Multitasking has been one of those things, which comes to me naturally. But, I see a lot of my friends, colleagues and employees struggle with it. Whether we like it or not, “doing many things” is the need of the hour.
I manage 3 consulting projects and one startup – SocialSamosa.com along with having a life. Let me share some of the things I do to increase my productivity during work hours.
1. Make a list:
It’s a great idea to note down everything on a piece of paper, or a note pad. If it’s on the list it will be done, sooner or later.
2. Delegate:
As much as we want to, we cannot do all the tasks on our own. Delegate tasks to responsible people in your team and let them handle it. Don’t go about checking on the person every 2 hours on the status of the task. Give the task, and wait till the stipulated time. Interfere only when he/she fails to accomplish it within the stipulated time.
3. Hire Freelancers:
As a startup, you may not necessarily have a team. If funds are a concern, hiring freelancers is a good way to get small tasks done. A lot of freelance websites like Odesk, ELance provide listing possibilities. More often than not, the freelancers deliver good work on time.
4. Go offline:
Have this long presentation to make? A long detailed email to be sent? Unless you need to keep looking for resources online, go offline and sit for 3 hours at a stretch and work on it. No mails, no tweets, no disturbance. Try and ignore all phone calls too during that time.
5. Give realistic deadlines:
I have seen so many startups falter on their deadlines. I call them the “Yes” people. They say ‘yes’ to every request of their customer. “Will I get the presentation by today?” “Yes Yes”, “Will I get the first prototype by next week?” “Yes yes I am on it”. See the number of yes’s there? In your heart you will know you cannot possibly deliver by the promised date. Be honest to yourself and to your customers. Defaulting on deadlines gives a very wrong impression. Once the trust is lost, the client is lost. With realistic deadlines your work quality will also be better.
6. Email management:
Most people suggest that mails should be checked twice or thrice a day. For me answering mails as they come makes a lot of sense. The only time I am not responding to mails is when I have decided to not let go of a task until I finish it. Emails are an important part of our work life, sometimes more important than calls. Swift responses make sure work doesn’t get stuck at your end. If there is an email that needs a detailed reply, star mark it or mark it as unread and revisit it later.
7. Take breaks:
“Most healthy teenagers and adults are unable to sustain attention on one thing for more than about 40 minutes at a time, although they can choose repeatedly to re-focus on the same thing” Says Wikipedia. The idea is to take short breaks after every one hour or so. Talk to a friend or colleague on something casual, have a beverage and engage in water cooler gossip, watch a move trailer, or stand up and stretch. And then refocus on the same thing as Wikipedia further states, “This ability to renew attention permits people to “pay attention” to things that last for more than a few minutes, such as long movies.”
8. Do what you love:
Or love what you do. It’s something like the Horace Slughorn’s hourglass, in which the sand runs accordingly with the quality of conversation; if stimulating, the clock runs slowly. Similarly, if the work that we do excites us, we will get more amount of work done in a smaller duration. Though, no matter how much we try, there will be some tasks that would be a drag. But the idea is to enjoy most part of your work.
9. Find your sweet spot:
I work best around 12 pm in the afternoon. I start checking mails around 10, make the urgent calls to assign work and move on to doing tasks that demand more time and attention. I am most attentive too during that time, as I get into the groove of working. Find your sweet spot. Allot your most demanding tasks to that time slot as you are most productive then.
10. Ask: Urgent or Important:
More often than not, entrepreneurs focus on tasks that are important but might not be urgent and ignore those that are not only important but urgent. As entrepreneurs we immediately jump to the next mail, to the next phone call, to the next task. It would be nice if you can take a second and plot the task on an imaginary Stephan Covey’s time management graph.
Stephan Covey's Time Management Graph
12. Learn to say no:
Our productivity drops when we have too much on our plate, when we are trying to do too many things at the same time. If you don’t have the bandwidth, say ‘No’, even if it means losing on a couple of business leads. It’s better to serve one bird in the hand well than cater to two in the bush.
13. Read well:
The rate at which information is thrown at us is overwhelming. Don’t sit and read every second article on the Internet, chose carefully the blogs/sites you want to follow. Select a couple from your industry, one perhaps a news site and a couple of blogs on your interest. That should keep you updated. If you want to do some mindless surfing, assign a time of the day to it, mostly when you are least productive.
14. Maintain a calendar:
If you are someone whose day comprises of back-to-back meetings or scheduled calls, it’s a great idea to maintain a calendar. A calendar can also come in handy to fill in deadline dates. Google calendar works the best for me.
