In conjunction with Global Entrepreneurship Week, Socialtalkr in association with Mind-Trac and Live and Inspire Magazine will be hosting a 2 day event called “Spotlight on the Entrepreneur” talking about using Web2.0 Platforms to monetize your creative work. This event will be a part of Startup Camp. (Startupcamp consists of 2 full days of fun events so please check out the schedule)
Date: 22nd/23rd NOV
Venue: PnP Midvalley. 7th Floor South Tower.
Crowd: est 400 (students, entreprenuers, professionals, vcs, govt)
Description:
1) Nov 22nd | 2PM
moderated by Gene Kok - mind-trac.com interviewees -
Chak Onn Lau (Foldees) - Creating a platform so that card designers (professional or just for fun) can make some $$ out of their designs
2) Nov 23rd | 12 PM
moderated by Tim Fernandez - liveandinspire.com interviewees -
Wong Yu Liang - Photography -Monetizing photography online - via stockphotos and other methods
Hardesh Singh & Fahmi Fadzil - Music & Video - monetizing music online via music platforms or labels/ Monetizing online Video
In Aaron’s own words, EzyPzy is ezypzy is a simple to use & cheap online contacts manager & SMS/Email marketing solution. You could use EzyPzy for example to send SMS’s to your entire organization or group of contacts using their web-based interface. Thats not where it ends; EzyPzy was initially designed for and still could potentially tap on the huge market for Property Listings.
Sky’s the limit for CEO Aaron Gill, who was also 1 of the first few individuals handpicked & selected for the MDEC Preseed Grant in Dec 2006. EzyPzy then went into development mode and officially launched 21st May 2008, just in time for WCIT! Check it out
[SocialTalkr] Okay today I’m interviewing Aaron Gill, CEO and Founder ofezypzy.com Aaron, can u describe ezypzy in one sentence? What’s it all about?
[Aaron] ezypzy is a simple to use & cheap online contacts manager & SMS/Email marketing solution. But this sentence describing ezypzy has already changed a few times over LOL
[SocialTalkr]
That’s great. One of things I always wanted to emphasize is how business models and plans change.
[Aaron] Yup that’s right and don’t forget about how people change too, as individuals & as a team.
Someone introduces EzyPzy during WCIT
[SocialTalkr]
So what idea did u start out with?
[Aaron] Well our idea was a very simple one. We wantedto allow real estate agents & homeowners to create their own sms keyword that they could print on their For Sale/Rent signage or in their classified ads and interested readers or passer-byes could sms that keyword to a shortcode. For example, SMS ‘ezy condo123′ to 36881 and immediately they would receive a detailed description of the property & pictures as well.
The product at that time was known as PixPocket and that was the project title we pitched to MDeC for the pre-seed grant. The idea is not new, such property keywords are widely used in Australia & UK. However it was new in Malaysia.
After that we thought, why not give our users the ability to manage their business & property listings so we then set about creating a simple contacts management module, so for EzyPzy, we allow users to key in as many phone numbers, addresses, emails & custom fields as they want.
Essentially, we give users the power to decide how they want to save their information
We then applied the same concept to the property listings … because we realized that local listings &Singapore listing could have a different set of fields. No point re-doing the system for different countries.
Again we let the users decide what information to store for their listings.
So far so good right? but after a few beers, it hit us that if u can decide what set of fields to save, why stop at just property you could use it for cars, events and etc. So we thought we would do a little experiment and not brand EzyPzy to target a certain industry. We wanted our users to hijack the brand so to speak and decide how they should use EzyPzy.
I think I’ve gone on for too long LOL. As you can tell… it just kept changing
[SocialTalkr] No worries man i think that just shows how much thought given to your idea.
[Aaron]
Yes but it can be a bad thing because you’re never sure what your product is going to be, so you’re never really sure when you should launch and that’s what happened to us. We had a working product but we weren’t confident of launching it.
[SocialTalkr] Ok let’s talk about the history of the company ezypzy then. Who came up with the idea? Who is in the team? And how did you hear about Preseed?
