It has been an exciting week for the Malaysia web/tech scene with the Open Web Asia – Southeast Asia conference happening in Kuala Lumpur on 13-14 July. The TWIA crew hosted a live show with Serkan Toto (@serkantoto) from TechCrunch & Brian Wong (@brian_wong) formerly from Digg and now followFormation as our guests. We touched on some hot topics with great seats about InMobi’s 8M fund-raising success, the feedback about the Open Web Asia Conference and interesting start-ups which caught our eye, how Asian start-ups should improve on their pitching so to attract investors (and Asian investors should be more harsh on feedback to the entrepreneurs here) and Serkan’s interesting prediction for Asian companies in the next few decades. A special treat for all our listeners that you can view the video of the live show here.

You can watch the This Week in Asia Live Show Video from Satoo.TV.

Photo credited to Shereen Shah and Sham Hardy: The panel comprising of (from the left) Bernard Leong, Daniel Cerventus, Serkan Toto, Brian Wong, Michael Smith Jr and Chew Lin Kay.

Yes, Google vs China comes to a stunning conclusion with one side making a kow-tow, and the emergence of Groupon clones taking over Asia springing from China and Singapore. How will all these change the landscape of Asia? With Chew Lin taking the helm as the moderator for the first time, the TWIA crew examines the key issues which dominate Asia, with little quibbles over Microsoft’s dropping of Kin, Huawei putting Froyo onto their Chinese Android phones, Mixi making a minor Linkedin, Amazon’s acquisition of Woot and the major differences between e-commerce in Southeast Asia & East Asia.

• The Groupon Clones in Asia: With Groupon Clones springing up from China (400+ according to Gang Lu) and Singapore (about 4 according to E27 SG), how is the whole e-commerce fever hitting across the Asian landscape?
• Google vs China: The conclusion is that Google buckered down with an official blog release, but what are the next steps for the search engine giant to take on the Great Firewall of China? Is it with Froyo (Android 2.2) loaded with Huawei phones?
• Is Mixi creating a minor Linkedin: Are they going to back to their roots or are they running out of ideas?
• Microsoft drops Kin and what happens now?
• Quibbles on Amazon’s acquisition on Woot and the e-commerce market in Southeast Asia vs East Asia.
• Upcoming Events: Open Web Asia – Southeast Asia on 13 and 14 July (and you can use our promo code “TWIA” to register with 10% discount) & BlinkBl-nk on the 19 July.
• And one last thing: Chew Lin now has an official twitter account, @chewlink – please add her to show your support.

Want to be a success story of the Asia wave by getting your Web company acquired?
Learn from the Koprol acquisition by Yahoo.

The acquisition of Koprol by Yahoo is probably the most important tech event which rocked Southeast Asia this year. With the founders of Koprol, Fajar Budiprasetyo & Daniel Armanto together with our dear Smithy from Yahoo, we discussed the origins of Koprol (and how it was launched before FourSquare). We also found out how the founders built the mobile social network from zero to 100K users and the interesting features of Koprol before the fateful acquisition. In fact, we get an insider view behind the scenes on the day when the acquisition was announced. Finally, we hear how the founders and Smithy explain how the marriage between Yahoo & Koprol from their own perspectives and the future which lies ahead for Koprol.

OpenWebAsia – SEA is a regional technology and web business conference that brings together top minds in the web technology space.

In 2008, Open Web Asia was hosted in Seoul, South Korea at the Sheraton Grande Walkerhill.

For the very first time, in 2010, Malaysia is privileged to be selected as the host of this inaugural premier summit . This year it will be held in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia at Crowne Plaza Mutiara Hotel, on the 13th and 14th of July 2010.

The theme for Open Web Aisa – SEA 2010 is “Web Innovation In Asia”.  Never before has Malaysia  hosted  a congregation of the worlds leading technology giants from all across the globe,  with unprecedented speakers from Google, Yahoo,  Amazon, Facebook, Tech Crunch, Digg.com and  BANSEA just to name a few.

In Seoul, Korea Open Web Asia attracted 500 global leaders and delegates from across the globe to discuss on a Pan-Asian perspective on web businesses and groundbreaking technology waves that will shape the future of the world.

This global conference is produced by the Open Web Asia Workgroup , Malaysia Entrepreneurs , MSC Malaysia Innotech, IASA (International Association of Software Architecture), & Social Media Club KL.

