North Korean Government Launches Slick New Website

All hail Kim Jong Un? Perhaps it’s the result of the country’s young new leader, or perhaps this was part of the plan all along, but the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea — a.k.a. North Korea — has launched a new English-language propaganda site. And while the rhetoric is as crazy as it has always been, the design is…well, pretty good actually.

It’s not clear where the site was designed, and a WHOIS lookup returns the true owner of the domain has been concealed, though it appears the site is currently hosted in Denmark. Although it is apparently the official English-language website of the North Korean government, it is connected with and seemingly operated by the Korean Friendship Association, a sort of international fan club for North Korea that anyone can join. In fact, it’s very easy to join, according to the site:

In order to join the KFA, please send an e-mail to korea@korea-dpr.com with your complete name, address, telephone, birth date and e-mail. The membership is totally free.

Members can also purchase a KFA membership card for 50 Euros ($63).

The site is full of information about North Korea, from details about the country’s flag to information on how to travel there for business or pleasure. It also has a photo gallery and an online Cafepress shop where one can purchase DPRK swag. In fact, the whole thing looks pretty normal, until you start reading any of the text. Then, of course, you come across things like this:

The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is a genuine workers’ state in which all the people are completely liberated from exploitation and oppression. The workers, peasants, soldiers and intellectuals are the true masters of their destiny and are in a unique position to defend their interests.

So the DPRK is selling the same old crazy in a slick new package. I can’t imagine this will be a particularly effective soft power tool for the Hermit Kingdom; on the other hand, it’s been a hot topic on Twitter all morning so I could be wrong. There do appear to still be a few bugs in the system, though. For example, this page is supposed to be a new memorial section for Kim Il Sung, but it’s actually just a dead link.

Either way, perhaps China’s government could take the hint and ask the North Koreans to design new official websites for China while they’re at it. Most Chinese government websites are a nightmare of outdated and mostly terrible design.

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Facebook Pages Manager now available on iTunes in Singapore and select countries

The Facebook Pages Manager is now available for free to iPhone and iPad users through the Apps Store. The app by the world’s largest social network lets users manage their company’s Facebook Pages using their phone.

While the official Facebook app allows for some basic Facebook Page management, it lacks a lot of key features. This new app has the ability to let social media managers post new updates and photos on their Pages, get push notifications about Page activity, view Page insights, and more.

The app is now available as a free download in Singapore, New Zealand, Australia, and Canada. More countries are expected to follow.

Take the app for a spin, let us know what you think and whether it is available in your country.

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20-year-old Gumroad founder talks about how he raised funds

Sahil Lavingia, a 20-year-old entrepreneur, shares some tips on attracting investors. He was with the founding team of Pinterest before leaving to build his own startup Gumroad, which makes buying and selling online much easier. One of the things he did was to build relationships with investors before even building his startup. He did it through writing on his blog, and engaging investors via social media. Age is nothing but a number.

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Book review: The Lean Startup by Eric Ries

Drawn from his blog “Startup Lessons Learned” and sharing his experiences as the former CTO of IMVU, The Lean Startup is Eric Ries’s (@ericries) effort, in his own words, to change how startups are built. Whether you are a business person or technologist, the book “The Lean Startup” is a must-read for any entrepreneur.

The lessons on how to build a minimum viable product, iterate base on customer feedback and metrics and pivot when all else fails will guide the entrepreneur and hold them accountable in their attempt to change an industry.

In the vein of Peter Drucker, who wrote that entrepreneurship is risk management, Eric Ries began the book with the note that the lean startup method is for entrepreneurs and the people who hold them accountable. The five key principles which set up the entire book are:

1. Entrepreneurship is everywhere and isn’t limited to people who work in startups. In his definition, he broadened the definition to anyone who works within any human institution designed to create new products and services under conditions of extreme uncertainty, which implies that the approach he is advocating works in a company of any size of any sector or industry, and that includes multi-national enterprises.

2. Entrepreneurship is management. This sets up the notion that the entrepreneur needs a different kind of management for an environment that is specifically geared to its context of extreme uncertainty.

3. Validated Learning. Eric Ries argued that startups exist to learn how to build a sustainable business and the learning can be validated scientifically by running frequent experiments that allow them to test and find out how the market reacts to their products. In fact, that approach pervades the book.

4. Build-Measure-Learn. This concept explains that a startup’s fundamental activity is to turn ideas into products, measure how customers respond and then learn whether to pivot or persevere, and how the lessons from all successful start-ups can be directed to grow the feedback loop.