[Aaron]
hehe that’s an interesting story as well. I’ve actually been an entrepreneur since 2003. Paul Tan (paultan.org) & I have been partners for a while now. We foundedhulksolutions.comin 2003 and along the way we’ve had so many ideas but never the capital to kick any of them off because we were just too busy surviving
Anyway we landed our first RM100K project in 2006. It was for the Dubai Ministry of Labour. Of course the consultants of that project were not us la, it was another Malaysian company but they outsourced it to us, we were supposed to migrate their entire Oracle database to MS SQL Server. It was a 3 months project, I was in Dubai for 2 months, we finished it, but Dubai people had some internal politics issues and they terminated the contract with Malaysian consultants who hired us.
So at the end of it all, we were RM30K poorer because of the initial investments we put in to make this project work, like extra PCs, people & travel and we weren’t getting paid, not even a single cent.
So that’s when we set down and said that things needed to change, we can’t be living hand to mouth with every project. It’s a vicious cycle… while you’re out looking for new projects, you have to complete the current one, then you also have to collect payment on the old one. So after this Dubai fiasco .. I thought we should just take a break and re-evaluate a few things. The first thing I wanted to do was apply for MSC status for Hulk Solutions
this was in September 2006, so when I enquired with MDeC, they asked me to attend a couple of workshops like Business Plan development & Financial Management. Since I was there in Cyberjaya for quite a bit, people kind of knew who i was and maybe they liked me la. so when they told me that they were formulating a Pre-Seed programme, they asked me to join.
At that time, Pre-Seed was a closed invitation programme. Someone from MDeC must nominate you before you can submit your plan, so TeDD nominated me and I had two weeks to write a simple business plan and submit about 40 people were nominated, but I think only 20 submitted in time & only 5 were selected. We got approved in Dec 2006, and we started the project proper in Jan 2007.
[SocialTalkr] During development, were you still pursuing contract jobs?
[Aaron] Yes of course. Pre-seed funding is not enough man. At that time Hulk only had 3 people, so all 3 worked on Hulk projects & EzyPzy projects. Then I had to hire 2 more people, a designer & programmer, Because the rm1.5K allowance per person from pre-seed is not enough to cover a person’s salary ,we had to work on other things concurrently to handle the payroll. However, this time we can choose our projects better & not work on any projects just to earn a living so we only maintained 2 clients at that time, The Star & Monsooncup Terengganu.
[SocialTalkr]
At what point did u release the product commercially?
[Aaron]
We started beta testing in Dec 2007 actually, at the monsooncup Terengganu.
The organisers used ezypzy as the main announcement tool. They used it to coordinate the press and media folks. For instance, informing them of a photo op with the King or gathering them for a media briefing. They also used ezypzy to blast out the race results to everyone, the spectators, VIPs, media, internal team and etc.
[SocialTalkr]
That is one heck of a large scale beta test.
[Aaron]
LOL ya it was … and we did have a few mishaps along the way, but it was the telco’s problem. SMSes did not reach people immediately so time sensitive messages were abit dodgy. For instance, if you send your girlfriend a message to say, “meet me in KLCC in 10 minutes time”, but she receives it 20 minutes later, so somebody’s going to get pissed for waiting … or missing a photo op & etc.
All in all, people were more forgiving because it was something new introduced in monsooncup. The good things outweigh the bad. so the lesson here is .. Mistakes are alright, just don’t make too many! That’s probably why some sites never take off their “Beta” badge LOL, so that users will b more forgiving when they screw up. We decided from the start not to put up that Beta badge on ezypzy.
The company needs to learn how to deal with angry customers. We can’t be telling them “oh its beta, oh we’re still testing” every time, then your team won’t learn!
[SocialTalkr]
So what do u think has been your biggest obstacles since u got this idea?
[Aaron]
hmm biggest obstacles … so many LOL. Number one has always been about talent, but I think that’s a proverbial problem for anyone. I don’t think it’s an exact science no matter what recruiting experts tell you
For instance, my UI designer actually applied for the programming position. When he applied he gave us his portfolio site which was a pretty impressive CSS based site. He started off doing some programming but he sucked so I told him he has no future in programming n he doesn’t have creative direction for fancy designs but his userbility design skills were not bad. He was also a fresh grad, so that’s why he listened to me la and it worked out.
