Prof Tom Kosnik started the seminar with a brief description of Silicon Valley (SV) as one area with one of the highest concentration of high-tech start ups. He further added that Singapore, Beijing and Bangalore also set up high-tech zones for entrepreneurship. To show his commendation for Singapore and NUS’s effort towards entrepreneurship, he reiterated “NOC and ilead are the coolest entrepreneurship programs.”

He went on to describe Stanford University as ground zero for entrepreneurship, particularly in high-tech ventures. In short, in Stanford University, professors get hands-on with new technologies research and students help to innovate. This astonishing combination of enthusiastic students and dedicated professors actually attracts an influx of entrepreneurs to Silicon Valley.

It is followed with the topic of the day – change of circles of influence. He briefly introduced that there are 3 circles of influence: players, stakes and code. Players include government, venture capitalists (VC), angel investors, research universities, public accounting firms, and investment banking (IB) firms, among others. Stakes are the time, money, customer relationship and technology from the players. Codes are the local implicit rules to raise funds or even to gather aid. They are different across industries in the same location and rooted in local entrepreneurial culture.

In the past decade, the leading players were IB and Nasdaq stock market while the smaller players were governmental agencies. Since the financial crisis in 2008, IB has invested less in VC funds. As raised by Prof Tom, there are 4 main reasons for less VC investment in SV: poor returns for VC funds in 20^th century compared with 1990s; returns from all other investments in their portfolios were less than expected so although a fixed percent of their portfolios was used for VC funds, total VC funds became smaller; fewer trusted IB to help with Initial Public Offering (IPO) and Mergence and Acquisition (M&A); public distrust requires VC to hold start-ups longer to reach profitability before exit.

Since VC funds become smaller, government, accelerators and incubators take over as the bigger players. For stance, government is eagerly encouraging and funding clean tech solutions. Interestingly, more entrepreneurs are using blogs and social media for quick start-ups and less dependence on funds.

He ended off the seminar charmingly with the ways entrepreneurs are coping with changes. These methods are beneficial and can act as references for local entrepreneur to handle changes or to raise funds. In general, more entrepreneurs are relying on parents for funding. Others are entering multiple competitions with same business ideas. Increasingly, entrepreneurs are sharing information of VCs on The Funded.com to inform others of good VCs – one that will provide more and demand less. In Prof Tom’s words, new generation of entrepreneurs are “avoiding the ‘old school VCs’ and working with ‘young guns’”. Fascinatingly, entrepreneurs of the past mainly focused on developing products whereas entrepreneurs of the new generation are focusing on developing products and customers at the same time. To cope with this new demand of entrepreneurs, entrepreneurs spend more time listening to and working with customers.

You know things are getting out of hand when gadgetry website Crunchgear starts reporting on the total instances of “iPad” appearing on various news websites. Yesterday Apple released the iPad upon a (mildly) unsuspecting world and unleashed a tidal wave that crashed Twitter (almost, again).

Why, you might ask, is the iPad the recipient of so much scorn from the tech head community? Scott Adams, author of Dilbert, says the iPad “looks like committee work to me”; Mashable lists 4 very good reasons why the iPad disappoints; and GigaOM gives a couple of true reasons why the iPad won’t make headway with business users.

If you ask me, there are 5 thoughts that are worth mentioning:

• The iPad is a device that will appeal to casual users of the web who don’t want a clunky, unintuitive computer like a regular Windows desktop. (first suggested by Daniel Tenner)
• As regular users of the web and technology, it escapes our notice that there are literally masses of people who don’t use computers to surf the web, blog, shop, and chat endlessly.
• This is the computer that can replace your old photo album, your recipe book, and even your TV. If it can overcome the potential glare issues associated with reading off the screen for hours, it can replace your kindle too.
• There was a time when smartphones were considered not powerful enough to be much use for business, and too cumbersome for casual use. The same could now be said for the iPad. It is breaking new ground.
• Apple’s bet is probably that the iPad will take root in places where nobody expected before. Who would have thought that you can have a portable electronic recipe book with full colour in the kitchen?