5. Innovation accounting. Ries strongly believe that the survival of a startup can be better enhanced by focusing on the boring stuff: How to measure progress, set up milestones and prioritize work. It provides a possible way for how investors and entrepreneurs themselves can evaluate the progress of a start-up.

With the five principles in mind, the author takes the reader through the rest of the book in three parts: “Vision”, “Steer” and “Accelerate”. He buids his case with several interesting case studies including his time in IMVU.

For example, Intuit demonstrated with Snaptax that they can build a good product even though they are a big organization. They found their own way to break the Innovator’s dilemma. Snaptax was able to solve an interesting problem of allowing users to finish their entire tax returns on a mobile phone. Other stories included Zappos, Facebook and Path.

In “Vision”, the first part of the book, Ries builds the case for the discipline of entrepreneurial management. The author identifies who the entrepreneur is, the definition of a startup, and offers a new way for startups to gauge that they are making progress with a method called validated learning.

The key, according to Ries, is that start-ups need to devise scientific hypotheses on their product and find out how a sustainable business can be built in the process.

On “Steer”, the second part of the book, the author brings up the concept of building the minimum viable product to test the assumptions and an accounting system to evaluate whether entrepreneurs are making progress. He offers the a decision making method to help entrepreneurs to decide if they should pivot or persevere.

In “Accelerate”, Eric explore techniques that help lean startups accelerate through the build-measure-learn feedback loop as quickly as possible while the start-ups scale.

What’s interesting about the book is that Eric Ries presents an upfront and realistic picture of how life in a start-up can be. He says that entrepreneurs tend to dupe themselves into thinking that they have the perfect idea or product, not realizing that the market have disproved their own notions.

Probably, for any entrepreneur who reads this book, the best lesson to learn is to be able to admit that an idea failed and it is time to go back to the drawing board. Of course, like some other books I have reviewed, this is one title which will be kept on my bookshelf and iPad for referencing from time to time.

The author Eric Ries in Authors @ Google talking about his book “The Lean Startup”.

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Rakuten to be Lead investor in Pinterest’s Next Funding Round [Report]

All Things Digital is reporting today that it expects that Japanese e-commerce giant Rakuten (JSD:4755) will be the lead investor in Pinterest’s next round of funding, which is expected to be announced tomorrow morning.

Pinterest, of course, is the pinboard-style social photo service where individual users and brands alike can share images of things they want to show to the world. Pinboard is especially interesting from an e-commerce perspective as some brands have reported that traffic from Pinboard brings bigger spending customers than from some other social services like Facebook.

It should be noted that All Things Digital is citing unnamed sources here, so take this at face value for the time being. But ATD claims that Rakuten will be investing “upwards of $50 million in a $120 million round that values [Pinterest] at $1.5 billion.” The report also notes that Rakuten will likely help Pinterest convert pictures into purchases, drawing on its vast experience in e-commerce.

We’ve mentioned Rakuten quite a bit on this blog recently, as it folded up shop in China a few weeks back with its joint venture with Baidu was not quite going as planned. But then it then it opened up an online shopping mall for the large Brazil market soon after.

We’ve reached out to Rakuten for comment on this, but if this report is true, I expect we won’t hear much until tomorrow. We’ll keep you posted.

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VSee will change the future of video collaboration with its safe and secure, software-only solution

Put video conferencing + collaborative work + safe and secure transmission of information + simplicity of use together, and you’ll get VSee.

What comes to mind when you think of video collaboration tools?

For mainstream consumers (i.e., you and me), Skype (and to a smaller extent, Google hangout), is no stranger to us. As for businesses and enterprises, video conferencing systems like Polycom and WebEx are the bigger players in the market.

These video conferencing tools serve the same purpose of eliminating distance as an impediment to real-time visual and audio communication. How then, does video-collaboration softeware, VSee differ from the rest? On top of offering a rich video and audio experience, VSee takes video conferencing up a notch with simplicity in performing collaborative work and high security of information transmission.

To find out more about the product and the company, I VSee-interviewed CEO of VSee, Milton Chen.

Interviewing Milton through VSee.

Simplicity as the main difference between VSee and other video collaboration tools.

The biggest difference lies in VSee’s simplicity of work collaboration while video conferencing. With just a click, users can share screens and any application. Another of VSee’s easy-to-use features is the drag-and-drop file transfer. I have to admit that the name itself doesn’t sound too big a deal. But when Milton demonstrated it during the interview, I was sold for the product.