As for the Programmer hire .. I actually wanted to look for someone senior or at least 3 years experience, so I looked around for freelancers who may need a flexible but steady job. I think I found Devan on TwoGateways.com. We instantly hit it off … and he would work on EzyPzy 2 days a week.
We eventually I found my full-time programmer who resigned from a friend’s company. Actually, that company used to outsource work to us, so we already had a working relationship so he did not mind joining us. Things are great… we’ve got a strong team
Paul is charge of systems, Kenneth in charge of Operations, Terry lead programmer, Ahmad UI designer and me everything else. We produced some solid work for a year for both Hulk & EzyPzy. and Devan as you know went on to apply for pre-seed himself. I might have partnered him for that as well if I wasn’t too busy already.
[Note] Devan went on to apply for preseed himself and formed Elevyn with Mike Tee. Read the interview with elevyn here
[SocialTalkr]
Well theres still alot of room for synergy. The pre-seed group has alot of collective talent
[Aaron] Ya I tell him what I tell every other friend. We may do different things or take different paths, but as long as we stick together, we can’t go wrong. Ff he had not work on ezypzy,elevyn.commay never have happened right?
I am also helping out someone else right now who wants to apply for pre-seed.
[SocialTalkr]
Nice. ok let’s talk about the future of ezypzy.
[Aaron]
After the Web2.0 conference I attended .. I came back with a couple of new perspectives. In order to make ezypzy more of a global application, I have to get rid of the SMS portion because having a shortcode in each country is expensive. Eventually ezypzy will work with different carriers. We still want to see for sale/rent signages with the ezyKode keywords n maybe our branding as well,so we’re trying to work with a large local real estate agency to carry the keywords. Hopefully we can kick start that service.
As for the international ezypzy … I have no idea yet. Was thinking of doing something around the contacts, but Plaxo already does a good job there, or maybe we should just be another plaxo.
Then there was also the idea to let users create their own forms, like a Form wizard and embed that form in their own site, like how u embed youtube videos. Because we are already coding these forms for some clients, like this page http://www.peugeot.com.my/form407.html. The form is being pulled from ezypzy and when somebody submits, they are automatically saved in Peugeot’s ezypzy account. We’ve done a few forms like this for our users … but we’re tired of doing yet, so probably build a wizard for you to do it yourself.
We even started on a java app u install on ur phone, which u can backup all your phonebook contacts to your online ezypzy account, so if you lose your phone, you won’t lose your contacts. Plus, it can restore from online to ur phone as well.
[SocialTalkr]
That’s really great stuff man. Is there anything else you wanna talk about?
Advice to entreprenuers? dos and donts? if theres one thing to remember, what would it be?
[Aaron] Well I would say that being an entrepreneur is not for everyone… sometimes passion is not enough. Its always been a combination of things. What those things are is unique to each individual. For myself personally, given my background, I’ve always been a survivor. The biggest concern at the end of the day has always been about my staff and team because whatever you do, you’re not doing for yourself anymore .. these people’s lives depend on you .. its a big responsibility .. that’s why I say it’s not for everyone, because many people can’t shoulder that burden.
[SocialTalkr] That’s pretty good advice man. I think that wraps things up! Thanks for your time Aaron!
Ureka Labs is an ideas incubator. They are currently working on 2 projects.
The first is a social network for interior designing, think along the lines of a virtual “Pimp My Room”. Arrange/Buy new furniture, let your imagination run wild, see how your room looks without actually having to do it. A more serious application is to collaborate with your interior designer.
The second project is about monetizing online video. Ureka Labs wants to be able to impose virtual 3D objects into streaming video (in Real Time). It’s pretty ambitious, and amazing. Check out the video presentation below.
This interview was conducted during Barcamp Malaysia, a 2 day (26-27 July) un-conference attended by an amazing mix of startups, veteran entrepreneurs, bloggers, media and VCs.
[SocialTalkr]
Hey Roni, thanks for interview!
