TheSunnyMag: A Startup which sold for $176 mn two days after launch & best stories of last week

Here goes our weekly magazine of stories curated from around the world. In this edition: When workers dream of a life beyond the factory gates. A Political Brawler, Now Battling for Microsoft. Robot Workers: Coexistence Is Possible. The web we lost. The startup which sold for $176 million two days after launch and more beautifully written stories.

Inc.

When workers dream of a life beyond the factory gates: Can Foxconn, the world’s largest contract manufacturer, keep growing and improve its margins now that cheap and willing hands are scarce? asks The Economist. TO GET some idea of the scale of Foxconn’s Longhua campus in Shenzhen, in southern China, a visit to its massive central kitchens is all that is needed. They lie at the heart of this sprawling complex of factories, dormitories, sports facilities, banks and stores built by the secretive Taiwanese-owned firm. The food-preparation centre, spread over 12,500 square metres on four storeys, goes through three tonnes of meat a day as it prepares grub with military precision. More here.

A Political Brawler, Now Battling for Microsoft:  Mark Penn made a name for himself in Washington by bulldozing enemies of the Clintons. Now he spends his days trying to do the same to Google, on behalf of its archrival Microsoft. Since Mr. Penn was put in charge of “strategic and special projects” at Microsoft in August, much of his job has involved efforts to trip up Google, which Microsoft has failed to dislodge from its perch atop the lucrative Internet search market. While we try to understand the basics of lobbying here in India, this profile tells you what it means to be a lobbyist in the tech world. Read more here.

New new world

Whats the big problem with Big Data? NS Ramnath of Forbes India looks for some answers in Nate Silver’s book “The Signal and the Noise: Why Most predictions Fail but some Don’t.” Nate Silver is the nerd who changed political reporting forever. That’s after changing Baseball predictions and poker…The problem with Big Data could exactly what its name suggests, big data. To separate signal from noise, to deal with false positives, and to test hypothesis – all these will be difficult, because more data will also produce more noise. Read more.

Robot Workers: Coexistence Is Possible Sam Grobart talks about the relentless march of automation which is causing economic upheaval. As time goes on, companies will become more productive and more efficient, but the amount of human labor required will decrease and the pay will be less. The sentient worker will be reduced to a relic of a simpler age. This is what we’ve been told, anyway….Yet the robot revolution doesn’t have to cause panic. While robots can claim some technological superiority over humans, even the most sophisticated machines have limitations. Read more here.

/roots

Dear Facebook: Without the Commons, We Lose the Sharing Web: Read why Ryan Singel of Wired thinks that without creative commons, we lose the sharing web. It’s what made the web a place where individuals were not just creators, but part of communities that valued sharin, he writes. Today Creative Commons isn’t as easily accessible in our most popular social networks. And that means we’re at risk of losing much more than the web we have already lost. More here.

The web we lost: The tech industry and its press have treated the rise of billion-scale social networks and ubiquitous smartphone apps as an unadulterated win for regular people, a triumph of usability and empowerment. They seldom talk about what we’ve lost along the way in this transition, and I find that younger folks may not even know how the web used to be, writes Anil Dash before he talks about what we lost of the old web. This piece was massively popular last week and a must read. More here.

Entrepreneuring

The startup which sold for $176 million two days after launch: On Monday, tiny startup Contrail Systems was in stealth mode. On Tuesday it officially launched. Today, Juniper Networks bought it for $176 million. Contrail’s founders, employees, and investors are sharing $57.5 million in cash and almost 6 million shares of Juniper stock. Not bad for two days on the market.Juniper has had its eye on the company for a while. The networking-equipment maker kicked in some of the $10 million Contrail raised in July, in a round led by Khosla Ventures.Read more.

Chuck Feeney is the James Bond of philanthropy. Forbes writer Steven Bertoni has written a fitting profile of the 81 year old Billionaire who is “trying to go broke.” The man who made a fortune selling cognac, perfume and cigarettes in his empire of duty free shops is on a clandestine mission to give away his $7.5 billion, writes Bertoni. While the business world’s titans obsess over piling up as many riches as possible, Feeney is working double time to die broke. Read the full story here.

Technicolor

State of the world’s science: The pursuit of knowledge is now a global enterprise. Scientific American and Nature have teamed up on this special report on how this trend is changing the way science is done, and how it informs the world. Scientists are collaborating across borders to an unprecedented degree, broadening opportunities in Big Science and Big Data projects and helping bridge the gulf between nations.  Read the whole series here.

Misc

The Hobbit: An unexpected failure: Laura Hudson writes why The Hobbit is an unexpected failure. If expanding one rather modest book into three epic movies sounded like a bad idea the first time you heard about it, that’s because it was, she writes. The problem with The Hobbit isn’t that it fails to be Lord of the Rings; it’s that it tries so unbelievably hard to be when it isn’t, not in its style, characters, or scale. More here.

Lifehack

How to Make Your Site Look Half-Decent in Half an Hour: Anna Powell Smith, a freelance web developer writes on 24ways.org about how you could use Bootstrap, great Fonts, textures, Icons, CSS3 and a bunch of other things to make your site look awesome in half an hour. Well, half hour might be an exaggeration but this article is definitely a good read for anyone who wants to make their website look good. Read more here.