On his end, he simply drags and drop a file into the video window (yes, the entire video window is a folder). To retrieve it, all I had to do to get the file is to drag it out to my desktop. Milton also showed me how simple and easy it was to perform screen sharing with just a click. In my opinion, these are winning features that enables efficient video work collaboration.

As Milton puts it,

“VSee allows for video calls, but, so what? It is important to connect to someone, share a report or an image easily with a single click or drag and drop. VSee believes that video is important in while having a conversation. What makes us different is the rich video experience through file sharing etc.”

Big push this year is to make vsee mobile. background- research on video streaming efficiently over 3g and 4g network.

VSee offers security in information transmission using end-to-end encryption.

Milton demonstrates the VSee for the U.S. House of Congress. Photo: Darren Pillen, VSee

The U.S. congress has recently approved VSee to run behind the congressional firewall. Other video collaboration tools such as  Google,  Skype or even big companies like Cisco, Polycom and WebEx, are not approved to run behind the congressional firewall. This, together with VSee’s many other high profile government clients like NASA, serve as testament to VSee’s secure information transmission technology.

The technology behind: VSee does this by using end-to-end encryption. That is to say, a two-way video session on VSee is being encrypted such that only the parties involved have access. No one else, not even VSee, has access. With such high security, it is easy and more assuring to have a conversation without having to worry that a third-party might tap in.

Prominent users and their main uses for VSee

Big clients of VSee include the U.S. Congress, U.S. Navy SEALS, NASA and big companies like IBM and Primerica. These organisations uses VSee for mainly two key reasons:

1. Internal team work. The challenge that companies face is the problem of being able to work efficiently with the team, given that most of the co-workers are located at different offices. VSee aims to solve this by providing a social and friendly rich working experience to the team.

2. B2B communication/ Talking to customers. One of the company’s bigger clients, IBM, uses VSee as a communication tool for customers to communicate easily with IBM sales representative solution specialist to solve their problems.

Milton emphasized that the key to VSee solutions lies in its simplicity of use. Traditionally, video collaboration is viewed as being complicated with too many steps involved. Vsee breaks this perception by making the video communication experience simple and easy through rich video, screen sharing, file transfer, etc. with just a click on a webpage.

Traditional video conferencing requires expensive gadgets and setups. Photo: Video conferencing equipment blog

VSee’s software-only solution vs. traditional hardware video collaboration tools.

Milton commented that if the interview setup that we were having, was done a couple of years ago, there is a heavy stress on the need for video quality. Of which, can only be achieved through purchasing delicate hardware that don’t come cheap. To further inconvenience users, the hardware must be placed in a dedicated room, say a fixed ‘video conference room’ where all have to be physically present to hold a meeting.

Today, all video conferencing can be solved with a purely software-only solution. I must say, the level of quality achieved with VSee is pretty high.

Why spend US$20,ooo on a piece of hardware that comes with all the complexity to schedule a meeting, and physically being in a conference room before the actual video collaboration meeting.

“The line has crossed for the level of quality you can achieve from hardware and software. This again, is why we think that the multi-billion dollar hardware-based companies will die in the next 5 to 10 years. There is no reason for their existence.”

The future for video collaboration

“The VSee team is really excited about the future of video collaboration,” exclaimed Milton. He gave a very good picture of how the future of video collaboration will be like by relating to the ongoing video experience that we were having.

“It is near midnight here in California and I’m working from home while you are in Singapore. VSee enables one to have a rich dialogue with someone from across the world. It is easy to show something or share a file. We see VSee as a social network technology that brings people together, erase distances and simply get work done, no matter where the other person happens to be.”

Milton adds on that he believes, in the future, people will do more and more of such video activities. Today, it is used by mostly big enterprises for mainly tech conference calls. Prior to the call, one party might have to send a powerpoint presentation over before the conference begins. There is simply too much work to prepare before and during the video conference for traditional video communication methods as compared to a solution like VSee that allows all work collaboration to be done during the call.

Milton envisions that in five to ten years’ time, everybody will be doing video collaboration online, all the time. And, people will just take for granted. His prediction is that traditional hardware-based, multi-billion dollar video conferencing companies like Telepresence,  Polycom and Tandberg will be in serious trouble.  With the level of video quality that can be achieved now with software technologies like VSee, there is no need to invest in $20,000 on a piece of hardware that entails complexity with it.

Milton adds on, “With the rise of technology like VSee, we will kill the billion dollar companies like Tandberg and Polycom.”

The VSee team at their annual winter ski trip. Photo: VSee

The VSee team as a proven testimony that remote team work can be efficient.

