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:

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

Aaron Gill, CEO & Founder of EzyPzy

[SocialTalkr]
Okay today I’m interviewing Aaron Gill, CEO and Founder of ezypzy.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 wanted to 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 founded hulksolutions.com in 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.com may 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!

[Links Summary]

EzyPzy - http://www.ezypzy.com
EzyPzyBlog - http://blog.ezypzy.com/

Aaron’s Facebook - http://www.new.facebook.com/profile.php?id=711990355&ref=profile
Aaron’s Linkedin Profile - http://www.linkedin.com/profile?viewProfile=&key=17505563&trk=tab_pro

MDEC PreSeed Program - http://www.technopreneurdevelopment.net.my/cms/AllProduct.asp?CatID=122
Elevyn Interview with Socialtalkr - http://www.socialtalkr.com/wwwelevyncom-interview-with-founder-mike-tee/
Elevyn.com - http://elevyn.com/

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.

Roni Shah Mustapha - CEO & Founder behind Ureka Labs

[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.

[Roo.my is in development but you can sign up for more info here http://www.roo.my/roomy.htm]

[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.

[Check out Roni's presentation during Barcamp]

UrekaLabs Barcamp Malaysia Presentation

[SocialTalkr]

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.

[Links Summary]

Visit UrekaLabs- http://www.urekalabs.com/index.html
Visit roo.my - http://www.roo.my/roomy.htm

Roni’s Facebook - http://www.new.facebook.com/profile.php?id=633347354&ref=ts
Razlan’s Profile - http://www.urekalabs.com/coo.html

Monetizing Online Video - Technology Demo http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w4pvAjkJiLQ&eurl=http://www.urekalabs.com/index.html
- Presentation Slides http://www.slideshare.net/ronshah/urekalabs-barcamp-malaysia-presentation?src=embed

Paul Graham and YCombinator - http://www.paulgraham.com/

Ureka Labs - Executive Summary available upon request – contact me thamkengyew[at]gmail[dot]com or get in touch with Roni via FB.

[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

[SocialTalkr]
Mike, thanks for interviewing! :)
Tell me about Elevyn.
[Mike]
Thanks for the opportunity!

Elevyn (pronounced as “eleven”) is an online platform to empower marginalized communities. We enable rural entrepreneurs and non-government organizations (NGOs) to set up online shops and sell their crafts to a global market. Our goal? To improve the economic standards and financial independence of marginalized communities.

[Here's how Elevyn works]

[SocialTalkr]
Why the name Elevyn?
[Mike]
The whole thing started when my partner Devan and I took the challenge of applying for the MDeC Preseed grant. We found out about it a couple of days prior to the deadline; and after poring thru sleepless nights on the proposals, doing the presentations and eventually having everything come together - we wanted to call ourselves 11th Hour Solutions for all the last-minute craziness. Elevyn is sort of a word-play on that - although a lot of people seem to have trouble with the name so we may do something about it later down the line!
[MDec Preseed is a Malaysian Govt Grant to help budding technoprenuers turn concept into product/prototype]

[SocialTalkr]
Okay, I want to try and understand this more. Part of the problem you are solving is using the Internet to empower communities to be able to sell online. How would your platform be able to help them any more, than say something like eBay?

[Mike]
Haha we get grilled on that a lot - even during the MDeC presentation Q&A itself! A unique factor is that we introduce this thing called CAUSES, which are little community-based projects run in collaboration with the community and field partners / NGOs. For example, a Cause could be something simple like “Raise $100 to buy books for the local school”.

Now here’s where it differs from eBay and anything else out there – every time a product is sold, 5% is automatically channeled towards a Cause. From here, we see multiple benefits - sellers make an income, their community project gets funded, and the buyer leaves with a great feeling knowing that they have not only supported a seller, but also to its community.

[SocialTalkr]
That’s a great concept. So how are you currently reaching out to your buyers and sellers?
[Mike]
Our pilot project is a crafts seller in Kota Kinabalu, who also works with a group of single / aged mothers and poor women at her village. We have a Field Coordinator in the team, Puah Sze Ning and she works directly on the ground with the sellers. Reaching out - for now will be mainly online. Get blogger support / write-ups, provide widgets, banner advertising, partnerships.

Eventually we want the sellers themselves to be responsible for marketing because it’s a huge part of what contributes to the success of a business, and they need to know that. Ultimately we’d like to see sellers from the world over setting up their own online shops directly thru the website.

[SocialTalkr]
So until you reach that “critical mass” point, you’ll be replicating the field coordinator model. I think user education is a big challenge man.
[Mike]
Tremendous challenge; but at the same time, we’re also surprised at many things. Who knew that a village, accessible only via logging roads, hours deep in Sabah, actually has satellite-based Internet connections?!
[Sabah – East Malaysian State, located in the island of Borneo]
We were pleasantly surprised with how knowledgeable some of the village folks were. There was this elderly village chief – the old-uncle type you’d expect to sit at coffee-shops talking politics – and Sze Ning had him discussing e-commerce! Plus the community officers that we aliased with – most of them young adults from similar villages nearby – all Internet-savvy and some had nicer phones than we do!

[SocialTalkr]
Okay. I’m going to talk a bit about the initial stages of the project. How did you come up with the idea of helping these folks?
[Mike]
The interesting thing is… this idea didn’t come up at the snap of a finger. Devan and myself initially wanted to do a project very similar to SocialTalkr! We wanted to interview social entrepreneurs… folks who combine both profitability and social elements into their business.
We actually started development on the site, and the more we got into it, the more ideas came about. We wanted to incorporate videos and create this whole social entrepreneur online scene… and it’ll have collaboration tools to get actions going, we’ll have this, we’ll have that, and as a revenue generator, we’ll have a shop that sells only cause-based products produced by the social entrepreneurs.
Elevyn materialized out of these many ideas that were built on top of each other. So a word of advice to entrepreneurs - never stop brainstorming - you never know what might come out of it!

[SocialTalkr]
Yeah man… I plan on doing 1 year anniversary interviews for all SocialTalkr startups.
Just to see how their ideas have evolved because that is so critical for the startup stage.
So you started this with Devan? How did you guys meet? And how big is the team today?

[Mike]
Yup, Devan and myself spearhead the business development - but since Devan is already a hardcore PHP programmer, he also spends a lot of hours on programming. Wilson our designer was also involved very early in the project – he and Devan go back a long way. We recently engaged Shahrul as another designer, and Ms Leong who does our accounts on the sides. We have Sze Ning as our Field Coordinator, and she’s, well, mainly in the field. Even right now, she’s in Sabah for 3 weeks to get us ready for the launch and to work with another community, potentially coming onboard Elevyn in the future.

How did I meet Devan? It was actually a series of interesting coincidences. A few years back I met him thru a PHP developer forum… had wanted to outsource some jobs to him. But it didn’t pan out… many months later I bumped into him again while with my girlfriend (Sze Ning) who helps out at this stall selling indigenous handicrafts called Gerai OA. Turns out that Sze Ning and Devan both volunteer for the same thing!