The Linux 3.7 Kernel was released last week. This Linux release includes support for the ARM 64-bit architecture, ARM support to boot into different systems using the same kernel, signed kernel modules, Btrfs support for disabling copy-on-write on a per-file basis using chattr and faster fsync(), a new “perf trace” tool modeled after strace, support for the TCP Fast Open feature in the server side, experimental SMBv2 protocol support, stable NFS 4.1 and parallel NFS support, a new tunneling protocol that allows to transfer Layer 2 Ethernet packets over UDP, and support for the Intel “supervisor mode access prevention” (SMAP) security feature. Many small features and new drivers and fixes are also available. All about the new release here.

Big picture

Why the stupid network isn’t our destiny after all: In the early days of the web, David Isenberg famously predicted the rise of a so-called stupid network with smart endpoints. Joe Weinman, of Telx, argues that instead the network has become “pervasively intelligent” and will only get smarter. Read more here.

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The Potential of Startup Communities in Asia

Japanese VC firm Global Brain held its annual startup-focused conference in Tokyo last week, the 6th Global Brain Alliance Forum (GBAF). The firm and its limited-partner investor Nifty unveiled their future investment strategies. In addition, nine tech startups from Japan and the rest of Asia pitched to a Japanese crowd of angel investors, entrepreneurs, and local media.

We’d like to highlight one panel discussion in particular titled “Asian venture companies on track for growth.” Panelists included Gwendolyn Regina Tan (the co-founder of SGE.io, Singapore), Mark Hsu (partner at TMI, Taiwan), Mohan Belani (the co-founder of e27, Singapore), James Jung (the co-founder of beSuccess, Korea) and Willis Wee (the founder of Tech in Asia, Singapore). The panel was moderated by Global Brain’s James Chan.

Asian markets are diverse

Mark Tsu, partner at TMI

The session kicked off by emphasizing the market diversity in the region. “Asia is so huge,” Mark Hsu noted.

Even if we pick one country in South East Asia to talk about, there are many different views [which we cannot apply to] the entire region together. But the ratio of a country’s population to its GDP is a good index to find how much potential a country has. For instance, Myanmar has 55 million people with a GDP of 70 US dollars a month per capita, and Indonesia has 240 million people with its GDP per capita at $300 dollars a month. A country’s population and productivity index lets you easier to understand the state of the country. Thailand’s economic growth is extremely fast now.

e27’s Mohan Belani also pointed out Thailand, calling it “one of the fastest countries in terms of the speed of spreading internet infrastracture in Southeast Asia.

Willis Wee, TechInAsia

James Jung from BeSuccess proudly introduced his country, noting, “Korea’s internet penetration rate is as high as 91 percent, and our mobile penetration rate also high as 70 percent.”

Tech in Asia’s Willis Wee says, “I’m interested in Vietnam. Facebook and Twitter are highly widespread in Indonesia too, and it will be the next big one after mainland China.”

Gwendolyn Regina Tan from SGE argued for Myanmar’s potential and said, “Its infrastructure is not well-prepared, but the country has many investors and a big population, which means there’s a high potential for rapid growth.”

One thing all panelists appeared to agree on was the region’s high potential to develop further.

The gap in broadband availability and online payments

Moderator James Chan moved on to the next topic about internet infrastructure and online payment issues in the region, with special consideration to the fact that in some countries in Asia a majority are still using feature phones.

Mohan Belani, co-founder of e27

All panelists pointed out the fact that in some regions payments are still made via mail and very few people use credit card payments. TMI’s Mark Hsu says,

In Taiwan, convenience stores have spread around the country since about 10 years back. But now, the number of e-commerce sites have exceeded the number of convenience stores and department stores. Most of e-commerce sites can accept credit card payments but customers tend to pay at a convenience store and pick up what they’ve ordered online there.

e27’s Mohan further adds:

Most Thai people don’t have a credit card, but they do have a bank account, so they can buy something online and pay by debit card.

The e-commerce business is trending now in Southeast Asia, and banks are intensifying investments in developing infrastructure which at this point is still inadequate. Broadband availability differs from country to country, and there’s a big gap in terms of online market opportunities.

Willis Wee explains:

Everyone should see not only consider [high-capacity] broadband countries [1] but also “non-laptop” countries. In these “non-laptop” countries, people usually don’t have laptops but mobile penetration rates are extremely high. Entrepreneurs have to recognize these market gaps and discover business opportunities by filling needs or addressing gaps.

Venture capitals and the surrounding environment in Asia is not yet mature

James Jung, co-founder of beSuccess, Korea

James Jung from beSuccess points out:

Korea has more than 500 angel investors. Our startup ecosystems are working closely with the US, and there are many cases where US-based companies have invested in Korean startups. Similar to Singapore, the Korean government is also proactively involved in helping startups in their growth.

e27’s Mohan adds:

The state of VC firms in Singapore is not yet mature. Startups can get support from big enterprises but there are still few angel investors there. That’s why VC firms provide hands-on support for early-stage startups as well as funding.

He says this is where angel investors should take the lead, in his view. TMI’s Mark compares this with his region:

[Like] Singapore, Taiwan does not have many angel investors. We have highly-skilled engineering talents which have not yet discovered from our workforce pool. Cyber Agent Ventures has come to Taiwan, and Japanese companies are keeping their eyes on the startup trends in Taiwan.

SGE’s Gwendolyn says:

We need more time to mature the market. For entrepreneurs, news like a startup [emerging] from our country to make a successful exit could motivate them to launch their startups.