So describe what are you trying to do in UrekaLabs? [Roni]
Well, we’re looking to change the world! We’re looking at how to improve things, improving quality of life. We’re in the business of creating convenience and making things better and more efficient in particular areas.
[SocialTalkr]
Give us some examples of projects that UrekaLabs is working on? [Roni]
2 Projects at the moment. First, we have an interior design visualization project. It’s called roo.my. What is it? Think Autocad, Maya, 3D Objects. Think free, think easy to use… Think interior design meets web2.0.
[SocialTalkr]
Like a Zoho for interior designers? [Roni]
You can say that, yes but the idea is not to be an engineering or architectural tool. It will be more of a visualization tool. It’s going to be easy and fun. You’re going to use this tool to design your living space.
I got this idea when I bought my condo several years back. I approached many contractors and ID designers. They drew up designs on paper and showed it to me and I realized we were both visualizing 2 different things on our mind. In the end, I finally got a 3D representation model to show them what I was thinking. I had to get my brother in law who was an architectural student, to do that using some software. That’s very limiting and inefficient. What we want to do is enhance the collaboration between the contractor and customer. So that’s the value we provide.
The application we are talking about is going to be downloaded to the PC. We initially experimented with putting that application online and web-based. We experimented with AJAX, Flex, and other web technologies but realized that rendering 3D in real time on the web just wasn’t fast and efficient enough. The user experience would not be up to the standards we are looking for. There’s the question of bandwidth as well. So we sacrificed web based convenience for that. So now the user will register with our Social Network, download it, use it. The most important thing is really the end result of the design that promotes collaboration.
Users can share their designs through 3 ways, the fist via sharing images. Second is via an interactive flash file. The idea in the long term for this is to create a 3D representation of the room that is web-based and interactive in real time (zoom in and out move furniture around). What we can release at this point is a 2D version of that. The last would be a 3D tour of the room, a movie file, a fly through.
The beauty of this is, users can use all of these features for free. Again, the pulling factor as well is its going to be easy. Today, if you wanted to do this, you can always go and purchase something like AutoCAD, but you need training to use software like that. We’re trying to eliminate that. There is also Google Sketch-up but it’s not focused on Interior Design. For someone like me, a regular non-artistic person, I wouldn’t be able to build a room from scratch, but I can modify. So we’re going to provide templates, they can use templates that best represent their rooms. It’s much easier to modify than to create and design from scratch. What we can do as well is to let users upload a jpg or an image of a floor plan if available. They can then use our app to easily design and trace on top of the uploaded floor plan.
The social network part of it is to let them share and collaborate on their designs. It’s a social network for interior design enthusiasts and professionals. For casual users, they can use that to share their designs and promote it on their blogs or other social networks (like facebook etc). Another possibility is an interactive classifieds where they can promote their house/apartment via an interactive file. For professionals, they can also use it as their portfolio. They can show potential clients their previous work. Think Flickr for ID. Each design has its own page and they can elect to show who has downloaded the design as well.
Business model wise, it’s going to be free for casual users. But we will offer a premium subscription package for professionals. Casual users will probably work on 1-2 projects, but professionals will definitely work on more simultaneously. We will also offer additional advanced functionalities and features on top of that. The other revenue source is advertising and product placement. This is where furniture retailers can put their furniture into our app for brand awareness. For example, if someone sees a sofa in Ikea, he or she can then use our app to check how the sofa would fit in his or her living space. We will provide a new medium for these retailers to reach and engage their customers and potential customers.
[SocialTalkr]
So that’s the first project. Tell us about your second project. [Roni]
As we were building roo.my, another idea came up and we wanted to pursue that as well. This second idea, we think will revolutionize the online video industry. What we’re trying to create is a platform for advertisers to reach their target market thru online videos. Let me tell you how we came up with the idea first. By the way, we don’t really have a name for it yet.