After that I kept bumping into Devan at an Indian restaurant in Sri Hartamas - but the changing moment came during a lazy Sunday afternoon where I had lunch, saw Devan there and we started talking and discussing all the way until dinner! It was then, that the idea for collaboration was hatched.

[SocialTalkr]
Okay let’s talk about funding. When did you apply for Preseed? How long did development take and when do you plan to launch?
[Mike]
We applied for Preseed towards the end of 2007 and actual development started in April 08. We plan to do a beta launch within this week itself (Aug 08). The public launch will be confirmed once we get feedback from the beta users.

We’ve got one shop ready for the beta launch; and users can already buy the crafts online. We bought a pencil holder ourselves last week - and surprise surprise, it arrived within 3 days! It was quite a shock as the item just popped in out of nowhere - no email notifications; nothing. We weren’t even expecting the seller to have checked her email for our order! So that’s one of those little things that we need to work one with the seller… to not surprise buyers! Haha…

[SocialTalkr]
Payment is done using credit card?
[Mike]
Yeah, credit card and PayPal at the moment.

[SocialTalkr]
Alright so what are your future plans for Elevyn? Do you hope to be sustainable after Preseed? Looking for investment?
[Mike]
Future plans - we want the impact of Elevyn to be felt globally. As influential as Kiva, if possible. Because with the internet - your market really is global. Preseed funding has been tremendously helpful, and we are thankful for that. It has allowed us to do so many things which wouldn’t have been possible otherwise.

We’re keeping our costs very low to ensure sustainability for as long as possible after Preseed. We’re also looking at grants from social entrepreneurship foundations. We recently made it to the final of the YSEI competition - but the results will only be known in September. So that’ll give us a small amount of money which will help – if we win, that is!

[Examples of these social entrepreneurship foundations]
YSEI - http://www.ysei.org/
Skoll Foundation- http://www.skollfoundation.org/
Ashoka - http://www.ashoka.org/
Stockholm Challenge - http://www.stockholmchallenge.se/

[SocialTalkr]
What have been your biggest obstacles so far, and what do you think will be your obstacles in the future?
[Mike]
We’re having too much fun! Hahaha… Seriously I’d say it has to be working with the communities. It’s a very steep learning curve - from learning of their infrastructure, to getting their interest to come online, and managing the various “people” issues that come along with it.

[SocialTalkr]
Can you give me some examples of what you mean by “people” issues?
[Mike]
Issues that are beyond our control! :-)

Firstly, there’s the challenge of selling the idea of going online to the communities. This isn’t much of a problem - we’re incredibly lucky to have Sze Ning onboard. She’s built up a good reputation with her community work throughout the years so it helps a great deal. I’m not sure if we would have been able to even step foot in any of the villages without her around.

But the real issues start from there. Communities must first get organized as a team – who will produce the crafts, what to produce, pricing, fund management, etc. And somebody needs to lead the team. We can’t go into the village and start ordering people around. We can only advise – the people themselves must take the initiative. These are some of the many factors that we cannot control.

Another major issue was copyright. Some parties expressed serious concerns about local traditional motifs being open to plagiarism once published on the web. Again, these are human factors – fear of the uncertainty; because we can say the same of the products being sold in the offline market. Suggested solutions include drafting protection clauses and forming copyright taskforces – all of which were beyond our capacity!

[SocialTalkr]
I think I will end on that note. Thanks for interviewing Mike!

[Links Summary]

Visit Elevyn - http://www.elevyn.com/

Core Team Profiles
Mike Tee - http://www.new.facebook.com/profile.php?id=637667571
Devan Singaram - http://www.new.facebook.com/profile.php?id=754244063
Puah Sze Ning - http://www.new.facebook.com/profile.php?id=689791693

Social Entrepreneurship Foundations & Grants
YSEI - http://www.ysei.org/
Skoll Foundation- http://www.skollfoundation.org/
Ashoka - http://www.ashoka.org/
Stockholm Challenge - http://www.stockholmchallenge.se/
MDec Preseed Grant - http://www.technopreneurdevelopment.net.my/cms/AllProduct.asp?CatID=122

[Summary]

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

[JD]

Hey. How’s it going? I’m ready whenever you are :)

[SocialTalkr]

Hey JD! Great. So I’ll jump right into it.

JD, can u describe Teacherjames in one sentence?

[JD]

Ok. We offer an educational social platform online for language teachers and students to integrate, educate, and network using the latest technologies. Our focus is to create the platform and then empower the user, whether it be teacher or student to manipulate it.

[SocialTalkr]

Can you describe to me, the experience I would have, if I was a student registered with Teacherjames. What would I be able to do?

[JD]

Sure…as a student on Teacherjames.com, you are able to search over hundreds of teachers by all different qualifications and search tools including video introductions by the teachers in order to find the best one that’s suitable for your needs.

You are empowered to choose the price of lesson, type of lesson, schedule of lesson, and classroom materials. This means that you are not bound by any preset curriculums or price points…and because we have a great peer ranking system, you can really see which teachers have risen to the top of the crop by their peer recommendations and Apple Lesson Rankings

Some students are looking for something specific…i.e. a college student preparing for an exam. A businessman looking for presentation help in Finance that he has to give the next day.

We also have pre-recorded packages that the student can choose. Since each lesson in our “e-English” classroom is fully recorded and viewable, we empower the teacher to package their previously taught lessons in “Teacher Store” packages that they can sell in the future. For example, if a teacher has been teaching STUDENT A conversation English pertaining to banking for 6 months…accumulating 30 hours of classroom sessions…That way students can really browse and find the right type for them

[SocialTalkr]

Is it intentional that the lessons taught over Teacherjames are about language? or can they learn about other subjects too?

[JD]

Right now, they are just on language…that’s what all of our themed features are, and specifically we are targeting Asian markets (especially Mainland China where there is emphasis on English learning)… but soon, we will do many more languages…and then we will think about expanding subjects and also get into corporate enterprise.

The idea for now, is to create the brand of “Teacherjames.com”. That’s what the entire company is focused on, creating a global brand…from that, we can extend to anything.

[SocialTalkr]

Why the name Teacherjames?

[JD]

1. because in Asian cultures (at least in China and Taiwan), if you teach at small prep schools,…all the little kids call you “teacher + first name” like Teacher Annie, Teacher Jane, etc. it becomes kind of endearing….so we wanted to create a platform where ANYONE can be a teacher… so you can be Teacher John at teachejrames.com, or Teacher Amy teacherjames.com

When we “spin” off languages, that might create “Teacherchen.com” for Chinese languages, TeacherRyu.com for Japanese.

2. James is the only name we thought of that isn’t spelled in any other way and really doesn’t have a nickname attached. It’s easy to remember and cannot be confused with any other spellings

[SocialTalkr]

How long has it been since Teacherjames has been launched?

