Malaysia's digital economy is similar to Singapore and Brunei.

Recently, I was invited to speak on entrepreneurship and consumer Internet trends in a private event hosted by Penn Olson during Startups in Asia, which happened from 2nd to 4th February.

In this article, I will highlight additional perspectives to shed greater light on the ideas presented during my talk, which gave the audience a better grasp on the consumer internet space in Southeast Asia.

Two clusters of economies in Southeast Asia, based on mobile and Internet penetration rates

Glancing at the mobile and internet penetration rates in ASEAN countries, we see two prevailing trends (see slide 4 of the presentation provided below).

But before that, it’s important to note that the internet penetration rate is constructed based on the number of broadband internet subscribers divided by the total population, while the mobile penetration rate is calculated using the number of mobile subscribers (mobile phones are not distinguished as either featured/WAP phones or smartphones). As a result, mobile penetration rates are usually more than 100 percent, which just means that most users own more than one phone.

Taking into consideration the ratio of mobile and internet penetration rates, we see two clusters forming: The digital economies of Singapore, Brunei and Malaysia share very similar behaviour where smartphone ownership is becoming significant in the cities, while the Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam represent emerging digital economies where smartphone penetration are relatively low but the consumers uses social media with low mobile rates without knowing that they are accessing the Internet.

Looking at Cambodia, which may represent a potential digital economy of 53 million people, one can conjecture that it is heading in a similar direction as Vietnam or Thailand. As for Myanmar, the infrastructure must be built first before a digital economy can arise.

Missing elements in the Southeast Asia Ecosystem

I have indicated in my talk that there are at least three missing elements (and they may be more). Let’s start from the first issue: the lack of series A funding in the region of US$0.5M to US$2M. The reason why most investors avoid this funding range is because it’s a risky stage where a company can grow into a proper and sustainable entity or go south if they cannot find sustainable revenue streams.

As a result, most companies which can potentially grow will not be considered by investors. However, seed funding is readily available because the quantum of investment is low. To get a better chance of obtaining funding in this range I talked about, the company has to leapfrog and generate significant revenues quickly, otherwise it is very tough to move forward.

The second issue is the dearth of talent to scale the company. If we match founders from Southeast Asia to Silicon Valley, the difference is not that wide apart. The real difference is in the management team with people who are formerly from big companies that can help to scale the company. We read often from tech blogs about the movement of people from one big tech company to another, but this phenomenon is very rare in Southeast Asia. The reason is that most start-ups cannot afford the lifestyle of these executives and the opportunity of exits are very minimal.

The last issue relates to most VCs in Southeast Asia: A lot of them are former financiers and not really business operators by experience. We cannot fault them for their backgrounds, but it does have an impact on how they assess companies.

To be blunt, a former banker constructs a company’s valuation by profit and loss. If Facebook was started in Southeast Asia, they can never survive. The reason is that they did not generate any revenue or profit until their pre-IPO investment round. Of course, Facebook was a bit bet and the odds of finding companies like it are really small.

But I am seeing good signs in Singapore where we have people like Meng Weng Wong (co-founder of JFDI Asia) and Batara Eto from East Ventures who are former entrepreneurs running venture incubators and are investors as well.

Photo: WhizKris

There has been strong resistance against both bills not just from many technology entrepreneurs from the start-up space but also from multi-national companies such as Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Twitter and Facebook.

The aim of this post is to explain what SOPA and PIPA really means for us and why we are not supportive of such legislation for economic reasons if our Minister of Law decides to propose it as a bill in the very near future. It’s not just a Singapore problem but a Southeast Asia problem if it gets passed thru in Singapore.

To put it simply, here’s what SOPA and PIPA seek to do: the laws will be enacted “to minimize the dissemination of copyrighted material online by targeting sites that promote and enable the sharing of copyright-protected material, like The Pirate Bay.” If the act is enacted, a few steps will be taken to limit access to rogue sites:

(a) bypassing the “notice and takedown” method of copyright infringement on internet services (for example, the Pirate Bay) and require the Internet service providers, or ISPs in short (in Singapore: M1, Starhub and SingTel) to police content uploaded by users or prevent users from uploading copyrighted content,

(b) require ISPs to change their DNS servers and block resolution of domain names of websites that host these illegal content (i.e. movies or TV shows),

(c) require search engines to modify search results to exclude websites of such nature,

(d) order online (including mobile) advertising services (Google AdSense, InMobi) and digital payment services (Paypal, Square) to cease business with websites of such nature.