Now, as a thank you for entertaining the thoughts of this blogger, here is Hitler’s disappointment on learning about the iPad.

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NUS Entrepreneurship Centre

(divison of NUS Enterprise)

Presents

Techno-Venture Forum

About The Speakers:

Tom Kosnik is a consulting professor in the Stanford Technology Ventures Program at Stanford School of Engineering. His courses have included Global Entrepreneurial Marketing, Global Entrepreneurial Leadership, Global Project Coordination, and Strategy for Technology Based Companies. He has designed and led a variety of executive education programs. He has coauthored two marketing text books, several articles, and over sixty case studies about companies in imagination-intensive markets. He has also taught in the past at Harvard Business School, Stanford Graduate School of Business, National University of Singapore, and Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden.

Tom is also a managing director with TCG Advisors. Since 1978, he has helped information technology (IT) suppliers take new products to market, and global companies to adopt IT innovations to create value for their customers and shareholders. He helps his clients to develop and execute strategy, manage their portfolio of global customers, launch global products, and manage global projects. He also helps senior executives to coach their teams, develop the next generation of leaders, and recruit world class talent.

Some of his past clients include: American Management Systems, Apple Computer; Applied Materials; BMC; Cummins Engine; Electronic Arts; Ernst & Young; Harris Bank; Hewlett Packard; Information Week; Microsoft; Nokia, Siemens, and numerous start-up technology companies.

Tom earned his Bachelor of Arts in History and International Relations from Duke University (1972), MBA from University of Virginia (1977), and Ph.D. from Stanford Graduate School of Business (1985). He was a research associate at IMD in Lausanne, Switzerland (1977-78)

This may be somewhat old news that has been sitting on my backburner but it rates a mention.

EBay’s revenues fell 7% to $2.04 billion in 2008. This meant that the company’s earnings yielded 41 cents per share, lower than 2007 but beating Wall Street’s estimates of 39 cents per share.

The global slowdown has eBay execs worrying their pants off. Not only is the company spending more on marketing while laying off workers, it also sold off bookmarking site Stumbleupon back to its founders which it bought in 2007 for $75 million. Now eBay has also decided to divest its ownership stake in Skype by listing the company in 2010.

Dealbook states that eBay has been involved in 69 deals over the years worth a total of $12.6 billion. Of those 69, eBay was buyer in 57 of them. Some, such as its acquisition of Paypal for $1.4 billion made excellent sense, while it now seems apparent that others did not.

Dealbook’s graph shows that eBay’s shopping spree at the time of the 2001 recession served it in good stead, yielding progressively higher share prices until this effect tapered off in 2005. After that, successive increases in acquisitions didn’t do its share price any good.

Despite all this doom and gloom, eBay recently acquired a controlling stake in South Korea’s largest auction site GMarket for $1.2 billion. GMarket is an aggressive company in its own right as well, but who can resist the overtures of the internet’s retail behemoth. GMarket is serving Singapore and has been endorsed by Yahoo to become the spiritual successor of the now-defunct Yahoo Auctions.

It now looks  as thought eBay is regaining its focus and buying only what it needs, rather than what it wants. That’s excellent advice for any shopper.

Aggregating feedback to rank content according to popularity isn’t a new idea. Digg, delicious and reddit are just a few of the most popular ranking websites. It seems only natural that the next step in the evolution of website rankings should be personalized rankings.

If this trend passed you by, don’t fret. Its still early days. The more interesting startups out there that utilize this concept of personalized content ranking are still in beta, or even alpha-testing stages. My6sense is a little iPhone app or Firefox add-on that learns your preferences as you use its RSS reader/aggregator. It then serves you the most relevant snippets from the sea of information that you use daily.

Taking a slightly different tack is Headup. Headup’s Firefox add-on highlights keywords from websites that you view. When you hover over these keywords, the connections that exist between say, your musical tastes and that of your friends is shown, as well as any musicians that you may also like. This allows you to view content that is most interesting to you and to see the connections between yourself and your social circle.

