Interview with Simran Kaur, Founder of Stage & Such

Other than the food and beverages industry, education is one of the hot areas in Singapore given it’s aim to become an education hub for the region. How about running a school for kids between six months old and six years old? It may sound impossible, but Simran Kaur, founder of Stage and Such found a niche in the education sector with her company, Stage and Such. We interviewed her on what inspired her to set up Stage & Such, why the company offers services for a niche market and her thoughts on the education industry in Singapore. Read more

In Conversation with Rick Treweek, co-founder of BreakDesign

During my trip to Monte Carlo for the first Nokia Developers summit 2009, the Nokia-Adobe Open Screen Project announced the first five recipients, and surprisingly, one of them is BreakDesign, a Singaporean based company developing the Barking Seed platform for Flash-lite games on the mobile phone. In the next few months, I have asked around for this interesting stealth start-up and finally, in the recent Nokia One Connected World event in Kuala Lumpur, I managed to meet up with Rick Treweek, one of the co-founders of this interesting company. So, I spoke to Rick and he is generous to give us some time to be interviewed about the Barking Seed platform which they are developing for the Open Screen Award, the first flash lite game – Dawn of the Fly, his thoughts about the mobile apps space and experience working as a partner to Nokia’s developer ecosystem. Read more

Interview with Ross Veitch, co-founder of wego.com

If you walk past the lane opposite Boat Quay in Singapore and look, you will see that one of the shophouses there displayed a logo called “Wego.com”. Wego is the name of a travel search portal made in Singapore and used to run by the name of Bezurk. In fact, if you talk to a lot of frequent business travelers, they will frequently refer you to this site to find hotels, flights and even good deals on travel. Ross Veitch and Craig Hewett started this enterprise some years back and brought Martin Symes, an experienced veteran into the company as CEO. They have been featured on the press from WSJ to many travel magazines such as Expat Living and Time Out Singapore. What’s the story behind Wego.com? So, we brought in Ross Veitch, one of the co-founders to share their story with us. Read more

Startup in China by Chris Evdemon

Yesterday, Chris Evdemon (board member, BANSEA and partner, Eastern Bell Venture Capital) gave a interesting presentation about investing and doing business in China. Organised by the Business Angel Network – Southeast Asia (BANSEA), Chris has now uploaded into slideshare. There are some interesting notes about how to set up in China. For SG Entrepreneurs who might plan to move to China, this is a good set of presentation slides for reference particularly about who to seek for early stage capital investing, infrastructure and what needs to be done. Read more

6 Essential Social Media Tools for Start-Ups

If you are starting up a new company that primarily goes from business to consumer, without a big budget in marketing or PR, your best chance for getting your message across will be via social media. Most start-ups or major corporations which adopt social media tools to market and engage their customers in Southeast Asia, are essentially in the IT, fast moving consumer goods (FMCG – for example, mobile phones, computers and gadgets) or online media space. Specifically in this article, we want to focus essentially on the start-ups space and offer 6 essential social media tools that a start-up will need. Read more

ACE Bluesky Festival 2009: Growth Opportunities in Difficult Times

The ACE Bluesky Festival 2009 is happening on 10 July 2009, with the Conference which starts from 10am-5.30pm, Grand Ballroom, Ritz-Carlton Millenia Singapore, followed by a gala dinner in Megu Event Hall, The Singapore Flyer. The Guests of Honour for both events are Mr Lim Hng Kiang (Minister for Trade & Industry) for the conference and Mr Lee Yi Shyan (Minister of State for Trade & Industry and Manpower, Minister in charge of Entrepreneurship) for the gala dinner. The annual BlueSky Festival is a distinctive platform for the Action Community for Entrepreneurship (ACE) to recognise and celebrate the entrepreneurial spirit in Singapore. Join us and learn from fellow entrepreneurs on how to grow your business in these challenging times. Here are the details for the event: Read more

Barcamp KL 2009 – The Things I hear about Entrepreneurship & Bloggers

I set off to Subang Jaya for Barcamp Kuala Lumpur (KL) on Friday morning. I reached a day earlier to meet up with some internet specialists and organizers of Barcamp KL. The last Barcamp KL was held in the KLCC area (where the Petronas Towers are). This event was held over the weekend (4 and 5 April 2009) in Inti College, Subang Jaya. The trip turned out to be a good one because it grew to become Barcamp Southeast Asia, with other organizers from Bangkok, Singapore, Tokyo & Cambodia. This time round, we have wi-fi available, and the other thing I liked about the location is that the Inti College is located besides the Asia Cafe and also a Starbucks Cafe where I can grab a cup of grande vanilla latte. Read more

After Barcamp Singapore (Asia) 3

Our very own Bernard was one of the first presenters of the full-day event while his two counterparts, Gwen and Ian Timothy were in the audience skipping around from room to room. Here, we hear from both Gwen and Ian Timothy on their thoughts on various presentations. Read more

In Conversation with Violet Lim, Eteract and Lunch Actually

The co-founders of Lunch Actually needs no introduction as they are well-known in the offline dating space for matchmaking professionals and executives. While expanding Lunch Actually to Malaysia and Hong Kong, the founders of the team have now embarked on a venture that translates the dating business from offline to online and vice versa. Their new dating portal, Eteract allows singles to conveniently and instantly meet new friends by doing interactive and efficient online speed dating activities together to determine if there is chemistry and connection between them. So, we interview Violet about the story behind Eteract. Read more

Announcements from the Singapore Government Budget Speech 2009

The announcements for the budget are finally out. From the Finance Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam in his Budget statement today, the Singapore government will spend S$20.5 billion to help businesses and workers. The aim is to ensure that .The major announcements include the following:
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