For Southeast Asian countries, there are many things to learn from Japan

Gwendolyn Regina Tan, co-founder of SGE.io

For the fourth topic, the panel discussed the relationship between Southeast Asia and Japan. They pointed out that entrepreneurs place too much emphasis on Silicon Valley, and need to be more conscious of discovering market potential in Asian countries. The region has more than double the population of the US, and more big deals and more business partnerships could be made if the region was unified and every country worked well together. They say, every startup community in Asia has to have a sense of unity, and they would like to explore how we further impact the entire startup ecosystems and unify the market.

e27’s Mohan points out that “Japan has an important role for startups in Southeast Asia. It is one of the best place for fostering entrepreneurs and IPOs.”

Likewise SGE.io’s Gwendolyn adds that “Japanese working abroad motivate us a lot. I’d like to learn how Japan brings innovation. In many aspects, there are many things to learn, and we’d like to share with many people what we’ve learned from Japan.”

BeSuccess’s James says:

Kakao Talk has acquired 70 million users worldwide, and Japan has Line [2]. [This base of users] will definitely generate a lot of business chances.

Willis focused on the affinity of Japanese companies for SEA markets, and closed the session saying that,

Good products from Japan may bring great impact to Southeast Asia. Additionally, there are many things to learn from insights and knowledge that Japanese entrepreneurs have. Moreover, we can learn a lot from the fact that Japanese companies are good at expanding business overseas. I hope there will be more cases where Southeast Asia and Japan can work collaboratively.

A big thanks to Shintaro Eguchi for his awesome write-up over on Startup Dating.

---

1. Akamai’s state of the internet report is always an insightful resource on this point.  ↩
2. Line has about 80 million right now.  ↩

The post The Potential of Startup Communities in Asia appeared first on Tech in Asia.

Link to full article

Read More

The Potential of Startup Communities in Asia

Japanese VC firm Global Brain held its annual startup-focused conference in Tokyo last week, the 6th Global Brain Alliance Forum (GBAF). The firm and its limited-partner investor Nifty unveiled their future investment strategies. In addition, nine tech startups from Japan and the rest of Asia pitched to a Japanese crowd of angel investors, entrepreneurs, and local media.

We’d like to highlight one panel discussion in particular titled “Asian venture companies on track for growth.” Panelists included Gwendolyn Regina Tan (the co-founder of SGE.io, Singapore), Mark Hsu (partner at TMI, Taiwan), Mohan Belani (the co-founder of e27, Singapore), James Jung (the co-founder of beSuccess, Korea) and Willis Wee (the founder of Tech in Asia, Singapore). The panel was moderated by Global Brain’s James Chan.

Asian markets are diverse

Mark Tsu, partner at TMI

The session kicked off by emphasizing the market diversity in the region. “Asia is so huge,” Mark Hsu noted.

Even if we pick one country in South East Asia to talk about, there are many different views [which we cannot apply to] the entire region together. But the ratio of a country’s population to its GDP is a good index to find how much potential a country has. For instance, Myanmar has 55 million people with a GDP of 70 US dollars a month per capita, and Indonesia has 240 million people with its GDP per capita at $300 dollars a month. A country’s population and productivity index lets you easier to understand the state of the country. Thailand’s economic growth is extremely fast now.

e27’s Mohan Belani also pointed out Thailand, calling it “one of the fastest countries in terms of the speed of spreading internet infrastracture in Southeast Asia.

Willis Wee, TechInAsia

James Jung from BeSuccess proudly introduced his country, noting, “Korea’s internet penetration rate is as high as 91 percent, and our mobile penetration rate also high as 70 percent.”

Tech in Asia’s Willis Wee says, “I’m interested in Vietnam. Facebook and Twitter are highly widespread in Indonesia too, and it will be the next big one after mainland China.”

Gwendolyn Regina Tan from SGE argued for Myanmar’s potential and said, “Its infrastructure is not well-prepared, but the country has many investors and a big population, which means there’s a high potential for rapid growth.”

One thing all panelists appeared to agree on was the region’s high potential to develop further.

The gap in broadband availability and online payments

Moderator James Chan moved on to the next topic about internet infrastructure and online payment issues in the region, with special consideration to the fact that in some countries in Asia a majority are still using feature phones.

Mohan Belani, co-founder of e27

All panelists pointed out the fact that in some regions payments are still made via mail and very few people use credit card payments. TMI’s Mark Hsu says,

In Taiwan, convenience stores have spread around the country since about 10 years back. But now, the number of e-commerce sites have exceeded the number of convenience stores and department stores. Most of e-commerce sites can accept credit card payments but customers tend to pay at a convenience store and pick up what they’ve ordered online there.

e27’s Mohan further adds:

Most Thai people don’t have a credit card, but they do have a bank account, so they can buy something online and pay by debit card.

The e-commerce business is trending now in Southeast Asia, and banks are intensifying investments in developing infrastructure which at this point is still inadequate. Broadband availability differs from country to country, and there’s a big gap in terms of online market opportunities.

Willis Wee explains:

Everyone should see not only consider [high-capacity] broadband countries [1] but also “non-laptop” countries. In these “non-laptop” countries, people usually don’t have laptops but mobile penetration rates are extremely high. Entrepreneurs have to recognize these market gaps and discover business opportunities by filling needs or addressing gaps.

Venture capitals and the surrounding environment in Asia is not yet mature

James Jung, co-founder of beSuccess, Korea

James Jung from beSuccess points out:

Korea has more than 500 angel investors. Our startup ecosystems are working closely with the US, and there are many cases where US-based companies have invested in Korean startups. Similar to Singapore, the Korean government is also proactively involved in helping startups in their growth.

e27’s Mohan adds:

The state of VC firms in Singapore is not yet mature. Startups can get support from big enterprises but there are still few angel investors there. That’s why VC firms provide hands-on support for early-stage startups as well as funding.

