BlueSky Festival 2009 by Action Community for Entrepreneurs (ACE)

SPRING Singapore today announced the launch of an entrepreneurship training scheme for PMETs (professionals, managers, executives and technicians) at the ACE BlueSky Festival 2009. SPRING will set aside a total of S$500,000 which will be used to support up to 70% of course fees offered at participating local polytechnics under this scheme for PMETs who qualify.

The aim of this scheme is to equip PMETs  (especially those who have been affected by the existing economic downturn) who aspire to be entrepreneurs with relevant skills to be better prepared to start and run a business. According to SPRING, the curriculum will adopt a mix of theoretical and practical components to provide an all-round training that includes sharing sessions with established businesses and entrepreneurs as well as mentorship and incubation opportunities. Courses are expected to start between August and September.

You can find out more here.

So if you’re a down-and-out PMET who happen to want to start your own business, watch this space. More details to be announced by SPRING at a later date.

Co-founders Anshul Jain and Ashok Patro of ThoughtBuzz.

How do we measure social media? That question may seem simple, but startup ThoughtBuzz was founded just to answer that question.

Singapore-based ThoughtBuzz was originally conceived in February 2009 by three guys - all with IT experience and with ages ranging from 25 to 29 - with the aim of providing users with a way to manage their profiles on multiple social networks. However, as co-founder Anshul Jain admitted, he and his partner Ashok Patro soon realized that such tools were already available and many were actually pretty good. “So we decided that this wasn’t the right way to go,” he remembers. “We then decided to shift focus to social media measurement when during our research we came across how increasingly important social media is to brands and companies.”

Measuring Online Buzz

According to its website ThoughtBuzz provides social media intelligence services through its flexible dashboard - with a list of features such as automatic sentiment analysis and demographic analysis - that allows marketing and communications professionals to monitor social media in real-time. “We help companies in discovering trends so that they can make use of them for their brands. Our user is anyone who wants to know what’s being said and written about them on social media.”

“Almost all companies make use of social media some way or the other, and they have no certain way to measure their ROI (return on investment),” he adds. “This is where we believe we can help them and provide them with a platform to measure the impact and success of their social media campaigns.” I’m not sure if I agree that all companies should engage in social media, but of course any tool that allows its accurate measurement is sorely needed.

Anshul says ThoughtBuzz’s key USP is that it provides speed and relevancy of results. “We believe that though social media is an extremely good channel for connecting with consumers, it has its pitfalls. How do you identify spammers or collect only relevant data? These are some questions that we had to answer in order to differentiate our product,” he elaborates.

Anshul says to date they have slowly but steadily cultivated a group of interested clients who are beta testing their product and waiting for its launch. “Our product has also undergone significant changes since February 2009 based on the feedback received and we are hoping that we are our building a solid and relevant product in the market.”

He says that their main challenge is identifying the relevant factors for measuring social media. “Should we try to include everything or give what’s most important to our customers? How much customization to offer, how to present the data so that it’s useful are some of the questions that we face on an everyday basis.”

Starting up in Singapore

The founders decided to base its operations in Singapore because, as Anshul puts it, the country ‘greatly encourages entrepreneurship’. “People here are very forthcoming towards new ideas. Also this being a developed market, the quality of feedback is very high and this helps us in building a solid product.”

ThoughtBuzz is privately held and received funding from Mercatus Capital Group in April this year. They have also applied for and successfully received SPRING Singapore’s YES! startup grant in June.

On Entrepreneurship

“The best part about entrepreneurship is you get to do what you want and how you want,” says Ashok. “You handle real clients and have real deadlines. If you win all credits to you and if you lose then also you are responsible. But the satisfaction you get after fulfilling the market needs and meeting the expectations of your clients is something which always pushes you forward.”

“We have made many business plans, financial projections and strategies as an assignment during our student life. Buts it’s real fun and challenging to actually execute them. After our MBA we were all charged up to do something of our own and try out the various skills and tools we have learnt during our professional and academic life.”

“ThoughtBuzz is the outcome of all these and our successful execution towards our dream of doing something good and useful.”

“Starting something is not easy. There is a lot to think about and it does take its toll on you. But there is nothing more rewarding than to see your own enterprise take shape.”

ad:tech Singapore may be over, but if you’re interested to learn more about the latest in social networking and marketing trends in the Asia Pacific region there’s the upcoming Social Networking World Forum Asia. Organized by Bristol-based events company Six Degrees, this two-day conference dedicated to all things social networking will take place in Singapore on 22nd and 23rd September this year.

