A few months ago we had the privilege to meet John Gage from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers(KPCB) who was down in Malaysia. KPCB is one of the top investment firms in Silicon Valley and also the world.

Who is John Doerr you may ask? John Doerr is a partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers(KPCB). Along with KPCB’s partners, John has invested and sits on the board of directors of many of America’s leading entrepreneurs including:

Larry Page, Sergey Brin: Google
Jeff Bezos: Amazon
Andy Bechtolsheim, Scott McNealy, Bill Joy, Vinod Khosla: Sun
And the founders of Compaq, Zynga, VeriSign, Macromedia, Palm and Symantec.

Just to name a few.

Courtesy of VentureBeat.com who had a round table with KPCB, John Doerr had a list of sound advice for start-ups to follow by.

Original article can be found here.

At VentureBeat’s Downturn Roundtable event this morning, Kleiner Perkins’ John Doerr came prepared with a list of the top things that start-up CEOs should do. He surveyed 18 of Kleiner’s companies, and here’s what they suggest [update: Doerr has since added an eleventh point]:

1. Act now. Act with speed. Raise money. Get a loan, secure financing. Focus, cut or sell.
2. Protect the vital core of the business. But use a scalpel not an ax. Be surgical. Protect the vital core of the company. Cut once, deeper than you think.
3. Make sure you have at least 18 months of cash. Or more — on a conservative revenue forecast.
4. Defer facility expansions. Don’t spend money on tech infrastructure, such as new software or computers. Doerr noted that Andy Bechtolsheim’s new startup, Arista uses Google Docs (free web office software).
5. Reevaluate your R&D priorities.
5. Renegotiate any contracts that you can. Everything is negotiable.
6. Remember, everyone in the organization should be selling, from the receptionist to the engineers.
7. Offer people equity instead of cash e.g. in place of bonuses. (You can do this with outside vendors as well).
8. Secure your cash. Treasuries, or treasury backed securities, are more secure than money market funds.
9. For your revenue plan, develop and obsess on leading indicators — e.g. bookings, unique visitors, conversions.
10. Over-communicate with everyone – employees, investors, partners and particularly customers. Don’t sugar coat things, communicate your resolve.
Angel investor Ron Conway added a key twelfth point: Be open-minded to mergers and acquisitions. Always a good tip.

There are alot of definitions to the role of Entrepreneurs, the meaning of Entrepreneurship and the Process in which one must undertake during his Entrepreneurial Pursuits. But nobody puts it clearer than Paul Graham, Founder of the Y-Combinator, a Start-Up Incubator which had produced many successful start-ups and entrepreneurs.

Commenting on his original article available at the article ‘What Start-Ups Are Really Like’ , the team behind Entrepreneurs.my found out that various young entrepreneurs whom we spoke to, regarded this piece of article as ‘The Best, the Most Relevant and Most Unveiling’ of all, explaining to us, about Entrepreneurship.

A definite MUST READ for all Aspiring and Thriving Entrepreneurs.

After reading the article, i found myself admitting that Entrepreneurship is not as Easy as It Seems, and that Partnerships are Evidently So Important to Decide on a Start-Up’s Success.

Also, many entrepreneurs preached about entrepreneurship commanding a sense of ‘Perseverance’ with which many have also accused as being an ‘Over-used’ word used by entrepreneurs describe their hardships. However, after reading this article, it is TRUE that entrepreneurs whom are successful did persevere through the hard times.

Check out this article below as we post a Sneak Peek on ‘What Start-Ups Are Really Like…’ by Paul Graham

“1. Be Careful with Cofounders

This was the surprise mentioned by the most founders. There were two types of responses: that you have to be careful who you pick as a cofounder, and that you have to work hard to maintain your relationship.

What people wished they’d paid more attention to when choosing cofounders was character and commitment, not ability. This was particularly true with startups that failed. The lesson: don’t pick cofounders who will flake.