He says this is where angel investors should take the lead, in his view. TMI’s Mark compares this with his region:

[Like] Singapore, Taiwan does not have many angel investors. We have highly-skilled engineering talents which have not yet discovered from our workforce pool. Cyber Agent Ventures has come to Taiwan, and Japanese companies are keeping their eyes on the startup trends in Taiwan.

SGE’s Gwendolyn says:

We need more time to mature the market. For entrepreneurs, news like a startup [emerging] from our country to make a successful exit could motivate them to launch their startups.

For Southeast Asian countries, there are many things to learn from Japan

Gwendolyn Regina Tan, co-founder of SGE.io

For the fourth topic, the panel discussed the relationship between Southeast Asia and Japan. They pointed out that entrepreneurs place too much emphasis on Silicon Valley, and need to be more conscious of discovering market potential in Asian countries. The region has more than double the population of the US, and more big deals and more business partnerships could be made if the region was unified and every country worked well together. They say, every startup community in Asia has to have a sense of unity, and they would like to explore how we further impact the entire startup ecosystems and unify the market.

e27’s Mohan points out that “Japan has an important role for startups in Southeast Asia. It is one of the best place for fostering entrepreneurs and IPOs.”

Likewise SGE.io’s Gwendolyn adds that “Japanese working abroad motivate us a lot. I’d like to learn how Japan brings innovation. In many aspects, there are many things to learn, and we’d like to share with many people what we’ve learned from Japan.”

BeSuccess’s James says:

Kakao Talk has acquired 70 million users worldwide, and Japan has Line [2]. [This base of users] will definitely generate a lot of business chances.

Willis focused on the affinity of Japanese companies for SEA markets, and closed the session saying that,

Good products from Japan may bring great impact to Southeast Asia. Additionally, there are many things to learn from insights and knowledge that Japanese entrepreneurs have. Moreover, we can learn a lot from the fact that Japanese companies are good at expanding business overseas. I hope there will be more cases where Southeast Asia and Japan can work collaboratively.

A big thanks to Shintaro Eguchi for his awesome write-up over on Startup Dating.

---

1. Akamai’s state of the internet report is always an insightful resource on this point.  ↩
2. Line has about 80 million right now.  ↩

The post The Potential of Startup Communities in Asia appeared first on Tech in Asia.

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Sina Weibo to Tax Third-party Marketing Accounts

Sina finally reaches into the pockets of third-party Weibo marketing agencies.

Earlier this week, fuwu.weibo.com (fuwu means serving in Chinese) was launched for third-party companies or individuals doing Weibo-related business, marketing, public relations, data analysis, third-party application development, or training & consulting. Demonstrated cases show that the official backing, in addition to a partnership with third-party services, helped advertisers get more Weibo fans, reposts and comments, post impressions, or even more return customers. It appears to be a platform for the benefit of third-party players on Sina Weibo, as its domain name reads.

But news broke out that Sina Weibo asked accounts, who have been doing Weibo marketing business but are not verified as so, to sign business contracts with the company and hand over 20% of their revenues, or, links in their Weibo posts would be blocked, according to Sohu Tech’s report (article in Chinese). An industry source told the reporter that Sina’s targets are those with more than 500 thousand followers, unverified, well-known “large grass-root accounts”.

Selected Goofy as a Sina Weibo account has attracted approaching 10.6mn fans by posting jokes. Even though unverified, it’s widely known who are behind it: Du Zijian and his investor Cai Wensheng, a veteran investor and mentor in China’s internet industry. Du’s company owns a handful of Weibo accounts posting content to audiences‘ interests thus gained millions of followers. Also under Mr. Cai’s wings are a couple of companies who also possess Weibo accounts with a huge number of followers in total. Those accounts are called large grass-root accounts.

The social power of those accounts is reflected in prices that forwarding or posting an advertising Weibo message is for several hundred yuan or higher on the Weibo advertising market. Meanwhile, costs of coming up with jokes are low, in stark contrast to Sina who spent hundreds of millions dollars — $110-120mn in 2011 and planned $160mn in 2012 — on the infrastructure and operations with no sense-making monetization measures.

Selected Goofy wasn’t created for Sina Weibo. It had been well-known and much welcomed on previous social networks like Douban, an interest-oriented social network founded in 2005, or Fanfou, one of the earliest Twitter clones in China. Long before Sina Weibo’s emergence, a bunch of nobodies had started making a living in the online social space by doing content marketing for businesses. They began from BBSs such as Tianya, to social networks, and to Weibo. They knew a good thing when Sina Weibo became a national phenomenon, and, they knew better about how to monetize online social power than Sina itself.

I heard that Sina tried to make money in the same way with those grass-root accounts with its own accounts which had been used for posting news content and other information. No matter how much money has been made there, it seems far less than enough to cover the costs and make the Weibo myth sense-making in terms of revenue. It’s not been too long since Sina’s Charles Chao touted the six approaches to monetize Weibo – excluding snatching food from the mouth of third-party Weibo marketing agencies.

fuwu.weibo.com

Related posts:

1. Report: Restaurants Ruled Sina Weibo Enterprise Accounts
2. Sina Weibo Working on New Marketing Solutions
3. Sina Weibo Virtual Currency Information Leaked, One Weibi is Worth One Yuan

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Musomap.com Connects Musicians Worldwide Online – Sign Up Asia!