The reason why most major internet companies oppose to the act is simple. SOPA and PIPA changes the liability rules around copyright infringement. The Digital Millenium Copyright Act of 1998 in which Singapore has signed on a stronger version (during their free trade negotiations with the US) states that companies are protected from charges of “contributory infringement” on content uploaded by users as long as the company follows up with the process of removing the content which infringes copyright when an alert process is signalled.

Here’s how it works in real life: suppose a user of the ISP uploads a video that infringes copyright, the ISP will be alerted by the relevant authorities to remove the content. SOPA changes the former arrangement, and now user-generated content sites like YouTube or Twitter have to worry about copyright due to contributory infringement when a rogue user deliberately uploads content to these user generated content sites.

The burden of reviewing every blog post, tweet and video submission is impossible to manage for any company. This is similar to the situation in China, where video sites such as Tudou have to hire people to monitor content uploads 24-7 to ensure that no sensitive political content is uploaded.

SGE‘s opposition against SOPA/PIPA legislation is not focused on freedom of speech arguments which have been brought forward by many digital advocates. You can read about these elsewhere. Our concern is that such legislation has profound implications to our economy.

First, the legislation breaks the internet architecture and subjects our ISPs to undue stress of monitoring all forms of user-generated content. The current procedure that the ISPs use to remove illegal content is sufficient to protect copyright. However, if SOPA or PIPA legislation is enacted through the Singapore parliament, the ISPs would have to waste resources to monitor internet traffic.

Second, the Singapore government has devoted a lot of resources to nurture in our country the next Facebook and Google or sites that might create great impact like Wikipedia or any user-generated sites similar to YouTube and Twitter. By allowing such a legislation, innovation within the local tech and creative content industry will be reduced. Think of a young, talented pianist applying for a top music school and producing a YouTube performance of a song which is well known. The pianist can get sued for copyright infringement even if the content is being re-mixed.

Last but not least, Singapore is currently the digital hub for most of the large MNCs (Google, Facebook and Microsoft) for the whole Southeast Asia region. All these companies are mostly anti-SOPA, and by enacting such legislation, it may force these companies to relocate their companies’ SEA headquarters somewhere else. That will mean that our economy will slow down and lose the jobs created by these companies.

For all of you who want to help out, please go to the Facebook page of our Law Minister and register your objections in a respectful manner so that we will have not such a legislation knocking our doors. It may be good to check out this post by Xu Si Han who initiated the call to me and the rest of the tech community to step in and declare a resounding no to SOPA/PIPA like legislation.

Lastly, this is not just a Singapore problem but a Southeast Asia problem at large. If Singapore passes such a legislation, it’s very likely that everyone around the region (Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Philippines and Brunei) might follow suit. Hence it might make the whole region less viable for the investment that will transform the region to be like China and India.

All in all, SGE does not support SOPA/PIPA.

References:

[1] ChannelNewsAsia, Healthy IP environment contributes to creative economy.
[2] K Shanmugam Sc Facebook Post
[3] Tim O’Reilly: Why I’m fighting SOPA
[4] Joi Ito: Why we need to stop SOPA and PIPA and Ethan Zuckerman, MIT Media Lab opposes SOPA, PIPA.
[5] Cato @ Liberty: SOPA: An Architecture for Censorship.

Image: Andréia

I will also provide some interesting case studies, for example, the Aravind Eye Centre for social entrepreneurship. This series is based on the “MPS 812: Entrepreneurship” course I have been teaching in the School of Physical & Mathematical Sciences, Nanyang Technological University. This post is republished from my blog.

Author’s Preface: I will include elements of a previous course which I have taught in Nanyang Technopreneurship Centre as well as some advice which I used to dispense via my role as an entrepreneur-in-residence for INSEAD Business School. I have refined the presentation slides and notes after teaching that course for four semesters over the past two years. Note that the content I have done up for this course is under Creative Commons – No Commercial, Share-alike and Attribution.

One important thing that I want to stress even though I have worked as an academic in the past: Entrepreneurship is a contact sport, and it’s easier to teach as a practitioner because you encounter a lot of challenges and issues from starting a company to managing, maintaining, growing and exiting from the company. My original intention is to change the course name to “Technology & Business” (and it’s not possible) as I am not a fan of teaching entrepreneurship but more of providing a toolkit for the students to use whether they are advancing their career or starting their own businesses. Do bookmark this post as I will update it from time to time.