[JD]

We started programming in late 2006, launched the current site in July 2007, and spent the last year revising our business models

We’re about to launch the new Beta design in 2008

[SocialTalkr]

Let’s talk about how you got started with this. How’d you come up with the concept and idea?

[JD]

I was producing movies in LA for a few years (3 feature films to my list of credits) and came to Taiwan in 2005 to produce a TV pilot. While in Taiwan, I met a lot of English teachers and started getting into that world.

Somewhere in there, I read the book “The World is Flat” by Thomas Freidman and that really influenced me as a producer and then businessman. The idea kept rolling in my mind about how to leverage new globalized technologies in Asia (where all business is heading).

Since I was hanging out with a lot teachers, the idea of creating an online EBay for English tutors just made a lot of sense. It’s so hard for students to find teachers (they are shy, lack of resources, time, etc.) So if you can put a searchable database online, you can really help out teachers and students to find each other. The social platform and ad widgets and networking stuff came later as we started developing true business models.

[SocialTalkr]

How did you go about turning the idea into a website? What was the next step?

[JD]

“The World is Flat” taught me about outsourcing to India. I read up on GOOGLE about website outsourcing (still not popular to the masses back in 2005) and then tried it out. We went through 5 Indian companies at first, but did accomplish our goal of creating the site (pretty much as you see now) by probably 1/20th of the cost it would take a US programmer.

(Socialtalkr: The World is Flat by Thomas L Friedman)

I had a partner who started with me. His name was funny enough, James Taylor. He’s my best friend from junior high, moved to Taiwan to teach English while I was here. Now, he’s a consultant for TJ.com…back in Texas and about to get married, but he is still on the TJ team.

Also, we brought on Andy Wilson, you can read his bio in the business plan. He graduated 1st in his class at Notre Dame in architecture. He’s been an architect in NY for the last 5 years. He’s an impressive guy :). Andy and i lived down the street from each other in 6th grade, and he moved away when he was a junior in Highschool, but we have kept in touch since. Then just this year in 2008…Andy came aboard to help with raising expansion funds. I wrote the BP and Andy is now actively selling it.

[SocialTalkr]

How did you fund the development cost? Do you mind disclosing how much it cost to outsource to India?

[JD]

I funded the development with my own money. I can say that the site you see today was done for less than $5,000US….and the new Beta site you see will be done for less than $15,000US, but that doesn’t include any of our salaries…only the outsourcing costs

[SocialTalkr]

Were u concerned at all with protecting your idea when you outsourced it?

[JD]:

Yes, there is still the risk of others taking this idea, but we are more concerned with always being ahead of the technology curve and having better features. Our users are our best asset, just like any social networking site.

[SocialTalkr]

So after u launched, were u actively looking for investors?

[JD]

Not yet, we didn’t know what we had. We were new to the field and new to online start-ups. It took a few months to really sort out realistic business models and strategies, then 4 months to draft the BP. Now we’re actively looking for investment. We’re seeking $500K US, and we’re targeting angel investors.

We have been officially accepted into the Irish Angels Network, which is the alumni VC network at Notre Dame. We have a deal champion and everything. Kinda like “cool kids club” i think :)

[SocialTalkr]

Have you accepted any deals yet?

[JD]

We haven’t raised all the funds. We have commitments for small portions of the 500K, but haven’t raised the full amount yet.

[SocialTalkr]

Alright so let’s say you got the funding. What’s the next step for Teacherjames?

[JD]

We are registered in US and we will be maintaining an office in the US. We have existing contacts in Austin and NY.

The next step would be expansion of our Corporate Solutions Department and then separately, expansion of our Online Marketing and Sales Department will be in Asia. Currently both James and Andy are both part-time. In our office in Taiwan, we have one full time admin, one Online Marketing Sales Manager fulltime, two interns. Our web designers are out of India and China, plus a Chicago design firm did the graphics for the beta site.

[SocialTalkr]

Alright, let’s talk about marketing. What have you guys been doing for Teacherjames?

[JD]

Mostly online ads for now. We’re going to be introducing new widgets next month that allows any teacher or site to put Teacherjames.com widgets on their site. For example, one of these widgets will let a viewer know whenever a new student registers on TJ.com. Another widget will let a viewer know anytime a student has put in a teacher request (like “converstaion teacher” Mondays, price range, etc.). Imagine that you can put this widget on your educational publishing website, it’s much more interaction. Next we’ll be unveiling a new Facebook application centered around Teacherjames.com to sync up Facebook users and TJ.com users…plus there’s a GAME in it! Haha

[SocialTalkr]

What are you timelines for these new releases? Is the beta site a complete rework?

[JD]

The widget program by end of August

The Facebook app probably mid-August

Beta site launch early August

It’s a complete rework, new features, functions, etc.

So…August is a big month of releases for us

[SocialTalkr]

Sounds like an exciting time :)What is the traffic for Teacherjames right now?

[JD]

We have about 5000+ monthly uniques, spending an average of 5 minutes on the site, around 5 pageviews. We think it’s going to really explode with the new features this month. Registered users, we have about 300 teachers now, and around 150 students.

[SocialTalkr]

Cool. Let’s talk about the business behind Teacherjames. How do you make money?

[JD]

At this point, its corporate packages, online ad revenues, and teaching fees

[SocialTalkr]

Does Teacherjames have its own e-currency (credit system)?

[JD]

We use Teacherjames Points, each Point cost $1 Us. That’s how students pay teacher is through the points. Students buy points with Credit card or paypal. Most of our teachers are part time. Right now our highest teacher makes over $1000US a month. Her rate is about $20US an hour. That should go up for teachers as they have more options to sell stuff (like the teacher’s store).

[SocialTalkr]

I’m going to go back to your experience with starting this up. What do you think were your biggest obstacles?

[JD]

1. Understanding what people want

2. Adapting to it

3. realizing what this statement means: “If it’s not perfect, then people won’t use it.”, and then figuring out how to bring that back to your core company, and then make it better

[SocialTalkr]

You were in the entertainment business before this right? How did it feel getting into the web business?

[JD]

Similar…since it’s project management at its core. Starting your own online company with limited funds is MUCH like shooting an indie movie on limited funds. You just have to figure out how to make it happen! Usually the keys are getting the smartest, hardest working people in place for the least amount of money possible. As a producer or a startup owner….you substitute money for inspiration. You gotta inspire people to help you….because you can’t pay them what they truly deserve.

[SocialTalkr]

:) well said. Great. I think that should be about it… do you have anything to add?

[JD]

hmm…just that if you could…please of course promote all of our new feature offerings this next month and also the beta site :) And thanks for doing this, I had a really good time :)

[SocialTalkr]

Anytime man!

