That Thing You (Forget to) Do: Lessons in Product Development, Management & Marketing

That Thing You (Forget to) Do: Lessons in Product Development, Management & Marketing

Recently, I was invited by startup incubator JFDI.Asia to deliver a talk entitled “That Thing You (Forget to) Do” (inspired loosely from Tom Hanks’ movie “That Thing You Do”) on best practices of product development, management and marketing. In this post, I have included the presentation (which is free for...
Building and Managing Tech Teams in Asia 2: Cultural Nuances & Scope Creep

Building and Managing Tech Teams in Asia 2: Cultural Nuances & Scope Creep

In the second part of the series I am building up on building and managing tech teams in Asia, I want to focus on the problem of scope creep and why paying something cheap might cost you more. The other highlight of the article is to understand the various cultural...
Building & Managing Technology Teams in Asia 1: The Tech Conundrum

Building & Managing Technology Teams in Asia 1: The Tech Conundrum

In Asian countries, most mobile-web technology start-ups have found major difficulties in building technology teams. A few factors contributed to the problem, with lack of talent being the most common cited reason. Other factors include weak entrepreneurial ecosystem and inactive programming communities. Any start-up founder with a business background will...
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Why Exits are Important (as a metric for Start-ups)

Why Exits are Important (as a metric for Start-ups)

My friend, Rama Mamuaya (aka @rampok) from DailySocial.net (the top tech & social media blog in Indonesia) wrote a tweet this morning, “How exactly does one measure a startup’s success? Exits?” I want to emphasize why exits are very important as a whole for the technology scene in Southeast Asia. It is one of the...
Building a (Mobile-Web) Start-up: the 2011 way

Building a (Mobile-Web) Start-up: the 2011 way

The era of business plans and presentations to raise money for mobile-web start-up ideas is over. In Silicon Valley, the venture incubator, Y-Combinator led by Paul Graham and his team have crushed this old school way of building an internet start-up by mentoring teams (with co-founders coming from a software engineering background) to produce a...
2010: A Year Worth Remembering

2010: A Year Worth Remembering

Other than 1994, the year 2010 is the year that is worth remembering. After two lost years, 2010 has reignited my drive in life with many interesting times. The year was fraught with struggles, obstacles and challenges that took the most of me and yet brought out the courage to make a difference. Here are...
Thoughts on "The Social Network"

Thoughts on “The Social Network”

Yesterday, I managed to catch one of the most anticipated films in the tech sector, “The Social Network“. It was a sneak preview and the movie is officially out next week in Singapore. With a script written by one of my favourite writers, Aaron Sorkin (with claims to fame from “The West Wing”, “A Few...
A Universe Less Ordinary

A Universe Less Ordinary

Last night, I gave a talk for the BlinkBl-nk 7 event which happened in Blu Jaz. The talk is a recollection of what culminated to my doctoral thesis in cosmology and some after-thoughts about the subject years later. I share my thoughts on the subject here in this blog and share with you the synopsis...
Why Mobile Matters & How to Take Advantage of it

Why Mobile Matters & How to Take Advantage of it

Two days back, I was invited by E27 and Ascendas to give a talk entitled “Why Mobile Matters & How to Take Advantage of It”. The synopsis of the talk discussed a couple of new trends that have developed over the course of last 3 years: (a) the emergence of mobile apps store, (b) the...
5 Principles for Agile & High Speed Development @ Open Web Asia

5 Principles for Agile & High Speed Development @ Open Web Asia

I want to share in detail on my presentation that I have delivered last week in the Open Web Asia conference, elaborating on the 5 principles which I deemed important for those are planning to build a start-up. The talk is entitled “5 Principles for Agile & High Speed Development” and shared the Chalkboard story...
Freedom by Daniel Suarez

Freedom by Daniel Suarez

A couple of months ago, I read Daemon by Daniel Suarez, recommended by many tech pundits from the US. Similarly, I have also recommended to many people I know within the Singapore tech community. They all loved the premise behind Daemon because it is technologically feasible to see the concept behind Daemon actually brought to...
The Tempest Epilogue by Shakespeare

The Tempest Epilogue by Shakespeare

“The Tempest” is the last play written by William Shakespeare. Something recently got me to read the entire play particularly, the monologue by Prospero in the epilogue of the play. In fact, when I put part of the epilogue on my Facebook status, the quote caught the interest of Calvin and Tudor, founders of a...