As a company, VSee has two offices worldwide- Silicon Valley and Singapore. Half of its staff is spread out all over the world in Indian, Spain and in the United States, they are scattered in different states. Even though the team is separated by distance, the company’s efficiency level remains high.

The VSee team is a proven testimony that remote team work can also be efficient and effective as the product itself allow for efficient work flow and collaboration. In the beginning, when VSee was first created, the main motivation behind was to create a good tool to facilitate the work collaboration amongst the widely geographically-distributed team.

One of the trends that Milton has  pointed out is the difficulty that that companies face in hiring good engineers. There are few tech companies fighting for resources in there. Unlike these companies, VSee does not face such a problem. With an efficient remote teamwork tool, they can hire the best talents around the world, no matter where they are located.

Big companies like Apple, Facebook, Google, are traditional and afraid to hire people remotely. They have the mindset that as soon as they have people working remotely, productivity suffers. Trust and social bonding between team members also suffer. That is why  most prefer not to hire someone else located far from the home office as there are no tools  that will ensure effective team work.

Milton’s hunch is that by being able to show that VSee is able to work well across distance, this will give VSee and any other company that follows the VSee work culture an unfair advantage over other companies. He believes that in five to ten years’ time, companies will switch to the VSee style of working.

Although the interview was done at 3pm, Singapore time (11pm, California time), there wasn’t a hint of time or distance difference throughout the entire VSee interview session. I’d have to say the voice and image quality was brilliant.

VSee is available free for download for both Windows and Mac. The iOS and Android versions will be coming out soon.

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VSee will change the future of video collaboration with its safe and secure, software-only solution

Put video conferencing + collaborative work + safe and secure transmission of information + simplicity of use together, and you’ll get VSee.

What comes to mind when you think of video collaboration tools?

For mainstream consumers (i.e., you and me), Skype (and to a smaller extent, Google hangout), is no stranger to us. As for businesses and enterprises, video conferencing systems like Polycom and WebEx are the bigger players in the market.

These video conferencing tools serve the same purpose of eliminating distance as an impediment to real-time visual and audio communication. How then, does video-collaboration softeware, VSee differ from the rest? On top of offering a rich video and audio experience, VSee takes video conferencing up a notch with simplicity in performing collaborative work and high security of information transmission.

To find out more about the product and the company, I VSee-interviewed CEO of VSee, Milton Chen.

Interviewing Milton through VSee.

Simplicity as the main difference between VSee and other video collaboration tools.

The biggest difference lies in VSee’s simplicity of work collaboration while video conferencing. With just a click, users can share screens and any application. Another of VSee’s easy-to-use features is the drag-and-drop file transfer. I have to admit that the name itself doesn’t sound too big a deal. But when Milton demonstrated it during the interview, I was sold for the product.

On his end, he simply drags and drop a file into the video window (yes, the entire video window is a folder). To retrieve it, all I had to do to get the file is to drag it out to my desktop. Milton also showed me how simple and easy it was to perform screen sharing with just a click. In my opinion, these are winning features that enables efficient video work collaboration.

As Milton puts it,

“VSee allows for video calls, but, so what? It is important to connect to someone, share a report or an image easily with a single click or drag and drop. VSee believes that video is important in while having a conversation. What makes us different is the rich video experience through file sharing etc.”

Big push this year is to make vsee mobile. background- research on video streaming efficiently over 3g and 4g network.

VSee offers security in information transmission using end-to-end encryption.

Milton demonstrates the VSee for the U.S. House of Congress. Photo: Darren Pillen, VSee

The U.S. congress has recently approved VSee to run behind the congressional firewall. Other video collaboration tools such as  Google,  Skype or even big companies like Cisco, Polycom and WebEx, are not approved to run behind the congressional firewall. This, together with VSee’s many other high profile government clients like NASA, serve as testament to VSee’s secure information transmission technology.

The technology behind: VSee does this by using end-to-end encryption. That is to say, a two-way video session on VSee is being encrypted such that only the parties involved have access. No one else, not even VSee, has access. With such high security, it is easy and more assuring to have a conversation without having to worry that a third-party might tap in.

Prominent users and their main uses for VSee

Big clients of VSee include the U.S. Congress, U.S. Navy SEALS, NASA and big companies like IBM and Primerica. These organisations uses VSee for mainly two key reasons:

1. Internal team work. The challenge that companies face is the problem of being able to work efficiently with the team, given that most of the co-workers are located at different offices. VSee aims to solve this by providing a social and friendly rich working experience to the team.

2. B2B communication/ Talking to customers. One of the company’s bigger clients, IBM, uses VSee as a communication tool for customers to communicate easily with IBM sales representative solution specialist to solve their problems.

