A feather scarf and a huge package... hmm...

Christmas hasn’t arrived, but the Grinch has already terrorized SXSW and the city of Austin with his trademark smirk.

It’s all actually part of a mobile game by Singapore-based startup Zopim, which is representing the country at the festival. The startup’s flagship product, Zopim Live Chat, is helping more than 35,000 online businesses engage their customers real-time through their websites.

South by Southwest (SXSW for short), is an annual music, film, and interactive festival that is drawing over 16,000 participants from around the world. The interactive segment ends on 13th March.

Here’s how the mobile game works: A Support Grinch mascot (which is actually Zopim team member Weixiang in costume) has been roaming the streets of Austin, with his location trackable on Hugthegrinch.com. Gamers can log onto the site using Twitter, and do a hug attack via a tweet if they are within range of the Grinch, or do a telepathic attack of they are far away.

The person that deals the most damage to the Grinch will win a Macbook Air.

The goal of the game is to demonstrate the importance of great customer service. The Support Grinch represents someone in an organization that kills joy, and sabotages relationships between businesses and customers. By giving the Grinch a “hug”, gamers will be reminded that even the baddest person deserves some love, not to mention their customers.

This marketing campaign, which started on 9th March, is inspired by the Free Hugs Movement.

Check out SGE’s articles on Zopim, as well as our past content on SXSW festivals.

Zopim, a Singapore-based startup that integrates non-intrusive instant messaging functionality into websites (see interview), has joined the fight against the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) — a controversial proposed bill in the US that aims to curb online piracy but runs the risk of destroying Internet innovation.

According to their blog post, Zopim will protest against SOPA by “offering new and existing customers a 40% discount code and donating 10% of all such proceeds to the Electronic Frontier Foundation“, a donor-funded nonprofit dedicated to defending freedom of speech in the Internet space.

They have also changed all their default (orange) chat bubbles to black for one day (ending 18th January, 11:59pm PST). Blacking out the entire site is not an option for them, since they have a responsibility to customers to ensure that their service is working all the time.

This is in addition to their recent move of ditching domain name registrar Go Daddy for rival NameCheap. GoDaddy was a proponent of SOPA, but soon reversed their stance when customers boycotted the company.

So far, the widespread resistance against SOPA seems to be working: The bill will not be brought up in the US House of Representatives, although the Protect IP Act (PIPA), a similar bill, might still see action in the Senate.

SGE, in a recent article, has also spoken up against the bill, highlighting that Singapore’s Law Minister is also mulling similar anti-piracy measures but enacting a SOPA-like bill would kill innovation in Singapore and the region.

Exchange ideas, learn what works and what does not, brainstorm with peers, and find partners are the main ideas for Lean Startup Breakfast Singapore Group meetup. Their next meetup will be held next month, 8 July with topic Customer Acquisition. Focusing only on tech startup, the first meetup was held last month, May. This group is organized by Deric Loh of TheEZSuite.com, a joint venture between SingPost and Paypal. Beside him, this meetup also gathers Usman Sheikh from Identifii (on SGE), Herryanto, Royston, and Julian from Zopim (on SGE), Danny Tan from Foound (on SGE), Yan from Flickevents, Jereme Wong, Badi from MOSAIC MediaHouse, and Jeff from Battle Ventures.

HOW

Meetups will be held at 10am till 11am on the First and Last friday of each month.
Each person will be allocated 10 minutes to run through their agenda for the day.

WHAT

This is not a chit chat session. You are committed to share what you are working on and the challenges and the suggested outcomes with the group after which.
Be very specific and define what you want out of your agenda for the day.

HOUSE RULES

Everyone will be given a chance to speak
Get to the point

This yearly conference saw Music, Film and Interactive people descend upon Austin, Texas in the US for two weeks of panels, meetups, day parties (with beer), night parties (with beer x 10) and drunken networking revelry.

I was there to check out the conference, stalk the Singapore delegation, meet old friends and make new ones.

So let’s start with…

The SXSW Trade Show:

Exploring the booths.

A message board at the trade show.

A Fedora mascot prancing around.

There were many games and prizes to be won at various booths.