[Links Summary]

Visit Teacherjames - http://www.teacherjames.com/

Teacherjames’ Business Profile - http://www.raisecapital.com/search_detail.php?post_id=4805

Teacherjames Exec Summary -

JD on IMDB (Film credits) - http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0151677/

Teacherjames Facebook Group - http://www.new.facebook.com/s.php?q=teacherjames&init=q#/group.php?gid=9260583790

[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.

[SocialTalkr]
Guys, thanks for interviewing! J Now can you describe your startup in one sentence?

[U-Zyn]
Sure. Widgeous is a cross-channel communication channel platform for developers and users.

[SocialTalkr]
Can you give me an example of how a developer benefit would use Widgeous?

[U-Zyn]
Traditionally, for a developer to support cross channel communication, they need to decide which channel to support. They needed to learn the individual APIs for those channels, and they will have to follow up on any changes to the APIs that they have adopted.

Through Widgeous, developers will only need to integrate their existing or new applications once on our API, and immediately they will gain support for multiple communication channels that Widgeous supports and do not have to force users to make a change of their comfortable communication channels for what the applications eventually choose to support.

Currently Widgeous supports Twitter, Windows Live Messenger, email and web (Widgeous device) and in the near future, Widgeous is looking forward to extend the channels to more IMs (Google Talk, Jabber, etc) and also to social networks (Facebook chat, etc).

At the recent Barcamp Malaysia, Widgeous has also just opened up their developer’s API and announced a month-long hackathon. Do check out the details at http://widgeo.us/hackathon

[SocialTalkr]
How about a regular Joe like me. How do I and other end-users benefit?

[U-Zyn]
Widgeous is putting the power of communication back to users. Through Widgeous, end-users will gain access to information on-the-go. Imagine with only 1 number where end-users can SMS to learn about the new movie timings in the city, or to find out what a certain word means.

On top of that, Widgeous can also be used as a direct user-to-user communication interface. Instead of the initiator deciding how a message should be sent to a user, through Widgeous, the receivers get to decide how a message should be received (which device it should be sent to). Imagine having a conversation which one party is on Facebook chat and the other party is on Windows Live Messenger. This is made possible via Widgeous.

To try out Widgeous, end-users can go to http://widgeo.us to try out some of the existing available applications available.

[SocialTalkr]
OK J. Let’s get to the interesting parts, tell me how did the idea of Widgeous come about?
[U-Zyn]
Widgeous idea came about from myself about a year ago, when Twitter has just announced its API. I built a few applications on Twitter API during the early days and I was thinking to myself at that time, why an application should suffer a limit of reach simply because of the boundary of the different communication devices.

Hence, I was thinking to myself how nice if there is a service that would allow application developers to not only extend the services out of the web, but also to support the various different communication channels without the extra work of needing to learn and integrate to different channels individually.

[SocialTalkr]
You came up with an idea to address a need, how do you execute the idea? Whats the next step?
[U-Zyn]
I presented this idea to some of my partners and friends, with a decision of either doing it alone like I did for Ping.sg or getting funding and starting up a company to handle the development and growth of this project. I would really like to thank Mr. James Seng (Thymos Capital) for not only motivating me to start the project, but also investing the seed funding for Widgeous under the Media Development Authority of Singapore (MDA) i.JAM funding scheme for S$55,000.

James also advised me to get a partner/director that would handle the business side of things, to complement my lack of experience in the business-side of things and also so that I can fully concentrate on the technical development work.  That’s when we got Ridzuan Ashim in as a CEO. Ridzuan has been a personal friend of mine for the last few years and I believe that he could do a good job in bringing Widgeous to the market, handling the funding of the company and everything non-technical.

[SocialTalkr]
Tell us more about the development process. Who is the team in charge of developing Widgeous and how did you recruit them?

[U-Zyn]
We have 3 technical team members, including myself , Kah Wee - the program analyst, and Aen - the design consultant.

Being a freelance programmer, I have worked with Aen on quite a few projects and I have always admired his design work and his ability to do some coding on top of his design. Believe it or not, Kah Wee was someone I met on Facebook. I was searching for a programmer for Widgeous and I randomly browsed through profiles on Facebook and I happened to encounter Kah Wee’s profile, which suited the job really well. We met up for an interview and found him to be really suitable for the job. Sure enough, Kah Wee is now an essential member of the Widgeous technical team.

I am basically the chief architect of Widgeous, designing the core of Widgeous with the idea of making it as plug-and-play as possible, ie. a new communication channel or a new feature can be extended to the core without having to alter much or any of the core. On top of that, due to the small size of the team, I am also the code monkey for Widgeous, splitting the work with Kah Wee on implementation of features.

Aen basically designs all the things visual on Widgeous, from our logo to layout to posters. He’s really amazing at coming up with designs that are really fitting.

[SocialTalkr]
Tell us some of the biggest obstacles that you guys have faced so far?

[Ridzuan]
Widgeous being a new startup has had to make decisions in areas where both founders have had very little experience compared the more established players in the industry. That said, we’ve had to make decisions to balance the need for developing for future trends with the need to build features that will help sustain the company today. I think it’s very well said by Derek Callow from Google when he gave a soccer analogy, “When do you run to where the ball is? And when do you run to where the ball is being passed?” One of the biggest learning points was when we tried to create a completely GUI driven IDE that would allow the layman to build applications intuitively. After spending about 3-4 months building it, we realized that we were in over our heads and had to shelve the development of that in the interest of our short term goals.

In terms of team management, it was also quite an experience because no one in the team had prior experience in working on a platform of our nature. This really translates to everyone spending many hours trying to design workarounds and developing new and robust systems for implementation.

On my end, I’ve come to learn that pitching for funding for a platform, as opposed to a software or a service, is somewhat a challenge because many of the financial decision makers are not deep into the technical fields. This means we would have to craft such technical details in a manner that is easy to understand yet does not oversimplify the potential of the Widgeous platform.

[U-Zyn]
Starting up Widgeous is not all smooth-sailing at all! I started Widgeous with the motto that ‘any layman can design widgets/applications without having any technical knowledge’. With that motto, we embarked in the development process on September 2007 by spending a great deal of our time trying to come up with GUI-based application design interface that was done in Adobe Flash. It went through about 3 full revisions, before we finally decide to scrape the idea totally and only fully concentrate on our core – making communication works and getting communication to cross the channel boundary. The change of direction came about 4 months since the start of our development work.

Even though it was almost a complete change of direction, I would not call it a total waste of time. Throughout the process, we have finalized the real goal of Widgeous, to create a multi-channel communications platform, and finally concluded that a completely user-friendly GUI that really works required much more effort from us and required more, way much more research, not mentioning also the vast amount of experience and lessons we have learned.

It was really tough trying to make a programming GUI that is simple enough for non-technical people to use and yet not lacking features for real programmers and not complicated enough that it would be an impossible task for new users to learn the interface.

For now and in the short foreseeable future, our goal would be to create a complete core that helps enhance application developers (especially web developers) in getting their apps to be extended outside of the limitation of the Web, and for end-users, an easy enough experience to communicate and retrieve information on the go.