15. Reward yourself:
After every big task that you complete reward yourself. It can be some free surfing time or a movie perhaps. Next time, it will push you to finish a task.
16. Get a speedy Internet connection:
A fast Internet speed makes sure work gets done faster, especially for startups.
17. Try web chats:
In most metros travelling is painful and time consuming. Even if you have a meeting only in the first half, by the time you get back to office, you are not in the working frame of mind. It takes a while to get back into the grove. Web chats are a great way to save up on time. Go for only those meetings that are extremely essential. Even then, try and keep all the meetings on the same day so the rest of the days you can sit in the office and get other things done.
I hope some of these tips will come in very handy. As the famous saying goes “Time is money”, saving up on time or doing more in little time can not only enhance the quality of your life but also that of your bank balance.
[Guest article contributed by Ankita Gaba, Cofounder of SocialSamosa.com]
More Productivity Tips:
(Credit: Adelaide Olympic FC)
Chandrasekar, founder of JooJoo (formerly Crunchpad), is working on a stealthy new startup.
Entrepreneurs are known for their resilience to face failure after failure, all with the goal of succeeding some day. Over the past two years, the regional community have been abuzz with news of Fusion Garage as they moved from one failed product to another failed product before finally facing liquidation.
For most of you familiar with this space, Chandrasekar is known for working on the JooJoo, which was formerly known as the Crunchpad due to the involvement of US tech blog, TechCrunch. The legal tussle with Michael Arrington and TechCrunch drew a lot of attention as Chandrasekar and his team decided to go separate ways and push out the renamed tablet on their own. Chandrasekar was also involved in Velvet Puffin, the social networking service that managed to secure a distribution partnership with SingTel and was one of the first Singaporean startups to be covered by TechCrunch.
Along the way, the team, lead by Chandrasekar Rathakrishnan, managed to raised a significant amount of funding while delivering products that lacked behind in users’ expectations.
Recently, a close source has revealed that Chandrasekar is getting back into the game and is working on something new. Would it still be in the mobile space such as the JooJoo and GridOS devices that Fusion Garage tried so hard to bring to market? If so, it would seem that Chandrasekar would be bringing with him extensive knowledge from the Fusion Garage failure to help overcome the challenges.
Featured Image Credits: 123RF
(Credit: Adelaide Olympic FC)
Chandrasekar, founder of JooJoo (formerly Crunchpad), is working on a stealthy new startup.
Entrepreneurs are known for their resilience to face failure after failure, all with the goal of succeeding some day. Over the past two years, the regional community have been abuzz with news of Fusion Garage as they moved from one failed product to another failed product before finally facing liquidation.
For most of you familiar with this space, Chandrasekar is known for working on the JooJoo, which was formerly known as the Crunchpad due to the involvement of US tech blog, TechCrunch. The legal tussle with Michael Arrington and TechCrunch drew a lot of attention as Chandrasekar and his team decided to go separate ways and push out the renamed tablet on their own. Chandrasekar was also involved in Velvet Puffin, the social networking service that managed to secure a distribution partnership with SingTel and was one of the first Singaporean startups to be covered by TechCrunch.
Along the way, the team, lead by Chandrasekar Rathakrishnan, managed to raised a significant amount of funding while delivering products that lacked behind in users’ expectations.
Recently, a close source has revealed that Chandrasekar is getting back into the game and is working on something new. Would it still be in the mobile space such as the JooJoo and GridOS devices that Fusion Garage tried so hard to bring to market? If so, it would seem that Chandrasekar would be bringing with him extensive knowledge from the Fusion Garage failure to help overcome the challenges.
Featured Image Credits: 123RF
The folks at Tea Leaf Nation have translated a fascinating and inspring article by Shen Yin about “L” and “W”, two men who focus their businesses on two different ends of Chinese social strata. The results might surprise you, and the article is absolutely worth a read.
The post Why China Has Two Internets, and What to Do About It appeared first on Tech in Asia.
China’s internet users are used to data leaks by now as many Chinese websites apparently suffer from subpar security practices, but they may not be used to their information being leaked on purpose. That’s exactly what happened to some Bank of Jiangsu customers recently, according to Jingji Cankao. A branch of China’s central bank in Shanghai discovered that a Shanghai branch of the Bank of Jiangsu had sold users’ credit information to Yixin Puhui, a P2P and microfinance company associated with the Yixin group. Users apparently had not been informed of this sale.
