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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.

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.

When an article recently stated that Apple is joining the campaign for real breasts, there was always only going to be one outcome. A geek’s love for technology and boobies (not necesarily in that order) knows no bounds and I quickly discovered the wonders that the iPhone is capable of.

Just how big a success is this wonderfully jiggly smartphone? Steve Jobs of course believes that he’s got a big hit on his hands. And there is in fact very good reason to believe that claim, even a google spreadsheet by the MacObserver that shows, through tracking the IMEI numbers of 3G iPhones sold, that Apple probably have exceeded their target. There are of course, doubters who, not without reason, claim that the dropoff in sales numbers after an initial high raise doubts about the iPhone’s sales momentum.

Hardware though, is not what is on my mind. More interesting for any aspiring entrepreneur is this litte tidbit. 500 million App Store downloads is nothing to laugh at, except if you’re the cash-laden owner of a certain jiggly App called Wobble. If you’re a software developer writing for a software platform that is mobile, has 10 million users, with potential to go up to 45 million in 2009, and has the processing power of a Sega Dreamcast, there is a lot of potential for games development.