Learn from some of the largest global brands who are using social media effectively in their marketing and public relations strategies, as well as hear from the regional heads of some of the most popular social networking platforms such as Friendster, QQ and MySpace on their plans for the region.

To register or find out more about the event, you can download the event brochure or call the booking hotline +44 (0) 117 321 8303. Alternatively you can register for the free exhibition-only pass here. Early bird registration ends 21st August. Readers of this blog get a 15% discount - just quote that you’re a reader of Young Upstarts.

You can follow news of the event on Twitter at @SocialNetworkWF.

Lior Levin - Co-founder of Status Search.

Lior Levin hails from the troubled country of Israel, which despite the continual territorial tensions with its neighbours was recently ranked by the Economist Intelligence Unit as the 9th most innovative country in the world in 2008. That innovation has also spawned a vibrant Israeli startup culture, which Lior belongs to.

Lior is one of the co-founders of Status Search, a social status search engine currently in beta that allows users to perform searches within Twitter and Facebook status updates.  The founders are all 20-something entrepreneurs who have worked in successful Israeli start-ups (such as Aniboom and 5min) in the past. Status Search is Lior’s second startup - his first was Veedda in 2007. Lior was even once named as one of the “Most Promising Entrepreneurs in Israel” by TheMarker business magazine for 2008!

Status Search is currently in private beta, but you can sign up for an account at their site.

So how is the service different from, say, the search function you can find within Facebook? “Status Search is for anything you would prefer searching in your friends’ updates rather than on the web: books, vacations, flights, beer, a party, a job and much more,” says Lior. He explains that the basic philosophy behind the service is that there so much valuable information within social networks that a search engine for that information can be very useful.

“When we present people the option to search their friends status updates, they immediately see how they can benefit from it. People know search and the value they can get from it.” Lior adds that people who use more than one social network are those most likely to benefit from Status Search. He admits, however, that one key challenge is to educate the market about searching their friends status updates.

It has, after a month in private beta, signed up about 400 users that perform around 550 searches a day.

Lior says their business model revolves around partnering with big websites and portals who are looking to integrate their social search service and incorporate that functionally to their users, and do a revenue share with them. “We’re already talking with a few and looking to talk to anyone who is interested in offering this kind of search engine to their users,” he reveals.

Status Search is currently self-funded and is trying to reach profitability on its own. “We’re talking to some investors these days but we’re waiting for a good deal. We’re not in a hurry,” says Lior.

The Next Web featured Status Search in its roundup of social status search engines.

Piecehunters, an iPhone game developed by AzukiSoft.

You can argue that, as a child, Gibson Tang was already entrepreneurial. After all, his first experience at making money was when he sold answers to math homework to his classmates in Primary school. “There’s a thrill of making money from my own hard work,” he laughs. Now 33 years-old, Gibson is today the founder of AzukiSoft, a two-person game development outfit that produced the casual Piecehunters iPhone game.

Piecehunters is a gem-matching puzzle-type game targets casual gamers of ages from children to young, working adults. Gibson says Piecehunters will especially appeal to people who do not want to invest too much time and effort into a complicated game, yet would like something entertaining to fill their time. Development for Piecehunters started in September 2008, when iTunes was officially launched in Singapore. The game was finally submitted to Apple’s App Store in March 2009. Currently there is the Lite version for free, and a paid premium version at the price of US$2.99.

Piecehunters: Puzzle-based game fun with combat elements.

In the Beginning

Gibson’s background is in computer engineering, and started off his career working in the Republic of Singapore Navy for six years. That stint with the navy was followed by a year in a local insurance company developing web-based applications, and later with a small local game company worked on mobile, Flash and PC games. “One day after a long day at work (at the local game company), I was on the bus getting bored (and) wondering why can’t I develop mobile games that can be played in short sessions for people looking to kill time?” Inspired, he started and incorporated AzukiSoft.

He took on a partner - with a background in business and finance - earlier this year who will work with him on a part-time basis. “Our backgrounds are as different as chalk and cheese,” he laughs. “But we share common ground in wanting to shape our own future by running our own business.” He declines to name her, however, revealing only that she is currently doing sales and marketing for a China-based company.

