Updates from May, 2013 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts

  • admin 11:32 am on May 9, 2013 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: inspirational, jgl, , , , startup-life   

    Taking the Juan (one) Great Leap to become an Entrepreneur 

    Juan Great Leap originally started in 2011 as an inspirational blog about Peter Cauton’s own experiences while going from an employee to becoming an entrepreneur.

    Peter’s about post quickly sums up what his mission is – to help the common Juan take the leap from nothing to starting their own dreams in business.

    Today, JGL has grown to include monthly Open Coffee meetups and has now started the Startup School where people from the startup industry share their knowledge on various topics related to startups. Startup School now has one upcoming class – PitchCraft – a seminar on how to market and pitch your idea to investors.

    These classes are just awesome and taught by experienced startup people, and though these courses can be self-taught through reading things online, they help the average Juan become acquainted with what’s out there.

    They are low-priced and pack a punch – I’m very sure that going through one of the courses would give anyone a big advantage over someone who just reads things.

    The other topics in the line up range from non-techie to techie and I really hope they could add things like Project Management, Hiring Best Practices, and something along the lines of Corporate Finance (like how to deal with investors and startup funding).

    Please check that site out and I’d love to hear your thoughts on how to take that leap below. I recommend bootstrapping – where you work on your startup while doing fulltime work on your own pocket – it is a lot of work but it is possible. Peter’s post on how toJust Start is a good primer on how to do just that.

     

  • admin 7:15 am on February 16, 2013 Permalink | Reply  

    Startups In Southeast Asia – an interview by Zan Azlee with Cherish Leow 

    Cherish Leow discusses what startups are about, and interviewed entrepreneurs in Singapore. She meets with top entrepreneurs in SG including TradeGecko (JFDI 2012), Flocatations(JFDI 2012), along with people like Keith Ng, Mohan Belani (e27/Echelon), as well as people from funding ventures like Golden Gate Ventures and JFDI (Joyful Frog Digital Incubator).

     

  • admin 12:46 am on February 16, 2013 Permalink | Reply  

    Cheap programmers for hire 

    A rocket company is currently looking for a rockstar developer to be the lead for the entire south east asian region. Take note however, it’s a position that won’t be based here – but rather – in Vietnam. And yet pay them the same rate as what I would rate a junior dev. It makes me wonder- they can’t hire internally because their own people get paid more here and love it here. They won’t offer to pay the additional increase in pay (as an incentive) for a developer to jump countries.

    Theres a trend right now that companies don’t hire workers who work on the spot, but through using virtual / remote working.
    One company I once joined (Microsourcing) had automated the project lifecycle and hiring and firing process. I think they’d be better off hiring people through that way, so that the total cost of sending someone to Vietnam to handle the team would be minimized. Reality is that Filipinos won’t bother leaving their country unless you pay a higher pay.

    BPO’s are really the way to go, and it is a trend that is growing, and will continue to grow, over the next 5 to 10 years.

     

  • admin 8:56 pm on January 30, 2013 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: e-commerce, international   

    The challenge for e-commerce in the Philippines 

    Random thought. Here in the Philippines, we don’t use credit cards much and people shun credit card offers, and most people run away from the credit card booths in malls.

    But what about DEBIT cards as credit cards? This promotes saving first before buying, and promotes not being in huge debt.

    Finally, about the delivery of goods. Are our infrastructure and safeguards in place for the timely and quick delivery of various goods? With regards to payment, I can attest to the reliability of LBC. I haven’t tried delivery though and I’m not sure people are really trustful of such services. For me, I do usually worry about the goods are really in transit, or will the person deliver the goods, orof any problems on the way here. Although it seems if you own a business and are in like Metro Manila, I’ve heard delivery is reliable, it depends on the area.

    It’s only on buy-sell websites that people are more cautious. E-commerce plays a big part for those with practically no social life because they a) work at home or b) work at odd hours.

    What are your thoughts? What’s hindering e-commerce from going full blast? And why is there doubt in our capacity for e-commerce?

    Right now, I’m really curious as to how well lazada/zalora and others are still doing, regardless of how evil they are perceived for having too much money that they can market their face all over the internet. It would be nice if there was an open discussion on this.

    Related links (External)

    Feel free to comment as your opinion will help would-be investors finally decide whether we’re good. As to all the Filipino-owned companies which are reluctant to globalization, it’s time to change! Let’s make this country a little more competitive by adding in some competition!

    The more investors, better job prospects, enriched lives, better startup communities, and everybody is happy.

     

  • admin 3:23 pm on January 7, 2013 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: asian, , , startup accelerators   

    We are the top three in JFDI applications 

    We seriously are (see comment on the other post). What does that say? We really have these dreams of startup conquests. We want to win.

    But, (as usual) I am going to disagree. Not a lot of Filipinos are going to continue chasing the dream if they did not win. Some will continue on but without the validation of winning some funds, will pursue it half-heartedly. Now I’m now sure, maybe the next batch is the lucky batch where a Filipino startup gets funded.

    How can we help? By giving the frankest piece of advice before they even got started.