[SocialTalkr]
Sounds like a careful balancing act J. Ok let’s talk about your initial Launch & Marketing efforts. How does a startup like Widgeous market its platform?

[U-Zyn]
Widgeous site was first launched at the Singapore Barcamp on 21 May 2008 with basic features and the intentions of getting the public to try out Widgeous as users.

Ever since the launch, we have met up with quite a few companies that are interested to use our solutions. We ended up providing a few solutions for some companies and still in the talk with some. One such example would be Widgeous powering the registration Singapore Symposium on Computational Biology (http://symbio.rsg.sg/registration).  If the talks go through, Widgeous might be powering the communication arms for more sites that are soon-to-come.

After the Singapore Barcamp, Widgeous has also given quite a few presentations and talks on various events in Singapore.

Today is the first time that Widgeous is presenting outside of Singapore and it is also the first time that Widgeous is opening up our developer’s API to the masses. With that, we are also announcing the launch of our month-long hackathon with the objectives of getting more applications to be developed for the Widgeous platform and also for us to improve on the Widgeous core, based on the developers’ feedback and questions that we hope to be getting out of this.

[SocialTalkr]
Ok Ridzuan this would be more your domain. Tell us about the current financial stage of Widgeous and & future plans?

[Ridzuan]
Widgeous has received pre-seed funding from Thymos Capital under the iJam funding scheme to basically create a basic launch of the Widgeous service. From here, we’re faced with the bigger challenge of bringing this to market. Because of the nature of our service - we are a platform – we really face a chicken and egg problem with the value of the platform only realized if there are enough applications that are built to take advantage of the platform on one end while developers have no incentive to build applications if there isn’t a large enough pool of users.

For now, our strategy of solving this dilemma is really to take a two prong approach of getting organizations and SMEs to adopt the platform(and thus bring in large number of users) while at the same time engaging the developers to work together with them to create an ecosystem that encourages developers to start building applications that are powered by the Widgeous platform. We believe that growth would really pick up as soon as either the developer or user adopters on our platform reach a critical mass.

We are presently currently actively looking for another round of investments to take the company to the next level.

[SocialTalkr]
Thanks for interviewing and thanks for coming to Barcamp Malaysia!

[Ridzuan]
I think it’s a breath of fresh of air having attended Barcamp Malaysia. Having attended many tech unconferences back in Singapore, this session was filled with a lot of fresh ideas. To me, the most distinct positive experience is how the Barcamp Malaysia participants are a lot more relaxed and focused on asking questions and focusing on collaboration. It’s actually very interesting that there are many developers here who are attempting to do projects that are being attempted back home while there are startups here that seem to have a very strong foothold where Singaporean startups are still struggling to stabilize.

If anything, I would most definitely want to attend more of the Barcamps here just to hear the diverse perspectives that the developers have here.  I think it would also be awesome if they could come down to Singapore for future events as well. There is so much room for collaboration and innovation to happen.

[Links Summary]

View the Team’s Profiles
Ridzuan Ashim -  http://www.linkedin.com/in/ridz84
U-Zyn Chua - http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=706830922
Aen Tan - http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=570211067
Kah Wee Teng - http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=852815625

Visit Widgeous – http://widgeo.us
Email Widgeous – ask@widgeo.us
Interested in investing in Widgeous? - http://www.slideshare.net/thamkengyew/widgeous-executive-summary/
Read about Widgeous – http://blog.widgeo.us
Widgeous Hackathon Competition - http://widgeo.us/hackathon

Foldees Lets You…
1. Design Greeting Cards & Earn $$ if other people like ‘em & buy ‘em.
2. Buy Greeting Cards. Designer Cards. Prettier than the ones at the store or the gas station.

This is Chak, the man behind Foldees (He is a serious man)

SocialTalkr:

So wanna jump right into it?
Chak Onn Lau :
|Hahah. Ok let’s go. Wutcha got?

SocialTalkr:
Alright. So to start things off, can u describe Foldees in one sentence? Summarize it up!
Chak Onn Lau :
Okay. In three words - designer greeting cards. In one sentence - A portal to connect a bored greeting card market with a deluge of talented greeting card designers around the world.
We open for business on the 31st of August. We’re running our first contest now, which will end shortly before that.

SocialTalkr :
And the contest is for card designers right?
Chak Onn Lau :
Well, how about anyone who considers themselves a greeting card designer?
It doesn’t matter if you don’t have l33t skillzorZz in illustrator (which is the software you need to join)
We have some really simple designs done by average Joes as well,
Tt’s about the idea of the card, which doesn’t necessarily depend on a kickass design.
(SocialTalkr: Here are some samples of Foldee’s Designs. Foldees will start selling these designs by Aug31st, visit the foldees blog to see more)

SocialTalkr
So some designers might not win the prizes. What’s in it for them?
Chak Onn Lau
That’s the interesting part. The prizes are to create a sense of competition amongst the participants so they have something to strive for. Basically, we will accept any card from anyone who’s design we think can potentially sell, and is within our contest rules and each time we sell the card, he/she will get a royalty out of it.

I was just talking with my team about this last night. The competition needs to be there to give designers a challenge - to come up with something cool. Otherwise they’d just be coming up with something that sells, like what they do on cafepress and zazzle

SocialTalkr: This is what the cards look like once you receive them

SocialTalkr
Very cool…so where have u been receiving contest applications from so far? local /foreign?
(SocialTalkr: Local = Malaysian)
Chak Onn Lau
Mostly local. It was a conscious decision from the team because our engine, system and even our organization has never been tested. We wanted to try it out here first, to see if all our programming, admin and everything were good to go

Now that we know, and we’ve learnt so much… we are going to publicize our next contest everywhere!
The contests are basically recruitment drives for new designs. The site will always have something to sell
After 31st august, that is..

SocialTalkr
Can you describe the process of someone buying a card?
Chak Onn Lau
Ok, two methods.
The first is similar to other sites already out there. You go in, pick a card, customize it, and identify a recipient. All you need is either his email address or his physical address, and we’ll do the rest.

The other form is much more interesting. I think it’s a niche market, but I’m very excited about it because it’s something I would actually prefer to do. So same thing, you go in, pick a card, customize it but this time, you download it as a ready-to-print PDF which you then print in the comfort of your own home allowing you to sign-off the card, as well as to write your message in your own handwriting. What we’ll be doing to kick this off is selling prepaid packs.

Each prepaid pack will have 12 sheets of textured recycled paper, and a coupon code that allows you to download 10 card PDFs. We’re thinking of selling these at places like www.inqbox.com and palate pallete for starters (Palette palate is a restaurant where alot of quirky people hangout).

SocialTalkr
So is this prepaid pack in the idea stages or have you already discussed with your sales channels?
Chak Onn Lau
We have discussed it already. You can actually download the card yourself, find the paper yourself, and print it yourself too. We charge only RM1 per card design..