Gibson says he wished he had roped his business partner in earlier. “She has offered a lot of insight from a casual player perspective. I did not notice such insights since I have been playing hardcore games for so long that it has kind of clouded my view on how a game for casual players should be.”

“She is a non-technical person (who) likes to play simple games. I constantly have to modify my game so that it will be something that she likes to play,” he says. “Her business training has also contributed a lot to opening my eyes regarding the business side of running a company.”

On Customer Feedback and Development

Gibson admits it was a big culture shock moving from a pure Microsoft Windows development background to developing an iPhone game with an entirely new programming language and development tools. “I have never touched the Mac OS before,” he insists.  In the end, he says, they’ve managed to product a game to be proud of and have come to appreciate the beauty of the Mac OS X.

“Piecehunters started out as a single player game, but midway through the development cycle we discovered that the game could have a social gaming angle to it,” Gibson recalls. “We launched it early in order to get customer feedback and ideas for potential social gaming features to be incorporated.”

Gibson is a strong believer in customer feedback, and a big fan of the “customer development” approach advocated by Eric Ries (author, entrepreneur and previously a venture advisor at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers). “As a small startup, there are a lot of unknowns about the product viability, direction etc. So customer feedback will be very important in helping us to shape the direction and vision of our game to make it a game that casual players want to play.”

“Fire up iTunes, download my game and give it a try. Then drop me an email at my personal email address gibtang[at]gmail[dot]com if you have any feedback about the game.”

With this approach, Gibson says they have solicited a whole plethora of social gaming features from early testers which they plan to incorporate them into the game. “We intend to roll out new features and patches every week to keep the game up to date in line with player feedback, and grow a community based around the game.” Gibson says they have recently submitted their latest iteration of the game, Version 1.05, to Apple for review.

To date, Piecehunters has been downloaded some 5,000 times, at an average of around 1,500 downloads per week despite the lack of a marketing campaign. “We feel that we have hit the right spot… players who have downloaded my game have emailed me to feedback on how much they like the game.”

As a growth strategy, Gibson plans to extend Piecehunters over to other platforms such as Google’s Android and Facebook. He says this will help to increase the viral effect of the game as they use multiple platforms to help spread the word.

Gibson says he’s not daunted by the recession and is focused on its positive aspects, such as the lowering of commercial rental rates. “I may contemplate renting a small office space sometime down the road when I feel the timing is right,” he adds.

AzukiSoft is currently funded by Thymos Capital to the tune of S$55,000 for their game project. “The rest of the expenses are paid out from my own pocket,” says Gibson.

On Entrepreneurship

Gibson says he chose the entrepreneurial path as he prefers to be unconventional. “My first career choice was to be a rock guitarist in a rock metal band years ago, and I would spend countless hours and money on my guitar. Then I realized that I also like to play and analyze games. That was when I stumbled onto the game development path.”

He shares that being an entrepreneur is tough and he believes the best ones are those who firmly believe in teamwork. “No one can master everything, so an entrepreneur must be able to make up for those deficiencies by working with the right people,” he explains, which was a reason why he brought on his partner.

“Singapore’s push on entrepreneurship is a right move as entrepreneurship can be a potential growth factor for Singapore, plus my partner always wanted to have a product that she can proudly refer to as Made-in-Singapore instead of Made-in-China!”

“One thing about entrepreneurship is that sometimes, you just have to believe in yourself. When I decided to embark upon the game development career path close to ten years ago, there was no game development industry in Singapore. And yet I told myself that I should give it a try and after all, the worst thing that could happen is that I will fail. That’s it.”

“Being able to accept failure if it happens is important for an entrepreneur.”

Phlook co-founders Justine (Left) and Wee Kiat.

I first came across online photo-hosting service Phlook.com at Unconference 2008. Founders Ng Wee Kiat and Justine Ho was pitching their idea to the audience but, at that time, I wasn’t sure if the World Wide Web needed another Flickr clone.

Wee Kiat assures me that a lot has happened since then. “During the Unconference 2008, our products were still very basic. In the subsequent few months, we continued to develop and fine-tune our products. Currently, any photos uploaded to Phlook will automatically be integrated with features that probably no other websites are offering,” he says.

Phlooking Around

Photo-hosting service Phlook.