Bank of Jiangsu denies having broken any laws or regulations, saying that the credit report sale was part of a value-added service they were offering customers in cooperation with Yixin. However, many outside observers feel that this may be a bluff. The bank had previously been planning an IPO, and allegations of improper or even criminal behavior would certainly throw a rather large wrench into those works. Rumor has it the central bank told Bank of Jiangsu to shape up and rectify the situation; when called by a Jingji Cankao reporter, the central bank did not confirm or deny this.
So what exactly is going on here, and who is in the wrong? As usual, it is far from clear. But consider this reminder number 6,782 to put your money and give your information only to companies you really trust.
[via Techweb]
The post Bank of Jiangsu Sells 32,000 Users’ Information to P2P Loan Company appeared first on Tech in Asia.
Word has been whirling that luxury site Jiapin.com would be shut down. Throughout the luxury e-commerce market, more players are losing their flame. The downturn started since second half of 2011 when Wooha.com closed down, Xiu.com layed off its staff and CEO of VIPKu resigned. Why the crisis all of a sudden and any chance they can weather the downturn?
Bad News Pouring In
The Chinese luxury B2C market got started from 2009 on. At that time, lots of entrepreneurs and investments saw the picking up trend in this sector and flocked to it. Unexpectedly, in two years bad news pours in. Nice dream becomes a nightmare and a hot potato for many investors.
Jiapin.com once boasted that, “In the luxury B2C area, we are definitely best of the best. Our monthly sales reaches tens of millions RMB.” While lately rumor has it that the company is having a major downsizing with 200 jobs cut (almost half of the startup). CEO Yang argued that it was just a strategic layoff in which some unnecessary positions and expenses were cut off, and the aim was for an efficient and optimal group.
Jiapin isn’t the only bad news broke out lately. Luxury channel of the portal site Sina is also said to stop business operation very soon. Another one ShangPin.com shared the bad luck in that it did a big layoff this February…
Excess Supply?
China has undoubtedly become the second largest luxury goods market now, but why the great demand hasn’t brought great profits to e-tailers? Actually even many top designer brands have come to China, they are not really into the idea of e-commerce. Mostly luxury companies are very serious about its brand image, and they want to protect the image under luxurious price. They don’t need to compete with low-price merchants by allying with e-tailers, because that will go against its marketing positioning and may also violate its own pricing system.
According to iResearch, the market researcher, sufficient supply is the biggest problem for luxury B2C sites. When the top luxury brands hold their supplies, the e-tailers can’t ensure the stock, and even can not have a say in pricing. Furthermore, the brand licensing is also strictly controlled by the luxury brands, which puts the e-tailers in a dilemma. As a result, most luxury B2C players resort to overseas purchasing agents for supplies. This is clearly not a good solution for the order will thus take a long time to finish (sometimes over months), and the quality of the goods can’t be guaranteed either.
From a consumer perspective, it is easy to assume that most luxury lovers do not really care about the prices. B2C sites offer discounts for its users, but the customers are not grateful. Actually they doubted if these discounted goods are authentic and if the quality is good.
Industry insiders said that consuming habit of the luxury goods lovers and the problem of supplies are the two main causes for the sudden crush of this market. Try out goods in brick-and-mortar store is part of the wonderful shopping experience, which can never be realized online.
O2O: the New Direction
A solution customized for Chinese luxury e-tailers is badly in need, and it might be O2O. Recently Vipmssp.com is launching an “Authentic and Full Price” business model. Unlike the low-price competition, the conception of “original price” sounds very innovative. To obtain authentic goods from the brands and make available the latest products in time can ensure the quality and supplies at the same time. Currently some top brands are still taking a wait-and-see attitude towards this model.
This June, Jiapin.com won a $15 million investment from Macy’s and Intel Capital and the site will cooperate with Macy’s offline stores by selling some Macy-only products on Jiapin’s online channel Omei.com. The O2O model combines the offline merchants and e-commerce platform, which is seemly a feasible transition for luxury e-tailers, as it offers customers with good shopping experiences as well as attractive discounts.
Related posts:
Ambition [J] has released the new social game “Ixa Kiss” (Battle Kiss).