SocialTalkr
Does that mean all your cards follow the same pricing? Regardless whether or not they are contest winners?
Chak Onn Lau
Yup. Makes sense, because if your card is really that popular, lots of people are going to buy it, which means that your royalties will go up too

SocialTalkr
So alright let’s talk about how you got started. How did u even come up with an idea like this?
Chak Onn Lau:
er… we started buying Threadless shirts and thought… hey… this would be great for greeting cards! or rather i thought that. So i wrote up a 3-page brief, called two friends that i was looking at as partners to come to chili’s, late may 2007 and i pitched them the idea.

SocialTalkr:
Where did you go from there? You had good idea. what next?
Chak Onn Lau:
Heh This is something i only admitted recently, but i actually applied for the MDEC Technopreneurs Preseed grant, sometime end June 2007 to give my newly formed team a deadline to work towards. We got the grant in October 2007.
The grant had a small window by which to apply, and milestones for everything… so i figured it would be a good kickstart of the project to sort of “make it real” rather than something we talked cock about at a mamak
(SocialTalkr: Mamak is a Malaysian term for outdoor food stall)

SocialTalkr:
You guys launched sometime in June 2008 right? How long did development take?
Chak Onn Lau
17th June if I’m not mistaken. A long long time, it took way longer than necessary because a lot of that time was spent optimizing my team.

Only one of them is still working with me on the project. Alvin Yu was at chili’s that day, and he still handles all the nitty gritties of the project like timelines, our reports to mdec, msc application, cashflow and stuff like that. but the other guy sorta felt halfway that this whole entrepreneurship business wasn’t his cuppa, so he’s a small, silent, minority shareholder now. No hard feelings.

Unfortunately, he was the programmer at the time, so that’s what sorta threw our project off course for a while until we found someone new

SocialTalkr:
So who is head geek of foldees today?
Chak Onn Lau:
Hahaha, er me! well, it’s a close call
My programmer (who chooses to remain unknown) is quite… eccentric
He’s quite happy about the whole mystery thing
heheh i can say one thing though, he is a programming machine
no sleep or food if necessary, fueled by Cadbury bytes.

SocialTalkr:
Did you receive any investment after MDEC? Are you looking for investors?
Chak Onn Lau:
No and yes. Not at this point in time.
We want to show people that the system works first, then we’ll go looking for investors!

SocialTalkr
So what were your biggest obstacles starting Foldees from an idea to a company.
Were you employed before Foldees?
Chak Onn Lau:
Yup, i did. My former colleagues are now driving Audi TTs and Merc CLKs.
(Socialtalkr: Chak at that time worked for a Malaysian MSN ad space company called Media2.0. At one point, he was also editor of “Stuff” Magazine.)

Anyways, my biggest obstacles were definitely finding the right people, and keeping them motivated and that includes myself as well. You need to find the write sorta brain wiring to do this whole entrepreneurship thing and once you’ve found it, you really need to keep them together, and motivated by whatever means necessary

SocialTalkr
Is your team (3 of you ) full time on Foldees?
Chak Onn Lau
Nope. I’m the only full-time staff. My programmer actually freelances for a few people, so he spends about 2-3 days a week on the project. Alvin has a day job in oil & gas, so he keeps track of stuff after hours, and at our weekly meetings on Sunday.

SocialTalkr:
Last couple of questions, so where did u go to school and what year?
Chak Onn Lau
First off, I am turning 29 this Sept. I went to Taylors, then was supposed to head over to Birmingham, but the currency crisis, in combination with my parents finding out i was smoking kinda revoked my trip.

So after getting my UK trip cancelled 2 weeks before i was supposed to go, my parents put me into APIIT instead. Spent two years there, then went to Monash. I was actually in a bunch of Monash ads around the world Radio in Malaysia and apparently even on London tubes. it’s frickin classic man. Funny as hell… something for the grandkids someday.

Anyway, after APIIT I went the Monash Caulfield in Melbourne, joined the school Mag, and realized that i loved writing.That’s when i came back and decided on a career in journalism. I worked for The Sun, for a month. Then, as we say, “The Sun went down”. I got effectively retrenched after a month’s work.

Then I joined a struggling dotcom in Cyberjaya (so I know how it feels) called VQ interactive for 2 years. They created an online agent… like an animated character that welcomes you to a site and guides you around. Quite cool stuff actually, but there were alot of competitors, and honestly, the only thing cooler about our agent was the responses me and this other guy came up with for just about any question you can think of…

SocialTalkr :
So is Foldees your first own venture? Have u done anything before in the past?
Chak Onn Lau
This is the first, so going by laws of probability, it’s probably going to fail horribly, and people will make fun of the “fold” in our name.

SocialTalkr :
Any influences/ motivators? What made u get up one day and decide to run a business?
Chak Onn Lau
Well, my friend, who owns RedtoneCNX (one of the 5 companies that managed to get the WiMAX tender in Msia) passed me a book called “Anyone Can Do It”.

It’s a really good book that tells you the story of how a brother n sister in the UK went from just having an idea to making a really successful business. i read it and thought two things… “that sounds like fun” and “I think i can manage that”

SocialTalkr
The coffee shop story, right?
Chak Onn Lau
YUP, that’s the one! Great book, bad title.
So after that, I was writing a whole bunch of business plans for various things and bouncing them off Alvin. We developed some of them pretty far, with profit, cash flow calculations n stuff, and finally we found one that sounded feasible for our experience, applied for the grant and the rest is hopefully history. J

SocialTalkr
Very nice! Thanks for interviewing Chak!

Links Summary

Chak Onn Lau’s FB Profile
http://www.new.facebook.com/profile.php?id=681164975&ref=mf

Visit Foldees – buy a designer greeting card
www.foldees.com

Read the Foldees Blog
http://foldees.blogspot.com

Foldees FB Group
http://www.new.facebook.com/home.php?ref=home#/group.php?gid=24818896619

Malaysian Govt Technoprenuer Pre-seed Grant
http://www.technopreneurdevelopment.net.my/cms/AllProduct.asp?CatID=122

From Left - Lorenzo & Travis

SocialTalkr :
Can u describe Bidrealm in one sentence? kinda summarize it up…
Lorenzo Dickerson :
Bidrealm.NET is the web’s first ever Real Estate Active Labor Marketplace.
It is used by homeowners as well as home improvement professionals such as contractors, landscapers, painters, electricians, builders and others. We even service Real Estate Agents.

