fundamentally review the country’s development strategy, and formulate a blueprint for economic restructuring.

(Photo: The Parliament House. By Kojach)

The ERC published its report in 2003, and one of the key objectives identified was to make Singapore “a creative and entrepreneurial nation, willing to take risks to create fresh businesses and blaze new paths to success”.

This twin anniversary would seem to be an opportune moment to take stock of what has been achieved so far in the country’s efforts to become a ‘a creative and entrepreneurial nation’.

Let’s start with the positives.

No doubt, the landscape has changed. Literally. The whole one-north development has created a concentration of researchers, practitioners, and academics that is already producing creative results.

For example, an increasing number of INSEAD MBA students are choosing to work on projects coming out of the various research institutes that are now our neighbours, and I see this as a tendency that will continue to grow.

In more general terms, my experience is that young Singaporeans have taken to the idea of starting and running their own business with enthusiasm.

This can be seen in the number of new company registrations here, which has grown tremendously over the past eight years, but also in the number of entrepreneurship-related organisations that have sprouted up, such as SGEntrepreneurs.com, an online publication on entrepreneurship in Singapore and Southeast Asia, and e27, which organizes events and meetups in the tech startup space.

The universities and polytechnics here also have thriving entrepreneurial activities, and NUS organises the popular business plan competition, Startup@Singapore.

The Singaporean government has also been tireless in its efforts to support entrepreneurs.

These have ranged from financing schemes, through specially organised networking events to encourage mutual help and support, streamlined company registration procedures, a new look at bankruptcy laws, and a special work permit to smooth the path for would-be entrepreneurs from outside Singapore.

As a result, an ever increasing number of entrepreneurs are coming here to start their ventures.

Paradoxically, it is in the area of government efforts to help start-ups that the less positive elements are also found.

One constant complaint I keep hearing about government funding schemes is that they are a bureaucratic hassle. Many people have told me over the years that they don’t even consider these schemes precisely because of the hassle element.

This problem was particularly evident in the way the NRF incubator scheme was handled last year. The scheme itself is a great idea – create a series of Singapore-based incubators, mostly run by people with Silicon Valley experience.

Interest in this scheme was tremendous, and NRF had a large pool of applicants to choose from. They chose seven, but then proceeded to micro-manage the whole subsequent process, creating a huge amount of frustration and resentment.

In many ways, this tendency to micro-manage, accompanied by an arrogant ‘we-know-better-than-you’ approach, is the one area in which Singapore is still light years away from Silicon Valley mindsets.

This characteristic was well captured 12 years ago by Sim Wong Hoo of Creative Technology in his now famous ‘NUTS’ piece.

NUTS stands for ‘no U-turn syndrome’. Sim explained:

NUTS is when you want to do something and you seek approval of a higher authority. When there is no rule saying that you can do such a thing, then the standard answer is NO …

In the US, when there is no sign on the road, it means that you can make a U-turn. When the authorities do not want people to make U-turns, they will put up signs to tell you not to make U-turns. In Singapore, it is the reverse. When there is no sign on the road, you are not allowed to make U-turns. When the authorities allow you to make U-turns, then they will put up signs to give you that right.

The two different systems serve the same purpose – to better manage the traffic. They may look quite similar, just coming from different directions, but the social repercussion is significant.

- Chaotic Thoughts from the Old Millenium, Sim Wong Hoo, Creative Technology Pte Ltd, 1999

Much to the Singapore government’s credit, this message appeared to have been received and understood. In the then Prime Minister’s speech on National Day 2003, he said that henceforth, the default answer would be ‘yes’ rather than ‘no’.

However, the experience of the incubators last year would seem to show that the NUTS mindset is still very much alive and flourishing here.

This impression is further reinforced by severely critical comments made during a Q&A session with Dr Tony Tan organised just over two months ago by SGE. Amongst other criticisms made during the session, Dr Wong Poh Kam, NUS professor and an angel investor himself, pointed out that the government still micromanages in their involvement with investors:

You spend a lot of time trying to convince the bureaucrats that some of these rules do not work.

An entrepreneur acquaintance of mine never tires of saying that the best thing governments can do to help entrepreneurs may simply be to keep out of the way!

In summary, then, there are both positive and negative developments in Singapore entrepreneurship. I’ve always thought that what Singapore had set out to do following the ERC report of 2002/3 would take any normal country a generation to achieve.