“Ixa Kiss” is a card battle style social game in which the player becomes a shogun and summons beautiful girl commanders, and through repeated training builds up their strongest deck, aiming for unification in troubled times. By the “Advance to Battle” part, you use up hit points and get experience points and bells, military commander and family crest fragements. When you complete every “Advance to Battle” part for each story, a boss comes out, and by defeating the boss, it’s possible to advance to the next tale. Also with the “Training” part, you use bells acquired from the “Advance to Battle” part, and by forging it’s possible to strengthen cards by combining two commander cards together. Furthermore apart from common training there is “Love Training”, and with this the commanders fall in love with the player, making abilities change along with the card visuals. You can have “Love Training” with all the commanders, so you can build up your very own special deck made up of chosen commanders in love status. What’s more, with the “Duel” part, you can challenge other shoguns to a duel. Likewise there are times when you will be challenged to a duel by other shoguns, and you can also snatch bells to use for training and family crest fragments from the enemy if you win the duel. Rare commanders can be obtained when you collect all 6 kinds of family crests in a series.
Translation authorized by VSMedia
Ambition Releases Beautiful Girl Commander Nurturing Social Game “Ixa Kiss” For GREE
Tokopedia, one of the oldest players around in Indonesia’s e-commerce industry focusing on the C2C market, is celebrating its third year anniversary today. William Tanuwijaya, co-founder and CEO of Tokopedia, has told us that at the end of the year they are going to move into a larger office and expand the team numbers beyond the current 38 people. The company has been enjoying sigificant expansion after investment from PT Indonusa Dwitama, East Ventures [1], and CyberAgent Ventures last year, and then Netprice this year.
The company, which we interviewed as well last year, has again put up some remarkable numbers despite having few marketing activities compared to its competitors. In total, Tokopedia has processed IDR 151,130,616,899 ($15,908,486) worth of transactions up until now, with the help of its third year result (IDR 115,162,774,221; $12,122,397). William shared that this third year’s growth has really improved significantly: in August 2011 the transaction value per month was only 2.83 billion IDR. But by July 2012 it had reached 18.94 billion IDR. The majority of the sales come from fashion and beauty products (not expensive compared to gadgets), which shows that the company has recorded a lot of transactions.
In its third year, Tokopedia also ranked as the 78th most visited website in Indonesia (according to Alexa), and as William said above this is an impressive achievement that the company achieved organically, without a huge marketing push. William also told me that actually, Tokopedia doesn’t even have any marketing or sales team as of yet.
William told us:
We are very happy with the result so far and be one of startups in Indonesia that consistently growing from year to year. This has fueled us to do even more in achieving our mission as one of the best internet companies in Indonesia. We would like to thank our members, team, investors, and everyone that is involved in making Tokopedia en route to a success.
We have been seeing some other e-commerce startups inside Tokopedia; asked about this, William told us that since its inception Tokopedia has always been an online mall concept and a distribution channel that enables individuals and small business owners to open and maintain their online stores easily. With hiking traffic and visitors, Tokopedia can be another channel for niche e-commerce startups; so far it is doing a trial with 3 sites: Krazymarket, TeknoUp, and DealGoing.
Starting in September 2012, Tokopedia also will close down “Adult” category which previously was added with certain limitations (only members who are older than 21 years old). The site will also hold a campaign against piracy, banning merchants who are selling pirated CD or DVD (software, music, movies, and games). At the same time, Tokopedia has promised to serve its members even better by creating an better mobile-site that can be accessed from any smartphone. Happy birthday to Tokopedia; hopefully it can be one of the success stories that inspires people here in Indonesia!
The post Tokopedia Celebrates its Third Anniversary, Reveals Some Financials appeared first on Tech in Asia.
In an open letter addressed to the government, Jeffrey Paine talks about the state of affair of startups in Singapore and how we can solve them.
Hang around in the local community long enough, chances are you would have cross path or at least heard about Jeffrey Paine. Known among the community as the guy who runs Founders Institute Singapore, Jeffrey also runs a huge list of other initiative to help the startup community in Singapore. One of his latest venture is a partner at the Golden Gate Ventures, and Jeffrey is often invited to speak and judge at various conferences and competitions.
Recently, Jeffrey was invited for a government round table discussion but was unable to make it. Although he was absent, he penned down his thoughts through his blog and it was widely circulated around the various social media channels. In the open letter, Jeffrey articulated his thoughts on the various challenges for Startups in Singapore along with the solutions, current situation as well as his own wishlists.
Read on to find out about the state of affairs of startups in Singapore, and what are the solutions Jeffrey propose. I assure you, Jeffrey knows his stuffs.