Milton emphasized that the key to VSee solutions lies in its simplicity of use. Traditionally, video collaboration is viewed as being complicated with too many steps involved. Vsee breaks this perception by making the video communication experience simple and easy through rich video, screen sharing, file transfer, etc. with just a click on a webpage.

Traditional video conferencing requires expensive gadgets and setups. Photo: Video conferencing equipment blog

VSee’s software-only solution vs. traditional hardware video collaboration tools.

Milton commented that if the interview setup that we were having, was done a couple of years ago, there is a heavy stress on the need for video quality. Of which, can only be achieved through purchasing delicate hardware that don’t come cheap. To further inconvenience users, the hardware must be placed in a dedicated room, say a fixed ‘video conference room’ where all have to be physically present to hold a meeting.

Today, all video conferencing can be solved with a purely software-only solution. I must say, the level of quality achieved with VSee is pretty high.

Why spend US$20,ooo on a piece of hardware that comes with all the complexity to schedule a meeting, and physically being in a conference room before the actual video collaboration meeting.

“The line has crossed for the level of quality you can achieve from hardware and software. This again, is why we think that the multi-billion dollar hardware-based companies will die in the next 5 to 10 years. There is no reason for their existence.”

The future for video collaboration

“The VSee team is really excited about the future of video collaboration,” exclaimed Milton. He gave a very good picture of how the future of video collaboration will be like by relating to the ongoing video experience that we were having.

“It is near midnight here in California and I’m working from home while you are in Singapore. VSee enables one to have a rich dialogue with someone from across the world. It is easy to show something or share a file. We see VSee as a social network technology that brings people together, erase distances and simply get work done, no matter where the other person happens to be.”

Milton adds on that he believes, in the future, people will do more and more of such video activities. Today, it is used by mostly big enterprises for mainly tech conference calls. Prior to the call, one party might have to send a powerpoint presentation over before the conference begins. There is simply too much work to prepare before and during the video conference for traditional video communication methods as compared to a solution like VSee that allows all work collaboration to be done during the call.

Milton envisions that in five to ten years’ time, everybody will be doing video collaboration online, all the time. And, people will just take for granted. His prediction is that traditional hardware-based, multi-billion dollar video conferencing companies like Telepresence,  Polycom and Tandberg will be in serious trouble.  With the level of video quality that can be achieved now with software technologies like VSee, there is no need to invest in $20,000 on a piece of hardware that entails complexity with it.

Milton adds on, “With the rise of technology like VSee, we will kill the billion dollar companies like Tandberg and Polycom.”

The VSee team at their annual winter ski trip. Photo: VSee

The VSee team as a proven testimony that remote team work can be efficient.

As a company, VSee has two offices worldwide- Silicon Valley and Singapore. Half of its staff is spread out all over the world in Indian, Spain and in the United States, they are scattered in different states. Even though the team is separated by distance, the company’s efficiency level remains high.

The VSee team is a proven testimony that remote team work can also be efficient and effective as the product itself allow for efficient work flow and collaboration. In the beginning, when VSee was first created, the main motivation behind was to create a good tool to facilitate the work collaboration amongst the widely geographically-distributed team.

One of the trends that Milton has  pointed out is the difficulty that that companies face in hiring good engineers. There are few tech companies fighting for resources in there. Unlike these companies, VSee does not face such a problem. With an efficient remote teamwork tool, they can hire the best talents around the world, no matter where they are located.

Big companies like Apple, Facebook, Google, are traditional and afraid to hire people remotely. They have the mindset that as soon as they have people working remotely, productivity suffers. Trust and social bonding between team members also suffer. That is why  most prefer not to hire someone else located far from the home office as there are no tools  that will ensure effective team work.

Milton’s hunch is that by being able to show that VSee is able to work well across distance, this will give VSee and any other company that follows the VSee work culture an unfair advantage over other companies. He believes that in five to ten years’ time, companies will switch to the VSee style of working.

Although the interview was done at 3pm, Singapore time (11pm, California time), there wasn’t a hint of time or distance difference throughout the entire VSee interview session. I’d have to say the voice and image quality was brilliant.

VSee is available free for download for both Windows and Mac. The iOS and Android versions will be coming out soon.

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China’s Satellite Navigation System to Serve Asia-Pacific, Launch More Satellites

Without GPS technology, we would all be lost — increasingly, that’s a literal truth. China’s “Big Dipper” GPS satellite system has of course been in operation for a little while already, but major expansions were announced yesterday at an exhibition in Guangzhou.