Introducing…the Singapore Pavilion:

(Some 101 on incorporating a company in Singapore.)

Steven from IDA speaking to someone interested in Singapore.

The lounge at the Singapore Pavilion.

Introducing…the startups:

(From left): Hong Ting and Wenhan from 2359media, the company behind MobDis

Julian from Zopim doing his pitch.

Socialico presenting GameMaki.

Audrey, cofounder of PlayMoolah

MobileWalla (previously Wordster)

Varun of GoToCamera was momentarily displaced when I was there snapping away. Check out our quick 5-question interview with him at SXSW. More on GoToCamera.

Lichi from Chalkboard

Jay from Brandtology doing a demo. Brandtology was recently acquired.

Another startup, Sambaash also had a booth, but when I was there taking pics, they haven’t yet arrived at SXSW. I didn’t take a pic of their empty booth.

Picture of the Sambaash booth provided by the company.

On the contrary, Foound was not found at SXSW…(sorry, couldn’t resist):

While mobile startup Foound was supposed to have been at SXSW, they pulled out and remained in Singapore to focus on their product instead.

Danny Tan, founder and CEO of Foound told SGE, “We felt that SXSW was getting too “noisy” and didn’t feel that we would have achieved as much there as we originally wanted. More importantly, our team is focused on building the next iteration of our service here, which will be quite a major revamp.”

2359 Media found SXSW useful:

“For MobDis, SXSW brought together some of the top creative and design minds from interactive agencies across US (and to a lesser extend across the world), who provided us with invaluable feedback and, through the friendships established both during and after conference hours, opened doors for potential business deals to be completed in the months to come.”

(From left): Gwen (SGE), Keith (GameMaki), Audrey (PlayMoolah), Lichi (Chalkboard)

(From left): Gwen (SGE), Steven (IDA), Joachim (IDA)

This Singapore pavilion was driven by IDA, the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore – the CIO of the Singapore government.

SXSW wasn’t just about the trade show though, there were many speakers and panel discussions.

Introducing…the Microsoft BizSpark Accelerator pitching sessions:

Advisory board and judges of the Accelerator.

GoToCamera pitched under the Innovative Web Technologies category. They didn’t make it to the finals, but great try, Varun!

ViKi pitched under the Entertainment Technologies category and got into the finals but unfortunately, didn’t win. Great effort, Razmig, nonetheless!

Razmig (pictured center) pitching ViKi on stage during the finals. Photo by Audrey of PlayMoolah.

At the Singapore @ Tech Summit…

We had a really good one hour session where entrepreneurs and people interested in business opportunities in Singapore engaged with our Singapore delegation.

SG ROARS! The Singapore SXSW Party at 512 bar:

Mingling. Singapore + Beer + Asian food + Live music = Wicked!

(From left): Unnamed, Steven (IDA), Julian (Zopim), Joachim (IDA), Audrey (PlayMoolah), Gwen (SGE)

You can see Shashank (SimpliFlying) on the right.

(From left): Gwen (SGE), Vlad (WebOfThings), Rafi (inventor of the first smart rabbit, Nabaztag), Dom (WebOfThings), Vahe (INM), Christine (CityInnovation)

(From left): Gwen (SGE) and Joachim (IDA) with the band in our background.

The goodie bag included a chilli crab soft toy.

With a recipe to boot!

Twilight at the Singapore party.

As cofounder and CEO of Zopim, Julian says, “SXSWi was in one word: EPIC. SXSi was essentially Social Media meets Tech meets Townhall size meetings. To say that we networked with top minds in our industry is an understatement. Ingratiation would be a better term as we got closer to quite a few potential clients and partners. Biz opportunities were opened, high value business targets which we would otherwise never have met were befriended. If you are launching your next product to the world, there is clearly no other better place than SXSW to showcase your service.”

NEXT YEAR, SXSW Interactive 2012 will happen over March 9-13. Set aside those dates!

SXSW 2011 is over. About 20K people from all over the world descended upon Austin, Texas (USA) for two weeks to experience the Music, Film and Interactive South by Southwest festivals.