Singapore could probably achieve it in half the time, given its ability to change direction faster than other countries. On this timeline we are currently at year 8 out of 12.

Can Singapore maintain the impetus created while tackling the deeply ingrained mindset problems described above?

If it wishes to create a Silicon Valley style entrepreneurial environment here, it has no choice. It has to.

This piece was originally submitted to The Business Times (at their request), but they asked for the critical parts of the content to be ‘toned down’. The author has decided to publish it on SGE instead.

After spending ten years with Levi Strauss Europe, Patrick Turner left Levi’s in order to launch his own jeans marketing company, after which he subsequently acquired and managed another small company, both in Spain. Now, he is Affiliate Professor of Entrepreneurship and Family Enterprise at INSEAD and has been at the institution since 1999, specifically teaching MBA courses on acquisitions, new business creation, and managing growth ventures, on both the Fontainebleau and Singapore campuses.

Read also:

An entrepreneur talks about the downside of government grants

Timothy C. Draper is the Founder and a Managing Director of Draper Fisher Jurvetson. His original suggestion to use “viral marketing” in web-based e-mail to geometrically spread an Internet product to its market was instrumental to the successes of Hotmail and YahooMail, and has been adopted as a standard marketing technique by hundreds of businesses.

On behalf of Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Tim serves on the boards of DoAt, Glam, Meebo, Prosper, SocialText, and DFJ Plug ‘N Play companies. DFJ’s previous successes include: Skype, Overture.com, Baidu, Parametric Technology, Hotmail, PLX Technologies, Preview Travel, Digidesign, and others.

Event Details

When: Friday, 14th October 2011
Time: 7pm onwards
Where: The Studio Cocktail Bar, 778 North Bridge Road, Singapore 198746 (Map)
Fee: S$20-S$25
Register here.

Program Details

7pm–710pm Welcome/Opening speech by e27 & Penn Olson
710pm–725pm Opening speech by Amazon Web Services
725pm–740pm Case Study 1 (Qlubbr)
740pm–755pm Case Study 2 (Gastro Couture)
755pm–815pm Panel Roundup
815pm–900pm Networking

Event Details

When: Wed, Aug 31
Time: 7pm-9pm
Where: Amazon Web Services, Capital Square, 23 Church Street, #10-01, 049481 Singapore (Map)
Register here.

Identifii
Identifii aims to make career discovery simpler for young professionals by helping to solve the problems they face when selecting their career. The company seeks to educate their users about their personality preferences in order to help them make better career decisions. On the employee side, Identifii enables employees to target applicants whose personality characteristics and aptitude suits the company requirements.

PlayMoolah
PlayMoolah is the brainchild of Min Xuan, Audrey and Alam. The company provides a fun online platform for kids, aged 5 to 11, to save, manage, and earn an allowance. PlayMoolah leverages on game mechanics for behavior change, empowering children with the curiosity, knowledge, skills and tools needed for financial capability. Meanwhile, parents are equipped with a separate platform to monitor, reward, and engage with their child’s progress. (PlayMoolah just exhibited at SXSW in the US.)

Fetch Plus Asia Pacific
Fetch Plus’ product, FetchFans, is an interactive custom brand design engine built for commercial use that designs templates for Facebook, Twitter and blogs through a three-step process. This allows companies to update their pages with messages, new offers and promotions quickly in order to always be in contact with their customer base.

LoveByte
They always say “The more, the merrier”. LoveByte looks to bring this to blogging, from the bloggers point. Instead of a lone blogger, think blogging as a couple activity. LoveByte is a couple blogging application that aims to inject an element of romance into the activity. The application incentivize couples to contribute actively towards perserving their special moments together through fun challenges and rewards.

Not a Basement Studio
Not a Basement Studio is made out of a team of five Vietnamese students in the Singapore Management University who are captivated with developing apps for the iPhone and iPad. Their product, Wikly! Glance, aims to replace all your boring, native calendar apps with something beautiful and intuitive. Wikly! Glance provides users with the ability to customize their calendars with many of the apps beautifully designed themes. Not only look forward to an exciting week ahead, enjoy jotting down those activities too!