This year, an additional three Big Dipper satellites will be launched to assist in a network expansion that will see the Big Dipper system covering the entire Asia-Pacific region by the end of this year. These three new satellites will join the 13 already in the sky, and they likely won’t be the last to go up. The ultimate goal for the Big Dipper system is for it to be a high-tech, open global positioning system with full global coverage by 2020.

China is also cooperating with all the major international players — Russia, the US, the EU, Japan — to integrate the Big Dipper system with their systems and to meet international standards for aviation and maritime navigation.

[China Youth Daily via Sina Tech]

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Exploring Taiwan through reviews and recommendations on Citydomo

Where do you head to to find good recommendations for these:

Hotel and Flights? Tripadvisor.

Food? hungrygowhere (Singapore)

And what about EVERYTHING? Here’s one that we all know– Yelp.

Taiwan startup, Citydomo is creating a Yelp-like site for users to read and write reviews on everything from food, hotels, night clubs to even plastic surgery! In exchange for writing reviews, users gain Domo dollars and stand a chance to win prizes.

e27 caught up with Co-founder, Kevin Lin to find out more about Citydomo.

What is the idea behind Citydomo?

Citydomo wants to build a company that can send local businesses themselves viral.

Citydomo has two inspirations. We would like to provide the education, support, and nurturing necessary for companies to craft and manage the entire sales life cycle online, from exposure and sales, to post-sale branding. Secondly, we would like to make it fun to promote the businesses that you love by offering prizes to users who spreads the word through Facebook, Twitter, write reviews, upload business photos, attend events, make purchases…etc from Citydomo’s business partners. With good content, good tracking, and incentives to spread the message, we plan to send our business partners viral.

Your team is mostly made up of the friends you made while at Duke. How has the overseas experience contributed to your entrepreneurship endeavor?

At Duke MBA, we had a chance to learn from a vast array of business people around the world. From spice market vendors in Dubai to the CEO of the second largest mining company in the world, the most important lessons we learned from these people was to listen to our customers. We found out that we ourselves don’t have to have all the answers. If we listen to our end users and craft our product around their wants, needs, desires and ambitions, we will fill the gap that exist in the market.

From a logistics points of view, Joe and Kevin learned to collaborate remotely as a team from anywhere in the world. This has played out well as Joseph is currently stationed in Austria while Kevin is on the ground in Taiwan. Even with thousands of miles between them, they are able to create synergies that even in-person teams would envy.

The Citydomo team. Photo: Citydomo

How is the traction like for Citydomo and what are some of the feedback you have received from users so far?

From a user’s perspective, Citydomo is growing on track with our models. Our gamification system, as we predicted, has accelerated our growth about three fold as users sign on and begin earning domo $ and promoting businesses with the goal of winning great prizes they love. We have already outgrown our first hosting solution and just this past weekend we moved into the Amazon Cloud hosted in Singapore.

Citydomo's office. Photo: Citydomo

From a business partner’s perspective, we are moving along the learning curve. We knew going into this that working with small and medium sized businesses in Taiwan required a customized plan. We could not simple take a business idea from North America and drop it down in Taiwan – like Google/Yahoo tried – because it would fail. We see our progression down this learning curve as a competitive advantage. Once we have tailored our business partner education, sales, sales support and logistics programs we will have a year to a year and a half of operational protection from other competitors.

The main thing our business partners are telling us is that they want to see proof that their campaigns are working and that they did not feel a fixed monthly rate was justifiable. Citydomo responded to these observations by launching a pay-per-performance scheme based on the amount of domo $ generated around a business and by expanding our reporting, tracking, and branding features of the website and corresponding concierge services. (Concierge is what Citydomo calls its business development staff because they aren’t just selling the site to our clients, they are helping to educate the businesses on our tools and mold the businesses image online)

What are some of Citydomo’s plans ahead?

Citydomo is pushing hard to continue partnering with businesses around the Taipei area. To date we have 60 business partners and we would like to expand that to 350 by the end of the year.

Our next big push of features will be to support the businesses’ needs. These include the ability to interact with leads, detailed reporting capabilities, and additional tools to manage and sculpt their brand on Citydomo.com. Our other big initiative will be to begin releasing the mobile versions of Citydomo that will allow users to write reviews, learn about businesses and their events and specials, and earn domo $ while on the go.

Citydomo's Co-founders, Kevin and Joe. Photo: Citydomo

What would you mainly be looking for at Echelon 2012 Startup Marketplace?