My Course Slides:

Talking Points

• Course objective: My aim is not to teach anyone to become entrepreneurs. The success rate of any start-up from an investor’s viewpoint is 1 out of 10 based on anecdotal evidence, which means that 9 other start-up ventures will fail. So trying to convert you to become an entrepreneur is not the wise thing to do. The important thing I want to dispense through the course is to help you understand and learn the process of building startups and companies. The business plan assignment will provide you some basic understanding on various aspects of a business: Marketing, business strategy, financials and intellectual property (specifically for technology companies). The best takeaway is that you should learn to make all the mistakes about something as fast as possible. Simply put: Learn to fail fast.

• What defines an entrepreneur?: Different people have different perspectives of what an entrepreneur should be. In some cases, they are defined by the success of their businesses, and in other cases, they are defined by how their products or services have added value to everybody’s lives. Entrepreneurs also accept the inherent risks of their enterprise and are accountable for their success or failure. Unfortunately, some people do call themselves “entrepreneurs” but are totally off the mark, for example, companies who use Ponzi and pyramid marketing schemes to cheat consumers or lend money illegally (loan sharks) do not add any real value.

• Window of Opportunity and First Mover is not an advantage: While most investors like to emphasize on the first mover advantage of technology companies, note that many successful technology companies are not first movers. For example, Google was preceded in the search business by AltaVista and Inktomi (which was acquired by Yahoo! for US$20M instead of buying google for US$1M). Similarly, Facebook was not the first in the business of social networking. Before Facebook, there was Friendster (which was acquired by MOL Malaysia) and MySpace (which was acquired by News Corp). What made these businesses successful was that they learnt from the first mover’s failures and innovated to deliver greater value.

Videos

Video 1: Michael Pritchard’s LifeSaver in TED 2009

Lessons learnt from this video:

• Articulation of the problem and opportunity: The speaker discussed the problem of clean drinking water and used examples of a developing and developed country to illustrate that there was no good solution when a calamity struck. He also described how existing solutions have not achieved what they were meant to do.

• Describing technology simply: While the LifeSaver bottle solution has many features, the speaker only focused on one aspect of the technology: the 15nm pore. He explained it simply, describing how the filter is small enough to stop bacteria and viruses from entering. He could have explained how the entire bottle works but he chose to condense the solution to a simple feature so that the audience could understand him.

• Explain why his solution is better than traditional solutions: The speaker made a comparison with traditional solutions of delivering clean water, for example, people within the disaster area would make long trips to carry jerry cans filled with water from one location to another. He focused on how his solution made people’s lives easier.

• Product Demo and Authority: He was able to do a demo with the solution (as seen in the video). What’s more, he drank the water from the bottle and also passed it to Chris Anderson, the organizer of TED who is a well-known personality and got his endorsement that it’s safe.

• Provide vision on how to implement the idea and exact amount to fund the solution: He gave a plan of how the solution can be scaled and the amount of money required to solve the world’s drinking water problem. The amount was stated as 20 billion for worldwide implementation, but it was very clear to the audience what he was asking for.

Video 2: Thulasiraj Ravilla: How low-cost eye care can be world-class in TEDIndia 2009 – Aravind Eye Care Center

Lessons learnt from this video:

• Aravind Eye Care Hospital was founded in 1976 by Dr Govindappa Venkataswamy. The existing management has laid out a vision of what the Aravind Eye Hospital aspires to become in the future.
• The hospital evolved itself not just as a healthcare service giver but also as a social enterprise that deals with the blindness problem in India. It treated 2.4 million poor Indians over 30 years.
• Interesting Features: Eye Surgery facility that runs 24 hours with doctors focusing on surgery and nurses focusing on pre and post eye care. Free surgeries for the poor and also a top class R&D centre on eye treatment.

The 2011 Global Competitiveness Report by the World Economic Forum clearly thinks Singapore falls in the latter category. While it scores highly for lack of corruption, government efficiency (1st for both), and infrastructure (3rd), it lags behind for adoption of latest technologies (10th), measures that support sophistication of companies (15th), and capacity for innovation (22nd).

But overall, it is still the second most competitive economy in the world, behind Switzerland.

This means that while Singapore is a great place to do business, firms here have not quite caught up with the world’s best when it comes to improving their own processes and developing more innovative products. Government operations, on the other hand, have been on the cutting edge of technology, scoring second globally in government procurement of advanced technology products.

The survey gathers over 13,000 valid responses from 142 economies, for an average of 98 respondents per country, and captures the respondents’ perceptions of their countries.