Wee Kiat explains that the key benefit of Phlook is the interactivity that are available to photos uploaded on their site, which users can be easily be published on their websites or blogs.

“We were toying with the idea of online photo printing in the beginning, but then as we explored further, we realized working on the digital photos themselves would be so much more fun and useful,” Wee Kiat explains. ”We saw photos and images on sites with doodling and captions written on them by the authors but viewers can only add simple text comments on another space. We felt that this limit the potential of interaction so we created photo interfaces where users just need to upload their photos and then simply by copying and pasting an auto-generated embed code, Phlook’s interactive features will automatically appear with their photos right on their own websites.”

It’s easier to show than to explain in words. Below is the photo I took of some, ahem, very pretty babes at the Samsung booth during the recent CommunicAsia 2009. As you can see, Phlook adds a layer of interactivity you don’t get from photos embedded via Flickr. You can zoom in, zoom out, and even vote for the photo. Nifty.

GreyReview describes it as such: ”Phlook Turns Photos Into Portable Social Objects“. That’s about as apt as any.

Humble Beginnings

30-year old Wee Kiat, a graduate of National University of Singapore (NUS) with a Bachelor and Masters degree in Mechanical Engineering, at first knew nothing about computing. “I was clueless about even basic HTML then, but I decided to pick up the knowledge during my free time.” His partner Justine, now 32, graduated with a Bachelor in University of New South Wales and a Master of System Analysis from NUS. The co-founders met when they were previously colleagues at a German multinational company.

“In a way, I was inspired after I started reading all the tech and web startup blogs such as Techcrunch.” These days, however, Phlook finds itself the attention of tech blogs and has been featured on Mashable, Microsoft StartupZone, and Widget Labs.

He describes the World Wide Web as a place where ‘nothing seems to be impossible to be created’. “Our imagination is probably the only limitation”, he muses. He’s glad, he says, to see the growth of web startup community in Singapore, and looks forward to seeing more successful local websites making a mark on the world map in the near future.

According to their site statistics, Phlook currently has more than 3,500 users. “It is always very fulfilling to hear directly from some of the users how innovative and useful they think our photo features are, especially after they discovered how easy it is to enjoy the same features right on their own websites,” Wee Kiat says. “The key challenge, I would say, is how to constantly keep innovating and understanding the needs of users.”

To grow the service, Phlook is reaching out to companies to offer its platform where these companies can host their ad-hoc photo sharing activities for photo competitions. ”In fact, the current low in the economy has created an opportunity for us because while companies are cutting back on their spendings and we are providing a platform that they can organize photo contests as highly interactive marketing campaign at a fraction of the cost if they were to build their own,” says Wee Kiat. Just a few months into starting this service, they have hosted photo contests for companies such as HP.

Wee Kiat reveals that one of his regrets is that Phlook should have paid more attention to PR, marketing and promotions at the beginning. “Both Justine and me are very much developers. So when it comes to the aspect of marketing, it was another tough journey of changing mindset and learning from scratch,” he explains. ”We are starting to better grasp this aspect, but if we have started learning and equipping ourselves with marketing knowledge and mindset right from the start, we may have saved ourselves some more precious time!”

Phlook is currently funded by Media Development Authority of Singapore (MDA) through startup incubator Thymos Capital, but Wee Kiat declines to reveal the exact amount of funding.

On Entrepreneurship

Wee Kiat says there’s a special thrill and challenge in starting and running your own business. “This can never be experienced while working for others. My dad has built a successful career with his own company and that inspires me further.”

“One most important lesson I have learnt is humility. When thrown into a new startup where everything has to start from zero, it didn’t take me long to realized that I need to be humble enough to admit mistakes, accept failures and learn from them.”

Scott Goodstein, external online director for the Obama presidential campaign.

Goodstein, the external online director for Barack Obama’s presidential campaign, was responsible for planning and implementing the now president’s online outreach efforts, Obama for America. Since joining the campaign in February 2007 Goodstein successfully employed the latest in social networking tools and mobile technologies to engage Americans, helping to drive the presidential campaign’s key objectives of canvassing votes and raising funds.

Goodstein’s team conceptualized Obama’s presence on Twitter as well, whose Twitter account @barackobama was the most followed until Ashton Kutcher’s Twitter publicity stunt with global news giant CNN earlier in April this year.

