Unconference 2009 Singapore Kinda Rocks - Foldees.blogspot.com

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Monday, May 18, 2009Unconference 2009 Singapore kinda rocks.

As those who have been following our Twitter or Facebook feeds might know, werecently got invited to a manic meeting of entrepreneurial minds in neighbouringSingapore called Unconference 2009 . The entire Foldees team actually hoofed itdown from KL over the weekend, and are now thoroughly exhausted, and thoroughlyamazed at what an exciting weekend it has been.

The first thing that amazed us was the venue . Much as its name indicates, theBiopolis is a purpose-built bio-research facility. The minute to enter the compound(which is HUGE!), you get the feeling you ve just walked onto the set of Gattaca.

Here s my best impression of Ethan Hawke at the ground floor of the Biopolis

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Hmm.. ok. Well, moving on.

The Unconference itself was held at the MATRIX block, and took up a whopping 3floors! Despite being called an unconference, the event was surprisingly structured,with keynotes, breakout sessions, pitches and of course, the display booths, which iswhere we were. I think the whole naming thing is just to con us entrepreneurs intocoming which we re damn glad we did.

Our agenda this weekend? Gain a foothold into Singapore, and launch @ddress . Hereare a few shots of our booth, which consisted of two buntings

a greeting card stand with some of your ol favourites, and a plug to our contest!

And the smallest cocktail table EVER, where were were showcasing the @ddressfunction. We made our table a little bit less corporatey with our lime green tablecloth.

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Also, we were giving out these wicked customisable stickers Here s one we gave toour neighbouring booth, fellow Malaysian startup, Elevyn.com.

In a nutshell, we were swamped! There were at least 4 people talking to both myselfand Alvin the entire time, and the general consensus was that we needed to move into

Singapore, both in terms of designers to recruit, and cards to sell! Despite totallyignoring the card stand (which we were incidentally selling cards at S$4.00 a pop), wesold a ton of cards as well!

We also made some very important contacts, for whom we will be working out somevery interesting collaborations in the coming months, which we are unreasonablyexcited about!

If there was one key thing we took away from Unconference 2009, it is that usMalaysians could learn a thing or two from our Singaporean counterparts.

First, the organisers, e27 , did an amazing job of not only organising this conference,but getting bigshots from Cisco, Google, SalesForce and Skype to come down andshare their insights. This is above and beyond anything I ve seen in KL, and great bothin terms of exposure and education for us. Kudos to Mohan and the rest of his team.

Tragically, they actually made a loss on the event, due to a last minute cut in budgetfrom a sponsor. So to those who didn t want to shell out S$ for your tickets, shameon you (unless you were one of the awesome volunteers! Thanks Niyi for providing usloose change when we ran out!)

Also, the other startups were just jaw-dropping. From what we ve seen, Singapore hasa much more vibrant scene than our own, with loads of awesome projects, mostlyfrom people so young it makes the Foldees team look like a coupla grumpy old menin an old pub talking about the good ol days. These guys have built up some fantasticproducts with minimal funding, while studying for their university exams! It s absolutelyamazing!

We re gonna cover these guys instead of the more prominent ones that went for thepitch, since they ve probably been covered enough in places like this . Rest assuredthat the pitches were almost uniformly excellent, but what I want to tell you aboutwere the smaller startups that were no less amazing.

One such example is CareerAlbum.com , a startup created by some very youngpeople that is basically a social-media enabled jobsite.

http://www.careeralbum.com/http://mrsteel.wordpress.com/http://www.e27.sg/http://lh5.ggpht.com/_I5KPC5WL4xc/ShF-ovRlI4I/AAAAAAAAAno/eYbF6HfIUSA/s1600-h/DSC01793%5B3%5D.jpghttp://www.elevyn.com/http://lh5.ggpht.com/_I5KPC5WL4xc/ShF-msgpOJI/AAAAAAAAAng/m8TpshIpBpM/s1600-h/DSC01794%5B8%5D.jpg


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How they differentiate themselves is through providing job-hunters with more ways toconvince potential employers (integration with LinkedIn, video and music file linking),and employers with more information by which to make educated choices in terms ofwho they want to hire.