These findings are somewhat in agreement with INSEAD’s own Global Innovation Index, which ranks Singapore highly for investing resources into developing innovation but penalizes it for the creation of knowledge and the production of creative goods and services.

In fact, when comparing the dividends reaped with the investment made, Singapore ranks an inefficient 94th.

Despite this blemish, there’s a lot of good news for Singapore. The Global Competitiveness Report compares the country quite favorably against other innovation-driven economies. It’s just that Singapore falls short of its own lofty standards.

But the government has only just begun to recognize the important of innovation, and they are now earnestly encouraging firms to innovate by pumping in money to support entrepreneurs and increase productivity in the workplace. Time will tell if these measures have been effective.

Photo: Nattu

Special Interview on Entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial ecosystem with Brad Feld from onsuccess on Vimeo.

For full transcript, click here.

Article thumbnail: TechCocktail

This has been brought to you by SGE and Onsuccess. Onsuccess is a media enterprise for start-ups and ventures in Korea. Onsuccess introduces innovative Korean start-ups and ventures to people overseas through media partners and inspires readers by sharing interesting business ideas and trends from all over the world. Furthermore, Onsuccess holds various events, offering actual chances for Korean start-ups and ventures to meet other start-ups, venture business partners and investors abroad. They publish in both Korean and English.

As a former venture capitalist I’ve been privileged to interact with numerous entrepreneurs in South Asia and play a small role in some start-up ventures. A few of these succeeded and went on to become large companies while many others failed.

Some ended up as lifestyle businesses – the living dead in VC parlance – and continue to chug along never quite realizing their original promise.

Most of these start-ups had credible solutions targeting large, fast-growing markets, had raised one or more rounds of venture funding and in every case was led by a passionate and committed founding team.

Why then did so many of these businesses fail? Indeed, why do most start-ups fail?

In Silicon Valley – the poster child for entrepreneurship – the majority of Valley start-ups tended to be IP heavy, product companies. Most failed since new product development took up too much time and money and often the products didn’t work. In some cases, the market either wasn’t ready or turned too quickly, and poor execution killed the rest.

The Asian picture is different. Most start-ups here are relatively low-tech with little IP. Many target high-growth consumer markets with either a novel business model or follow a copycat approach, localizing Western success stories (think daily deals websites like Beeconomic or Deal.com.sg).

Still others tend to be service businesses. Capital requirements are relatively low. With non-existent product risk and only limited concept risk, execution turns out to be of overarching importance.

What is execution anyway? It’s the day-to-day stuff that keeps the company moving onward and forward towards the Founder’s vision. It’s where the rubber meets the road, where strategy meets tactics and where pies in the sky confront realities on the ground. Ultimately, it means having the right people at the right place at the right time doing the right things.

I believe 60-70% of the outcome of any business venture is attributable to people, 20-30% to external factors such as market environment and the rest to dumb luck. Time and again I’ve observed that the degree to which a founder is self-aware and willing to stretch himself/herself and evolve can make all the difference between success and failure.

This is especially true in Asia, where most business founders are first-time entrepreneurs and not battle-hardened by past experiences. The smaller pool of entrepreneurial CEO talent also means that founders continue to run operations long after the start-up phase.

Here’s a very incomplete list of dos and don’ts for first time entrepreneurs to minimize their chances of failure:

Do delegate and know when to let go.

In the early days you’re forced to wear different hats and be all things to all people. As the business grows, hire competent professionals and step back from day-to-day operations. For instance, as a technical founder, sales may not come naturally to you, yet you have to don a sales hat, meet customers and close the first few deals.

But as soon as the time is right, hire hungry and competent salespeople, incentivize them and let them loose. I’ve seen many founders continuing to micro-manage sales and other key functions long after the business has hit a certain level of maturity. Entrepreneurs love to talk about how scalable their business model is but don’t often realize that a controlling behaviour limits internal scalability.

Actively delegating and creating an inclusive decision-making process is one of the most empowering and liberating things you can do as a leader.

Don’t course correct every few months.

Make a plan and stay with it. Yes it’s hard. After all, nimbleness and agility are your assets, but you also need to give your team the time and space to execute. Some young start-ups get into a “throw it all at the wall and see what sticks” mentality which seldom works.

Agree on a direction, set clear milestones and be patient. If things aren’t going right, then understand why, and chart a new plan after getting your team’s buy-in and communicate this to all concerned. Nothing demotivates an organization more than constantly shifting strategy and direction.