    It’s an idea I have in my mind, that all pitches should be seen by everyone and screened before they get pitched. By the time someone pitches, they already know all the loopholes of their idea to change them and pivot their idea into something that doesn’t suck.

    Anyone want to help me rebuild pitchapie? It’s going to be the reddit for startup pitches basically. I need mentors, marketers, experienced user-interface people and gamification experts.

     

    • Victor Hou 11:47 pm on January 19, 2013 Permalink | Reply

      Awesome post and insight into startups and entrepreneurs in PH.  We are building a startup in the US http://www.trendstartr.com but have strong connections in Asia, where we have over 1000 users in PH already and growing quickly.  I think no matter what where in the world, all users are people and often share similar desires/demand that startups should chase after

      The culture is the biggest difference between the US and Asia startups, it’s the culture and confidence of knowing you can fail once, twice, or 10 times but the next time may be the success. 

      Love to hear more about your idea for pitchapie and help you grow it and market it with our connections and platform

      We are going to take over Asia in 2013 
       

  • admin 6:13 am on January 5, 2013 Permalink | Reply  

    Where are the Filipinos in JFDI? 

    Of course, I didn’t expect to see them. After checking out http://jfdi.asia/2013/01/05/startup-showcase-a-sneak-preview-of-the-applicants-to-jfdi-asia/ , I realized that these startups “fit” directly into their culture – focusing on education, finance, shopping (e-commerce is apparently a really big hit in Singapore, no wonder those Rocket guys tried to start their e-furniture store there), as well as some social apps like finding girls to date, and a way to recruit testers for your webapp (which is important, I found out recently that testing is a huge thing in most modern companies who need to ensure their software and systems are fool-proof and do run well (referring to Referoll) ).

    I looked carefully where these startups are coming from, and as of my last check, there are no Philippine teams. If there were I’d have heard of it by now.

    Which is, not really surprising I think given that we have our own culture and our own way of doing things. Most of our startup Weekends are filled with problem-oriented individuals who want to solve Traffic, Corruption, and make things better here. Think MRTTrack, Where’s my Doctor, and other socially-oriented apps that want to make our world a better place.

    Traditionally we have an education-oriented and employee-oriented culture but slowly a lot of those fed up with climbing up the corporate ladder are going on their own and finding their own ways to join the startup / freelancing world.

    I mix the two – startups and freelancers, because I believe most of those startups are from independent thinkers who could never think of working for someone at an 8-5 job. It’s usually someone with a goal, with a vision, who want more out of life.

    So I think maybe we just don’t have much entries into JFDI because we have a highly fragmented tech group ecosystem. There are the opensource people, and then the people whose lives depend on non-opensource technology. There are diverse interest groups and some groups don’t welcome the other group as much. Hopefully we can change that, by building the tools to make startups more a viable way to earn a living.

    I believe we also need to find the space and a place where people can hangout and discuss ideas. There are plenty of co-working spaces in the metro and I just think with enough “leeway” (not too much charging for individuals (cowo-asia is a pretty good and affordable office space I believe at 1,000 PHP per month or something).

    Maybe it’s also the fact that we’d rather stay here rather than go somewhere, our Filipino pride getting in the way of networking with others. Let’s hope that the next recruitment for the second batch this year 2013 will have a better turn out from the Philippines, and perhaps we could have some piece of the pie.

    Have a good year ahead, and goodluck to those who got in to JFDI.asia.

     

  • admin 11:40 am on December 20, 2012 Permalink | Reply  

    News and Updates for the past Week 

    Here are some updates for the past week.

     

  • admin 9:40 am on December 8, 2012 Permalink | Reply  

    Startup Ecosystem Updates and a Reinstallation Productivity tip 

    Tech News

    Updates on the Startup Tech Scene

    I haven’t written the details about it, but basically KickStart  Ventures, the Globe-affiliated startup incubator launched around the same time Startup Weekend 2 came around (this year I believe), got 4 teams funded with a hundred thousand dollars each (roughtly equivalent to four million pesos). The team that I believe really deserves it is Kalibrr, as it serves to help add more workers to the BPO (and I think they are also reaching out,eventually, to non-BPO) industry. That is a huge undertaking anyways.

    The rest of the startups, IMHO, are just variants of a service or a product that won’t make a huge impact on the Philippine economy. I’m not saying they won’t, I’m just saying it won’t be that huge.

    SulitApps – well this well help people save money on their App or Play Store purchases. This may help the economy by allowing people who can’t afford a credit card to basically buy more things online.

    TripSiders – it well definitely help the Tourism industry here. That’s a good boost for the economy.

    Workinspire is something like a collaboration portal. It adds other services combined to help manage the taskslists and code of a regular web development and design firm, as well as media firms. This can help our economyby simply helping possible investors know that we have the skills to challenge things like Github and Pivotal tracker.  I think it’s not a major impact on our economy since it won’t really help provide more jobs, but rather help those Filipino-based media outfits produce more work by being able to manage their tasks in one big place. (JIRA, is of course, more expensive, and this will help those companies save more money on apps like pivotal tracker.)