Music is a beautiful art that everyone enjoys.  For musicians, singers, songwriters, composers and directors; music is simply a joy to create and express their emotions. But for millions of musicians around the world who want to connect and collaborate to share their passion, how do they do it? That’s exactly the challenge, Musomap.com wants to tackle.

A while back I got a message from an old university friend Amanda Tse in Sydney, who told me about the website her partner, violinist and software developer, Kahne Raja was working on. I checked out the site and I think it’s a really cool idea. Musomap empowers musicians like guitarists, violinists, vocalists etc.  anywhere around the world to join the site, pin their position on a Google Map and say what their interested in doing, whether it be finding people to jam with nearby or collaborate with people around the world or share their music.  It is an initiative by musicians for to promote local musicians and music groups.

The site was only launched in April 2012 but has already gathered around 1,500 musicians around the world. The goal is to connect half a million musicians and by leveraging social sharing features like Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and Pinterest, that number is not hard to believe.

Looking at the world map, it is clear to see where the Muso hotspots are.  Being the home of Musomap, Australia has a strong following as does the U.K. and America. Since I’m in China, Amanda asked me to spread the word to as many Chinese and Asian musician’s as possible; so if you are a musician or know anyone who is, spread the word about Musomap!

Zooming into a specific location, each pin represents one musician. Clicking on the pin shows who the muso is, what kind of music genres they are interested in or what they want to achieve, such as finding people to jam with or perform together; and allows you to message, chat or recommend them. For those with sound clips on SoundCloud, they can also share their music for others to enjoy or comment on.

Mandy and Kahne playing Violin in Sydney

The project is still fairly new but the possibilities are amazing. From simply discovering a new violin or guitar teacher in the same neighbourhood or finding new band members or hiring one for your wedding, Musomap makes it all easy.

Good luck Kahne, Mandy and the team!

 

Related posts:

1. DFR Asia Announces New Funding for Asia’s First Digital Media Venture Studio
2. Baidu Launched Online Music Radio Channel
3. No More Unapproved Online Music in China

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[Events] iOS Day: Learn, break and make your dream iOS apps

iOS Day : learn, break & make your dream iOS apps

iOS Day is an one-day workshop cum hackathon. The day will start with four tutorial sessions features ObjC and iOS Development, hardware-hack and game development, and others that will be conducted by renowned speakers from the community. Participants can attend may or multiple sessions, form a group of three to four developers and build an app by the end of the day. Students and newbies are most welcome to attend the event, learn and pair with an experienced developer and build their dream apps. To encourage the spirit of the participants iOS Dev Scout will give away some StarBucks Coffee cards to the most notable teams or individuals. There will be mentors to help the teams out while they will be hacking and during the Show & Tell session to polish their pitches. This event is supported by Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA) and NUS Enterprise.

Agenda:
9.00AM – 10.00AM: Doors Open
10.00AM – 12.00PM: Tutorial Sessions
12.00PM: Lunch
1.00PM – 5.00PM: Hack on Apps
5.00PM: Show & Tell (Claim your Coffee Cards)

Get a glimpse of our last Hackathon from here: http://iosdevscout.com/an-awesome-hackathon

Event details:

• Start: Saturday, 22 December, 2012 09:00 a.m.
• Venue : PlugIn@Blk71, 71 Ayer Rajah Crescent, #02-18, Singapore 139951
• Register here
• Organizer : iOS Dev Scout, Singapore

The post [Events] iOS Day: Learn, break and make your dream iOS apps appeared first on e27.

Link to full article

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[Events] iOS Day: Learn, break and make your dream iOS apps

iOS Day : learn, break & make your dream iOS apps

iOS Day is an one-day workshop cum hackathon. The day will start with four tutorial sessions features ObjC and iOS Development, hardware-hack and game development, and others that will be conducted by renowned speakers from the community. Participants can attend may or multiple sessions, form a group of three to four developers and build an app by the end of the day. Students and newbies are most welcome to attend the event, learn and pair with an experienced developer and build their dream apps. To encourage the spirit of the participants iOS Dev Scout will give away some StarBucks Coffee cards to the most notable teams or individuals. There will be mentors to help the teams out while they will be hacking and during the Show & Tell session to polish their pitches. This event is supported by Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA) and NUS Enterprise.

Agenda:
9.00AM – 10.00AM: Doors Open
10.00AM – 12.00PM: Tutorial Sessions
12.00PM: Lunch
1.00PM – 5.00PM: Hack on Apps
5.00PM: Show & Tell (Claim your Coffee Cards)

Get a glimpse of our last Hackathon from here: http://iosdevscout.com/an-awesome-hackathon

Event details:

• Start: Saturday, 22 December, 2012 09:00 a.m.
• Venue : PlugIn@Blk71, 71 Ayer Rajah Crescent, #02-18, Singapore 139951
• Register here
• Organizer : iOS Dev Scout, Singapore

The post [Events] iOS Day: Learn, break and make your dream iOS apps appeared first on e27.