We believe, in the near future all devices will be connected. Bandwidth will be virtually unlimited and these will impact and change the way we do certain things. The area that we are focusing on is the entertainment industry. The Music industry for example is already affected by free downloads. Anyone can easily download free Mp3 files. The same is happening for movie industry. Sooner or later they will start to see revenues from ticket sales and DVD sales declining rapidly. We feel that in the future, advertising will start becoming a major and bigger contributor to their revenue stream. Right now, there is already advertising in terms of product placement in movies. However, It happens before the movie is shot. An example is I-robot where Audi paid to put an Audi car in the movie. It’s a one-time payment, and that’s it.
We think, in the future, product placements will happen in real time, as the movie is watched/streamed. With this, the producers can perpetually be making revenue from advertising every time the movie is being watched even years after it is released. We are now working on a technology that could make this possible. Take I-robot as an example again; instead of using Audi cars before the movie is shot, the producers can shoot a movie with a generic brand less car. Then, using our technology, if Audi wants to advertise and bid, some viewers will see the movie with Audi in it, and the same goes for BMW or Mercedes and so on. With the Internet, the ads are also going to be targeted and demographic specific depending on the viewers. It’s like Google’s AdSense and Adwords but on Video, and instead of just text or images; it can be a real live 3D representation of a product.
That’s what we are working on making it happen in the future! Right now we already have a prototype of the technology. What we can do now is by using a specific marker; we can superimpose any image or 3D object on a streaming video.
What’s a marker? [Roni]
A marker is a pattern. Any pattern. Our system has 2 layers, first is the pattern recognition that identifies the pattern in the scene, and the other layer will overlay anything we want, on top of that pattern.For example, you can say, you want to create a billboard, and the billboard is covered with that pattern. Advertisers can then place their ads on the billboard in the video.
[SocialTalkr]
That’s pretty interesting and unique. Y combinator talked about this area being hot on their list. [Roni]
Yes I read Paul Grahams blog regularly. We might not be entirely suitable for Y combinator but that could be an avenue that we will investigate soon. [SocialTalkr]
It’s an interesting note that you’ve got your focus spot on. You’ve identified the area investors are looking for. [Roni]
I certainly hope so, because again, when you ask us what we do? UrekaLabs really looks at inefficiencies in the markets today and tries to improve on that.
[SocialTalkr]
Haha ok. Let’s talk about who is the team behind UrekaLabs? [Roni]
When we first started this. We started with the idea of roo.my. First thing we did was apply for the MDEC pre-seed fund.
[SocialTalk] What year was this? [Roni] This was in 2007. UrekaLabs is really a very young startup. We finally were incorporated in Jan 2008. When we first started it was me and my brother, the COO: Razlan Mustapha.
roo.my was mainly outsourced to freelancers, but with our VideoAd we are really recruiting a core team. We’re working with a few people with the promise that when we obtain additional funding, then everyone can come onboard full time. We’ve got a very impressive group of talent working with us on this. They are the technical brains, the gurus behind this technology. We’ve also lined up a similar impressive group of people that we really want to work with. But it all depends if we can afford to pay them.
[SocialTalkr]
What has been your biggest obstacle so far and what is going to take you to the next stage?
[Roni]
I want to say its getting money. We’re struggling because for us to grow, we need money to pay our team and we don’t have the proper funding mechanism to do that. So we source from various grants for funds right now.
I also must say that Malaysians are in a very lucky position because money is available out there. There are very few places in the world where you can get money without putting your neck out on the line. So what’s the real struggle? It’s really about getting the team focused and full time on it. The money is the means to get us on our journey.
[SocialTalkr]
I agree. I’ve interviewed startups from several other countries and so far I’ve not heard of anything like what we have here. So have you started talking to investors? [Roni] There are still many grants that we can still apply for. The problem with that is the time frame associated with grants, both approval and payment. We still need something to start with. For this we are approaching private investors and VCs. We presented yesterday (this is Barcamp), and I’m quite happy and excited to say I’ve secured an interview with a VC this couple of days. We’ll see how that goes.
MDec as well has been very proactive about bringing in VCs. Like in WCIT, they bought in many VCs and got the local startups to pitch to them. And a lot of them were successful in getting funding. So there’s going to be another event soon and we hope to make it for that.
