Thanks to Mike Foong for getting the video up on his youtube account. You can check out his show here.

Some of the start ups featured were PlayMoolah(finacial education for kids), Movend (in app payment gateway) and my personal favorite, soya based ice cream Soyato.

However, the interview was not meant to be as the media shy young billionaire was overwhelmed by the amount of press showed up and politely excused himself. He said the main reason for him coming over was to check out the startups. Eduardo did eventually gave his first ever public keynote to a crowd of 300 entrepreneurs, investors and educators.

Clearly nervous of his first keynote, the take away points of the speech are that he fell in love with Singapore because of the beautiful country and also the thriving startup eco system. He also stressed a lot that he is interested in investing the social media space and how exciting these new generation of startups can gain amazing momentum. He cites Zynga’s phenomenal growth in CityVille as a good example of simple ideas with high turn around time leveraging on existing infrastructure. He also states, it does not cost much to create sites like Facebook and Cityville

He also said that although sometimes you can be lucky but should embrace failures as it can eventually lead you to good fortune as a long as you keep trying. I believe we will be seeing more of Mr Saverin in the region pretty soon.

Update: Mr Saverin’s talk during Innofest 2011 is up at here.

It took Facebook 300 Million users, almost 5 years to be cashflow positive and it cost over USD 500 Million to fund it. Who in the region is willing to fund it until you have an exit ? Without a proper ecosystem filled with Angels and VCs, it will be near to impossible to build a Facebook or a Twitter type company in the region.

Silicon Valley and China are in their own bubble. Investors are willing to loose more than 9 times before winning once in the hope to cover their cost. That all seem quite like a gamble don’t you think? Besides, these VC are fund manager not managing their own money. These money are raised from pension funds, foundations and etc.

So how going back to Rama’s question. How exactly does one measure a startup’s success? In my humble opinion, the success of a startup is when stop thinking itself as a startup and make profit. It is so much easier to build an internet business on the cheap these days. Why do you need to give away business to investor if you are making good money with your product? Remember, not exiting is an option and it can be a darn good one.

Learn to look for solutions that can be solved on the web. Solutions like Basecamp of 37signals or even sites like Pagemodo or Freshbooks do not require a lot of investment and it have enough customers to give them a good profit. Besides providing a solution, creating a business enable you to do something you truly love and really enjoy. Are you sure you want to quit something you love and just to retire? A lot of great entrepreneurs do not retire or rather they can’t because the love what they do. Funny part is, if you have profit and have money, investors will be knocking at your door instead the other way around. Maybe you can then choose to exit if you really really want to.

So would you like to retire restlessly or continue to do what you love to do and making great profit. I will choose the later, how about you?

Also you might want to check out the Micropreneur Manifesto

Update: Do check out Vivek Wadwha post Is Entrepreneurship Just About the Exit?

Funding Workshop details:

Date: 13rd April 2011 (Wednesday)

Time: 9am – 1pm

Venue: Level 12, Wisma MCA, 163 Jalan Ampang, 50450 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

Admission is free however registration is required. As spaces are limited, allocation will be made on a first-come-first-serve basis. This funding workshop is open to SME Business owners, academicians, start-up women entrepreneurs and government agencies.

If you are interested to participate in this funding workshop, please fill up the attached registration form and return to us via email at registration@mirc.org.my or fax to us at 03-2161 3618.

Here are some highlights of his articles which we find interesting.

Once I stopped slinging the technical terms, I realized that when customers shop for shoes, they do three things. They consider the look and style. They try them on to see if they’re comfortable. And they consider the price. Endorsements by famous athletes help a lot, too. But the technology, the features, the special-testing labs—I can’t remember a single customer who cared. I sold a boatload of shoes and tennis rackets that summer.

Understanding what people really want to know—and how that differs from what you want to tell them—is a fundamental tenet of sales. And you can’t get good at making money unless you get good at selling.

To read more visit here.

TED2011 : Cady Coleman @ The International Space Station from TED Blog on Vimeo.

Michael Tan Kim Seng, 24 from Penang was recently announced as one of 11 finalists selected for Malaysia. Michael is a very enterprising entrepreneur as he took a sabbatical from his studies to start YourPartTime.com, a job site focusing on the part time workforce. He have a quick video to explain his journey so far.

The GSEA is still looking for young and enterprising college or universities students in Malaysia to compete for this contest. For more info, please email iris.wong@gseamalaysia.org

If you are a developer, entrepreneur, solution provider, student, service provider, manufacturer or inventor, Malaysia Entrepreneurs & YTL Communications would like to invite you to participate in mYprize – A Global 4G Innovation Challenge.

YTL Communications will be launching it’s 4G Network in November 2010, and for the first time, Malaysia will be leading the world by deploying the first nationwide converged 4G network.

mYprize is opened to individuals & companies from any country to submit unique ideas and create innovative applications or devices that highlight the advantages of high-speed mobile broadband.

Be Part Of The Innovation Network

By participating, applicants are welcomed to be part of  the Innovation Network, bringing  ideas to market and the opportunity to directly collaborate with YTL Communications and their partners such as Google, Cisco, Samsung, Clealrwire, MDeC as well as participate in business scouring and matching opportunities.
www.myprize.my

Judges & Partners

Entries will be evaluated by a panel of top judges from Google, Head of New Business Development, Associate Director of MIT MediaLabs, Partner of Crosslink Ventures, a Silicon Valley Venture Capitalist, Senior Consultant of Light Reading & Dato’ Badlisham, CEO of MDeC.

Malaysian prize:

This is a special category for Malaysians only and is worth USD 120,000.
This cuts across all categories of ideas, applications and devices and is open to Malaysians living anywhere in the world; it can be awarded in addition to any of the other prizes listed above.

30 NOVEMBER 2010 – Close of Registration & Submissions

You can submit your entries at
www.myprize.my