This year was the first year that our tiny city state of Singapore had an official presence at SXSW Interactive (technology). Made possible by the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA) (the CIO of Singapore government), SXSWi saw several of our startups exhibit and pitch there.

SXSW has grown in breadth, depth and number of attendees over the past 25 years: check out this cool infographic. This year was my first time there, as with most of the Singapore delegation. Here are some photos! Gorge yourselves. (Part 2 here.)

(P.S.: Be cool. Know how to pronounce it. Refer to the entire festival as “South By” or “South by Southwest” in full even if you type it out as “SXSW”. Or “Interactive” for “SXSWi”.)

For two weeks, Austin = SXSW. This was an AOL@SXSW ad at the Austin airport when I arrived.

The Interactive and Film portions of SXSW were going on at the same time. The Music festival started after Interactive and Film ended.

As I arrived in Austin two days prior to the actual start of SXSW Interactive, I didn’t have to contend with huge masses of people while registering and picking up my badge:

The wait for my badge: 3 minutes. Time went up to an hour or so on 11th March.

There were many, many, many panel sessions, with an average of 30+ different sessions going on at any one time. It was really hard to pick one to attend.

In the program: All the sessions for just one time slot.

An open chat with Tim O’Reilly and Jason Calacanis.

Mass of both SXSW (and non-SXSW) attendees.

There were many people who didn’t get a badge to attend SXSW but still hung out in Austin to meet folks (i.e. attend parties, get drunk, and oh wait, network). StartupBus took this to another level as there were 6 buses from 6 different US cities/regions (San Francisco, Silicon Valley, Chicago, New York City, Miami, Cleveland) with teams of “buspreneurs” working on building prototypes in 48 hours. The destination was SXSW.

Singaporean Derrick Kwa, who’s currently doing his undergraduate studies at Hampshire College, was part of the EventBacker team on the Chicago bus. Watch a video interview with the team done by pop17‘s writer Josh Chandler:

Back to the rest of SXSW…

A TechCrunch and About.me set up.

Book signing: Tim Ferriss, author of 4 Hour Work Week and 4 Hour Body.

Lego…

Free entertainment and food at CNN hideout. There were many company-sponsored day parties.

The official Frog Design SXSWi Opening Party had cool bathrooms.

The SXSW Interactive program book.

IDA took out a full-page ad for Singapore.

Check out the Singapore Pavilion and party at SXSW in pictures in this next post!

Having attended SXSW for the first time last year, IDA was very impressed with the “attendance, energy and insightful sharing at the various conference sessions”. They see the conference “as the best show in US for startups to expose themselves in the American market, with over 35K attendees that consist of entrepreneurs, tech enthusiasts, press and investors”.

Also, having seen some of our own make a splash at TechCrunch50 (2009) and helped some make DEMO (Fall 2010) possible, IDA decided to go further and help make the Singapore Pavilion happen at SXSW Interactive 2011.

Update: Aftermath – Check out photos here and here.

Timeline: Singapore Delegation At SXSW

Singapore Networking Party: 14th March, evening
Singapore Pavilion Exhibition: 14-17th March
Singapore Panel @ TechSummit: 17th March

The Singapore pavilion is 40’x20’ and will house 10 companies and a small IDA reception counter.

Singapore Companies At The SXSW Pavillion

Started in 2007 (read their back story), Zopim provides live chat software.

Wordster is “a large scale project attempting to innovate the traditional semantic references (the dictionary and the thesaurus).”

Started in 2008 (read their back story), Socialico “creates social apps with game mechanics”, such as FameMark and GameMaki.

Sambaash provides community-driven tools for businesses.

Started in 2009, PlayMoolah helps kids attain financial literacy.

Started in 2008, was originally known as HomeCamera (read their back story). GoToCamera allows anyone to convert their off-the-shelf webcam into a surveillance tool.

Started in 2010 (read their back story) Foound is a mobile application that allows you to plan “hangouts” with friends.

Started in late 2009, Chalkboard (read their back story) is a mobile ad network.

Started in 2008 (read their back story), Brandtology provides business and brand online monitoring tools. Media Monitors just acquired a majority stake in Brandtology.