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Catch the best at South Korea’s biggest startup conference beLAUNCH 2013

beLAUNCH 2013 is South Korea’s largest startup conference. Early bird tickets are now available until 31 December, 2012.

beSUCCESS, South Korea’s leading startup-tech platform has launched the beLAUNCH 2013 website and has begun to accept registration for the conference and startup booths. beSUCCESS organized beLAUNCH for the time in June 2012 to bring together the global startup and technology community and provide a platform for Korean startups to showcase their products and services. With more than 1500 people attending the two-day conference, beLAUNCH 2012 was the biggest startup event in Korea.

beLAUNCH 2012 saw leading startups, tech conglomerates, media and startup enthusiasts gather and benefit by participating in the sessions, booths, workshops and networking. beLAUNCH 2013 is already positioned to be better attended and widely covered by global media.

Scheduled for May 1 and 2, 2013 at the COEX Auditorium in Seoul, beLAUNCH 2013 will build on the unprecedented success of its inaugural conference. beLAUNCH 2013 will have various components like Hackathon, Startup Battle, Startup Booths, workshops and networking parties.

beLAUNCH 2012 sponsors included SK Planet, Daum, Samsung, Amazon Web Services, SkySQL, KT, Google, Microsoft, Korea Internet Security Agency, Korea Communications Commission, YouNoodle, Qualcomm Ventures, Plug and Play Tech Center, Open Survey, K-Cube Ventures, Ecorp World, Dot Name, Korea Venture Business Association and Korea Association for ICT Promotion.

beLAUNCH 2013 tickets sales are open on Eventbrite . beLAUNCH 2013 Early Bird price is valid till  December 31, 2012. Click here to get your tickets now !

Startups and companies interested to take part in beLAUNCH 2013 by setting up startup booths can use this link to register.

This post is adapted from the official beLAUNCH 2013 press release.

The post Catch the best at South Korea’s biggest startup conference beLAUNCH 2013 appeared first on e27.

Link to full article

Read More

Catch the best at South Korea’s biggest startup conference beLAUNCH 2013

beLAUNCH 2013 is South Korea’s largest startup conference. Early bird tickets are now available until 31 December, 2012.

beSUCCESS, South Korea’s leading startup-tech platform has launched the beLAUNCH 2013 website and has begun to accept registration for the conference and startup booths. beSUCCESS organized beLAUNCH for the time in June 2012 to bring together the global startup and technology community and provide a platform for Korean startups to showcase their products and services. With more than 1500 people attending the two-day conference, beLAUNCH 2012 was the biggest startup event in Korea.

beLAUNCH 2012 saw leading startups, tech conglomerates, media and startup enthusiasts gather and benefit by participating in the sessions, booths, workshops and networking. beLAUNCH 2013 is already positioned to be better attended and widely covered by global media.

Scheduled for May 1 and 2, 2013 at the COEX Auditorium in Seoul, beLAUNCH 2013 will build on the unprecedented success of its inaugural conference. beLAUNCH 2013 will have various components like Hackathon, Startup Battle, Startup Booths, workshops and networking parties.

beLAUNCH 2012 sponsors included SK Planet, Daum, Samsung, Amazon Web Services, SkySQL, KT, Google, Microsoft, Korea Internet Security Agency, Korea Communications Commission, YouNoodle, Qualcomm Ventures, Plug and Play Tech Center, Open Survey, K-Cube Ventures, Ecorp World, Dot Name, Korea Venture Business Association and Korea Association for ICT Promotion.

beLAUNCH 2013 tickets sales are open on Eventbrite . beLAUNCH 2013 Early Bird price is valid till  December 31, 2012. Click here to get your tickets now !

Startups and companies interested to take part in beLAUNCH 2013 by setting up startup booths can use this link to register.

This post is adapted from the official beLAUNCH 2013 press release.

The post Catch the best at South Korea’s biggest startup conference beLAUNCH 2013 appeared first on e27.

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Focus on traction. Communicate and inspire. Money will follow: Paul Singh, Partner, 500Startups

In two and a half years, 500Startups has invested in over 425 companies in 20 countries. India is one of the largest regions in which the venture firm is interested in now. Paul Singh, of 500Startups spoke at the 6th Edition of UnPluggd held last month. For those who missed the talk, we bring you the video.

Key Takeaways

Early stage startups have already changed.

• Startup costs are lower than ever. The cost to scale the company is rising though. Once you hit the product market fit, the costs are higher because the acquisition channels are saturated.
• As the web gets bigger, the world is getting smaller. Raising money from investors have become tougher as more and more entrepreneurs come up in different parts of the world. Internet penetration gets you more potential users but also gives investors more companies to invest in. Its no longer good enough to be the best in your neighbourhood, you need to be the best in the world.
• For most tech startups is traction is almost the only intellectual property that matters.
• Transparency is driving the change. On Angellist, Quora, Linkedin etc, there are many different data points available to investors. Money is increasingly data driven and that’s why you should focus on traction.

Venture Capital Industry is Changing

• Early stage investing used to be very fuzzy. That’s changing. There is an unbundling of advice, control and money.
• Differentiation in venture capital is now about the access to the deal. We all want to invest in the best company. But the best companies will be able to generate a market. Paradox is that the best companies don’t need me.
• Increasingly, VC industry is switching to a checklist based format. You need to be solving a problem, be capital efficient, have a primarily Internet based distribution model, functional prototype, and a good cross functional team.
• Early stage financing is changing with more standardized terms. We are seeing more deals that have no fixed amounts or closings. They are turning into convertible notes.

If you want to raise more money, focus on traction, learn to communicate and inspire. Pick your words carefully.