Here’s a typical reponse:
You haven’t seen someone’s true colors unless you’ve worked with them on a startup.”

“3. It’s an Emotional Roller-coaster

This was another one lots of people were surprised about. The ups and downs were more extreme than they were prepared for.

In a startup, things seem great one moment and hopeless the next. And by next, I mean a couple hours later.
The emotional ups and downs were the biggest surprise for me. One day, we’d think of ourselves as the next Google and dream of buying islands; the next, we’d be pondering how to let our loved ones know of our utter failure; and on and on.”

“13. Expect the Worst with Deals

Deals fall through. That’s a constant of the startup world. Startups are powerless, and good startup ideas generally seem wrong. So everyone is nervous about closing deals with you, and you have no way to make them.

This is particularly true with investors:
In retrospect, it would have been much better if we had operated under the assumption that we would never get any additional outside investment. That would have focused us on finding revenue streams early.”

“17. The Value of Community

A surprising number of founders said what surprised them most about starting a startup was the value of community. Some meant the micro-community of YC founders:
The immense value of the peer group of YC companies, and facing similar obstacles at similar times.
which shouldn’t be that surprising, because that’s why it’s structured that way. Others were surprised at the value of the startup community in the larger sense.”

For the full article, please visit this website  http://www.paulgraham.com

Credit to Aidan Chew for sharing this article with the community of Entrepreneurs.my

Throughout 2009 we’ve been noticing a fairly surprising trend rate of what we would call a ‘Shopping Spree’ by the Big Boys. Early start-ups and established companies have been acquired on average almost every 3 months throughout the year.
Such as Cisco acquiring Tandberg for $3.0 billion and Starent Networks for $2.6 billion. Facebook purchasing FriendFeed for $47.5 million and Amazon acquiring Zappos for $1.2 billion.

So why are these Big Boys buying companies like there’s no tomorrow and how do you get acquired if you wanted to? We managed to speak to a couple of investors and venture capitalists from Silicon Valley, China, Singapore and Israel to tap their minds on mergers & acquisitions (M&A)

If you’ve been thinking that listing your company is the best and fastest way to cash out, you might want to think again. Based on some interesting statistics, most companies exit and cash out though the process of a merger & acquisition as opposed to going for IPO.

No doubt there are companies that will achieve financial exits through IPO’s but the amount of companies that exited through M&A’s are tremendous. The significance of the amount cashed out is also higher on average.
And so we asked one of the VC’s, if this was the case, how do we plan for acquisitions to happen in the future?

His answer was, “Most of our companies that got acquired didn’t plan to get acquired per say. But because they we’re providing so much value that they gained interest. If you do not create value you would die anyway because you’re not able to sustain.”

But if being acquired contributes to a large statistic and profits of exiting, the fact that companies are able to strategize to go for IPO, how does one strategize from day one for your company to be acquired?

As we go deeper into the conversation, a few valuable insights were shared on how to subtly strategize your acquisition.
First, create a product or service that would in a certain way ‘hurt’ them. When we say hurt it actually means that will slightly threaten the competitors business in terms of market share.

For example, recently AppJet which produced EtherPad was acquired by Google. EtherPad is a real-time collaboration application similar to Google Docs. It was said that EtherPad was a slight threat to Google Docs, but that being said is not the sole reason to be purchased.

Next is by building a valuable product or service that will threaten the existing companies, and with that tremendous value you’re able to gather a large consumer base in which translates into market share. When this happens it might be a dent on the revenue portfolio of the Big Boys.

When that happens it would be much easier for the Big Boys to buy your existing business along with the entire community and consumers around it, instead of recreating the wheel. By doing this it immediately gives direct market dominance in the particular field which they are in or are planning to enter.
A very good example for this is Mint that was acquired by Intuit for $170 million and Playfish that was purchased by Electronic Arts.