Started in 2009, 2359 Media (read their back story) develops mobile apps. Their latest product MobDis and the company just closed their Series A round.

I will also be heading to SXSW. So see you there!

Update: Aftermath – Check out photos here and here.

Zopim, the team behind the world most innovative Live chat application is EXPANDING! They are looking for passionate and creative web developers who want to make a difference, earn some serious moolah and have lots of fun along the way. For those of you who are not looking for a job but know people who are, there’s something for you as well.

Team Zopim is a young, energetic crew that is passionate about redefining the way people think about real-time communications on the web. They’re growing quickly, and hiring talented people who can help them accomplish their mission. Founded 2 years ago, Zopim has built the world’s most innovative live chat application in the market with many pioneering Live chat features. With a rapidly growing customer base, the company has since built a thriving business around its flagship service.

Zopim DNA

At Zopim, Engineers come first! They are the lifeblood of the company and are treated as such. No bullsh*t. They like pushing the limits and giving their co-workers space and resources to achieve greatness. Zopim’s technical team is devoted to being the best coders that they can ever be and expect the same of whoever they hire. They learn and grow as a team and they are looking for team players who can play well in a challenging but equally fun working environment.

Their mantra is Brilliant & Motivated Engineers = Awesome Product = Profits!

Working at Zopim gets you…

1. Competitive Market-rate salary. (If think you are worth more, justify it to us)
2. Stock Options aka Company ownership
3. Opportunity to work on a awesome project that is disrupting the live chat industry

Note: If you do not have the below stated requisites but have a good programming background, don’t fret! If you are still interested in taking a shot, do email them as they can work out an arrangement where they will impart the necessary skills to you along the way. They are also open for internships and they are big believers in personal development.

Refer a friend

If you are not looking for a job but know someone who might fit the bill, do forward this to your friends. Zopim will reward you with an Apple Ipod Shuffle if your referral joins them because of your help.

How to apply

Email them at hires [at] zopim [dot] com with your CV/Portfolio along with your contact details. If you have any other questions, feel free to drop by their site and chat with them or leave them an offline message! =)

* A passion for developing great web applications is a must (Please send us your portfolio work)
* Minimum 2 years experience with front end RIA/AJAX technologies
* Javascript / JS frameworks (Jquery, mootools, dojo)
* HTML
* CSS
* Actionscript 2/3 or both.
* Flex 3
* Keen interest in User Interface design
* Leadership, Vision and Market Savvy
* Strong understanding of basic web design principles, usability, navigation and related web site development processes
* Strongly motivated and ability to juggle multiple tasks/projects simultaneously
* Creative and persistent problem solver
* Wild, unbridled imaginer

(Good to have)

* Adobe Photoshop skills a bonus
* Knowledge of SEO and Social marketing experiences is a very Big Plus
* Strong verbal and written communication skills

(Responsibility)

You will work with a small, talented team in a fast-paced environment at our office in the NUS Garag3, building and scaling Zopim’s customer facing live chat application.

(Requirements)

* Good Knowledge of web technologies: Web servers, HTTP, HTML, CSS, XML, DNS, network protocols like TCP/UDP
* A passion for web development with a history of building web applications outside of school curriculum.
* Creative and persistent problem solver

(Good to have)

* Working experience with C is preferred
* Working experience with Django web framework and Twisted networking framework
* Familiarity with the use of a Linux system as a development platform, with the use and integration of open source software
* Experience in the development of dynamic web sites
* Experience in the administration of a Linux system, preferably with a Debian or Ubuntu distro
* Have tinkered with IM Protocols like XMPP/MSNP15/Oscar. Even better if you have built plugins for Pidgin/Adium or IM clients using libpurple (HIGHLY sought after).

(Responsibilities)

* To assist and further develop Zopim’s back-end architecture and messaging protocol.
* To monitor and address customer technical support issues. You will also have the freedom to suggest new coding practices, recommend architecture changes and collaborate with our platform team to optimize scalability and network efficiency.