Fezzl
With the Groupon clone wars still raging, Fezzl might have found a niche with its product, Zuupy CrowdDeals. This daily deal site aims to help business go viral with their deals by using the Facebook “Like” button as a way users claim deals. Deals are not activated until a minimum number of “Likes” are clicked. For non-Facebook users out there, clicking the “Like” button posts an update the user’s own wall, exposing the deal to all their friends.

Taxizu
Care to share a taxi with a random stranger travelling a similar route in order to reduce cost? Think peak-hour surcharges and I bet your wallets are begging for this. Taxizu is a Hong Kong-based startup that with an application that allows taxi sharing and social organization. The application allows user to collaborate and self-organize to share taxis on long-haul taxi routes. Users get to publish their preferred travelling details prior to departure in order to find share-mates and can also socially rank their ride share peers.

Twidl Inc.
Twidl Inc. is a Philippines based company that is building a social network around picture journals called PicLyf (pronounced pik-layf). The company’s product is going up against other photo sharing sites such as Flickr and Instagram but is confident that their ability to motivate updates (through badges, topics and leaderboards), ease-of-use, focus on static pictures and network-generated audience will appeal to shutterbugs out there.

Spatial Ideas
Spatial Ideas aims to integrate information from online news sites and social media in order to built the ultimate marketing tool, LocoBuzz. This powerful map-based analytics and communications platform allows marketers to identify potential customers, spot trends and evaluate marketing campaigns. The unique selling point of Spatial Ideas over their competitors is their easy-to-use UI, which they believe appeals to users of such services.

Stylelogue
Combining fashion with technology to simplify the search for all the right answers to fashion woes is what Stylelogue aims to do. The mobile and web application allows style-savvy users to communicate, share and receive information on all the latest hots and nots of the fashion industry. By focusing on the local market and publishing real styles by real people, Stylelogue looks to appeal to their target market based on relevance and convenience.

Feed George
Feed George aims to aggregate geodata on a single platform providing user with the ease to search data via data categories and feed source through georss. With Feed George, bloggers who wish to add geographical information to their posts are able to do so too.

FLOChip Sdn. Bhd.
FLOChip’s product, 31Storey, seeks to bring in a bigger social element into online shopping by marrying Facebook with eBay. Shoppers can share their fashion tips or lookbooks with their friends while following their favorite participating boutiques. For online shop owners, 31Storey provides a single platform to market, sell, receive payments and monitor sales data easily. Co-founder Ong Teng Siong is a YCombinator alum who sold a company to Loopt.

WorkCrowd by AdExcel Online Networks Sdn. Bhd.
WorkCrowd aims to help build and strengthen bonds among co-workers by being a social platform for the workplace. WorkCrowd seeks to incentivize the initiatives of co-workers in getting to know each other through unlocking badges. The platform can also assist the transition of new workers into the workplace by helping them familiarize themselves with the culture and facilitate knowledge transfer.

FanXT
FanXT is a privately funded website that seeks to be the worldwide leader in fantasy sports. Seeking to expand the fantasy sport offering beyond only that of popular U.S. sports, the website offers a one-stop fantasy platform that works on the web, Facebook, iOS devices, Android, Blackberry, Yahoo! TV and Google TV.

CellKast Games Pte. Ltd.
CellKast Games uses mystery deals that combines proven social game elements and discount offers to drive product discovery through their product Tikam. The concept behind the mystery deals idea is that the company believes that too many options creaties confusion among customer which makes them unhappy. By randomizing what deals customers receive, it lowers expectations while increasing satisfaction. Got a deal that doesn’t suit you? Give it to a friend as a gift!

Posttude
Posttude aims to provide an address for every one by being the new postal code system for the whole world. The service uses the geotude algorithm to assign a 13-number geotude to users which acts like an IP for the location.

MobileApps.com Pte. Ltd.
With the applications industry heating up and drawing a lot of attention from app developers, MobileApps.com seeks to standout from other app stores by allowing developers to retain 95% cut from sales while making it easy for developers to syndicate advertisements of their apps to target end-consumers. By being a global cross-platform app marketplace, MobileApps.com seeks to cut through the hassle and problems of buying apps through other App Stores that may have payment restrictions.

Soft Solvers Solutions Sdn. Bhd.
Aiming to help Asian businesses tackle customer relationship issues, Soft Solvers Solutions’ Second CRM offers on-demand solutions to small companies which covers business operations like sales, marketing, customer support and project management. Small companies can choose to automate their businesses with the simple and cost-effective solutions offered by Second CRM.

