incub3.org

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.

Contrary to popular belief, recessions aren’t all about doom and gloom. Recessions, in fact, are like coins, except that both sides can be ‘up’ simultaneously. For instance, international tourism suffers in a recession, but alternative forms of entertainment such as movie-going and local tourism have been known to grow during recessions.

The human mind isn’t wired to hold the opposing viewpoints that recessions can be good and bad simultaneously, so we will tend to neglect the fact that recessions are, in fact, excellent times to fire up your entrepreneurial spirit and break out of the slump.

The startup bug has already hit Manhattan, where a growing group of laid-off finance professionals have been assigned to startups as advisers. These nascent startups or expanding firms are part of a scheme jointly launched by the New York City Economic Development Corporation and the Levin Institute of the State University of New York. Did I mention that these finance experts are working for free?

An article in the New Yorker magazine makes the case that companies of all sizes should take the opportunity afforded in a recession to grab market share. One important line describes the difference between risk and uncertainty. Economist Frank Knight said “Risk describes the situation where you have a sense of the range of possibilities and likelihood of possible outcomes. Uncertainty describes a situation where its not even clear what might happen, let alone how likely the possible outcomes are.” However, research has shown that spending on acquisition, advertising and R&D yields significant returns to companies.

There is, however, always a risk of losing your way. Dabbling in startups isn’t a carte-blanche license to do business as one pleases. Sequoia Capital, benefactor of firms like Google, Yahoo and Youtube, has been shaking up its portfolio companies by showing them a slideshow entitled “R.I.P. Good Times”. This galvanized its companies to control costs, focus on sales and retool its marketing pitch to clients.

The take-home lesson for startups is that recessions are a period of flux, where markets can change and those motivated enough to take advantage with a disciplined, focused approach, while others freeze in the face of uncertainty will ultimately come out on top.

Ladies & Gentlemen we have an announcement to make. After weeks of begging, pleading, cajoling and threats of virtual violence, we’ve managed to invite the two founders of Nuffnang to speak at our inaugural talk.

The two gentlemen are (in alphabetical order): Cheo Ming Shen (Boss Ming) & Timothy Tiah (Boss Stewie). Both these fine gentlemen will be coming over to the University Hall auditorium @ NUS on the 4th of March (Wed). The talk itself will take place from 7pm till an estimated 830-9pm.

For the uninitiated, Nuffnang is as they say, Asia Pacific’s first blog advertising community. It is also a company that grew its user base from 300 to 70,000 in under 2 years. It currently has operations in 4 countries (Aus/M’sia/Phi/Sg) and counts such blogosphere luminaries as Kennysia, Xiaxue, Jeffooi and Dawn Yang among its members. Sometimes, learning about the existence of such a company feels like discovering life on Mars. The odds are stacked against it and the very laws of nature must have been broken.

Are there enough famous bloggers to support this industry? How did they avoid getting crushed by Google Adwords? Can blog ads be as profitable as ads on regular webpages? Do that many people from Singapore, Malaysia or the Philippines actually click on banner ads? Is e-commerce secure enough for advertisers to make money?

All these questions and more can finally be answered.

If you’d like to attend please click here to REGISTER.

We only have 100 places available as the venue is small. We sacrificed seat quantity for ambience. It’ll be great! see you there

Digital media is a funny business. No really I mean it. Let me tell you just what the grand old doyens of British comedy have done to their material. For the uninitiated, Monty Python is the name of a group of 6 comedians widely acknowledged as the funniest group of comedians ever.

No amount of writing can do justice to their comedic brilliance so I won’t try. However, the interesting story behind their Youtube adventure is this. So brilliant were the Pythons’ comedy that die-hard fans were posting much of their best performances on Youtube for all the world to see. As the music industry has already learned, suing filesharers alienates your customer and hardly makes a dent in the overall number of so-called pirates out on the www. You simply can’t sue enough quickly enough to make a difference.

The solution to this problem is of course to do the Python-esque thing.

Of course, this does seem like a trend. Radiohead pioneered online digital distribution with their album “In Rainbows”. Rock band Nine Inch Nails also tried their hand at it with their new album “Ghosts”. Radiohead made more off online distribution than they did with traditional media for their previous album “Hail to the Thief” even though users could download “In Rainbows” for free. This success is duplicated, no, exceeded, by Monty Python. They increased their DVD sales on Amazon by 23,000 percent after they unveiled their Monty Python channel.

Despite the seemingly outrageous success of online distribution, enthusiasm for this form of distribution doesn’t seem to be taking hold. Trent Reznor, lead singer for Nine Inch Nails, even claims that Radiohead was ‘insincere‘ about web distribution taking over as the new form of media distribution. What is stopping digital distribution from turning the tables on traditional brick and mortar distributors? Whoever knows the answer to that could well be the next Mark Zuckerberg, Larry&Sergei et al.

We don’t normally associate Kuwait with American pop culture, but a Kuwaiti entrepreneur has appropriated one of America’s most cherished forms of pop culture and created a sensation in places as diverse as Pakistan and Indonesia. This is very peculiar as in a region not known for embracing western culture, children’s media is dominated primarily by western icons such as Disney, and the Teletubbies. Attempts to take back the airwaves by media outlets with political ties have resulted in unintentional comedy such as the anti-semitic Mickey Mouse and Bugs Bunny of Hamas.

The 99 is a comic that chronicles the adventures of 69 characters who each have a unique superpower that they used to jointly fight evil. Powers such as the ability to grow, super-speed, and the ability to see ‘truth’ are just three of the 99 powers god possesses that are on display. There are 30 other powers that are considered unique qualities of god and hence will not be portrayed.

Comics to Battle for Truth, Justice and the Islamic Way – NYTimes

The 99 online

The 99 turned out to be a mega-hit. It is so successful now that there is an animated series based on it due to open in early 2009 in Kuwait.

I think that this is a fabulous example to show that there are opportunities to do something different in so many different areas. I.T. and biotech are undoubtedly great areas to get started in entrepreneurship but never be led into believing that they are the only ones.

By the way, anybody keen to have Naif al-Mutawa, the man behind the 99, over to speak at InCubed?