Open Letter to Government Round Table by Jeffrey Paine
To whom it may concern:
Thank you for inviting me to a government round table discussion next week to discuss about the state of affairs of our startups in Singapore and what challenges they face and solutions we can implement and finally how the government can assist startups through their policies.
Unfortunately I am away on a panelist engagement at Google I/O on July 29, 2012 in San Francisco. I will try to voice my thoughts with this letter and if you have any questions, please feel free to contact me.
Challenges for Startups in Singapore
A. WEAK IDEAS - In short, many Singapore based founders start out with small visions and weak ideas (not bold nor crazy enough nor targeting a large enough market). This is fairly common if they are first time entrepreneurs and perfectly alright. Not enough research is done on market size (TAM), go to market strategies (CAC/LTV) and the full customer development process. We suck at this, and we need to change that.
Solution:
What is happening now: We have JFDI, e27 with the Visiting Mentor Program sponsored by the MDA. Spring Singapore is also subsidizing travel costs for mentors at Founder Institute Singapore. These programs bring great mentors to our shores. But, we need more from them while they are here (isn’t it always?). It is an extremely great start. Kudos to MDA and Spring Singapore. Thank you!
Wishlist:
B. PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT - The second challenge for startups in Singapore is to get “some product” shipped. A lot of founders (technical or not) will face challenges here. The concept of minimal viable product, private alpha/beta launches (and how to manage them), post alpha iteration, user experience design, user testing etc. sounds foreign to most business founders. It comes down to Talent to produce and the know-how of how to produce.
Solution:
What is happening now: We have local and foreign development shops based in Singapore, talent is scarce here to hire full-time (that is not what you want to do anyway early on if you are non-technical), many events and meet ups to meet potential hires/cofounders, Startuproots Singaporepromotes internships in startups for university students. Our currency is strong enough to afford talent (outsourced) in neighboring countries. But no coding school or training specifically for startup technologies and know how except maybe for Founder Institute (but we have a rigorous selection process). Founder Institute Singapore is still not enough.
Wish list:
C. GROWTH HACKING - The third challenge of startups here in Singapore surrounds go to market and customer acquisition strategies. A new term has been defined recently called “Growth Hacking” (by Andrew Chen). To be clear, the true work of Growth Hackers focuses on products that have achieved product / market fit. We need to help startups in Singapore get to product/market fit as early as possible with some techniques learnt from Growth Hacking.
Growth hackers are a hybrid of marketer and coder, one who looks at the traditional question of “How do I get customers for my product?” and answers with A/B tests, landing pages, viral factor, email deliverability, and Open Graph. On top of this, they layer the discipline of direct marketing, with its emphasis on quantitative measurement, scenario modeling via spreadsheets, and a lot of database queries. If a startup is pre-product/market fit, growth hackers can make sure virality is embedded at the core of a product. After product/market fit, they can help run up the score on what’s already working.
Many Singapore startups have been given grants and equity funding, some have gone through accelerators/incubators and have secured their own set of advisors/mentors. What we are seeing now is a number of startups who are at risk of being a living dead company or worse deadpooled within months. In Malaysia, the government Cradle program implemented a Coach and Grow Program nation wide, in Singapore not as yet. We can change that.
Another challenge is knowing which beach head market to conquer vis a vis what product/market fit the startup has and when to pivot or shut down. More on the difficulty of market targeting is addressed in my previous post.
Solution:
What is happening now: A few adhoc talks with Singapore based entrepreneurs and also visiting mentors like David Weekly, and David Kadavy (most recently). IDA has been supporting iStart Programs in the US and (Indonesia most recently and China coming soon). And of course our current mentors who are good in this based in Singapore are also mentoring and helping.
Wish List:
D. CAPITAL - Lastly, Singapore startups face still a challenge in getting risk capital in the country. For risk capital below S$600,000, in most recent times there are more funds that issues those check sizes but it is still relatively difficult to get. Grants from $50-100k is available as well but the grant programs present sets of conditions that may hinder speed, growth patterns or flexibility of pivoting. Finally, the Series A gap is pretty gaping in Singapore, although there are new entrants to the game (from Japan, Russia, Europe), but it is still not enough. That means startups have to be careful designing their capitalization strategy, they are pressured to be focused more on revenue growth early on which leads some of them to start “clones” or be too short termed for their own good (it isn’t bad, but it hinders game changing ideas).
Solution:
What is happening now: For the digital media space: MDA iJAM grants, NRF TIS Incubators, Spring Seeds programs. Angel tax incentives are also in place. Many new events are being sponsored and organized locally which drives buzz and new influx of entrepreneurs and investors.
