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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.

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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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.

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.

Much as I’d hate to admit it, the incessant buzz of the people around me, looking for their first job, has started to get to me.

The most popular job sites in Singapore are Jobstreet and JobsDB. I attended a JobsDB fair over the weekend and I was left feeling very unimpressed. It wasn’t any deficiency with organization or execution. The fair was managed exceptionally well. It was that exhibitors seemed to be from broadly 4 categories, namely insurance agencies, real estate agencies, educational institutions and government institutions, none of which interested me.

I came across Plaxo jobs while cleaning up my bookmarks today. It was well described in this Wired blog article. Imagine if you could leverage on your entire facebook contact list to search for a job, that in essence is the promise of Plaxo. It’s a really neat idea. I think it would help a lot for people to know a little about the social circle of the people they are hiring, or know where a job opportunity is coming from within their social circle. The social nature of the job search could also improve your chances of finding employment as your friends can be expected to help in whatever small way they can to refer you to the right job.

Another interesting site I’ve unearthed is philes. Again, tip to Wired. Wired’s article puts it succinctly. Jobaphiles is an “ebay for jobs” where potential employees can bid (lower) for a job compared to their peers. I think the idea will have limited traction in industries where salary levels aren’t very flexible. For example, most banks will pay standard remuneration packages that aren’t affected much by a candidate’s desired pay. However, in areas where contract work is concerned, this idea is a clear winner. The question of how successful it will be then becomes a question of how many short-term contract jobs are there in a recessionary environment.

Anyway these are interesting questions to ponder, but I’ve got to start submitting my own resumes now, so please excuse me.

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.

Social entrepreneurs don’t get enough respect. There’s nothing wrong with running a non-profit halfway house for recovering drug addicts or providing vocational training to ex-convicts to assimilate them back into society. Its just that, among other things, these ventures are neither profitable nor exciting.

Of course, there’s no reason that this should remain true. The Economist has an article in one of its January issues describing a new, promising, fun, AND profitable business model for social entrepreneurship. Too good to be true? Read and find out.

I’m sure Virgance’s website has caught the eye of many an unemployed graduate. Now that I’ve got your attention, Virgance‘s website proudly proclaims its model as “Activism 2.0″. There are some truly amazing ideas coming from the brains of the entrepreneurial activists/activist entrepreneurs at Virgance. Aside from the the groundbreaking 1BOG and Carrotmob ideas already covered in the Economist article, Virgance is also working on a program called Lend Me Some Sugar that will allow muti-national firms to let their customers become involved in their corporate philantropy. Through Lend Me Some Sugar, customers can direct the philantropy efforts of the companies they support, letting customers and companies partner each other in doing good for society.

Virgance is only the tip of the new activism. “IfWeRanTheWorld” takes crowdsourcing (the idea of utilizing the power of crowds to achieve goals) and plunks it down in the middle of many intractable social problems we have today. It is still in the early planning stages (there isn’t even a website yet), but the idea is a remarkable one. Led by marketing veteran Cindy Gallop and software developer and serial entrepreneur Wendell Davi, IfWeRanTheWorld seeks to break down large social projects into small discrete parts that can be picked up by users to complete, and hence a great number of people can contribute to a massive project’s success, which could not have been achieved without massive effort otherwise. Both these ideas could become huge, in large part because they are profit-driven companies. The difference is that they don’t derive profits from the money going towards the project directly. Both expect a large part of revenues to come from advertising. Digital guru Esther Dyson has said that IfWeRanTheWorld could create a “liquidity of goodness”. I certainly can’t argue against that.

What is innovation?

Click on the link above and you’ll get a surprisingly long list. I shall settle for “different from what was before in great or small ways.”

I think we’ve not really addressed the issue of innovation before even though this is a blog about entrepreneurship and innovation lies at the heart of this. Small things can make a big difference, and that is certainly one of the central lessons to take home about innovation.

Vik Singh, leader of Yahoo’s BOSS team recently found that out for himself when he took Twitter and combined it with Yahoo’s search engine. In his own words “Twitter as a ranking signal for search freshness may prove to be very useful if constructed properly.” Then, in under 100 lines of code, he created a search engine that provides news more up-to-date than what we’ve seen before. To put that in a little perspective, Windows 98 took 13 million lines of code to write.

Two lessons are to be learned here. One is that a little innovation goes a long way. Second, are search engines about to become commmoditized?

In economics jargon, we like to say that correlation doesn’t imply causation. What this means is that just because the sun rises at the same time that the cockerel crows, it doesn’t mean this proves that the cockerel crowing caused the sun to rise, or vice versa.

Likewise, graduating from a good university like NUS magna cum laude doesn’t imply anything about your ability to be a good entrepreneur.

Ali Zaki Mahomed is an engineering graduate of NUS. His new startup TimeSvr has been getting favourable reviews here and here. When asked how he saw his company against the competition, Zaki replied “We really don’t compare ourselves to anyone. We just saw a market underserved and decided to fill the void.”
The void, as it is, is the fact that very busy people in developed countries with a wired lifestyle would rather outsource the endless stream of errands that are part and parcel of modern life than have to spend a significant portion of the day attending to them.

I say what I say because I know for a fact that Zaki is long on brains but short on grades *wink*, and if my idea that academic success is inversely proportional to business success is correct, I should be starting up the next google any day now. Wish me luck.