On top of designing this amazing site, one of the girls, Shuyan also has a wickeddesign for a wallet, which I wanted the moment I saw it.

And now, I ve GOT IT! Thank you shuyan for SMS-ing me the details of where to get itafter the event. Much much appreciated!

Another really cool startup we saw was Phokki.com , which acts as a sort of onlineversion of a street-side portrait sketcher, except that they use vectors instead ofpencils and a pad.

http://lh6.ggpht.com/_I5KPC5WL4xc/ShF-vLzcBtI/AAAAAAAAAoA/IkIEoFghkaw/s1600-h/image%5B8%5D.pnghttp://www.phokki.com/http://lh6.ggpht.com/_I5KPC5WL4xc/ShF-sWQLBFI/AAAAAAAAAn4/3_5dsZZnmGw/s1600-h/DSC01810%5B6%5D.jpghttp://lh6.ggpht.com/_I5KPC5WL4xc/ShF-qgfC-nI/AAAAAAAAAnw/vcNTgjqKFAE/s1600-h/image%5B3%5D.png


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They also offer those same vectorizing services at 25 photo outlets in Singapore! Yes,were already in talks with them about distribution of Foldees cards at those sameoutlets :) Also, if you re curious, the name of the site was created specifically to makeyou snigger like you just did 5 seconds ago.

Further down the hall, were a bunch of really enthusiastic er kids, led by thisefferverscent Chinese guy named Casper. Yes, he was certainly friendly, coming byour booth 4 times to take the I WISH YOU Stickers. The first one I wrote for himsaid I WISH YOU WOULD PLAY GAMES WITH ME because that s what Casperdoes, with GameMo , a company that specialises in Mobile gaming.

What s really interesting about GameMo is that they offer both the option of Ad-supported free gaming, as well as pay-to-play, an option that most providers stayaway from. This gives users the flexibility of Try-before-you-buy, which isn t availableat the moment.

Another really cool startup (albeit without a profit model) was FFFFoundtape.com ,which can grab music from ANY site, and allow you to forever drag it into your owncustomised playlist, that you can share with anybody. HOW COOL IS THAT!?

The only problem with the site is no clear business model. Yup, it s run by a bunch ofreally idealistic people, and we here at Foldees absolutely understand that. However,in the long run, you still need some cash, so you guys should probably hook up withthese guys www.cravecharts.com cos they have a pretty good business model.

Lastly, but not leastly (if there s such a word, which according to Blogger, there isn t),is Foliohouse , ironically the first startup we met since they were our neighbours. The

site s not up yet, but we got a sneak peek at it.

http://www.foliohouse.net/http://www.cravecharts.com/http://lh4.ggpht.com/_I5KPC5WL4xc/ShF-0EJ-FsI/AAAAAAAAAoI/VfjQ0m3EUao/s1600-h/image%5B19%5D.pnghttp://ffffoundtape.com/http://www.gamemo.mobi/


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Doesn t it kinda look like Foldees except more orange? That s cos the concept is verysimilar to our own! It s called an Artist Incubation Project, and aims to use contestsand events to recruit a bunch of designers to their site, and match those artists tocorporate work (this is the part that s not so much like us). We can t wait!

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Anyways , that was what we remembered from Unconference2009, which is probablyat least in part due to the fact that we were standing and talking the whole day on 3hours of sleep. To those startups that we didn t feature, please don t get mad at us.We need to rest too, so we can t cover everybody :)

Speaking of which, we re going to catch up on some now.

Ok Singapore, Good night from KL.

Posted by chak at 8:29 AM

4 comments:

Post a Comment

Stephen said...

Some awesome ideas there. Exciting stuff.

May 18, 2009 12:11 PM

Sneha said...

Yo!

Thanks for the writeup. I fffound ffffoundtape to be cool too along with elevyn,evolitera and iTwinn. We are glad you came for the event and most importantlyhad fun!:)

May 18, 2009 8:08 PM

chak said...

We always have fun, Sneha!

Painful, teary-eyed, utterly exhausting fun :)

May 19, 2009 4:00 AM

Meng Weng Wong said...

Glad you guys had a good time, and congrats! Took a picture of your booth:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mengwong/3537666040/in/set-72157618296780316/

cheersmeng

May 20, 2009 4:11 AM

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