Kudos to the E27 team, the Unconference Singapore 2008 held in Matrix, Biopolis had been a fantastic and well-organized event. It had an overwhelming turnout, hitting between 200-250 people. From a surprising excellent keynote from Daniel Ingitaraj (Director, Developer & Platform Evangelism, Microsoft) to the enthusiastic pitches from many start-ups in the event, it was a gathering of many enthusiastic minds for a growing and emerging Internet industry.

Of course, the event started with registration till lunch. There was an exhibition area where Microsoft had a booth allowing the audience to try out their latest Xbox craze, Guitar Hero II. Other than that, we have the founders from several start-ups, for example, Homespace, ZopIM, Eteract, Widgeous, Phlook, GoThere, Podfire, Hibernater, Yum.sg, PatSnap and many others featured here. Surely with the good food and drinks, we mingled around the area to watch demos from the entrepreneurs about what they have worked on for the past few months.

Following on, the event started with a keynote by Daniel Ingitaraj, (Director, Developer & Platform Evangelism, Microsoft Singapore) entitled ““Innovation: Persevere or Perish”. In the talk, Daniel went from a slow start in defining two important ideas from Ted Levitt’s “Marketing Myopia” article from Harvard Business Review and Christensen’s “Innovator’s Dilemma” about disruptive technologies and talked about how technology has evolved from the past to present. He went to discuss the three major trends that is to come: (i) user experience, (ii) collaboration and (iii) cloud computing. The talk ended with some interesting demos (likely we will get a video soon). After that, the keynote was followed by the start-ups pitching about their products and demos.

Once that ends, the event is followed by the six major breakout sessions split between 2 hours: (i) Enterprise 2.0, (ii) What’s so difficult about valuing and investing in Internet Companies? (iii) Mobile Platforms, (iv) Social Media in Asia Pacific, (v) Web2.0/Mobile Startups in Eastern Europe/Africa/East Asia, and (vi) Interoperability for Startups.

The event has drawn a lot of people together, bring back old friends and new ones to the grassroots movement. Sometime back, Preetam (a well-known web evangelist in Asia) and BL (our editor in SG Entrepreneurs) have expressed a worry that they have been meeting the same people over different events in Singapore. Since the eBay.dev.shack till this event, we are heartened to realize that we are now meeting new and enthusiastic people from all walks of life who come and share their ideas and thoughts on the industry. Of course, we do have interesting photos to share with you for this event. :)

Related Links

• 1. Mohd Hisham, e27 Unconference LIVE Update using Plurk and e27 Unconference Summary.
• 2. Thinking Nectar, Unconference 2008.
• 3. Thinking Nectar, Unconference 2008 – More Start-Up Pitches.
• 4. Young UpStarts, Singapore Startups at the e27 Unconference Singapore 2008 and Photos from the event as well.
• 5. Claudia, E27 Unconference Singapore.
• 6. The Armchair Theorist, The E27 Unconference was Definitely Unboring.
• 7. BL, The IVF Drip – Realities about Raising Capital for Tech Companies in Singapore on the breakout session he conducted for the Unconference 2008.

Photo 1: Unconference Singapore 2008 Exhibition Area.

Photo 2: Peter Du and Michael Cheng at the Podfire booth.

Photo 3: Ridzuan evangelizing about the Widgeous platform at his booth.

Photo 4: Royston pitching Zopim to interesting enthusiasts.

Photo 5: Talk by Daniel Ingitaraj (Director, Developer & Platform Evangelism, Microsoft).

Zopim is a company incubating under Garag3 from NUS that helps improve your visitors’ experience on your website. Their product enables your visitors and clients to stay in touch with you through your website, using the most convenient form of communication, instant messages. Of course, they have a larger than life story on how they got started. So, we managed to lock Julian Low and his fellow team mates in the Zopim team (Wenxiang, Royston Tay, Yang Bin) for an interview to tell us about ZopIM.

BL: Hi Julian, thank you for the interview. Tell us about your background.
Julian:Hi Bernard, for the interview, with your permission I would like to include the rest of my core team in this interview as ZopIM is our baby and I feel they too deserved the recognition for all their efforts.