   Aaron Tan Dani                     Christine Songco              Michael Francis Smith Jr                  Mohan Belani
        Chairman               Technical Program Manager                        Director                                     Director
             IASA                                         Google                                          Yahoo                                          e27
      Asia-Pacific                       San Francisco, USA                        Southeast Asia                            Singapore

        Lichi Wu                            Simone Brunozzi                        Dr. Serkan Toto                           Brian Wong

APAC Sales & BD                 Technology Evangelist                            Writer                     Business Development

  Former AdMob                                Amazon                                  Tech Crunch                               Digg.com

       Singapore                                 Asia-Pacific                                      Japan                                          USA

      Dr. Gang Lu                       Prof. Wong Poh Kam                 Patrick Chanezon                           Aaron Tan

            CEO                                        Chairman                       Client & Cloud Advocacy                 Brisbane Lead

Kuukie & Mobinode                         BANSEA                                        Google                                         MEGA

           China                                      Singapore                          San Francisco, USA                            Australia         

View FULL SPEAKER LIST here.

WEB INNOVATION IN ASIA
This conference addresses current issues in the area of:

a. Enterprise Web
b. Government 2.0
c. Mobile Applications
d. Android & iphone Development Platforms
e. Could Computing & Location Based Services
f.  Venture Capital & Funding
g. Social Media & Social Gaming
h. Architecture & Standards

WHO IS OWA FOR?

- Investors, Venture Capitalists, Private Equity Companies
- Directors, Business Owners & Entrepreneurs
- CEO’s, CIO’s, CTO’s & IT Managers
- Technology SME’s & MNCs
- Telcos & Communication Companies
- Web Developer, Programmers & Designers
- Advertising, Branding & Media Marketing Professionals
- Bloggers & Web Technology Enthusiasts
- Educators & Standard Institutions

Coming live from Echelon 2010 on 2 June with the largest panel ever assembled and a major announcement, the TWIA crew is in full force for the 1st time with interesting threads of discussion ever pursued. With the major announcement for TWIA that DailySocial.net (Indonesia) and Mobinode.com (China) will syndicate our show in the future, we hope to extend our show to reach further shores that provide Asia with the analysis on news which rocked the web, mobile and tech space. In our distinguished panel, we have Dave McClure (@davemcclure), Serkan Toto (@serkantoto) from TechCrunch, Mohan Belani from E27 (@mohanbelani), Gen Kanai from Mozilla Corporation (@genkanai), Rama Mamuaya from DailySocial.net (@rampok) and the full team with Chew Lin Kay (@chewlink) and Michael Smith (@dreampipe). We start with a review of Echelon 2010 with discussion on social gaming, the shift from web to mobile browser in Asia, the start-ups launch with Foound leading the way and Dave’s thoughts on how they can improve for the future. Following on, we crisscrossed through a variety of issues crossing from country to country (China, Korea, Japan, Indonesia, Singapore, Vietnam, Malaysia and etc.), the travel stories from Geeks on a Plane (GOAP) and take interesting questions from our audience. Finally, we wrapped up with what all our panelists wish for Echelon 2011.

TWIA Panel Display Screen (taken by Farry Aprianto and tagged by Mohan Belani in Echelon 2010)

Editor’s Note: The sound quality is perfect after the first few minutes with some calibration from the start. Please bear with us. We will post pictures in this event once we receive them from the organizers.

After a very successful Geeks on a Plane to Shanghai, Beijing, Korea, Dave McClure is down in Singapore to present his keynote on Silicon Valley 2.0

He will be talking about the venture capitalist model and what are the current trends on mergers and acquisition. We will be cover Echelon over Entrepreneurs.my and This Week in Asia. Stay tunned as we cover all the new and latest start ups in Asia.

Dave’s slides for his keynote

One of Cerventus‘ pet project, This Week in Asia (TWIA), a podcast focusing on the Asian technology community, has been growing since its first episode on 8 November 2009. As one of echelon 2010’s media partners, TWIA has been interviewing many speakers and attendees of the upcoming event, including Daniel Raffel (Yahoo), Gen Kanai (Mozilla), Noah Kagan (Gambit) and many others.