Don’t expect everyone in your company to share your passion.

People are motivated by different things. Outside of your core team it’s unreasonable to expect everyone to have the same degree of excitement and passion regarding your vision. Everyone is different and people change.

As a leader it’s your job to understand what makes each of your team members tick and find a way to link your vision to what’s important to them. This is especially true as your business grows and your 51st hire may be more interested in a good income and stable job and care less about changing the world.

Do create your own leadership style.

Photo: Tony Hue

Many young entrepreneurs are rightly inspired by famous technology leaders like Steve Jobs, Bill Gates and Larry Page. However, some take the role-modelling too far and try to mimic someone else’s leadership style and attempt to create a culture that resembles a far-away Silicon Valley company.

Nothing wrong with a little inspiration but the only management style that’s going to work for you is your own. Understand your strengths and weaknesses and grow into your role as a leader. Create your own distinct style of leadership and shape the culture of your company the way you want to – and in a way that’s appropriate for the realities of your operating environment.

What works in Silicon Valley rarely works in Singapore, Bangalore or Shanghai. Every company succeeds for a different, and sometimes hard to quantify, reason. There’s more to learn from other people’s failures than trying to ape someone else’s success.

Do self-reflect.

Your ability to change and stay one step ahead of your business is the single most important factor for success. Being an entrepreneur is a lonely job, venture-funded company or not, and the pressures of the business and meeting the expectations of various stakeholders leave little time for reflection or personal development and can lead to a situation where the business has grown but you are playing catch-up.

What worked from a start-up phase to a million-dollar revenue base may not help you get to a $20m top-line. Understand your strengths, weaknesses and appreciate that you – just like everyone else – have blind spots. True leadership has less to do with managing or motivating other people and more to do with managing yourself.

About the author

RJ Sridhar is the founder of Radical Shift, a Business Coaching practice based in Singapore, and works with entrepreneurs and small business owners across S.E. Asia and India. Prior to coaching, RJ was a venture capitalist with JAFCO Asia where he invested in several early-stage and high-growth businesses across the region and actively worked with management teams to scale their operations. Previously RJ developed technology products and held operational roles with industry-leading companies in Silicon Valley.  He also spent a couple of years on Wall Street as an equity analyst covering the technology sector. RJ has a Master’s degree in Electrical Engineering from The Ohio State University and an MBA from Duke University. His other interests include meditation, writing, running and travelling. RJ is a member of the Singapore Institute of Directors, a Business Mentor at Singapore Management University, a Mentor with Mentor Square and is also a member of the International Coach Federation.

Top photo: Terence Lee

About Sean Bonner from Bode Media & Neoteny: Sean Bonner has been involved with media, online and off, for the better part of the last 16 years. He has been featured in GOOD, Wired, Playboy, Salon, Forbes and others, been included in Yahoo!’s Best of the Web, and has spoken at conferences, events, and coffee shops around the world. As co-founder and CEO of Bode Media Inc, Sean helped create Metblogs, the worlds largest network of local media blogs.

As a consultant, he has helped The Groop, Jack In The Box, LAPD, Suicide Girls, Obey Giant, Shopzilla and others interact with their customers, clients, and fans online. He also speaks frequently at conferences covering blogs, media, networks and grassroots journalism. Recently he’s spoken at IzeaFest (Orlando, FL), SXSWi (Austin, TX), Roboexotica (Vienna, Austria) and Re:Publica (Berlin, Germany).

Sean is well connected to the startup scene in Asia as one of the guys behind Neoteny Labs, a venture fund and incubator which opened its doors in Q1 2010. Neoteny Labs aims to find and grow some of the most interesting technology startups in Asia and the Middle East. It is one of seven technology incubators chosen to participate in the S$50 million National Research Foundation (NRF) Technology Incubation Scheme (TIS).

As an event organizer, Sean brought Neoteny Singapore Camp 1 (NSC1) to Singapore which brought together a fascinating mix of entrepreneurs and investors, sharing possibilities over a 2 day event. Check this out for an interesting discussion around startups from that event. He also brought BarCamp to Los Angeles, produced the first art exhibition comprised solely of phonecam images, ran art auctions and benefits for the West Memphis Three. Sean has also been a guest blogger/contributor for BoingBoingVideo and hosted the iPhone game review show iPhun.

