I have moved!

Am currently blogging somewhere else. =)

Find and Follow me here:

www.jackyyapp.com

MSN Fraud

This morning i woke up to an MSN from an acquaintance i met the other day at Demoday.  The conversation goes as follows:

Basically he asked me whether can i transfer money for his friend on his behalf.

He asked me to transfer a few thousand to his friend. I almost did because Ill be seeing him tomorrow so I thought he’s gonna return me tomorrow night. But I dint have my online banking activated.

Later on in the afternoon, he msn-ed me:

Totally cannot imagine if i activated my online banking.

The cyber world is very dangerous.

Interested to be part of a founding team?

Im currently looking for people to work with me on a project. Its a website trying to connect singaporeans to Shanghai tech & startup landscape(vice versa) and the project is in ideation stage. basically its something like www.technode.com but with more exciting stuff! =)

i need,

• Someone based in Shanghai who shares the same ASPIRATION and who wants to try out something in their uni life
• Someone who can write (any bloggers out there?) and who is wiling to dedicate their time in shanghai attending events and all those networking stuff
• Someone who observes the happening and latest trend in Shanghai and can write their thoughts on it
• Someone who believes in the power of internet in reaching people

What i can offer:

• Not much for now but we can work on this project and if its a hit then it can be a nice addon to ur resume next time and nice to tell people “hey i tried started this with this that and the project was about this that / im part of the founding team of this that during my uni life”
• Commercialization of the website is still a long way to go but its very possible. =)

Please Drop be an email @ jackyyapp@gmail.com if you are interested. If you are keen to work with me on this project do drop me an email as well, whether you are based in Shanghai or Singapore (need people to work on Singapore side as well). I would also love to hear from you even if you are not interested. =)

 

Thoughts on a few startups that presented on Demoday

Techyizu Demo Day

Last Sunday, Techyizu organized a Demo Day in Shanghai.

About Demo Day

Demo Day allows seven selected tech start-ups with a minimally viable product to refine their demos via a closed session with selected mentors. On the following day, the start -ups will have 15 minutes to present their demo to a judging panel of investors and entrepreneurs.

Presenting Startups

1. Aimifan – Convenient online food delivery platform
2. Mamazuofan – A way for neighborhood cooks to sell dishes from home
3. Pengyouquan – (to be revealed)
4. Rudy Bike – High performance electric motorcycles with classic styling
5. Trader Analytics – Online game that teaches aspiring Wall Street traders
6. Tuiping – In-depth information search and analysis for users and marketers
7. VXPLO – Cloud-based new media solution based on SaaS tools

Pengyouquan

Pengyouquan brands themselves as the natural social network. With the tagline of 和不同的人分享不同的事, the social side differentiates themselves from other major players such as facebook by allowing users to know other users first before adding them as friends. The company believes that your friend list should only be those whom you treat them as your real friends, unlike those acquaintances you met at some party. This is the “natural way” of making friends. According to the founder in his presentation, he said that as you get more and more friends on your social network (think facebook), you tend to share lesser and lesser on it because the whole world is paying attention at what you are doing. This defeats the purpose of social network. Pengyouquan hopes to create a “world without strangers” where the friend list is not shared.

Building on the social network, to gain more users the social network leverages on the usability and efficiency of mobile devices where mobile phone address books are used as the method to import contacts. The mobile app of Pengyouquan also allows you to edit the photos before sharing it onto the social network. Pengyouquan also incorporated its services with the China twitter Singlang Weibo where one can share tweets from weibo to pengyouquan and viceversa.