Alphapod
Always tweeting about your meals before you devour it? Why not turn this information to help a lost, hungry, soul through Alphapod’s product, WootFood. WootFood aims to be the best way to find good food around you. By displaying highest rated food that is sorted by distance from the user, the service helps foodies discover new and amazing food offerings in the vicinity.

Motif Channel
Motif Channel’s product name explains it all, if you understand Cantonese. Fongfeikei.com gives event tickets a second chance if their buyers are not able to make the event. Ticket-holders can post their unused tickets on the website while potential buyers can place their request for even tickets that they missed out on. A matching algorithm will then notify both parties when a match is found. Not sure where available tickets are? Fret not. Fongfeikei.com’s future offerings includes a geolocation feature that allows users to see the location of available tickets and the event.

Open Mic

The organisers didn’t have time to put the pitches up to a vote this month, so there will be an open mic for 5 minute pitches. If you’re keen on pitching, bring your slides in a thumb drive on the event day.

When: Thursday 17th March 2011
Time: 7pm-9pm
Where: Scape, Orchard Road

Register here.

If you’re looking for a real-time Q&A solution for your event, check out PigeonHole Live. The team at PigeonHole has kindly agreed to allow event organisers who quote SGEntrepreneurs to get to use their solution for free till end June 2011.

If you’re looking for a real-time Q&A solution for your event, check out PigeonHole Live. The team at PigeonHole has kindly agreed to allow event organisers who quote SGEntrepreneurs to get to use their solution for free till end June 2011.

All ideas will be subjected to a poll and readers will get to vote for their favorite idea. The selected founder whose pitch has garnered the highest votes will be selected to pitch at the event for 10 minutes. Questions will be open to the floor after the pitching session.

If you’re looking for a real-time Q&A solution for your event, check out PigeonHole Live. The team at PigeonHole has kindly agreed to allow event organisers who quote SGEntrepreneurs to get to use their solution for free till end June 2011.

Everyone wanted a piece of them – from panelist and Geeks On A Plane founder, Dave McClure, requesting that everyone give them a standing ovation to TechCrunch’s Dr. Serkan Toto tweeting about their “world class presentation”, foound seemed to be the name on everyone’s lips.

How did they manage to earn that standing ovation from one of the harshest panelist at the event? By answering all the right questions and more importantly, putting their ideas across clearly and consisely such that the audience could immediately understand who they were, what their product was and of course, how their solutions were beneficial for their target group.

Hitting The Right Notes And A Standing Ovation

Indeed, Aen shares in the COMA blog that the “slides were deliberately kept simple to reflect the values and messages of the foound brand“. Whilst other teams struggled with faulty equipment and poor internet connection, the team ensured an effortless and smooth presentation by relying on slides instead of a video presentation.

Moreover, the pitch hit all the right notes because it answered all the right questions.

Foound:

(The [timings] listed will allow you to view the exact section of the video where the points were made.)

1) Identified the problem and showed how it affected them personally such that it was in their interest to solve it [40.15 - 41.25h]

2) Proposed a solution to the problem outlined [42.28 - 45.35]

3) Defined their customer profile

4) Showed how their product was differentiated from their competitors’ offerings

(Foound starts pitching at about 39 min 30 seconds into the video.)

In addition to this, throughout their pitch, their speaker, Danny, had a varied pitch and timbre which kept their presentation interesting. Most fundamentally, they were prepared and spoke with brevity and clarity. The last 3 points being the most critical becauase poor presentations often mar a great product as observed for some of the other startups.

Practise, practise, practise.

Of course, it also helps to research on who your team is going to be pitching to; how else do you think that they were prepared for their now (in)famous straightlined rebuttal “no way any normal motherf***** is gonna do this check – in sh**” which was made in response to the comparison with popular mobile location-based “game”, Foursquare?

Not yet checked – in? Find out what Foursquare is and why Mashable has described the game as the breakout mobile app at the South by Southwest (SXSW) conference.

Alternatively, for an introduction on what an effective Elevator Pitch consists of, read this.

Images courtesy of COMA and Karteha.

Need more persuasion? Here are 5 other reasons why you should be stoked about Echelon 2010.