Paul’s presentation at UnPluggd:

The Rise of the Angels (and the Entrepreneurs) – Bangalore – Dec 2012 from Paul Singh

Recommended read: India Has a Series A Drought : There aren’t enough early stage companies being funded in India

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Tech in Asia: Our Picks for News of the Week [Dec. 15]

There was lots of interesting tech news going down in Asia this week, and particularly in China. The iPhone hit in a few new countries, although there was more going down around the region that warranted attention. Coincidentally, much of the news from this week did center around apps that run on iPhones though. I [...]

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Translate your social enterprise idea into reality with Singapore International Foundation’s Young Social Entrepreneurs Programme

Targeted towards aspiring social entrepreneurs aged 26 and below across all nationalities, Singapore International Foundation (SIF) is currently accepting applications for its Young Social Entrepreneurs (YSE) Programme.

If you believe you have a valuable idea for a social enterprise and want to have an opportunity to make that dream a reality, this programme is for you.

Successful YSE 2013 participants will receive special coaching through a workshop, as well as guidance and mentorship by professional consultants. Moreover, participants will have the chance to take part in overseas study visits and get to pitch their ideas for funding to kick-start or scale up their budding enterprises.

You may register your interest for YSE 2013 HERE. Do note that registration remains open until 21st December 2012.

For more information, you can refer to their website here or contact Jasmine at jasmine.chew@sif.org.sg

The post Translate your social enterprise idea into reality with Singapore International Foundation’s Young Social Entrepreneurs Programme appeared first on SGE.

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DailyDose: Futurist Ray Kurzweil to join Google as Director of Engineering

Futuruist Ray Kurzweil is joining Google

Ray Kurzweil confirmed today that he will be joining Google to work on new projects involving machine learning and language processing. “I’m excited to share that I’ll be joining Google as Director of Engineering this Monday, December 17,” said Kurzweil. “I’ve been interested in technology, and machine learning in particular, for a long time: when I was 14, I designed software that wrote original music, and later went on to invent the first print-to-speech reading machine for the blind, among other inventions. I’ve always worked to create practical systems that will make a difference in people’s lives, which is what excites me as an inventor. [Source]

Ray Kurzweil

AngelList raising $150 million

AngelList, a service that matches early stage startups with investors, is raising a big round of financing at a valuation that multiple sources say will top $150 million. Investors may include Google Ventures and Andreessen Horowitz, among others, say our sources. This will be the company’s first outside financing. [Source]

Microsoft, Motorola file to keep patent case details private

Microsoft Corp and Google Inc’s Motorola Mobility unit have requested a federal judge in Seattle to keep secret from the public various details from their recent trial concerning the value of technology patents and the two companies’ attempts at a settlement. [Source]

Khosla Ventures Hires Condoleezza Rice as Adviser

Khosla Ventures, the investment firm led by Sun Microsystems Inc. co-founder Vinod Khosla, hired former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s advisory firm to work with its portfolio companies. Rice, who is now a professor at Stanford University, is being tapped to help Khosla Ventures’ startups deal with political and regulatory risks as they expand overseas, the Menlo Park, California-based firm said today in a statement. Her partners at RiceHadleyGates LLC include former National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley and former Defense Secretary Robert Gates. [Source]

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Games2Win mobile games cross 25 million downloads, targets 50 million

Homegrown gaming company Games2win has crossed 25 million downloads for its mobile apps. According to ComScore, the casual gaming company has more than 20 million unique consumers a month and has more than 700 proprietary games and applications to its credit.

“We haven’t spent any money on marketing our 44 apps that have been deployed on iTunes and Android,” says Alok Kejriwal, CEO and Co-Founder of Games2Win.

Of the 25 million+ downloads, iTunes comprised 17.3 million, whereas Android comprised 7.99 million.

Games2win wants to cross the 50 million download mark porting its hit online games to mobile.

Game Title                         Downloads*

Parking Frenzy                     13.7 million
SuperMom                             4.4 million
Makeovermadness                1.1 million
Best Friends Forever           899 k
Volcano Flight                       615 k
Plain Jane DressUp             612 k
Other 35+ Apps                    3.8 million
Total Downloads            25.3 million

* Source: Games2Win

Games2Win was founded in 2005 by Kejriwal and Mahesh Khambadkone. The company raised $5 million from Clearstone Venture Partners and Silicon Valley Bank Financial Group in 2007.It then raised $6 million from existing investors in a follow on round in March 2011.

A year later, Nexus india Private Limited, a few senior employees and ICICI Ventures sold 10 % of their stake in the company to Nirvana Venture Advisors.

For casual gaming companies, Mobile is the next big wave. For instance, Zynga, the public listed US based social gaming giant gets nearly 20 % of its revenues from Gaming. They have been stepping up thier mobile offerings lately. Zynga says it wants to launch two web based games and four mobile games every quarter. Zynga had over 306 monthly active users as of July 2012.

Try out Games2win’s iOS games here and Android games here.

Watch Games2Win founder, Alok Kejriwal’s talk at UnPluggd event:

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Chat App Comm Will Be a Big Part of DeNA’s 2013 Plan

DeNA is doing well financially these days, and we’d all like to find out more about its plans for 2013. I attempted to dig up some more information recently at the company’s headquarters in Shibuya, Japan. The good folks at DeNA couldn’t reveal too much. But somehow even when the conversation is going in circles, its new chat app Comm constantly proved a recurring theme.

The app was built not to compete on messaging or texting. Rather, Comm is positioned to have superior voice call quality to compete with other chat apps, a DeNA representative explained to me.