SocialTalkr :
Say I am a homeowner, walk me though the steps and how would I benefit using Bidrealm?
Lorenzo Dickerson :
Normally if a homeowner needs to have home improvement work done on their home, they will search the Yellow pages or rely on a friend’s recommendation. These two methods are unreliable and outdated. They waste time and do not offer the homeowner the efficiency in their choice or price. At Bidrealm.NET, a homeowner can register for free and post an available project including details of what type of project, the dimensions, materials desired and even time frame. Once posted, local registered professional vendors will be able to bid in a reverse auction on that project. This way the homeowner has multiple bids to choose from and gets the best price through competitive bidding. They can view the professional’s posted credentials and communicate with them through the private message board to make their best decision. Once a bid is approved both parties win and the project can begin. The homeowner gets reliable choice at a great price, while the home improvement professional is able to build their business and keep it consistent.

The transaction itself will take place outside of Bidrealm. We do not facilitate the transaction after the approved bid or the exchange of funds for the purpose that in this type of business the two parties will have to meet anyway, and we want our users to be able to actually meet one another in an attempt to be even more cautious when choosing a person to work with. Bidrealm does stress online safety when performing transactions, and this is why we include valuable tips within our FAQs and policies on out site.

SocialTalkr :
What are some of the alternatives to Bidrealm right now? Who are your competitors?
Lorenzo Dickerson :
Our major competitors include servicemagic.com, improvenet.com and contractors.com among others
SocialTalkr :
Are these also reverse auction sites?
Lorenzo Dickerson :
No. That is one of the main features that sets us apart from the competition. Our competition simply matches homeowners with contractors in their area in a list format and it is now up to the homeowner to contact them and do the research. This type of system is really nothing more than a glorified phone book. There is no innovation or interaction. We are the only reverse auction style home improvement site of our kind on the web.

SocialTalkr :
What’s the business model behind Bidrealm? How do u monetize?
Lorenzo Dickerson :
The business model is to keep the users interacted first, and to be sure that the site stays consistently innovative. We have built Bidrealm inexpensively and in such as way that operating the site is also inexpensive. We operate the company with no debt an focus heavily on viral and affiliate marketing. We monetize by selling advertising space and utilizing revenue generating affiliate programs with highly recognizable industry related companies. Bidrealm.NET fills the efficiency void in the home improvement industry by infusing web 2.0 into the equation. We have found a need and delivered a solution with the website.

SocialTalkr :
What do you mean by “affiliate programs”?
Lorenzo Dickerson :
We have partnered with companies that currently hold logo space on our website that we generate revenue from either per-click or as a percentage of purchase price. Some of these affiliate currently include Circuit City, Wal-Mart, and Sears.

SocialTalkr:
Let’s talk about your marketing efforts so far.
Lorenzo Dickerson :
We officially launched March 2008, so we have been up and operating for 4 months

We have been doing viral marketing online with building relationships through social networks. We can been seen online on facebook, youtube, myspace, wordpress and other sites. We are creating a way for users to become marketers for bidrealm too, by building a relationship with the company and refering others. We have also sent brochures, done email marketing and relying heavily on word of mouth. We have focused in the south eastern U.S. where small construction companies are abundant, and have centered around “grassroots” marketing, building relationships and the Bidrealm.NET brand name from the ground up. We will be placing online ads through various channels and well as participate in other marketing avenues in the near future.

We have gotten about 1000 hits thus far and people are registering. We have built relationships with about 500 through online social networking and have registered users from Virginia to California. We are still waiting for that break-through hit day like Amazon had

Check us out at

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=12806295853

http://www.bidrealm.net

http://www.bidrealm.wordpress.com http://www.youtube.com/bidrealmdotnet

http://www.youtube.com/bidrealmdotnet

SocialTalkr :
What about development . When did you start? How did come about this idea?
Lorenzo Dickerson :
The idea for the company grew from my business partner, Travis White’s difficulty in finding quality reliable contractors and other home improvement professionals when flipping a home in Baltimore, Maryland. During this process he dealt with contractors and others that completed work late and were all around unprofessional among other things. We figured that there must be a better and more efficient way to do this type of business. That day, April 2007 the idea was born and we were on our way to creating the company.

Upon talks with numerous web developers in and out of the U.S, and much planning, we decided to outsource our web development to India, and site development began in August 2007.began in August 2007

SocialTalkr :
Lorenzo, can u disclose how much development cost for bidrealm outsourcing to an indian partner? I think it’s something our readers would like to know
Lorenzo Dickerson :
This is actually an interesting story. When shopping for developers we spoke with companies from Ohio, California and Florida and the prices ranged from $25,000, to $55,000. We then spoke with developers in London, Spain and India. We ultimately went with the firm in India because of their experience and previous work. In doing so we were able to save a great deal and complete our web development for $4,500.

SocialTalkr :
Sounds like you got a great deal J. They should have a reverse auction site for web development. Indians would win all the deals.
Lorenzo Dickerson :
Cost savings and reliable work, can’t go wrong. Sounds like Bidrealm

SocialTalkr:
Was it tough working with someone from a different time zone.. how did u communicate ideas and such?
Lorenzo Dickerson : We communicated via email. I was somewhat apprehensive at first, but the communication worked out smoothly. I would email the developer details and site edits while I was awake and he was asleep, and when I awoke the next morning, he had completed it all. All edits done and detailed. We worked at different times on opposite ends of the day, but were able to stay efficient, on task, and on time.

The development took approximately 7 months. A lot of emails, edits, text and creativity.

SocialTalkr:
i am guessing u weren’t from the internet industry before this? How did you finance the development?
Lorenzo Dickerson :
No I wasn’t. I worked in banking and have a degree in Business management, and am currently working on my MBA in marketing while my business partner is an Engineer.

We financed the development solely from personal savings. No investors.

SocialTalkr :
Bootstrapped since day 1. That’s impressive. So are you looking for future investors?
Lorenzo Dickerson :
Yes we are. It is not critical for the progress of the site or the company, but it will definitely speed things along and allow us to do a lot more with the company

SocialTalkr :
How many people make up bid realm today?
Lorenzo Dickerson :
We have myself as the President and Mr. Travis White as the Vice-President to make up Bidrealm.NET. We are actually cousins. We grew up together and have always worked well together and been successful. Our web developer is not a partner in or employee of Bidrealm.NET, but we do still continuously work with him on keeping the site fresh and competitive.

SocialTalkr :
Are u working full time on it today? What about Travis?
Lorenzo Dickerson :
We both work full-time jobs. Myself in banking and Travis in Engineering. We are currently working on being able to manage Bidrealm.NET full-time hopefully in the near future. Venture capital to help build the site further, attract more users and continue to set Bidrealm apart from the competition will help with this.

SocialTalkr :
What are you and Travis’ roles? Do you guys specialize on any aspect of Bidrealm
Lorenzo Dickerson :
Travis is a very social person and lives near our nation’s capital Washington, DC. Therefore he is able to attend numerous events to promote the company. He is a people person and through his innate ability to build relationships with people and his creativity as an engineer, he is key in building the Bidrealm brand. I am the business manager. I enjoy running the day-to-day of the company and communicating with affiliates, users and our web developer. I am the lead on the company’s overall operation and use my business education and management experience to keep Bidrealm ahead of the competition.