Thoughts:

While the whole idea behind the social network is very new and yes “creating a world without strangers” sound pretty promising, personally I think that the Chinese market are dominated by renren, tencent and weibo. Pengyouquan to me sound just like another site for me to post some updates and share some photos and why should I go for pengyouquan when I already have my friends on weibo or renren? And I think that educating the netizens about the idea behind pengyouquan can be quite challenging especially the whole concept of和不同的人分享不同的事. 怎么样和不同的人分享不同的事？

Mamazuofan.com

Founded by 2 French guys, MamaZuoFan is the first online community for meal sharing within your neighborhood, to enjoy home-made prepared dishes, as if it were the ones your mama used to prepare for you. The idea like how I understand it: meet your awesome negihbours who cook awesome food, pay for their food! For the customers, this is a good way for those expatriates whom yearn for home cooked food in their neighbourhood or those who want to try out local homemade food. For the cooks, mamazuofan provides them with the platform they need to commercialize their product and earn some cash and also to gain some popularity. To make this possible, users are allowed to comment and recommend the dishes that they tasted before. There are also halal food promoted in the website and Im sure many muslim friends out there will find this website extremely helpful.

This business model is pure C2C where the cook will deal directly with the customers will have to pick up the food themselves. Mamazuofan only provides a platform for them to connect with each other and earns through transaction fee as well as through advertising. When asked about the liability issue and food safety concern during the Q&A session at the Demo day, the founders mentioned that there is a disclaimer that reminds customers that “the responsibility is wholly the one of the users to take the necessary measures to protect their and other’s health and safety”

Mamazuofan prides itself as the Asia based first food social network and as it suggests, the idea is actually not new in the startup space. Gobble [http://www.gobble.com/] is a similar startup based in the states just raised $1.2mil from Founder Collective and mamazuofan is just an incorporation of the idea into the Chinese market, catering to the needs of the expat markets here in China. While Gobble manages to raise funds for its startup which reflects the strong confidence of the investors towards the whole idea of ‘connecting home chefs with customers’, I don’t see why mamazuofan will not succeed in China, especially in Shanghai, where the expatriate community here is very big. And most importantly, they are willing to spend on good quality food.

Mamazuofan has also been covered by Cnngo. Read it here: http://www.cnngo.com/shanghai/eat/mamazuofan-shanghais-home-chef-cook-storm-014056

Thoughts:

Because I am considered an expat here in Shanghai, I would definitely use the service of the website. Probably the founders could spend more time and spare some thoughts on how to better reach the expat community and how to market the whole idea to them because if it weren’t for the demo day, I wouldn’t have known about this. And I am sure that although there are a lot of times where I would have sudden cravings for home cooked food, the first thing that come across my mind would be cityweekend or smartshanghai – to search for restaurants that serve my hometown cuisine. I’m sure if the marketing is done properly, mamazuofan would do very well in shanghai.

Rudybike

Weipingjia

Weipingjia in English means Weibo comment analyst, and as the name suggest, is a company providing real time weibo comment analysis. With features such as auto filtering of comments, trending keywords, clustering of commenting, satisfaction analysis as well as semantic analysis, companies can monitor their brand presence online on weibo. This B2B website is founded in May and earns mainly through weibo marketing, brand monitoring as well as online branding strategies consultation.

Thoughts:

To me, weipingjia is the perfect example of the incorporation of business models overseas into the Chinese market. It seems to me that weipingjia and brandtology is basically running the same business model:

Image: http://www.brandtology.com/our-difference/how-brandtology-can-help/

But a good business model always work. There are still not a lot of companies out there that offers social media monitoring and since the social media is growing exponentially, there is definitely market for weipingjia to tap.

Traders analytics corp

“Traders Analytics Corp is a social gaming company that makes niche games for finance nerds”, introduced Founder and CEO, Michael Tanenbaum. How does it work? Students or whoever is interested in the field of banking and finance, can sign up (for free) and take part in the specially designed game which is model upon real financial simulations adopted by banks to access their summer interns. In the game, the participants will be given virtual currency to trade in real life stocks/funds/options in real time based on real life market data. The top performers of each category can be identified and be recruited by financial institutions or bankings. For the students, there are also a specially crafted tutorial to teach them the basics of how finance work.