Another part of the strategy is to build a platform or product that provides value and is parallel with their future directions. By being able to integrate and compliment existing business models and directions of these Big Boys. For instance Google bought AdMob for $750,000 because it was a direct extension and compliment to their business model and future directions of Google wanting to penetrate the mobile advertising market space.
The reason Google bought AppJet for EtherPad was also because they believed that the real-time technology team is able to further enhance and compliment the development of Google Wave.

Finally, another tip is to start initiating partnerships or collaboration early with the company or organizations that you want to be acquired by. Form an initial and a valuable working relationship with the company. For instance if you want to be acquired by Apple, try to do small collaborations with them so when the time comes they wouldn’t be foreign and at least have worked with your company before hand. This will ease the integration and transition amongst both companies.

All these elements have to be in confluence and goes hand-in-hand with each other in order to strategize for this particular tricky yet uncertain manoeuvre to get acquired. And if all the pieces come together, a dash of luck is all you need as the final yet essential element. So send your wishes to Santa and your wish might just come true.

Merry White Christmas!

2009 has been an incredible year for the startup scene in the region. Despite the challenges of the painful global economic downturn, we’ve witnessed many of you grow from strength to strength and bringing much needed cheer and excitement to our community.

Over the past few years, SGEntrepreneurs, E27, The Digital Movement, MY Entrepreneurs, Hackerspace and Young Upstarts have been actively supporting local and regional startups to grow your exposure and awareness, and even markets for your products and services. We’ve also been supporting your growth, putting up job listings for free to help you find suitable talents for your startups.

Today, we are excited to share with you a part of our plan to take this support to another level. We are glad to announce the introduction of Triple Point Job Board, a job listings service that will be rolled out across all partner sites to help startups find suitable human resource talent.

This application was developed to help facilitate and deal with the increasing demand for job listings across partner sites. In addition, we hope that through this arrangement, we can offer greater value to startups, advertisers and other partners through access to all our sites at the same time.

We would like to state upfront that Triple Point Job Board will not be a free service (click here to see the rates). We recognize that some of you will not be happy to be charged for a service that you previously have gotten free from partner sites. However, we believe that the fees offered for the service are nominal and extremely fair.

Any proceeds – which, as you can imagine, is likely to be a pittance anyway – go towards the development and maintenance of the service. Any left over will inherently be ploughed back into supporting the local startup communities. For a start, any existing job listings within the past two months that are currently on the partner sites will be converted for free for a month on Triple Point Job Board.
We’re hopeful that you share our vision for a more cooperative, close-knit startup community. We’d love to hear your feedback on Triple Point Job Board. Feel free to contact us for any clarification.

Wishing you greetings for the festive season,

SGEntrepreneurs
E27
The Digital Movement
Malaysia Entrepreneurs
Hackerspace and
Young Upstarts

Image courtesy of Sam Felder.

Hosted and organized by Joi Ito, Sean Bonner, James Chan and Tara Brown, the Neoteny Singapore Camp 1 or NSC1 is a conference and unconference that bring together people to discuss about investment, start-ups and incubations.

This event is happening on the 12th and 13th Dec 2009

The first half of the event is scheduled and it will be followed by an unconference adhoc session. For more info of the schedule please visit here.

Besides that, Excutive Director of Mozilla, Mark Surman is having the Mozilla Drumbeat Challenge

According to the wiki:


What is it?
You, delivering 5 minutes of pure passion in which you (1) outline a concrete project idea that will make the web better or simply (2) explain the open web and why it matters.

What's in it for you?
We'll videotape, upload and feature your presentation on the Mozilla Drumbeat website.
'Ideas' presentations will be included in the Drumbeat project idea stream, offering an opportunity to attract attention, volunteers and supporters.
'Ultimate' talks will be entered into a global competition for best presentation.
If your idea or presentations is amongst the best globally, you'll also have a chance to participate in the Drumbeat Festival, tentatively scheduled for June 2010 in Amsterdam.