So what made Obama’s online and mobile campaign such a smashing success? If I had to distil the conversation about Obama’s online campaign with Goodstein into key takeaway marketing lessons, it would be this:

It had the 3Ms - The Man, The Manner, and The Message.

Goodstein admits that the online campaign wouldn’t have worked as well if the man in question wasn’t Barack Obama. “It really was about the message and the messenger. There is no way to deny that it was Barack Obama as a candidate, with the right set of circumstances and the right change message.”

That message of hope and change came at a time when Americans were sick of the status quo and, as Scott puts it, the most divisive time for American politics he’s ever seen in his lifetime. The message of hope, he says, was really where America wanted to be. “All of a sudden, there was a candidate who’s talking about something different, a vision.”

And the charismatic manner that Obama brought was refreshing, and indeed, needed.

It was about building, connecting and engaging communities.

Popular marketing guru Seth Godin, in a podcast interview with Accidental Creative, talked about communities - what he calls tribes - and how Obama did something really difficult in assembling a tribe who would otherwise would never have existed.

Goodstein tells a powerful story on exactly how the use of online networking tools allowed exactly that, the galvanizing of communities of voters and enabling them to connect with one another. “People would bring food to the long lines (of voters) because they saw it on blogs or heard it on Twitter, because (the voters) can’t get out of line,” he recounts. ”This encouraged those, the people who haven’t yet voted, to look forward to the voting process.”

Another great example of this can be found in Clay Shirky’s recent presentation at TED, who spoke about how Obama’s online campaign allowed conversations to happen between Obama and his supporters. Convene, not control, your communities - as Shirky puts it.

“Businesses have to willing to engage in a two-way conversations in a unique way and can no longer  just send out a press release and put a radio or TV spot one way… it’s a tough thing for businesses.”

It told a story that was consistent and authentic.

Goodstein shares that it was an effort to make sure that the online campaign was consistent with the overall presidential campaign. At one point, he says, they had to stop people from changing the content on the campaign website. “The front page of Barack Obama and his family photo, we just put it right there. At the end of the day, that’s what people wanted to see. Two of our opponents changed their websites all the time, buried the basic information (people were looking for).”

“Hillary (Clinton)’s campaign did some things that didn’t really ring authentic (to the American public). They did a lot of spoofs and things that were scripted, but didn’t ring authentic to the conversation.”

“Our videos were either speeches (of Obama’s) or videos about the movement. It fit our image and who Barack Obama was.”

It supported the big picture.

One of the comments Goodstein made really struck was how his online team viewed themselves, that they were but a part of the greater whole and did not work in isolation. ”We saw ourselves as a service organization. Our job was to be of service to the finance department, the field department, and the communications team.” They were regularly in touch with the other teams, for example, running down to the policy people to ensure that messages were consistent throughout.

“We didn’t do technology for technology’s sake,” he states.

It set the right goals.

Goodstein was very careful to not put a return-on-investment (ROI) target on essentially a new initiative. “Social networking hasn’t been around or used that long on political campaigns. To put that type of false commitment on an ROI on it, to me, didn’t make sense,” Scott said. “Basically as long as one made enough money to pay for the program, anything else on top of it will be gravy.”

Instead, they created a list of goals that they wanted to achieve and where they wanted to be, as opposed to using existing ROI methods used for traditional outreach methods such as direct mail.

It assigned the right amount of resources.

Scott points out that many underestimate the amount of resources that is needed in a campaign. “Campaigns at the end of the day are about time, people and money. If it’s costing you time and people and even if it’s not costing you money, you’re probably still not spending your time and people wisely.”

“For the people who say that all the social networks are free, sure, but consider the number of staff and amount of training that goes into it to make sure that we’re really running it as an embassy of the campaign.”

“We trained a small army of volunteers on how to answer questions, so that the answer that you got off on a MySpace page, YouTube, a text message, email or call will essentially be the same… that takes a lot of training.”

Goodstein with bloggers at ad:tech Singapore: (Left to Right) Bjorn Lee, Daniel Goh, Bernard Leong, Scott Goodstein, Mohan Belani, Dorothy Poon, Daryl Tay, Saurabh Pandey and Shalabh Pandey.

You can read more about the session with Scott Goodstein from the other bloggers present:

• Bernard Leong’s post,
• Mohan from e27’s view,
• Here’s Shalabh Pandey’s take,
• Saurabh Pandey’s perspective,
  
• Dorothy Poon’s say.

