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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.

Sometimes, when its a quiet day in the news, I’ll amuse myself by imagining an improbable scenario. I was watching what is surely a modern sci-fi classic in Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence today. It is an excellent film in the cyberpunk genre, exploring themes of humanity and consciousness. It almost makes one afraid of what the future might hold, almost.

However, at present, its nice to think that each of us may soon have our own robotic arm at the kitchen sink as a dishwasher.
Its touching to imagine that you could maybe talk to our babies and hear them coo from half a world away through the robotic teddy bear you bought her.
And it would be amusing to have a robotic companion after you retire who can remember your grocery list, remind you where you left your keys and tell you jokes.

All of a sudden, I don’t know whether to be afraid of the future or laugh at its child-like failings. Because even as Honda’s Asimo learns to make office clerks obsolete:

it still manages to fall quite literally flat on its face. Robots, it seems, are still a long way off from taking over our world. Genuinely intelligent robots aren’t yet a common part of our lives, but imagine for a while that you had a semi-intelligent robot for which you could buy and download operating routines off a store like iTunes, so it could cook Mediterranean food, converse with you as you practice your Portuguese, or turn your garden into a paradise out of a catalogue.

In a world where the AMD to Honda’s Intel (ASIMO) is already in town, surely the day of reckoning isn’t far away.