Wish list:
WHAT WE ARE DOING:
GOVERNMENT (SPRING/ ACE)
Spring Singapore Incubation Development Program (IDP)
Pros: Much needed initiative. Good diversity of sectors
Cons: Need to iterate and be open to new ideas. Keep incubators competing with each other on programs run. So what if they have similar programs? Let founders choose! If possible, set up a private sector led panel or committee to work through incubator’s performance and how to iterate to make it better each year. Incubators are startups sometimes and they are iterating as well.
Fixes: Keep iterating and measuring performances. Do 360 reviews from founders as well as incubators (inside and out). See what gaps from incubators are still missing and try to fix it by steering resources towards them and help them do it. Be flexible.
Spring Singapore Seeds Capital
Pros: Great initiative for many years with large amount for 1 for 1 matching.
Cons: Slow process, criteria not clear, panel needs to be refreshed within a set term of service, 2 for 1 is “always” better <3
Fixes: Test various options of the approval process. Rotate a list of panel members and measure their commitment and feedback. Panel members should spend more time with the founders to get a better idea of their competence, not just through paper and a few face to face presentations. A little more budget to back companies who clearly gotten their formula right and need capital to grow fast and double/triple down on them (this maybe where the 2 for 1 matching comes in).
ACE Startup Grants
Pros: Help first time entrepreneurs to launch with grants and mentor help
Cons: No structured program to help grant recipients to flourish (maybe Founder Institute can help design a program for them or have them enrolled in our program with special passes where they will not be kicked out). The grant should also apply to first time product company founders or repeat entrepreneurs who failed the first time. We should encourage more people to try again or think bigger. For e.g. a founder who started a F&B business with his wife, now wants to start a product company that can trenscend geographies should have the equal opportunity to receive the grant. At least make it a case by case and not a total shut out (it is not founder friendly sorry), trust me you will get better/stronger ideas that meets your KPIs.
Fixes: To increase quality deal flow, relax the criteria slightly (maybe have a case by case panel to approve outlier submissions). Instill a structured evaluation and mentor system to help startups get to product market fit with S$50,000. Partner with Founder Institute to enroll some of the successful applicants. Ideas can be fluid, either grant them and have them enroll or have them graduate SGFI before granting them.
Featured Image Credits: Jeffrey Paine
In an open letter addressed to the government, Jeffrey Paine talks about the state of affair of startups in Singapore and how we can solve them.
Hang around in the local community long enough, chances are you would have cross path or at least heard about Jeffrey Paine. Known among the community as the guy who runs Founders Institute Singapore, Jeffrey also runs a huge list of other initiative to help the startup community in Singapore. One of his latest venture is a partner at the Golden Gate Ventures, and Jeffrey is often invited to speak and judge at various conferences and competitions.
Recently, Jeffrey was invited for a government round table discussion but was unable to make it. Although he was absent, he penned down his thoughts through his blog and it was widely circulated around the various social media channels. In the open letter, Jeffrey articulated his thoughts on the various challenges for Startups in Singapore along with the solutions, current situation as well as his own wishlists.
Read on to find out about the state of affairs of startups in Singapore, and what are the solutions Jeffrey propose. I assure you, Jeffrey knows his stuffs.
Open Letter to Government Round Table by Jeffrey Paine
To whom it may concern:
Thank you for inviting me to a government round table discussion next week to discuss about the state of affairs of our startups in Singapore and what challenges they face and solutions we can implement and finally how the government can assist startups through their policies.
Unfortunately I am away on a panelist engagement at Google I/O on July 29, 2012 in San Francisco. I will try to voice my thoughts with this letter and if you have any questions, please feel free to contact me.
Challenges for Startups in Singapore
A. WEAK IDEAS - In short, many Singapore based founders start out with small visions and weak ideas (not bold nor crazy enough nor targeting a large enough market). This is fairly common if they are first time entrepreneurs and perfectly alright. Not enough research is done on market size (TAM), go to market strategies (CAC/LTV) and the full customer development process. We suck at this, and we need to change that.
Solution:
What is happening now: We have JFDI, e27 with the Visiting Mentor Program sponsored by the MDA. Spring Singapore is also subsidizing travel costs for mentors at Founder Institute Singapore. These programs bring great mentors to our shores. But, we need more from them while they are here (isn’t it always?). It is an extremely great start. Kudos to MDA and Spring Singapore. Thank you!