A very brief background of the team is as follows:

Wenxiang is ZopIM’s server side developer & residential punk who despite having a rebellious streak, labors day and night, tweaking away to ensure that everything runs smoothly at ZopIM. Graduating from the National University of Singapore’s Faculty of Computer Engineering, WX’s thesis involves advanced customer profiling solutions which is integrated into ZopIM as a very useful tool for ZopIM users to track and understand their visitors’ web path and behavior.

Royston previously honed his engineering skills as a QA/software engineer at FaceTime Communications Inc, a leading company in Enterprise IM security. He helped developed internal stress and monitoring tools, and was involved in some technical marketing as well.

At ZopIM, he is now heavily involved in developing the web-based interface for ZopIM’s corporate customers and also chips in for Business Dev as the official Business Dude

Yang Bin aka YB is ZopIM’s Client & Agent side developer and is also our resident Javascript ninja. A coding masochist, YB has outlasted his peers in coding marathons and at last check, has not left his cubicle since. A gaming enthusiast, YB is the co-founder of Fragnetics.com, one of Singapore’s very successful game hosting companies.

Majoring in Life Sciences, I was previously employed as an intern at Alpha Innotech Corporation based in San Leandro, California. I worked my way to Junior Product Manager and was handling multiple product lines before I left them last summer.

During my stint in Silicon Valley, I was given the opportunity to be part of a 2-man startup company called NandoDrop Array Technologies. ND-array Technologies was a company that was aiming to commercialize a small molecular drug discovery platform that was developed in NUS by my co-founder and which provides a 96% cost reduction in screening for potential drug targets.
Despite early successes in raising funding from local sources, I was unable to garner serious industry interest in the U.S to realize its full potential, largely due to undercapitalization. Eventual undercapitalization forced us to shut the company down and it was a painful lesson but I would still do it again as I gained many invaluable lessons through it. Many of which had benefited me as I venture forth with ZopIM.com which is also aiming to challenge and optimize existing business practices.

BL: Tell us the story behind ZopIM! and how did the whole team get involved in the project?
Julian: ZopIM like many other startups was an idea borne out of idle conversations. I had roomed in with Wenxiang and was classmates with YangBin when we were in Silicon Valley and we had an idea which goes basically like this: “What if you could have a browser-base chat session that could persist across multiple web pages? What if every hyperlink becomes an opportunity for you to interact with a fellow human being in this extremely populated but still surprisingly quiet place we call the internet.”

This remained an idea until 18th April 2007. That fateful day, Tim Draper the Founder and a Managing Director of Draper Fisher Jurvetson, a venture capital firm had arrived in Singapore for an event and was having a dinner meet up session with local aspiring entrepreneurs. WX who was never invited, gate-crashed the event (with the help of Roy) and shamelessly pitched his idea to Tim. As luck would have it, Tim liked the idea and asked when he could see the prototype.

WX, thinking that Tim was kidding, said: “Two months?”

Tim: “Okay, I want to see the prototype exactly 2 months from now, 18th June in my office. I will arrange a meeting with you with my secretary.”

When WX went home that night and received an email confirmation from Tim’s personal assistant Karen, he practically fell off his chair. That was when all hell broke loose.

Realizing that this was a rare opportunity, WX needed more help and roped in Roy who was eager to get in the fray. Within 2 months, Roy+YB+ WX had ZopIM’s 1st prototype up and we presented it to him at his Sandhilll office in Silicon Valley.

Like most VCs, he did not reject us outright but basically told us that he thinks the idea is scalable and that we were to approach when we gain some traction. Despite this, Tim’s encouragement gave us the impetus to continue developing on the idea. Though we were still schooling, we had successfully applied and obtained funding from MDA’s iJam’s program and the rest as they say is history.