Now for their 50th episode, TWIA is hosting a special live episode at the end of echelon 2010 conference from 4-5 pm on level 2. In this live show, they will invite those who have graced the show from the past to present and come on board to discuss how their thoughts and opinions are after the two days of exciting keynotes, panel discussions and case study presentations at echelon 2010.
If you have been a listener of the show, please come down and give them your support. The whole TWIA crew from moderator John Lim and his fellow co-hosts, Daniel Cerventus, Michael Foong, Bernard Leong and Chew Lin Kay will share how the show has been progressing and also drop a few gifts for those who are here for the event.

The second of the special episodes that line up for Echelon 2010, we have Jeffrey Paine, from Founder Institute and also a managing partner at Battle Ventures. We speak to him regarding the opening of Founder Institute and how the course has been ongoing in Singapore for the past few weeks. As Jeff is moderating the panel “Mentorship, Investment and New Funding Models” in the coming Echelon 2010, we discuss with him on the issues which he might cover and also his thoughts on the current trend where the micro venture capital model is becoming a new wave in creating start-ups with low cost and high effective return.

About Jeff Paine: Jeffrey Paine loves ideas and entrepreneurship. Assists founders in honing their business strategies, by partnering with larger industry players, customers and gaining exposure to prospective early stage investors and acquirers. He spent the first eight years of his career in early stage venture and private equity in the US, North and South Asia. He then co-founded a China market entry advisory firm which was then merged with a China mid market private equity firm and subsequently co-founded Generation Origin, a venture advisory firm based in Palo Alto (advised by Pitch Johnson of Asset Management Company). He left Generation Origin in 2009 to set up Battle Ventures- a venture advisory and investment company based in Singapore and the Bay Area, Lotus Entertainment (SE Asia)- a Pan Asia feature film production and distribution company, and is behind 2 stealth consumer Internet and mobile companies.

He currently sits on the board of Endeavor Capital Partners Pte Ltd, Rediffusion Pte Ltd, TheMobileGamer Pte Ltd, and the organizing committee of the Zayed International Humanitarian Award in Abu Dhabi.

Dave McClure is a man that wears many hats. 500 of them as a matter of fact(his site is called 500 hats). He has been involved and invested in some of the most interesting startups in Silicon Valley. From his days at Paypal to Slideshare and to Mint.com, Dave have seen it all especially on both side of the pitch.

During Presentation Camp in San Francisco, Dave McClure came up with a set of slides which became to know as the StartUp Viagra on the best way to pitch to a venture capitalist. These slides helps you understand what an investor will take notice about your business when you pitch to them and how to position yourself as a hot asset they will all rush to invest. The template been used by companies like MINT.com which end up being the winner of then TechCrunch 40 and later acquired by their main competitor Intuit.

Here are Dave’s Startup Viagra slides, follow by the slides used by Mint during TC40.

Dave who is an organizer of Geek on a Plane will be in Asia for GOAP and Echelon 2010

For this week, the TWIA crew is joined by Serkan Toto, a special guest from Japan, who is the only Asia correspondent for TechCrunch. We diced and sliced through the news happening in Japan: (a) DeNA’s reported profits and its competition with Gree, (b) Google is now booted out of mobile search by NTT-Docomo, the largest telco in Japan with them adopting Goo, (c) the new mobile apps platform set up by various Japan handset vendors including NTT-Docomo, and finally, we have a Singapore start-up named TenCube making headway in China.

• DeNA Reports USD100M On Quarterly Profit and focus on social apps business: We examine the landscape of mobile social gaming, and how the fight is now intensified between DeNA and Gree with a lawsuit over a fishing game on Japanese handsets.
• Google Losing Default Mobile Search Engine Position On Docomo i-mode Portal, A Gate To Half Of Japanese Mobile Web: Google is once again being snubbed and where do they go from here after NTT-Docomo, the largest telco dissed them for another mobile search engine. However, it did not help with Goo crashing on the first day when they realized that they could not handle the load.
• Japan’s next generation mobile application platform: NTT-Docomo is leading the way with Renesas Electronics, Fujitsu, NEC, Panasonic Mobile Communications and Sharp to create a new mobile applications platform. We wonder whether they are planning to take the Apple iPhone head-on given their recent success in the Japanese market. We surprise you by where Apple might get the idea of the mobile apps store.
• TenCube, SG based start-up and winner of Android Developer Challenge 2 last year got an award in China. : So, where is TenCube going after traversing from India to China?
• Don’t miss out these major events too: Wordcamp MY, PyCon APAC 2010 and definitely, Echelon 2010.