The aim of the company is to connect the banks and financial institutions with the right individuals. “Banks are hiring the wrong people”. Building on the company, behavioral analysts are also engaged to analyse the participants on their personality to ensure that the prospective individuals are the best fit for the company who are hiring.

“UltraTradr is a game, learning device, and recruiting tool all rolled into one fun, easy-to-use interface. UltraTradr lets users learn how markets work by replicating trading environments. Players trade units of one commodity, the absolute value of which is revealed at the end of an exchange.”

The revenue model? Banks can pay a subscription fee to observe the performance of the participants in real time. There will also be an engagement fee should any firm is interested in contacting the participant.

Thoughts: This is definitely something that I would want to try out. Personally I think the tutorial system is a brilliant way not only to draw in more users and to help educate them about finance but also to help them discover the economist in them. Trader Analytics Corp makes the learning process a fun and interactive one through the tutorial, enhancing the user experience. Nowadays, everything is about maximal user experience, creating word of mouth to promote the product to their social network.

Aimifan

The last startup to present at Demo Day was Aimifan. For Aimifan, it serves to address the problem of overdue food delivery flyers and the frustration of having to call in and place your food delivery order. With Aimifan, all the latest updated menu from various partner restaurants can be found at the website and when you want to order “waimai’ (food delivery), you can just log onto the website and place your order online. The order will be sent directly to the restaurant and there will be an email confirmation for you. What is exciting about this startup is that there are working on an English version of the website this would definitely cater to the expat community here.

When we look at the competitive landscape of Aimifan, there are a godzilian websites that offers food delivery services, be it independent ones [mealbay.net] or those delivery services offered by established restaurants or fast food chain (think McD), and whether it is targeted to the locals[http://www.wai-mai.com/ShangHai.php] with lower purchasing power or those catering to expats [www.sherpa.com]

Thoughts

While Aimifan has a pretty nice landing site and a cute brand logo, I think they are competing in a very competitive industry. The company is aiming to serve the needs of the white collars and expat community whom are price sensitive and who are looking for cheap waimai food. Existing Chinese waimai websites only provides the menu and phone numbers of the restaurants and customers have to call and place their order themselves, while aimifan took the liberty of helping their customers do just that. To stand out from its competitors, aimifan must build up its restaurant partners on its website, and they should not choose those restaurants with expensive food(thus competing head on with the well established Sherpa.com) but instead, should focus on partnering with restaurants with affordable foods. Maybe Aimifan can incorporate the groupon deals onto the website, after all, aimifan is targeting the price sensitive white collar market. Aimifan could also offer some incentives to its users if they were to refer new users to its website. The incorporation of google maps definitely enhanced the user’s experience on the website and probably Sherpa can learn how to do this in their website.

And so, we graduated from the NOC program. Will be leaving Shanghai soon.

Definitely gonna miss all of them. This is not the end, its the beginning of a new chapter in life.

Me and my ex supervisor from my old company.

Final 2 weeks

In 2 weeks time, NOC is finally coming to an end. My life here in Shanghai is slowing drawing its curtain. It would take me a few blog posts to pen down what I have learnt in this 1 year. Maybe just a few quick points so that I can remember:

1. Make things happen.
2. Life is not a dress rehearsal. You only have one shot at making it fabulous.
3. Rely on nobody but yourself.
4. You are 23 years old and counting!
5. It is important to assess where you stand today.
6. Your net worth is determined by the people that you hang around with.
7. Power of networking
8. Need to polish up resume

I have to say that I am very very excited to go back to Singapore because I am more clear on my short terms plan. =) They say NOC supposed to be where you get out from your comfort zone in Singapore and explore the world. While that is true, going back again to Singapore now gave me another chance and opportunity to explore and get out of my comfort zone yet again. =) Gonna revamp my blog and start blogging again when I go back to Singapore, just like how I used to, before I came to Uni.