    My Legal Whiz  is good for lawyers and lawyer firms who need to store the legal research they have into the cloud. It will help lawyers effectively render the righteous hammer of God on the many cases which we have in this country,   by being more accurate in their legal research and enable knowledge-management within legal firms.

    For more info on these startups, check out thebobbery’s post on this.

    Productivity Lost by re-installing my Windows

    I just recently, actually just yesterday,  hit the reset button on my netbook and whilst before it was a breeze to install everything and then get productive again, with the advent of today’s Cloud services, I found updating dropbox to take huge amounts of time. Plus it re-installs those non-productive freeware that originally came with my netbook.

    In short, if you will reinstall your windows, I suggest to do this:

    For Dropbox, copy and backup your entire Dropbox folder into a secondary storage space so that you don’t have to resync all those files again.

    For your files, make backups of the work and code you are working on (both the script files if you’re a developer) and the mySQL or SQL databases you have been working on. I am lucky because I copied my XAMPP (a local installation of Apache, PHP, MySQL) into one partition, so when I reinstalled I just had to reactivate it (run setup-xampp.bat) and voila, I go back to work.

    Also try out Ninite -a way to install or update multiple apps at once found at ninite.com . I basically usually just install the browsers, messaging apps, and most of the utilities and tools for creating websites, and maybe Foobar for music. You can install the other things you need by clicking on the checkboxes.

    What I found is that my system is not really much faster than before once I reinstalled everything, maybe its because of the many extra stuff that a new computer has (like the freeware crap). Particularly for Chrome , after I have re-synced all my links and bookmarks and add-ons, it still performs just as slow.

    Maybe I’ll upgrade the RAM, but I’m not sure if that will help since the processor is just an intel atom. I highly recommend not running too many tabs and apps when running on a netbook. Just open the one or two programs you need, and that’s it. If you want to do more with your computer though, I’d suggest giving Ubuntu a try.

     

  • admin 8:32 pm on November 29, 2012 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: cellphones, mobile,   

    Mobile First Strategy? Think again. 

    People on an MRT Train

    You may think you just made the coolest app ever, and you delivered it to a platform like the Android which supposedly a lot of people will be using. And you say to yourself, ah, that’s probably the cheapest option there is. If your app is something like the MRTTracker which requires your phone to go online and check the times and schedules of an MRT, then consider this: hundreds of people won’t get to use your app.

    According to a recent facebook post by Franky Branc  (the guy behind the highly acclaimed  http://thebobbery.com), out of 11 phones on the MRT, almost none of them were on a dataplan. Although I wouldn’t think this statistic is reliable (anymore than the statistics by AC Nielsen or other Media companies), one could easily surmise that we simply don’t use smartphones on a dataplan.

    A dataplan is about 1500 pesos a month. With the new yuppies earning almost minimum wage levels on their first year of work (unless you’re in the web/telco/ or edge technology yuppie), most of us  simply cannot afford to shell out that much cash. Think about it, I could use 1500 on my next social splurge (i.e. when I go out with friends). As highly social people (yup, I can attest that walking alone without anyone with you, especially around the malls during the Christmas season, is not a good idea), we’d rather splurge on friends and family rather than an internet connection.

    Think about it, when was the last time you organized an event through a mobile phone? Almost never. You’d text the people you know for 1 pesos per text instead of paying 10 pesos for 30 minutes of internet to put up an event on the internet (hence the demise of my idea, halubilo.com, which accepts facebook events through well mentioning my name on twitter).

    And of course, when was the last time you looked up a doctor on a mobile phone? well maybe someday it would be very simple and easy thanks to Where’s My Doctor.

    So in essence what I’m saying is – unless your target market is the well-paid or new rich yuppies from some of the expensive schools in the country or are not here in the Philippines – don’t count on a mobile-first strategy. Most likely, I’d think your website will be brwosed on a mobile device – when they’re connected to a wifi (i.e. when they reach an SM or an Ayala Malls). As for MRTTracker, I kinda wish they could have an automated server which you text (ie just like asking for your balance), then they text you back the status of the crowd on a per-station basis.  Now how to make money off of that is another thing is probably difficult (unless you get people to pay for the SMS text service.. )

     

  • admin 9:03 pm on November 21, 2012 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: habits, inc   

    Habits of Successful People 

    It’s a nice short read. But very true.

    Take this part about selling from Inc.

    When you truly believe in your idea, or your company, or yourself then you don’t need to have a huge ego or a huge personality. You don’t need to “sell.” You just need to communicate -Inc.

     

    Even if you look at the well-known and influential as well as outspoken techies, all of them have communication skills. Well of course, some of those who speak well just have things to say and nothing to show, but in general, good communication skills is a huge door opener.

    As we like to sometimes say, a good school gets us through the door, especially one where communication in group collaboration skills are highly emphasized. In fact a lot of good schools are like that. Although the individual can definitely gain a lot through the internet.

    Thiking about it, the Internet is still a communication method. If it ain’t speaking skills you got, sharpen up on your writing skills and maybe that one site visitor that sees your company site might take a second look at it.

     

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