Wishlist:
B. PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT - The second challenge for startups in Singapore is to get “some product” shipped. A lot of founders (technical or not) will face challenges here. The concept of minimal viable product, private alpha/beta launches (and how to manage them), post alpha iteration, user experience design, user testing etc. sounds foreign to most business founders. It comes down to Talent to produce and the know-how of how to produce.
Solution:
What is happening now: We have local and foreign development shops based in Singapore, talent is scarce here to hire full-time (that is not what you want to do anyway early on if you are non-technical), many events and meet ups to meet potential hires/cofounders, Startuproots Singaporepromotes internships in startups for university students. Our currency is strong enough to afford talent (outsourced) in neighboring countries. But no coding school or training specifically for startup technologies and know how except maybe for Founder Institute (but we have a rigorous selection process). Founder Institute Singapore is still not enough.
Wish list:
C. GROWTH HACKING - The third challenge of startups here in Singapore surrounds go to market and customer acquisition strategies. A new term has been defined recently called “Growth Hacking” (by Andrew Chen). To be clear, the true work of Growth Hackers focuses on products that have achieved product / market fit. We need to help startups in Singapore get to product/market fit as early as possible with some techniques learnt from Growth Hacking.
Growth hackers are a hybrid of marketer and coder, one who looks at the traditional question of “How do I get customers for my product?” and answers with A/B tests, landing pages, viral factor, email deliverability, and Open Graph. On top of this, they layer the discipline of direct marketing, with its emphasis on quantitative measurement, scenario modeling via spreadsheets, and a lot of database queries. If a startup is pre-product/market fit, growth hackers can make sure virality is embedded at the core of a product. After product/market fit, they can help run up the score on what’s already working.
Many Singapore startups have been given grants and equity funding, some have gone through accelerators/incubators and have secured their own set of advisors/mentors. What we are seeing now is a number of startups who are at risk of being a living dead company or worse deadpooled within months. In Malaysia, the government Cradle program implemented a Coach and Grow Program nation wide, in Singapore not as yet. We can change that.
Another challenge is knowing which beach head market to conquer vis a vis what product/market fit the startup has and when to pivot or shut down. More on the difficulty of market targeting is addressed in my previous post.
Solution:
What is happening now: A few adhoc talks with Singapore based entrepreneurs and also visiting mentors like David Weekly, and David Kadavy (most recently). IDA has been supporting iStart Programs in the US and (Indonesia most recently and China coming soon). And of course our current mentors who are good in this based in Singapore are also mentoring and helping.
Wish List:
D. CAPITAL - Lastly, Singapore startups face still a challenge in getting risk capital in the country. For risk capital below S$600,000, in most recent times there are more funds that issues those check sizes but it is still relatively difficult to get. Grants from $50-100k is available as well but the grant programs present sets of conditions that may hinder speed, growth patterns or flexibility of pivoting. Finally, the Series A gap is pretty gaping in Singapore, although there are new entrants to the game (from Japan, Russia, Europe), but it is still not enough. That means startups have to be careful designing their capitalization strategy, they are pressured to be focused more on revenue growth early on which leads some of them to start “clones” or be too short termed for their own good (it isn’t bad, but it hinders game changing ideas).
Solution:
What is happening now: For the digital media space: MDA iJAM grants, NRF TIS Incubators, Spring Seeds programs. Angel tax incentives are also in place. Many new events are being sponsored and organized locally which drives buzz and new influx of entrepreneurs and investors.
Wish list:
WHAT WE ARE DOING:
GOVERNMENT (SPRING/ ACE)
Spring Singapore Incubation Development Program (IDP)
Pros: Much needed initiative. Good diversity of sectors
Cons: Need to iterate and be open to new ideas. Keep incubators competing with each other on programs run. So what if they have similar programs? Let founders choose! If possible, set up a private sector led panel or committee to work through incubator’s performance and how to iterate to make it better each year. Incubators are startups sometimes and they are iterating as well.
Fixes: Keep iterating and measuring performances. Do 360 reviews from founders as well as incubators (inside and out). See what gaps from incubators are still missing and try to fix it by steering resources towards them and help them do it. Be flexible.
Spring Singapore Seeds Capital
Pros: Great initiative for many years with large amount for 1 for 1 matching.