Register yourself at the wiki.

update: Join us for a recording of This Week in Asia at Neoteny Singapore

Venue
NSC1 will be held at the SMU Institute of Innovation & Entrepreneurship campus in Singapore. Exact room location will be added shortly.

Photos by Joi Ito

BarCamp is back again and this time it will be in Melaka.
What is Barcamp???

Well, BarCamp is a user organized conference that will bring together, programmers, techies, geeks, entrepreneurs and other interesting people from all around the region.

For more details for BarCamp Melaka please visit our site.

http://barcamp.org/BarCampMelaka

Location: MMU Melaka
Date: 14th and 15th November 2009
Time Morning to over nite.

Here are some post about past BarCamp Malaysia
-FriedBeef
-ByteCraft
-Meng Wong

For the 1st time ever, Queen’s University in Canada is extending their arms to local Malaysian universities and youth groups to participate in the world’s largest undergraduate business plan/ entrepreneurship competition.

Youth Entrepreneurs Malaysia teams up with top Canadian business school – Queen’s University to bring ‘Queen’s Entrepreneur Competition’ for the 1st time into Malaysia.

This is part of the GEW Youth Catalyst’s efforts to bring the ‘Local – Global’ by extending international opportunities for local graduates to compete in internationally acclaimed business competitions.

Notable highlights of the competition includes its first attempt of inviting at least a submission from Malaysia to join into the competition, with teams bidding to raise funds from as much as Canadian $15,000 to jump start their enterprises. Whats even more interesting was the fact that the entries will be judged by some of the ‘Celebrity- Entrepreneur’ judges who have judged in reality shows – ‘Dragon’s Den’ and ‘Shark Tank’, both are prominent reality shows about Venture Capitalist and Entrepreneurship.

A smart partnership was formed between Queen’s University’s Entrepreneur Competition organisers with the Global Entrepreneurship Week (GEW) Youth Catalyst in Malaysia – Youth Entrepreneurs Malaysia.

According to fellow Co-Founder, Michael Teoh, he hopes that this pilot run for the Queen’s Entrepreneur Competition can add yet another ‘International’ element to the range of business competitions which are already available in Malaysia for students to join. He was even more impressed with the university’s network of getting high networth entrepreneurs like the ones in Dragon’s Den and Shark Tank, to appear as fellow investors.

‘It was surprising to me that no Malaysian teams have ever entered this international competition, yet they have received participations from our neighbouring countries but not Malaysia. Awareness was certainly not that,’ said Michael.

QEC is an amazing event that provides priceless opportunities for young entrepreneurs. Not only do participants have the chance to receive significant cash prizes to jumpstart their ventures ($15,000 for first place, $6,000 for second, $2,000 for third and two $1,000 innovation prizes), but the finalists also have the chance to network with Canada’s leading business professionals; past judges include Clide Beddoe (CEO and founder of Westjet), Tim Wilson (President of Visa Canada), David Blanchard (Chairman of Unilever Canada), Chris J.B. Clark (CEO of PricewaterhouseCoopers Canada), Brett Wilson (Dragons Den), and many others.

There is also more information on the website — www.theqec.com —!!!!

What is Queen’s Entrepreneur Competition?

Now in its 22nd year, the Queen’s Entrepreneurs’ Competition brings together some of the brightest young entrepreneurs from around the world to compete for $25,000 in cash prizes and the opportunity to appear on CBC’s Dragons’ Den. Participants also have the chance to network with Canada’s leading business professionals. Furthermore, QEC prides itself on the incredible judge to competitor ratio of 3:4– a tremendous networking opportunity and ratio of almost one competitor to one judge.

Past speakers include Bryan Pearson (President of Air Miles Canada), Brett Wilson (Dragon on CBC’s the Dragons’ Den) and Clive Beddoe (Founder of Westjet Airlines). The sixteen teams who make it past the preliminary business plan grading will have the opportunity to network with these amazing individuals and receive feedback about their business plans.