[SocialTalkr]
About Barcamp, I was there for the presentation yesterday. This is the first time you’ve unveiled the project to the public right? How do you feel about it? [Roni]
I.. well we feel excited. You know, people may think it’s difficult. But I think it’s been an exciting ride. Yes there’s been stumbling blocks but I feel like we just find ways to jump over them.
I always wanted to do something like this. Once we started UrekaLabs with the funding from MDec, the whole thinking process changed. Once you’re an entrepreneur, you feel like you can achieve anything!
This is not my first entrepreneur initiative. Earlier on in 1999/2000, I was very into the whole Silicon Valley startup thing, getting funding, doing something to change the world. At that time, I was in my early twenties, I had no network or contacts and all I had were ideas, and even if you could speak to people, who would listen and actually gave money? especially in Malaysia.So I joined the corporate life. I joined an international oil n gas company and it has been quite rewarding. But then, there was always that itch that just won’t go away. So it’s really a matter of timing. I’ve grown tremendously as a person since then.
[SocialTalkr]
What do you feel about Barcamp. It’s the first of its kind in Malaysia right? [Roni]
It’s brilliant! I would say the organizing team members have been spectacular. It’s a killer event. It’s great seeing Malaysians doing this. It’s not any one companies’ initiative. It’s just people getting together. The reward is being part of something, it’s just amazing.
[SocialTalkr]
I guess that’s it! Thank you very much man. [Roni]
Anytime Kengyew.
[Summary]
Elevyn is a social entrepreneurship project started by Mike Tee and Devan Singaram in late 2007, and is about to launch their beta!
Elevyn adopts the Etsy/eBay concept, but designed specifically to make it easy for marginalized/rural communities to set up ecommerce stores for their local crafts. By buying an item, you support not only the seller, but a portion of funds are also channeled to a local community project (Think “textbooks for rural schools”). The folks of Elevyn also do a lot of work on the ground (currently in the jungles of Borneo!) helping communities get set up.
Discover how the idea of Elevyn came about, how the idea evolved!
Find out how to secure funding for a social enterprise! Learn about out the unique challenges Elevyn faces working with rural communities!
Mike “The World Changer” Tee - Founder of Elevyn (more…)
Teacherjames is an eBay for English Learning (launched in July2007), where students can buy TJ points to pay Teachers (The highest paid teacher in TJ today earns about 1000USD a month! Part time job anyone?). Teacherjames will eventually branch out to multiple languages and let teachers open “stores” to sell saved lessons and more (similar to eBay stores). Teacherjames has already started to see revenue (nicely done!) and is actively looking for series A investors, and you can check out their business plan in our links summary.
CEO Jerry Damon Chang (JD) is an indie film producer turn internet startup founder, and he says they’re both very similar industries. Read on to discover why JD says internet and film producing are similar? How does an ex film producer build a website? How did he recruit his talented core team? How does he market and sell Teacherjames today? and how he plans to expand Teacherjames!
Read on to discover Jerry Damon Chang
[note: 11 Aug] I’ve spoken to JD about the new site and while there has been some delays, it should be up and running by this Friday
[Summary] Widgeo.us is a Singapore based startup, developing an amazing cross-channel communications platform (e.g. Message someone’s Widgeous ID and Widgeous will push the message via various channels, such as MSN/Twitter/Email/Widgeous Widget). Widgeous APIs are also open for application developers. Financially, Widgeous has received seed funding from the Singapore Govt, and is currently looking for series A.
Widgeo.us has a very competent tech team (it’s a pretty techie product after all). Find out how U-Zyn discovered the idea and how did he build from there? Find out how he managed to recruit a strong tech team for such a challenging project ? and how they didn’t get the product right the first time (important lesson here fellow entrepreneurs!). Read on to find out how and where they pitched to receive seed-funding in Singapore and how they are taking the first few steps to turn this “cross-channel” communications platform into a money making operation!
Read on to discover the Widgeous Team.
From Left: Kah Yee, Aen, U-Zyn, Ridzuan.
This interview was conducted during Barcamp Malaysia, a 2 day un-conference featuring an amazing mix of startups, veteran entrepreneurs, bloggers, media and VCs. Find out what Widgeous thinks about Barcamp Malaysia as well. (more…)