BL: As we understand that ZopIM is a next generation sales Instant Messaging platform, how is it different from the remote desktop types of messaging platforms which are available? Also, what are the features in ZopIM! that you deemed interesting for your users?
Julian: Live Chat for customer sales and support is not new. However the industry is filled with cloned solutions that just do not satisfy the needs of small online businesses. If you take a simple Google search and download the ready-made Live Chat solutions today, you’ll find that most are them are:

• a. Cumbersome to use and requiring software downloads.
• b. Have bad user interface design.
• c. Costly and not applicable for small online businesses

ZopIM differentiates itself from the rest of the market by focusing a lot of our developmental energies in solving the pains our customers as well as the end-customer (their customers). You can see this in the features that we offer like…

• a. Offline notifications/messaging and a browser-based Dashboard platform that help our customers talk to people on their websites even while they are on the not near a computer. We believe we are the first Live Chat service provider to offer this for now. (If you do find one, do let us know)
• b. Incorporating business features like customer ranking, canned messages and survey functions that help our customers to engage their web page visitors more efficiently and effectively.

Currently, we are still working on the pricing model with our Beta Clients but one thing we can assure is that it would be a Freemium model where it would be free for most websites till they reach a certain high traffic stage.

BL: Who would be the customers of your product?
Julian: So far, our Beta customers base come in all shapes and sizes. On top of a few Web design & IT firms that deploy our platform, we have a Spa Treatment Website (www.spahaven.com.sg), a Gaming Console Webby (www.qisahn.com), a Bag aficionada cum sales blog (www.cassis-room.blogspot.com) and even a Political Webby (www.voterscentral.com).
However, the one thing that is common among them is that they rely heavily on their websites to reach out and engage their customers.

BL: How does ZopIM! create a sustainable revenue model given that the messaging platform is free and can be deployed on any platform?
Julian: Yes, its free for the majority of our customers. However we will be working on a Freemium model, we will charge our customers an affordable subscription fee when they reach a certain traffic or need more advanced features (e.g SMS notification, intelligent routing, etc).

That way, we can build a sustainable business while providing ZopIM for our beloved customers.

BL: What are the trends that you see in the instant messaging platform space in the web?
Julian: In the social IM space, we see more and more integration and aggregation activities going on. We also see that IM clients which were once mostly desktop-based migrating/merging with the browser. Popular clients like Meebo and Ebuddy are evidence of this. Once dataplans become cheaper and accessible for phones, it’s a no-brainer to postulate that the next Big IM War will happen on the phone.

Ok, what I postulated are boring conclusions that have been debated since the 90s. Personally, I would like to go out on a leg to predict that IM would one day become smarter tools than just a simple text-base medium you see today. I believe very strongly that Netizens one day will use embedded IM tools on the web (like ZopIM) to conduct other activities. (E.g. Book an appointment with your doctor/restaurant, request for information or automate a multitude of online tasks)

BL: What are the three important traits of a young entrepreneur that you think are important?
Julian: Most self-motivational books would tell you that the 3 important traits that an entrepreneurs should have are Courage, Passion and Honesty. However, I would like to propose to SGE’s readers a slightly more non-conventional lesson for young entrepreneurs that we have learnt so far.

Team ZopIM would not be where it is today if not for our Mentor and Friend , Charlie Giang who is a successful entrepreneur in his own right. Through our drinking sessions (where he sponsors our liquor and get us horribly dead drunk), we were able to glean from him a few pearls of wisdom.
Chief among his many advices is that a young entrepreneur MUST have the willingness to “po fu chen zhou“. “Po fu chen zhou” is a Chinese proverb that basically translates to destroying the cooking pots and sinking his boats. The proverb relates to orders an ancient Chinese General Xiang Yu assigned to his army when they landed on enemy shores. The result of the orders hardened his army’s resolve and they were able to defeat their enemy who were numerically bigger and better prepared.

Likewise, a young entrepreneur going into the marketplace should be desperate to succeed. When he/she makes the conscious decision to cut himself off from the comfort of a 9-5 job to fill a gap identified in the market, he has nothing to lose. He/she would naturally have the means to adapt accordingly and to develop other traits (E.g. People skills) as challenges come along.

Thus said, there are no fixed traits or winning formulas any successful entrepreneurs should have. If you wait to develop those traits before you decide to plunge in, it would be too late. When you are young, you have nothing much to lose. So make the plunge today and learn those traits as you go.

BL: Thanks for sharing with your story and thoughts. We wish you and the team from ZopIM the best of luck for your ventures ahead.