Qualification Requirements:

o Competitors must be undergraduate students and can be from any faculty or program.
o Existing proposals are valid and qualify for consideration provided the plan has not qualified as a finalist in a previous QEC competition.
o Each team entered must be a maximum of four students and one faculty advisor.
o Entrants may involve the help of other students to produce parts of their plan. These students do not have to be registered members of the group.
o Business plans must be received electronically by November 4th, 2009

Format Requirements for Business Plans:

o Plans must be a maximum of 50 pages consisting of a maximum of 35 pages of written material and 15 pages of exhibits.
o Business plans are to be submitted via email. If students have an issue with this, they should make alternative arrangements with the University Coordinators at least two weeks prior to the submission deadline.
o Business plans and appendices must be contained in one file and in a format that is ready to print. Files can be in MS Word, PDF, etc., but cannot exceed 5mb in size.
o Documents must be named as the title of the business plan.
o All business plans must be written in English.
o All entries must be typed with 1.5 spacing (double spaced is also acceptable).
o Margins must be a minimum of one inch, and font must be a minimum of 10pt.
o Candidates’ last names and schools must not be included on any pages of the business plan.
o All business plans submitted to the competition must include the “Preliminary Round Cover Sheet” as the first page of the business plan. This form is available from the University Coordinators.

Deadline and Important Date

Applicants must submit their written business plans to Yuwen Huang at yuwen.huang@theqec.com by November 4th. The 16 teams who received the highest scores on their written business plan will be notified by mid December (2009) and will be invited to attend the final competition round held at Queen’s University from January 21st to 23rd. The top 16 teams will make a 25-minute presentation to a panel of industry experts; past judges have included Tim Wilson (President of Visa Canada), Grant Rassmussen (President and CEO of UBS Bank Canada), Brett Wilson (Dragons’ Den), John Sleeman (CEO of Sleeman Breweries) and many others.

Cost:

There are no delegate fees for our final competition; all fees including meals, evening socials and our final gala are covered through sponsorship. However, delegates must pay for their accommodation and transportation to Kingston. Delegates can also stay with their friends in order to avoid accommodation fees.

Anyone who is interested to participate, please go to www.theqec.com

The committee from Canada and Youth Entrepreneurs Malaysia do realise that the dateline is tight (On 4th November), however, this is a trial run in Malaysia and all university groups who have already compiled or competed with their business plans in local competitions are encouraged to use the same materials and apply.

All the best to all the teams!

22nd November, Kuala Lumpur – E27 from Singapore, in a joint-effort with Entrepreneurs.my launched the Start-Up Garage KL , featuring speakers from Singapore, South East Asia and Malaysia, in the fields of entrepreneurship, funding, venture capital, technology, business motivation and market trend predictions.

The 1 day event at Plug & Play Technology Garden in The Gardens, Midvalley, saw the participation of more than 50 participants who have registered for the event through the Facebook announcements and personal invitations, extended out by Entrepreneurs.my.

Several key note addresses came from Mr. Mohan Belani, a director from E27, who is also responsible for running the business incubation division at National University of Singapore (NUS). This was followed by another keynote address by Michael Smith, the Chief Development for Yahoo.com South East Asia and several other local speakers.

Participants at the 1 day garage found it most useful listening to speakers about start-up businesses and how they have obtained network support and funding to grow their start-ups regionally. The addition of Yahoo.com’s support to the event, also provided some insights to the participants on how Yahoo.com’s technologies and applications can be used to assist Start-Ups’ operations online.

The Start-Up Garage KL also saw the participation of MDeC with their representatives speaking about Pre-Seed funding provided by them and what are the best practices to apply for the grant. This was followed by another sound funding advice, by Mr. William Du, from Indeginious Fund, who spoke about the best practices for Start-Up entrepreneurs to pitch funding from VC.

Getting the word about your Start-Up and motivating yourself to excel in harsh economic times, were presented by Mr. Francis, a former Editor of NST and Mr. Nicholas Yeap, a renowned Malaysian Business Coach during their sessions.