SocialTalkr :
What do u think were your biggest obstacles so far?
Lorenzo Dickerson :
So far the biggest obstacles include financing and starting something new from the ground up. Financing is an obstacle not because the company needs funds to operate or get initially started, but because at the overwhelming rate that our thought process works and the ongoing innovation that we deal with every day, it is sometimes difficult for the financing to keep up what the speed of the company and its progress. As far as starting this new venture, the obstacle is starting from scratch, though it allows for a lot of creativity and the ability to build the best site out there, there is nothing like us on the web, there is no format for follow except for the blueprint that is in the founder’s heads.

SocialTalkr:
It sounds like you went through a lot to get to where you are today. Who are your influences & motivators?
Lorenzo Dickerson:
Historically or influences are African American pioneers in business such as A.G Gaston, Maggie Lena Walker and Madam CJ Walker.Currently we look to major players in the internet game, Ebay, Facebook & Google for inspiration on building a successful web company.  Donny Deutsch from the popular CNBC television show The Big Idea, always says “There’s got to be a better way”.  We believe that we have found just that.  A better way to conduct home improvement business with greater efficiency, online.

SocialTalkr :
Do you have a public profile somewhere that our readers can view?

Lorenzo Dickerson :
People can read a bit about us at our “about us” page at http://www.bidrealm.net/aboutus.aspx, or they can also check out our Facebook group page.

Links Summary

Visit Bidrealm
http://www.bidrealm.net

Read about Lorenzo & Travis
http://www.bidrealm.net/aboutus.aspx

Join the Bidrealm FB Group
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=12806295853

Read the Bidrealm Blog
http://www.bidrealm.wordpress.com

Howard Huang

SocialTalkr:
Howard, in your own words, can you please describe Wacanai?

Howard Huang:
Wacanai.com is a website that gives auto-generated suggestions about “How can you use the things you have?”.

The core concept is simple: “Everything needs other things to be done”. Wacanai helps users discover what they can do (cook, DIY, travel, fun…almost every aspects of life) with their present belongings.

For example, say you have a toast and an egg in your fridge; the only option in your mind is probably make a sandwich. However, different kinds of people tend to use things in a diverse way. Wacanai aggregates everyone ideas about using everything. Say someone posts a way to make an African style pie out of an egg and a toast, Wacanai will push the idea to you if you have an egg and a toast.

The beauty of it is that with our technology, you won’t need to purchase anything else to discover possibilities.

It’s kind of a reverse way of creation.
We start from what you have instead of what you want.
We don’t mind someone post something about different ways to smoke pot.

SocialTalkr:
Ha ha ha okay. Is that off the record?
Howard Huang:
No, you can say it ha.

SocialTalkr:
Alright so tell me about the name Wacanai?
Howard Huang:
It’s short for “What can I” and if you say in Japanese, it sounds like “I don’t know”
(Socialtalkr: “Wakaranai” in Japanese)

SocialTalkr:
How long has it been since Wacanai has been launched?
Howard Huang:
Less than a month. We launched it in 6/24/08 during IDEAS Show. IDEAS Show is a web-expo held in Taiwan similar to DEMO expo held in San Diego, CA.

SocialTalkr:
So tell us about the development process for Wacanai?
Howard Huang:
It took about 8 months
The biggest challenge was to launch it on time!
I started this about 3 years after my graduation
The 8 month means me and my team worked full time on Wacanai.

SocialTalkr:
How did you start financing Wacanai?
Howard Huang:
First of all, I gave up my budget & opportunity to study abroad and we built the core technology using that money. Now, we have a pretty smooth funding process. In fact, I just sealed a deal. The first funding round of about 10000000 NTD (this morning)
(SocialTalkr: 330K USD series A from an undisclosed private investor)

SocialTalkr:
Congratulations! How far will this money take you?
Howard Huang:
Projected more than 2 years.
We have free bandwidth and server sponsored by a Seednet (an ISP in Taiwan).
All our expenses are operational (salaries).

SocialTalkr:
So are you still looking for investors?
Howard Huang:
Sure. We are creating an innovation, in global market, 300K is still less than what I estimated.
We are planning to open an office in Silicon Valley to contact more NVs in North America
We are hoping the make it happen late this year.
Let’s put it this way, more money, faster expansion

SocialTalkr:
How are you planning to monetize Wacanai? What are your revenue streams?
Howard Huang:
In simple terms, we charge from Enterprise users; we also generate revenue from ADs. The Enterprise solution has not yet been released. For the enterprise solution, Wacanai provides an exchange API to malls/hypermarkets. After users buy goods from the mall, users can manage their resource in Wacanai by simply keying the receipt number. By this, mall gains more returning customers, so we charge a fee to the malls.

For example, when I go to a mall, I buy my groceries, eggs, orange juice, etc. When i input my receipt, Wacanai automatically knows what i bought. By doing this, you get advice about what you can do with the items purchased

Wacanai Value and Process Flow

(SocialTalkr: Detailed business plan available from the Wacanai Blog)

SocialTalkr:
Did u have any previous entrepreneurial experience?

Howard Huang:
Wacanai is our second project, the first failed. However in terms of forming a real company itself this is my first experience.

The first was called SherryCosmos. It’s about total backup/storage/share files for individuals or small companies similar to mozy.com

The reason to fail is that I was over dependent on outsourcing. The interesting thing is that Wacanai was some kind of a plan B, and it turned out that Wacanai was far more interesting to investors and others. So SherryCosmos now became our company name.

So we shifted our plan B to major project. SherryCosmos is put to paper stage

SocialTalkr:
Thanks for the interview Howard. Do u have anything else you would like to add?

Howard Huang:
I want to say that being a website located in Taiwan, the government really provides good support. Normally, web start-ups are relatively nerdy, all engineers & programmers. Taiwan Govt has a project to support us startups in “starting-up”, funding, capitals, usability. They help us to find resources.

Like Seednet, the sponsor I mentioned is introduced by the Govt. Govt holds a contest, thus filtered out some of the websites. In plain English, we won the contest, and we get lots of free stuff and support. They even supported us to attend DEMO FALL 08

(SocialTalkr: Govt Website http://www.iii.org.tw/english/index.asp)

Links Summary

Visit Wacanai
www.wacanai.com

Read more about Howard (personal blog)
www.ccool.idv.tw/blog

What exactly is Wacanai up to? Read Wacanai’s Blog
http://wacanaien.blogspot.com/

Read more about Govt Support in Taiwan
http://www.iii.org.tw/english/index.asp

Howards elevator pitch during Ideas Show
http://wacanaien.blogspot.com/2008/07/keynote-presentation-from-ceo-howard.html

Wacanais Business Plan
http://wacanaien.blogspot.com/2008/07/about-company.html

IDEAS Show Expo in Taiwan
http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/2008_III_IDEAS_Show_to_showcase_achievements_of_Internet_industry_in_Taiwan