He is one of the founders of Crash Space, a Los Angeles hackerspace and is the creative director for the brand R5315T. Prior to all this, Sean helped build the groundbreaking contemporary art gallery sixspace exhibiting artists such as Glen E. Friedman, Shepard Fairey, Coop, Chad Robertson and others. He also ran a record label and produced several records by Hot Water Music and Less Than Jake to name a few. He’s also managed a design firm, worked as Sr. Designer for Playboy.com and Creative Director for Victory Records.

In the real world, you need about two weeks to work out the stage from ideas generation to execution. Here is how I will break it down for you using 2 weeks:

• Day 1 – Day 4: Sketch your ideas within the first four days on the industry you focused. Try to brainstorm without constraints and work out all possible ideas you have. The key is to make sure that you have enough ideas to be eliminated in the next stage.
• Day 5 – Day 7: From the list you have brainstormed, decide on the top 3 ideas which you think will succeed.
• Day 8 – Day 11: Do your market research, surveys and reading secondary data on your industry. One important thing is to make sure that you end up getting the final idea. Make sure you talk to people in the industry whether they are from an MNC and start-up.
• Day 12 – Day 14: Focus on the last idea you have eliminated and work out the timeline and milestones so that you can get a prototype to market within 6-8 weeks from this date.

So good luck in generating your ideas for the start-up. :)

Update: We have 6 finalists!

The last 15 semi-finalists will be provided with funding up to $15K to develop their product or service with the assistance of mentors provided by the business challenge. Here are their team names:

• Care Inc.

Care Inc is a solution provider for Indian hospitals to eliminate medical errors caused due to nurse negligence with the right help of a middle wear application. Delivering Right Patient, Right Drug, Right Dose, Right Time and Right Root of Administration.

• Catch the Crowd

A new power in interactive ‘on-the-road’ crowd engagement!

We help brands/institutions catch the attention of the crowds by offering an interactive brand immersion experience through the innovative application of technologies like SMS and dynamic displays.

Our main focus is to provide companies/institutions interaction with the people ‘on-the-road’. ‘On-the-road’ engagement refers to interaction in locations/situations where it is not possible to interact with a large number of people directly using traditional media.

Our flagship product – CrowdMagnet – consists of a dynamic digital display which is made interactive through the use of SMS. Advertisers will be able to run simple campaigns like games, surveys and quizzes that capture the attention of the crowds and expose them to their brands.

By providing an immersive and interactive experience that the consumer chooses to take part in, CrowdMagnet enables the brand to reach the crowd in an engaging, fun and non-intrusive manner. Additionally, the advertiser is also able to obtain crucial consumer data gathered from surveys and polls.

• Coating Concepts

Coating Concepts Pte Ltd is founded by Kevin Tan and Cai Fei, both are final year undergraduates from the School of Materials Science and Engineering at Nanyang Technological University Singapore. With inspiration and guidance from Professor Huang Yizhong, the founders are committed in turning their innovative coating technologies into products. The company is funded by SPRING Singapore.

The first product is a coating poised to be commercialised designed to enable self lubrication in high speed cutting operations. The company’s vision is to provide state of the art coating solutions for industrial and consumer applications.

• Forget Boundaries

Forget Boundaries is a team of passionate and experienced travellers. Aadil, an NTU engineering undergraduate, has extensive experience in sales and management as a financial consultant with Prudential. Syazanah is an SMU graduate, specialized in marketing and psychology. Zafirah and Adeline are NUS graduates with respective strengths in finance and market research; and public relations and events management. Faisal, an SIM computer science undergraduate, is excellent in website development and programming. He completed numerous assignments such as one for the New Zealand Embassy. Zafirah, Adeline and Syazanah are working full-time on Forget Boundaries.

Forget Boundaries aims to change the landscape of travel. We provide opportunities for youth to explore sustainable and responsible travel. Our platform presents a unique and interactive experience for users to put together their travel itineraries. Users can map their travels and share the memories by creating digital scrapbooks of their travel photos and videos.

• Full Water

Full Water is a functional drinks company that is in the business of making low calorie, fat free, vitamin enhanced water. Our mission is to develop and supply a leading brand of next generation functional drinks to the Asia-Pacific market, with the aim of promoting healthy eating practices and improve the health and wellbeing of youths and working professionals.

Our team is a passionate, intellectually diverse, and coachable team comprised of four founders with backgrounds in the engineering, business, health and chemistry.