My6sense’s strength lies in its ease of use. Its creators claim that you don’t need to even choose any preferences or settings. All you have to do is surf as you normally would, and the add-on’s algorithm will learn your preferences. Its definitely a great help to those who need a hand dealing with the deluge of information that we are fed daily. Headup on the other hand, helps users make connections where previously there were none. You might learn, through Headup, that your strait-laced, no-nonsense schoolteacher buddy is actually a great fan of Guns&Roses, or you may discover the links between Guns&Roses, Deep Purple and Aerosmith.

I would personally love to see a combination of both services in one package, but that is an entrepreneurial opportunity for another day.

When a new technology that impacts the lives of many is first introduced to the world, it is common that there will be groups that fall through the cracks and miss out on the revolution. Lets call this the fish that got away, after fish that slip through the net.

Everything from the MacBook Air, the ASUS Eee PC, to Coke Light, SUVs, and even Twitter, were made to satisfy the needs of customers who were underserved by the mainstream product offering. There are always fish that fall through the net, when a new innovation is introduced to the world. Let me share 2 examples.

The latest group to illustrate this is the auntie community. In Singapore colloquially referred to as “tai-tais”. The aunt who doted on you as a child, who showered love on you because she didn’t have any of her own. They are now proudly served by Savvyauntie.com. Not usually considered a significant enough group to have dedicated websites, this is  changing.

Everybody has a friend or 2 who only uses their mobile for the most basic purposes. Anything more than calls and text messaging might as well be attaching a GPS unit to a tribesman’s lionskin headdress. Happy provides prepaid calls and sms cheaper than any telco, making it a dream come true for anyone with an aversion to hype and gimmicks.

The times when the only people that mattered on the internet were young, pimply, english-speaking males with a penchant for technology are gone. What other group now underserved, undervalued and under the radar do you think will be the fish that we catch when we cast our nets again?

Questions without answers are puzzling, and answers without questions are just baffling.

What then is one to make of modern search engines, which provide us with the answers to a nearly infinite catalogue of questions, scattered across the vastness of cyberspace?

Stephen Wolfram thinks he has the answer to our confusion. In his company blog, he announces the imminent arrival of the world’s first “answer engine”. Several pundits have given the demo of this world first a thumbs up, even saying it could be as important as google.

I think this is a fascinating development. Wolfram is the brilliant, if somewhat egocentric child prodigy who graduated from Cal Tech and went on to create the phenomenally successful Mathematica software now so common in schools. There is an incredible amount of promise behind Wolfram Alpha, and backed by the brilliance and financial muscle of Wolfram’s team, there is a lot of room for experimentation and error. I’m just cautious about Wolfram Alpha turning out to be another Quantum porn engine.

I read a thought-provoking article today on The Register. There is a school of thought that says you don’t have to be first in anything as being early isn’t the same as being the best. This point was made by Ming at the inaugural Incub3 talk. Andrew Orlowski makes the same point in his piece on Apple, linked above. Apple, by not being the first to the smartphone game, was able to identify and attack weaknesses in the way business was done in this field. These weaknesses are ruthlessly exposed and condemned in satisfying fashion by Brendon McLean in his vicious article.

The most accurate description of the mobile industry’s failings as a whole is that mobile handset manufacturers forgot that they were making phones for consumers, and not corporate executives from monolithic telcos resistant to change and innovation, except where it padded their wallets and bottomline. When you don’t serve your customer, you can and will lose their business, and dollars.

Even with a product as great as the iPhone, it was no foregone conclusion that Apple would make it in the smartphone business. For instance, the first generation iPhone had no 3G, no Wi-Fi, you couldn’t forward messages, and most annoyingly, there was no “copy-paste” function. Yet, even with these glaring omissions, Apple had a glorious winner on its hands. Even with tying itself to selected telcos, Apple managed to outsell many established brands.

I’m not going to join my iPhone-owning buddies in lauding the genius of Apple, I don’t even own one, but I can’t deny that its really instructive to ponder the success that is the Apple iPhone.