We are mainly looking for exposure through the Echelon 2012 market place. This is our first big coming out to the world and we would like everyone to know about the great work our staff is doing on the ground in Taipei, building up the Citydomo brand and product.

While we are opening lines of communication with potential investors in Taiwan, we are looking forward to meet some other international investors in the event who are interested in our product and believe in Citydomo’s business model.

Citydomo will be exhibiting at Echelon 2012 Startup Marketplace. The team pitched their product at the Taiwan Satellite in April.

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Exploring Taiwan through reviews and recommendations on Citydomo

Where do you head to to find good recommendations for these:

Hotel and Flights? Tripadvisor.

Food? hungrygowhere (Singapore)

And what about EVERYTHING? Here’s one that we all know– Yelp.

Taiwan startup, Citydomo is creating a Yelp-like site for users to read and write reviews on everything from food, hotels, night clubs to even plastic surgery! In exchange for writing reviews, users gain Domo dollars and stand a chance to win prizes.

e27 caught up with Co-founder, Kevin Lin to find out more about Citydomo.

What is the idea behind Citydomo?

Citydomo wants to build a company that can send local businesses themselves viral.

Citydomo has two inspirations. We would like to provide the education, support, and nurturing necessary for companies to craft and manage the entire sales life cycle online, from exposure and sales, to post-sale branding. Secondly, we would like to make it fun to promote the businesses that you love by offering prizes to users who spreads the word through Facebook, Twitter, write reviews, upload business photos, attend events, make purchases…etc from Citydomo’s business partners. With good content, good tracking, and incentives to spread the message, we plan to send our business partners viral.

Your team is mostly made up of the friends you made while at Duke. How has the overseas experience contributed to your entrepreneurship endeavor?

At Duke MBA, we had a chance to learn from a vast array of business people around the world. From spice market vendors in Dubai to the CEO of the second largest mining company in the world, the most important lessons we learned from these people was to listen to our customers. We found out that we ourselves don’t have to have all the answers. If we listen to our end users and craft our product around their wants, needs, desires and ambitions, we will fill the gap that exist in the market.

From a logistics points of view, Joe and Kevin learned to collaborate remotely as a team from anywhere in the world. This has played out well as Joseph is currently stationed in Austria while Kevin is on the ground in Taiwan. Even with thousands of miles between them, they are able to create synergies that even in-person teams would envy.

The Citydomo team. Photo: Citydomo

How is the traction like for Citydomo and what are some of the feedback you have received from users so far?

From a user’s perspective, Citydomo is growing on track with our models. Our gamification system, as we predicted, has accelerated our growth about three fold as users sign on and begin earning domo $ and promoting businesses with the goal of winning great prizes they love. We have already outgrown our first hosting solution and just this past weekend we moved into the Amazon Cloud hosted in Singapore.

Citydomo's office. Photo: Citydomo

From a business partner’s perspective, we are moving along the learning curve. We knew going into this that working with small and medium sized businesses in Taiwan required a customized plan. We could not simple take a business idea from North America and drop it down in Taiwan – like Google/Yahoo tried – because it would fail. We see our progression down this learning curve as a competitive advantage. Once we have tailored our business partner education, sales, sales support and logistics programs we will have a year to a year and a half of operational protection from other competitors.

The main thing our business partners are telling us is that they want to see proof that their campaigns are working and that they did not feel a fixed monthly rate was justifiable. Citydomo responded to these observations by launching a pay-per-performance scheme based on the amount of domo $ generated around a business and by expanding our reporting, tracking, and branding features of the website and corresponding concierge services. (Concierge is what Citydomo calls its business development staff because they aren’t just selling the site to our clients, they are helping to educate the businesses on our tools and mold the businesses image online)

What are some of Citydomo’s plans ahead?

Citydomo is pushing hard to continue partnering with businesses around the Taipei area. To date we have 60 business partners and we would like to expand that to 350 by the end of the year.

Our next big push of features will be to support the businesses’ needs. These include the ability to interact with leads, detailed reporting capabilities, and additional tools to manage and sculpt their brand on Citydomo.com. Our other big initiative will be to begin releasing the mobile versions of Citydomo that will allow users to write reviews, learn about businesses and their events and specials, and earn domo $ while on the go.

Citydomo's Co-founders, Kevin and Joe. Photo: Citydomo

What would you mainly be looking for at Echelon 2012 Startup Marketplace?

We are mainly looking for exposure through the Echelon 2012 market place. This is our first big coming out to the world and we would like everyone to know about the great work our staff is doing on the ground in Taipei, building up the Citydomo brand and product.