• GIVE.SG

Team GIVE hopes to inspire a social movement for good. Our website, www.GIVE.sg is here to help you get involved and make a big difference. You can build a shelter and feed the homeless children. You can preserve our dying forest and protect endangered animals. Together, we can change the world. Stand up and be part of the solution. For my birthday, I’m celebrating by getting my friends to make a gift to children education. I love to run so I’m challenging a marathon to raise funds for breast cancer. Next holiday, I’m having a dinner party and serving only vegetables to encourage my friends to eat healthy and go green for our environment.

• i-Free

iFree is founded by Mr Aung, Mr Li and Mr Wang. We specialize in electronic devices design and development. Mr Aung is in charge of business plan, marketing research and customer analysis. Mr Li is specialized in product control. Mr Wang is in charge of technical support and product development.

iFree provides a platform that combines computer vision, computer graphics and GUI interface design. Our products have potential applications in areas such as banking, automobiles, health and education. We aim at changing the life style, improving the living standard and connecting the people. Company spirit: “You are all set”.

• In Vitro

In Vitro Pte Ltd is a technology company founded by a group of NTU students who use their expertise to develop innovative lifestyle products like “Plant-in-a-Bottle”.

Our flagship product “Plant-in-a-Bottle”, has empowered customers with the ability to own a plant, that actually grows, WITHOUT THE NEED TO WATER OR MAINTAIN!

We are currently developing a spinoff product by adding functions to improve your well-being and quality of life at your personal space!

In Vitro promotes green conservationism, using recycled or reused materials to make their products which are alive, attractive and affordable while keeping it hassle-free!

• Joint Tech

Total knee replacement (TKR) surgery is the only solution for thousands of patients severely afflicted by osteoarthritis each year. The knee joint, consisting of the femoral head, tibial condyles and patella, is replaced by two or three prosthetic implants during a typical surgical procedure.

Currently, surgeons rely on experiences and visual observation to align the prosthetic knee. TKR surgery’s malalignment leads to fast wear-out of the tibial spacer and a consequential early revision surgery to replace this component.

Using JointTech’s real-time pressure-mapping system, surgeons can assess the pressure distribution at the bones’ interface. As prosthetic knees are aligned more easily and accurately, their longevity is improved.

With the first mover’s advantages and great market trend, JointTech has huge potential to be the world-leading company in pressure sensing technology for joint replacement surgeries. More importantly, thousands of people’s lives will be better with the development of this product.

• Manga Castle

Manga Castle is the most exciting, entertaining and engaging e?commerce platform for manga fans. Online shopping has never been more fun!

Look out for many features that generate interest-excitement! Play games and earn discounts? Meet people who share your passion? It’s all possible at Manga Castle.

Our team is truly amazing. Wu Di is the web guru armed with five years of industrial experience in web and game development as well as search engine optimization. Yao Xiaohui Sylvia is the business mind who is totally into marketing and social media.

• Outliers

Our web application, Wishii, is a wish list and events calendar hybrid that’ll both notify you of important events, and suggests not just appropriate gifts to buy, but also the best (cheapest) place to buy it.”

• Paredigm

Currently focused on developing innovative green printing solutions, Paredigm has attempted to address the massive expenditure incurred by corporate houses and educational institutes, on purchasing paper and managing waste. By launching our twin pioneering products GraphitonTM and ErasonTM, we aim to make laser printed paper reusable.

Graphiton is a unique erasable dry toner catering to the laser printing market, while Erason is a one touch automated machine developed to erase paper which has been printed using Graphiton. The idea is to enable users to print on fresh paper using Graphiton, use it like they normally do and ultimately retrieve the fresh paper by passing the used paper through Erason.

Paredigm is a team of five highly motivated and entrepreneurially minded individuals hailing from diverse academic backgrounds. A good blend of technical knowledge and business acumen will definitely stand us in good stead, allowing us to develop unique yet commercially viable products.

• Phoenix

We are a humble pair of recent graduates from the Communications and New Media and Electrical Engineering fields. We were both from NUS’s Raffles Hall, and Phoenix is the mascot of our Hall. It symbolizes the never say die spirit that is embodied by each and every Rafflesian. We hope that we can bring forward our synergy to the next level with this entrepreneur start up.

While we are in the process of patenting our business idea, we hope to share our simple but innovative online service with everyone soon.

• Soyato

Love soy milk and frozen dessert? How about combining the best of both worlds?

Introducing SOYATO! Made fresh with soy milk, SOYATO features a new category of frozen dessert- FROZEN SOY, which unlike ice cream, is low in fat, lactose and free of cholesterol. FROZEN SOY also misses out on the tartness of frozen yogurt, which makes it more palatable for our Asian tongues. It makes a perfect dessert for weight watchers and high-cholesterol patients, so you’ll never be deprived of your favourite frozen dessert again!

