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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.

In one night, the founders of two premier websites in Singapore will be sharing their entrepreneurial journey in building their own companies. They will also be discussing about the important aspects in creating a good website business and advice for aspiring entrepreneurs and web developers.

Register now by clicking here

About :

HungryGoWhere.com is Singapore’s most popular and fastest growing food website, with more than 260,000 unique visitors reading HungryGoWhere.com every month and generating more than 2.4 million monthly page views and more than 16,000 reviews from then public, containing a comprehensive search of more than 5,000 F&B outlets. Launched in March 2007, HungryGoWhere.com is now the No.1 food website in Singapore, rated by HitWise for being the top website in the “Food and Beverage – Restaurants and Catering” category. It has expanded overseas to Hong Kong, Kuala Lumpur, Sydney and Melbourne.

Gothere.sg utilizes a map-based interface for obtaining public transport directions and other information based on our own GIS data and proprietary routing algorithms. Through the site, a user can obtain directions, estimated time and cost to go from one location to another in Singapore based on the most efficient mode of public transport – bus, MRT or taxi. It also allows users to search for nearby amenities within a location including restaurants, banks etc.. The site currently serves several thousand unique visitors each day and is growing rapidly since it’s inception in May 2008.

Getting there (click on map to get Gothere.sg’s recommendation for your route)

Address: Level 2 Auditorium, University Hall, Lee Kong Chian Wing, 21 Lower Kent Ridge Road, Singapore 119077

Please contact incub3ppl@gmail.com for any clarification.

Talk about cutthroat competition. Chinese Social networking behemoth and shameless facebook clone Xiaonei.com was accused of attacking direct competitor and equally shameless facebook clone Tongxue.com. Tongxue released a press statement (in Chinese) decrying the cyber attack as irresponsible and urging competitors to exhibit mutual respect.

Its interesting to think about the Chinese Social-Networking-Service (SNS) space. SNS remains very much a college-oriented, and white collar worker space. Also, more than their English-speaking peers, Chinese web users enjoy an integrated SNS. For example, Tongxue offers streaming radio from many terrestial Chinese stations as well as video. The coming showdown between Xiaonei and Tongxue is sure to be a clash of the titans to be watched closely. Which service will be able to move away from its roots as a facebook clone and customize its user experience to suit the preferences of Chinese users more quickly?

In this struggle for supremacy, Xiaonei is the clear leader at present. Xiaonei justifies its previous 550 million USD funding round by having 22 million users from over 3000 Chinese universities and over 1500 foreign universities. Such is the optimism surrounding Xiaonei that there is already talk of going public. Tongxue on the other hand has recently just secured 2.2 million in funding from Tano Capital LLC, in recognition of the vast expansion potential for Chinese SNS.

The insular nature of the Chinese internet sphere, due to language barriers and also the Great Firewall of China, effectively protects Chinese web start-ups from their English language counterparts. Watching the Chinese internet sphere is almost like watching the internet grow anew. Watch this space for more updates.

Seeing how this is the inaugural post for what I’m sure will turn out to be a very long-lived and exciting blog, I thought it’d be best to get right down to business. In this case, I’d like to share a really interesting article I read recently:

Connecticut Rolls Out New Cleantech Fund – GigaOM

There doesn’t seem to be a lack of startups keen to ride the coming wave of cleantech adoption. Any ideas on which company would be a good candidate to speak at our InCubed talk series would be welcome. Methinks Oxford Performance Materials is the most promising by industry conditions. It straddles cleantech and the biomedical industry, which in our age of environmental degradation and increasing healthcare costs, makes its work twice as attractive.

On a separate note, its almost too ridiculous to ponder, but could falling oil prices have something to do with stifling the growth of cleantech?
Royal Dutch Shell and the Industrial Wind Action Group think so. I’d rate it about as likely as UFOs kidnapping Fox Mulder.