With successful case studies from KakaoTalk and Line that games can thrive on chat apps, it surely has applied pressure on DeNA to rethink where and how people will play mobile games in the future. Mobile chat apps are proving to be one avenue where casual mobile gamers spend time and money. Such apps have an in-built a social graph to keep games casual and viral.

So far, there’s no plan for DeNA to insert games into its Comm app. It’s just too early to do so for such a young app. Here’s our timeline for Comm so far:

• Oct 23: Comm was launched
• Oct 23: Achieved number one on top free on Japan’s App Store
• Nov 14: Hit one million downloads
• Nov 16: Began airing TV commercials, which drove up downloads
• Dec 12: Adds popular stickers/stamp feature, for free

The target for Comm this year is 10 million downloads. I’m not sure how feasible that is but I’m hearing that Comm currently has about five million downloads. A representative declined to confirm the figures but did say that Comm will “play a big role in 2013,” although they didn’t elaborate on exactly how it might do that.

But perhaps the answer is obvious: Build a massive network of users and then distribute games to them. It worked phenomenally well for Line and KakaoTalk so DeNA should excel also if the users on Comm are as active as on competing chat apps.

The post Chat App Comm Will Be a Big Part of DeNA’s 2013 Plan appeared first on Tech in Asia.

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A Glimpse on China’s Online Education

img:http:i5.hexunimg.cn

Chinese tech people are not missing out on the online education revolution. Over 100 online education startups emerged. It’s a business easier to justify than those such as group-buying: in such a big country where quality education resources are concentrated in bigger cities, well-recognized teachers or for-profit schools can reach more students and make more profits through the Internet.

Some existing educational organizations or online services have tasted the sweetness. New Oriental Education’s online business, Koolearn which was founded ten years ago, has its revenues increased 50% for the six consecutive years, and the margin, at the same time, are higher than that of offline classes, according to its CEO (article in Chinese). Hujiang, a language-learning site founded in 2001, claims it has made 100mn yuan ($16mn) in revenue this year from 15mn registered users (source in Chinese).

Different from other copy-to-China businesses, most online education services, though there still are MOOC-like or Shareskill-style ones, are in very Chinese ways, 1) most online classes are for pre-exam training, 2) teacher is the key resource to attract users, 3) most founders are from tech background, not education background, 4) most courses are not for free.

Examination-oriented & Teacher-centric

Almost all well-known private schools in China, such as New Oriental Education, have been focusing on pre-exam training and language learning. That doesn’t change for online education and is expected to be so for a long time. And in the whole education system teachers are absolutely respected by the mainstream society. They want teachers to help their kids get high scores in exams.

Laoshi, teacher in Chinese, is a platform for students and teachers to reach deals. The website holds the tuition paid by students till the end of all classes, and will refund the remain fees if a student isn’t satisfied with classes that have taken. Students will get cash rewards by rating or reviewing teachers after all classes.

Fenbi, chalk in Chinese, is “an interaction platform between professional training teachers and learners” as it describes itself. It takes the micro-blogging format that students can follow teachers/schools, reading notes/materials they post as timeline feeds, access learning materials uploaded by teachers/schools, or taking part in Q&As. The platform covers all kinds of exams a Chinese’d probably come across in a lifetime. Founded by Li Yong, former editor-in-chief of Netease news service, and his colleagues. It raised A round of funding, 10mn Yuan, from IDG, saying they won’t be worried about monetization in two years.

Few founders with education background

Most founders are from tech scene, engineers or tech media people. The rest with education background are from primary/middle schools where teachers are motivated as they have been paid for out-of-school classes when preparing examinations.

It’s hard to imagine that professionals from higher education system in China would build an online service like Coursera or anyone could come up with online classes so attractive as Khan Academy’s. So far I haven’t heard about any professor or university teachers opening online classes.

Different from building up a social network or group-buying site that what you need to do is attracting as many users/merchants to join in, the key for an online education service is content, well-organized classes. There has been technically well-supported sites that can enable all kinds of online educational activities but few offers professionally organized classes.

Taobao

Yes, Taobao is everything. Some people managed to making a good living by selling self-made teaching videos there. They don’t necessarily be teachers, or it can be on a part-time basis.

Educational organizations also set up stores on Taobao’s Tmall. New Oriental School and Hujiang Online School, among other services, even took part in the November 11th marketing event this year — the first time for educational organizations, offering online classes at half the prices. The total transactions on education reached 200mn yuan ($32mn) on that day, according to data released by Taobao (source in Chinese).

YY Education

With its virtual currency, users can access online classes on YY Education through YY software. YY wants to make the education business, launched in June 2011, as successful as YY Music in terms of popularity and revenue. But so far it hasn’t shown how different it is from other online education startups.

The education market in China has been changing since brick-and-mortar private schools emerged. The newcomer parents, who grew up after the Cultural Revolution and during the economic reform, hate the existing education system and are willing to pay a big percentage of family savings for kids to get a good education. But it pretty much depends on how they and their children define high-quality education. To them, better education may mean studying in a Western advanced country or obtaining professional certifications, thus the education market will still be exam-driven and about language-learning. For startups who previously have little access to educational resources, to survive, they have to figure out where to get the right content that will be accepted by audiences. If you wonder whether the online education trend would change China’s education system? Well, there must be a long long way to go.

Related posts:

1. SAIF Partners China Invested $10M into Early Education Company
2. Low-End Smartphones Should Democratize Education in Rural China
3. TermWiki: Term-based Online Learning Platform

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