Other speakers include:
*Be connected with the speakers via LinkedIn by clicking on their pictures

Nicholas Aaron Khoo: Co-Founder of SCOGA; CNET Blogger at CNET Networks Asia Pacific	Andi Boediman: Chief Innovation Officer at Plasa.com	Andy Zain: Managing Partner at VentureX Capital; Founder & Chairman at MobileMonday Indonesia	Aneace Hadded: CEO & Founder at Taggo	Arnaud Blandin: APAC Managing Director and Vice President of Alliances at Intalio
Benjamin Joffe: Partner at CMUNE, Founder & CEO at +8* | Plus Eight Star	Bernard Leong: Co-Founder and CTO at Chlkboard Partner at Thymos Capital LLP	Bret Terrill: Senior Director of Corporate Development at Zynga	Chris Evdemon: Investments & Business Development Manager at Innovation Works	Christian Cadeo: Head of Brand Advertising, APAC for AdMob
Daniel Raffel: Senior Product Manager at Yahoo!	Dave McClure: Startup Investor at Founders Fund; Founder at Geeks On A Plane	David Lian: Social Media Strategist, ASEAN & Account Director, Malaysia at Text 100	David Zhao: Founder & CEO of Zumodrive	Fajar Budiprasetyo: Founder at SkyEight Indonesia
Gen Kannai: Director of Asia Business Development at Mozilla	Greg Fisher: Head of Advertising & Marketing Services, Asia-Pacific at Intel Corporation	Ian Mckee: CEO at Vocanic	Ian Morrison: CIO at i-POP	Jeffery Paine: Managing Partner at Battle Ventures, Executive Director of Endeavor Capital Partners
Joichi Ito: Founder and CEO of Neoteny Labs	Juoko Ahvenainen: Co-founder & Chairman of Grow VC International Limited	Kevin Walsh, CTO at Oracle Asia Research and Development Centers	Meng Weng Wong: Director at JFDI.Asia VP, Strategic Development at BoxSentry	Noah Kagan: Founder & CEO at Gambit Director of Marketing at Mint Software Inc.
Patrick de Laive: Co-founder of TwitterCounter, Co-founder and Partner at The Next Web, Founder of Paydro	Pratyush Prasanna: Founder at SMS GupShup, Open Innovation Manager at Xerox	Rex Ng: Managing Director at 6waves	Rohit Dadwal: Managing Director at Mobile Marketing Association APAC Branch	Ross Veitch, Chief Product Officer at Wego
Romulo “Je” Alipio: Executive Producer - Games & Media at BuzzCity Pte Ltd	Ryan Lim: Founder & Business Director at Blugrapes	Saeed Amidi: President & CEO at Plug and Play Tech Center	Simone Brunozzi: Technology Evangelist at Amazon Web Services- APAC	Tan Yinglan: Head of Projects at the National Research Foudation
Ulf Waschbusch: Chief Product Officer at Garena	Varsha Rao: CEO at SingTel Digital Media (inSing.com)	Vinod Nair: Founder & CEO at Catapult Ventures Pte Ltd; Founder & CEO at The Real Group	Vishal Gondal: CEO at Indiagames Ltd, Partner at Sweat and Blood Venture Group	Zaki Mahomed: CEO at Gameventures, Co-Founder and CEO at TimeSvr

2C2P: Singapore	Ankoder: Hong Kong	BubbleIdeas: Singapore	BukuQ: Indonesia	CatchTheCrowd: Singapore
Creately: Australia	Textuate: Singapore	Tasksee: Hong Kong	SocialWalk: Malaysia	sambaash: Singapore
ReserveUp: Philippines	Reevolo: Pakistan	OCR Terminal: Singapore	myAdEngine: Singapore	Muecs: Hong Kong
Medresa: Indonesia	KrazyMarket: Indonesia	Koprol: Indonesia	iWeb: India	iSyndica: Singapore
amn: Indonesia	Insync: Philippines	ideaken: Singapore	Home Camera: Singapore	Grow VC: Hong Kong
Gradkin: Singapore	Give.sg: Singapore	Gameplan: Singapore	ForSka: Singapore	FlutterScape: Japan
Design Chords: India	Yoplr: Pakistan	YBO: Singapore	VirtualSandbox: Singapore	Veldis Experience: Singapore
Urbanesia: Indonesia	TwitCasting: Japan	tokopedia: Indonesia	KUUKIE: China

To sign up for the event, please register here.