The Infocomm Singapore booth at CommunicAsia 2009.

CommunicAsia - one of Asia’s premier exhibitions on communications and information technology - isn’t exactly the place to find Singapore startups, being more of a stomping ground for SMEs and MNCs to network and solicit business.

So it was a surprise when I ran into a few familiar faces there. Most of the other startups, were sequestered in Hall 3 under Infocomm Development Authority (IDA) of Singapore’s Infocomm Singapore booth:

Goh Yiping (centre) of Human Network Labs.

The first I ran into - Goh Yiping of Human Network Labs. On the final day of the exhibition, she had the opportunity to share with Minister for Community Development, Youth and Sports (MYCS) Dr. Vivian Balakrishnan, who stopped by for a short chat while touring the booths.

Vincent Wang from TheMobileGamer

TheMobileGamer (TMG)’s COO Vincent Wang was manning their booth solo, with CEO Alvin Yap having stepped out for a while. (I have previously featured them here.)

OrSiSo booth at CommunicAsia 2009.

OrSiSo’s CEO Thorben Linneberg was not at his booth, due to an unfortunate bike accident last week. I hear it wasn’t too serious. (I’ve previously covered OrSiSo here.) Get well soon, Thorben!

I finally had the chance to say hi to Phokki’s Sean Seah, whose startup had a booth there. I’ve previously featured them but have never met Sean face-to-face. Sean - a really decent chap, and I found out Phokki’s not his first nor only startup -  even introduced me to guys from Juzz4Security, whom I plan to feature in an upcoming post. Other startups who had booths there included MyWobile and iTwin.

A few other startups even participated in the founding of Mobile Alliance. But I’m sure I’ve missed out on some of the rest.

I’m hoping to see more local startups at CommunicAsia next year!

Founding members of the Mobile Alliance, with various representatives from key partners.

A number of Singapore’s mobile software companies announced at CommunicAsia 2009 the formation of Mobile Alliance, the country’s first mobile software association that aims to drive strategic programs to position Singapore as an attractive base to develop new mobile services and market them globally.

The founding members of Mobile Alliance include various Singapore-based startups, such as Human Network Labs, Bak2U, buUuk, MobiQuest, Stream Media, tenCube and ZingMobile. Boudewijin Pesch, managing director of Acision in Asia Pacific, was selected as President. “By adopting a collaborative approach, Mobile Alliance is focused on generating greater synergies and incubating new opportunities within the mobile ecosystem in Singapore,” said Pesch.

Industry players such as NAVTEQ and Gemalto have joined the Mobile Alliance, which will also sign an MoU with the Sweden Mobile Association for cross regional collaboration.

The four Singapore entrants into DFJ and Cisco's global business plan competition.

Premier early-stage venture capital firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson (DFJ) and Cisco has announced four local startups as the Singapore entrants to their recently announced global business plan competition.

The competition seeks to find new technology-oriented ideas from aspiring college and university student entrepreneurs around the world, and will select sixteen finalists on June 19, 2009. The winner, who will be announced on June 30, 2009, will receive a minimum of US$250,000 seed money as well as receive professional feedback and mentorship from both DFJ and Cisco.

The Singapore entrants are:

1. TheMobileGamer (TMG), which created mobile gaming application GameMo (here for a previous interview),

2. Phokki, a Web 2.0-based photo-touching and photo-styling service (previously featured here),

3. E-Thermnity, which designed a baby milk bottle that changes color according to temperature, and

4. Zimplistic, which designed Rotimatic, an automatic chapati machine.

They will compete with business plans from 16 other countries around the world including China, India and Vietnam. Competition finalists will be selected on various criteria including the quality of the management team, technical innovation, addressable market size, competitive positioning, barriers, capital efficiency and financial projections.

This is the first time the competition is aimed at a global market, made possible by DFJ’s Global Network and Cisco TelePresence, which allows live, face-to-face network communications experience that enables the finalists from around the world to present their business plans in real time to a joint panel of DFJ and Cisco executives based in San Jose. “We believe that technology has no borders and that there are talented entrepreneurs everywhere who want to change the world, and we look forward to partnering with them,” says Tim Draper, DFJ’s managing director.

Let’s wish our Singapore hopefuls well!