While we are opening lines of communication with potential investors in Taiwan, we are looking forward to meet some other international investors in the event who are interested in our product and believe in Citydomo’s business model.

Citydomo will be exhibiting at Echelon 2012 Startup Marketplace. The team pitched their product at the Taiwan Satellite in April.

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Inside the Minds of International Investors in Indonesia [#StartupAsia Preview]

When statistics for the number of Facebook users back in 2010 revealed that Indonesia was the second largest Facebook nation, it took many people by surprise. But beyond that statistical evidence of its oozing potential, what is exactly attracting international investors to enter the Indonesian market?

On day one of our Startup Asia Jakarta conference, we’re fortunate to have a power-packed lineup of international investors on board with us, discussing the potential they see in the country as investors seeking opportunities there:

Tatsuo Tsutsumi, GREE Ventures

Tatsuo Tsutsumi is a partner at GREE Ventures and has over 14 years of experience in managing and investing in internet companies. He worked for the Management Consulting Division of Sanwa Research Institute Corporation where he was involved in strategic development and implementation support of mid-sized Japanese businesses.

After Sanwa Research Institute Corporation, he joined Global Brain Corporation which is an independent venture capital in Japan. After Global Brain, he joined Cyber Agent which is major internet company in Japan, and launched many internet services and Venture Capital arms of Cyber Agent (Cyber Agent Ventures).

After Cyber Agent, he joined RECRUIT which is the largest information service provider in Japan. He developed some new business and manage Venture Capital arms of RECRUIT (Recruit Incubation Partners) and invested in 15 startups. He received a BA in Law from Keio University in Japan (BA in Philosophy) and MA from the Keio Graduate School.

Alexander Pavlov, Ru-Net

Alexander Pavlov is an investment director for ru-Net, a leading Internet and IT investment company with about 30 investments in a portfolio of $700 million across Russia, Europe, North America, and Southeast Asia. ru-Net’s portfolio includes some exciting internet and IT companies such as Yandex, Russia’s number 1 search company (symbol YNDX on NASDAQ), where ru-Net was the first investor. It also has the $100 million US arm (RTP Ventures) that was started last year and closed five deals so far in US focusing on both technology companies (SaaS, big data, parallel computing, security) as well as consumer Internet companies.

In Europe, ru-Net has a number of investments in exiting companies like Tradeshift, Delivery Hero, and made.com. Alexander joined ruNet in 2008 and since then was a part of over 15 deals. His responsibilities include finding and managing portfolio companies in Russia with key focus on e-commerce, travel, and B2C. He is also in-charge of ru-Net’s activity in SEA. In 2012, ru-Net plans to actively invest in Southeast Asia, especially in the e-commerce, gaming, travel, and online entertainment sectors.

Takeshi Ebihara, Batavia Ventures

Takeshi Ebihara is the CEO of Rebright Partners with more than 15 years experience in Venture Capital funding, as well as internet industry corporate management. He has long experience investing in tech startup with some of them going on IPO.

Ebihara has also founded several startups himself and also has experience managing a public company as CEO in Japan. Batavia Incubator, an Indonesian focused venture fund is a joint venture between Rebright Partners, Japanese incubator and Corfina Group, Indonesian Financial Group.

Takahiro Suzuki, Cyberagent Ventures

After joining CyberAgent Inc. Suzuki was part of CyberBuzz Inc. where he helped the company established its media division and online ad sales. After that, he joined another startup, CyberX Inc., which develops mobile social apps and games. At CyberX, Suzuki worked as a manager and was one of key members who contributed greatly to the startup’s route to profitability.

His role at CyberX earned him the MVP award. In June 2011, he officially became a venture capitalist after joining CyberAgent Ventures. In October 2011, he led CyberAgent Ventures into Indonesia. He now resides in Jakarta and can converse fairly well in Bahasa Indonesia.

We’re asking all these investors to share the difficulties they have faced thus far, ranging from the perks of early investments, to their long term investment plans in Indonesia. Whilst all these international investors ready to put their money in the pockets of Indonesian entrepreneurs, are they entirely ready for investments yet?

Of course, for Indonesian entrepreneurs looking to expand out of our own comfort zone, you must be curious about how these international investors can help. This and a whole lot more will be discussed during our Startup Asia session “Discussion: Inside the Minds of Overseas Investors” segment on day one at noon June 7, from 12.10 pm to 12.50 pm.

Also, if you haven’t gotten your tickets to Startup Asia Jakarta yet, you can get one here. And if you have a winning startup idea that could wow the audience and judges at Startup Arena, submit it here. See you guys!

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