What’s more, SOYATO creates FROZEN SOY with many different flavours, so you get to eat your favourite chocolate-flavoured frozen dessert without the guilt of calories and cholesterol! Look out for this sin-less and tasty frozen soy dessert. SOYATO- Indulge the healthy way!

• Tinkrbox

Tinkrbox makes sense of internet hyperlinks by converting links to actual content so you can access the content right in your Tinkrbox. Looking back in time, internet links give you one piece of information per link. Today, Tinkrbox allows you to put together different types of media; allowing you to simultaneously see, hear and read on your interested topic.

At Tinkrbox, you can easily collect and enjoy your favorite stuff in customizable boxes that can be accessed anywhere with an internet connection. Create mashups of your favorite items (i.e. websites, videos, images, flash games, documents, etc) and share them effortlessly to friends via Facebook, Twitter and instant messengers.

We wish them all the best for the next round of competition and will look forward to hear from the Ideas.Inc organizers in the coming year.

Update: We have 6 finalists!

Managing human relations within a company is not an easy task, particularly in a startup. People comes in all kinds of shapes and sizes, and not to mention that there is always a colleague who’s hostile and arrogant, a client who’s furious or too picky, a staff who is cynical and don’t get things done. In dealing with these rough and tough situations, what are the possible strategies that one can use to engage people back into productive communication? That’s what Mark Goulston’s book is about. In Mark’s own words, “People have have their own needs, desires and agendas … To cope, they throw up barricades that make it difficult to reach when your goals are in sync with their own.” While reading the book, Goulston threw very common situations that one will either face working in a startup with other founders, or talking to an investor or handling difficult people.

In the book, Goulston presented his own treatise in productive communication in four parts. The first part puts into perspective how the persuasion cycle works and throws a little science on how rational thought can be overtaken by an amygdala hijack (coined by Daniel Goldman, the author of Emotional Intelligence) i.e the rational part of the brain for the individual has lost control and it is impossible for you to talk facts or reason. Also, the author presented a simple story to show that getting through to somebody is not a difficult endeavour. From the start of the book, he brought out his point through a simple hostage situation and explains how the persuasion cycle works in the folllowing order: (i) from resisting to listening, (ii) from listening to considering, (iii) from considering to willing to do, (iv) from willing to do to doing and finally (v) from doing to glad they did and continuing to do.

Once the big picture is set, Goulston followed with his nine basic rules and twelve quick techniques (that make up the 2nd and 3rd part of the book) that one can apply to handle people across different points within the persuasion cycle. Of the nine, there are two rules which might be of interest to founders and employees in any startup.

The rule “Make People Feel Valuable” focuses on the insight that everyone competes for time but no one should need to compete for importance and offers the action point for the user to identify a person at work who constantly creates problems where none exist. In fact, the author recommends the following solution that the next time when the same person complains to you, just say, “What you’re saying to me is so important that I’d like you to take responsibility for coming up with a solution. When you have some ideas, call me, and we’ll get together and go over your solutions. I really appreciate your help.” .

Another interesting rule is “Check your dissonance at the door” where people might slide into unnecessary arguments abouut something in the workplace, particularly when the employee and boss are in conflict over how to solve a problem. In the book, Goulston prescribed a solution to the reader in how to defuse the solution by offering a useful insight from Warren Bennis, “When you really get where people are coming from – and they get that you get them – they’re more likely to let you take them where you want them to go.”

Finally, at the end of the book, Goulston provided seven fast fixes for seven situations which most people encounter in business. Of the two situations, it will be good for the reader to look at. One of the situations called “The Team from Hell” is a situation when a project manager is put in charge with a team with four different types of personalities: one who is really smart and you can count on, one who wants to do the least amount of work possible, one who spends all the time complaining about everyone and finally one, who wanted your assignment and is more experienced than you. The author tries to dissect the four personalities and the rules of engagement for each one of them. In fact, one of the main strategies is identify the “silos” they put up towards you.

All in all, the book is an easy read and can serve as a guide from time to time, particularly for those who are in leadership positions or even working under someone whom they deemed as “unreasonable” or “horrible”. From a personal point of view, I find it a good read that can help me to reflect about different situations I am being placed under.

Related Videos & Links:
[1] Jason Calacanis interviewing Mark Goulston in This Week in Startups #TWiST episode 21