Cons: Slow process, criteria not clear, panel needs to be refreshed within a set term of service, 2 for 1 is “always” better <3
Fixes: Test various options of the approval process. Rotate a list of panel members and measure their commitment and feedback. Panel members should spend more time with the founders to get a better idea of their competence, not just through paper and a few face to face presentations. A little more budget to back companies who clearly gotten their formula right and need capital to grow fast and double/triple down on them (this maybe where the 2 for 1 matching comes in).
ACE Startup Grants
Pros: Help first time entrepreneurs to launch with grants and mentor help
Cons: No structured program to help grant recipients to flourish (maybe Founder Institute can help design a program for them or have them enrolled in our program with special passes where they will not be kicked out). The grant should also apply to first time product company founders or repeat entrepreneurs who failed the first time. We should encourage more people to try again or think bigger. For e.g. a founder who started a F&B business with his wife, now wants to start a product company that can trenscend geographies should have the equal opportunity to receive the grant. At least make it a case by case and not a total shut out (it is not founder friendly sorry), trust me you will get better/stronger ideas that meets your KPIs.
Fixes: To increase quality deal flow, relax the criteria slightly (maybe have a case by case panel to approve outlier submissions). Instill a structured evaluation and mentor system to help startups get to product market fit with S$50,000. Partner with Founder Institute to enroll some of the successful applicants. Ideas can be fluid, either grant them and have them enroll or have them graduate SGFI before granting them.
Featured Image Credits: Jeffrey Paine
 Chris Shen, head of mobile at The9 Having already established itself as a powerhouse in the PC online gaming space, Chinese gaming company The9 (NASDAQ:NCTY) is now looking to change with the times and already has a decent foothold in the newer game spaces of mobile, social, and web. Its social gaming platform, The9 Game Zone, has accrued more than 12 million users since its launch in April 2011 (see chart below). We recently spoke with The9’s head of mobile, Chris Shen, to find out more about what they can offer developers, as well as the company’s plans for the future. Having already invested in mobile-focused companies outside of China like Open Feint and CrowdStar, The9’s Game Zone is hardly the company’s first effort to expand outside China via the mobile space. But the services that it offers to foreign developers aspiring to crack the fragmented Chinese mobile market, given its experience in PC gaming and its vast network of partners, is certainly remarkable. Chris explains:
He notes that when developers license their game to The9, it’s a big advantage to be able to leverage this large network. This is especially true for small and medium sized developers who might not have the resources to devote to marketing and promotion, especially in Chinese!  The9 Game Zone But why choose The9 over other partners in China? Chris points to The9’s wider network as its competitive advantage in comparison, noting that their tight collaboration with distribution channels, telecom carriers, and marketing resources ensure that a game will be well promoted. One of the more prominent mobile games under The9’s umbrella is the 3D MMORPG Galaxy Frontier which was developed by Eitarosoft from Japan. The company feels that online RPGs is a genre that is not really popular yet but could be easily monetized in China. But The9 has its own in-house mobile games studio as well, which was established last year, with the TweetHero battle game ported from its Weibo Three Kingdoms title. They have also launched Fly King in January, a social game with LBS features aimed at the China market If you build it, will they pay?Now I conducted this interview with Chris over Skype from Tokyo, and it’s difficult for me to not draw comparisons to the mobile games market here in Japan where companies like GREE and DeNA have already made boatloads of cash. Of course, Japanese mobile users are far more accustomed to paying for things via their mobile, whereas recent research has found that Chinese consumers are quite the opposite. I was eager to hear Chris’s expectations for Chinese mobile consumers and whether they will come around to paying anytime soon. While he acknowledged that the Chinese market is still in the initial stages with parts of the ecosystem on the unhealthy side, it turns out that he is ultimately optimistic:
Ok, but tell me how you’re really doing. Nicolas Anelka, promoting Firefall While their gameplay sounds all well and good, there have been some rumblings in Chinese media this year that all is not well in the land of The9, with some reports saying that as many as 50 percent of their staff had been laid off. I asked Chris about this, and to his credit, he gave me a pretty straight answer, saying flat out that the 50 percent figure was not true:
But is The9 making any money? Chris tells me that the company is, unfortunately not profitable right now, but with the coming launch of PlanetSide 2 and Firefall, he thinks it can reach profitability. Interestingly, Chris notes that for the web and social aspects of its business, the company is profitable already. It will be interesting to see how the rest of its drama plays out over the next year or so. The company’s second quarter financials are due out in a week, so we’ll know a little more at that point. But The9 is an interesting example of a Chinese company looking not just at domestic business but also at opportunities beyond its borders. |
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