E27 and Entrepreneurs.my would like to thank the sponsors of Start-Up Garage KL which includes Yahoo.com, MSC Malaysia, MDeC, Youth Entrepreneurs Malaysia and GEW Malaysia for the support with venue sponsor – Plug & Play Technology Garden.

The Start-Up Garage KL is signature event for GEW Malaysia.

E27 present StartUp Garage with Malaysia Entrepreneurs.

EXPERIENCE HOW TO PITCH and GROW Your START-UPs!

Venue hosted by Plug ‘n’ Play Technology Garden.

An event, packed with ‘Sharing on Best Practices, Tips and Predictions on How You Can Bring Your Business to the Next Level!’

An event that will feature speakers who have;
- Been successful in obtaining business grants for start-ups
- Has tested the best business models, practices and methods to grow your business
AND
- Has gone through the failures in which we all do not want you to do!

Learn about PITCHING Your Business Ideas and Networking with fellow Entrepreneurs and Investors!

LEARN how to PITCH your ideas to the Press and the Online Media Channels!

Get them Interested!

Come join us here!

*Food, beverages and networking sessions provided

Listings of Speakers:

9.30 a.m. – 10.30 a.m. – Arrival
10.30 a.m. – 10.45 a.m. – Welcoming speech – Daniel Cerventus – Entrepreneurs.my
10.45 a.m. – 11.00 a.m. – Keynote address – Mohan Belani – E27 Singapore
11.00 a.m. – 11.30 a.m. – Michael Smith – Yahoo South East Asia
11.30 a.m. – 12.00 p.m. – Francis Dass – NST Malaysia
12.00 p.m. – 12.30 p.m. – MDeC Presentation
12.30 a.m. – 1.00 p.m. – Tham Keng Yew – SocialWalk
1.00 p.m. – 2.00 p.m. – Lunch & Networking (Lunch corner – GEW)
2.00 p.m. – 2.30 p.m. – Nicholas Yeap – From Zeroes to Heroes
2.30 p.m. – 3.00 p.m. – William Du – Ingenious Hous
3.00 p.m. – 3.30 p.m. – JitSiong E27 singapore
3.30 p.m. – 4.00 p.m. – Closing & Wrap Up

Looking forward to seeing you all there.

In conjunction with GEW Malaysia, Alpha Catalyst Consulting has teamed up with GEW Malaysia to co-organise the Global Innovation Tournament (GIT), a globally renowned competition, recognised and pioneered by Stanford University.

Global Innovation Tournament in Malaysia

The competition, which would be open to all public and private learning institutions is aimed at cultivating the innovation and entrepreneurial spirit among youths in Malaysia, by providing them with a platform for them to create, plan, execute and evaluate on creative ideas and solutions for an industry in the country.

The GIT is a GEW Malaysia signature event, spearheaded by GEW Malaysia’s Innovation Catalyst – Alpha Catalyst Consulting, and mainly supported by GEW Malaysia host, Warisan Global and the GEW Malaysia Youth Catalyst – Youth Entrepreneurs Malaysia.

Interested participants may refer to the charts below to begin your journey in Innovation and Entrepreneurship, by being a part of GIT;

For more details please visit — gitmy.blogspot.com

The Global Innovation Tournament (GIT) is recognised as a GEW Youth Catalyst Signature Youth event, led by GEW Innovation Catalyst – Alpha Catalyst Consulting, GEW Country Host – Warisan Global and GEW Youth Catalyst – Youth Entrepreneurs Malaysia.

All students and youths from higher learning institutions are encouraged to participate in the event!

You can also catch the GIT team with Youth Entrepreneurs Malaysia on the road at these locations and dates. Book your dates with us!

1) IIUM Gombak(open to public), Saturday 10th October (2:30pm)

2) University Malaya (Open to public), Dewan Perdana 1, Aras Bawah Blok D, Kompleks Perdanasiswa, 13th October (5pm)