To do list back in Singapore:

1. Pick up web designing
2. Learn Photoshop
3. Finance Planning & loan servicing
4. Make blogging a daily habit
5. Ted.com instead of drama
6. Know God
7. Work on startup ideas & start earning money

In the last 1 month I have taken part in 2 global business case competition, the first one being the ESIC Global Marketing Competition and the second one being the Nyenrode 24 Hours Business Case Challenge. For the ESIC GMC which is still ongoing, I got into the semi finals and was ranked 8th in the Asia + Oceania Category (51 countries took part). =) For the Nyenrode Competition, I teamed up with 2 Indians, 1 girl from Netherlands and another guy from South Africa and our team got 2nd.

Through the competition which the participants have to make managerial decisions which includes: production, marketing, finance, human resource, pricing, distribution and assembly line, I really learnt a lot, especially in the GMC.

1. Familiarize myself with the income statement, balance sheet and cashflow statement as well as the mechanics behind all the numbers.
2. Highest cost in any operations = Cost of goods.
3. Launch more versions to the market to test it.
4. Product Design > Price War
5. Under stress I perform better individually. At other times, teamwork > going solo.

http://video.ted.com/assets/player/swf/EmbedPlayer.swf

Good watch. Try to understand what is the message behind this vid. =)

Nurse reveals the top 5 regrets people make on their deathbed

By Bonnie Ware(who worked for years nursing the dying)

1. I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.

This was the most common regret of all. When people realise that their life is almost over and look back clearly on it, it is easy to see how many dreams have gone unfulfilled. Most people have had not honoured even a half of their dreams and had to die knowing that it was due to choices they had made, or not made.

It is very important to try and honour at least some of your dreams along the way. From the moment that you lose your health, it is too late. Health brings a freedom very few realise, until they no longer have it.

2. I wish I didn’t work so hard.

This came from every male patient that I nursed. They missed their children’s youth and their partner’s companionship. Women also spoke of this regret. But as most were from an older generation, many of the female patients had not been breadwinners. All of the men I nursed deeply regretted spending so much of their lives on the treadmill of a work existence.

By simplifying your lifestyle and making conscious choices along the way, it is possible to not need the income that you think you do. And by creating more space in your life, you become happier and more open to new opportunities, ones more suited to your new lifestyle.

3. I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings.

Many people suppressed their feelings in order to keep peace with others. As a result, they settled for a mediocre existence and never became who they were truly capable of becoming. Many developed illnesses relating to the bitterness and resentment they carried as a result.

We cannot control the reactions of others. However, although people may initially react when you change the way you are by speaking honestly,in the end it raises the relationship to a whole new and healthier level. Either that or it releases the unhealthy relationship from your life. Either way, you win.

4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends. 

Often they would not truly realise the full benefits of old friends until their dying weeks and it was not always possible to track them down. Many had become so caught up in their own lives that they had let golden friendships slip by over the years. There were many deep regrets about not giving friendships the time and effort that they deserved.Everyone misses their friends when they are dying.
It is common for anyone in a busy lifestyle to let friendships slip.But when you are faced with your approaching death, the physical details of life fall away. People do want to get their financial affairs in order if possible. But it is not money or status that holds the true importance for them. They want to get things in order more for the benefit of those they love. Usually though, they are too ill and weary to ever manage this task. It is all comes down to love and relationships in the end. That is all that remains in the final weeks,love and relationships.

5. I wish that I had let myself be happier.

This is a surprisingly common one. Many did not realise until the end that happiness is a choice. They had stayed stuck in old patterns and habits. The so-called ‘comfort’ of familiarity overflowed into their emotions, as well as their physical lives. Fear of change had them pretending to others, and to their selves, that they were content. When deep within, they longed to laugh properly and have sillyness in their life again.
When you are on your deathbed, what others think of you is a long way from your mind. How wonderful to be able to let go and smile again,long before you are dying

Source: Posterous

=) Gonna print this and paste it in my KR room when i get back to Singapore.

I have great plans when I am back in Singapore. =)