About    Team    Business   Press   Partner   Contact Us

Wrapup for Developer Series 3: Startups and Platforms
Explorer Grant: Call for Proposals: Games and Web Applications


  • iTwin Shares their TechCrunch50 Experience

    Sep
    22
    posted by guest on Tuesday, September 22, 2009 at 3:07pm Categories: Blog

    picture-151Editor’s note: Lux and Kal are the guys behind iTwin, the first Singaporean startup to launch at TechCrunch50. They share their honest and frank insights as young startup founders and give a first hand behind-the-scenes account of what happened before their pitch.

    Lux and I are back from TechCrunch50 and Mohan suggested we share our experiences and observations.

    (Before getting to that, we want to thank the people who mentioned iTwin to Nik when he was over in Singapore. That was the catalyst for our first meeting, which ended up leading to the TechCrunch50 stage. We owe you.)

    The Experience
    Skipping over the initial discussion, interview, selection & our (frantic) preparations, we start at the rehearsals. There were two pitch rehearsals for iTwin, which were overseen by Jason Calacanis and Tyler Crowley of Mahalo. Looking back, when we compare the pitch at the first rehearsal to what ended up on stage (we have videos of all 3), there is an order of magnitude difference in impact. Jason and Tyler sliced away the less relevant parts and distilled our pitch wonderfully, within just 45 mins over two rehearsal-slots. That ability to quickly identify relevance is something that comes with experience, I reckon. If you can find someone like that, whom you consider credible & tech-savvy enough to listen to, grab them and bore them to death with your pitch. And ask them to be frank (read brutal). Preferably, find someone who you know is naturally frank.

    The knowledge that one is going to be on-stage at TechCrunch50 focuses the mind wonderfully on improving one’s pitch, in a way that probably nothing else in the world can. In the weekend between second rehearsal and TechCrunch50, I spent hours walking around Frisco, practicing the pitch and optimizing it. The plan was to be so prepared that even if the brain completely froze on-stage, the pitch would work on auto-pilot.

    On Sunday, September 13th, evening was the technical dry run, where we met Michael Arrington, Editor of TechCrunch, who wished us luck. Things went smoothly at the dry run. So, of course, 5 minutes before we went Live on stage the next day, the exact same VGA adaptor (that we had used in the dry run) stopped working. We didn’t have a backup for that exact adaptor in-hand, so we had to scramble to switch to a different laptop which had an appropriate adaptor available. There’s nothing quite like the feeling of not being able to connect your laptop to the projector 5 minutes before going Live at TechCrunch50…

    By the way, the scale of the event is quite staggering. The backstage setup alone was massive. Best of all, the event brings together and attracts the best of Silicon Valley. Quite the achievement.

    Our pitch was on Monday morning and we were lucky that way, cos that gave us more time at the Demo Pit. The pitch itself was a wonderful experience. To pitch the product one helped create to the world’s technology elite was a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

    Observations

    Which brings us to our observations. In all cases, the startups had executed their idea really well. This was to be expected beforehand since these were the leading ones from amongst the 1000 that applied to TC50 but the quality still impressed enormously. The startups’ ideas were straightforward in some cases but the work they had put into bringing the idea to its current state was amazing. Some of the startups at TC50 also had excellent and quite memorable presentations. They showed signed contracts with partners, brought their lead customers on-stage etc. The TC50 presentation videos are thus worth a watch. Personally, I enjoyed the energy of the Udorse presenter.

    As we made our way through the 2 days of TC50, one thing that we really enjoyed was seeing famous tech people (the kind you refer to by a single name) everywhere we turned. The concentration and volume of smart people and tech-savvy investors is breathtaking. Hopefully, we are on our way to replicating that here.

    There is also a palpable, motivational effect from seeing all these famous people and the cutting-edge, admired Valley companies right there, personally at least. For example, on walking past One Infinite Loop, I remember feeling positively inspired.

    Our exposure thanks to TC50 also made us realise the benefits of the media. America is where the technology world’s best publications come from. Naturally, in the process of reading them, one also gets info about the startup scene and those startups thus garner feedback, partners, beta users and customers. In that sense, startups in the Valley have an advantage. Startups outside America are getting more attention now. At TC50, there were startups from around the world, which is a great thing. There is a real need for our local startups to get serious, global exposure. Shows like CES etc. seem a good bet. If you have suggestions, please share.

    Conclusion

    We have been lucky, so far, with iTwin.

    Our sincere thanks to the people at ETPL and I2R who have helped us, funded us and given us the room to implement our idea. Most importantly, THANK YOU to the engineers in the iTwin team: Gopal, Frenky, Handi, Arun, Feri, Krishnan and Wee Li. They are the ones who make the magic happen. Finally, thanks to Don and Joanne (from NUS) for their excellent creative work during their attachment with us.

    We have found that iTwin inspires extreme reactions, positive and negative. Both help in their own way. We are learning as we go along (we hope).

    The process of developing iTwin has made us really appreciate the entrepreneurs who commit to a vision and stick with it over years, through tough times and against massive odds. That takes a special kind of person. It has been my pleasure to have met some of you and we appreciate your support and enthusiasm. Thanks.

    If you have any questions, criticism or feedback, we are at [lux, kal]@itwin.sg. And if you are ever in the Fusionopolis area, give us a shout.


26 Responses to “iTwin Shares their TechCrunch50 Experience”


Leave Your Comment




Stay Connected.

Subscribe to our Newsletters
e27 on Facebook
e27 on Twitter
e27 on Slideshare
e27 on Flickr
Blog Feed
Events Feed
top

© 2006-2010 Entrepreneur 27 Singapore: Web 2.0 Unconferences, Sites & Cool Tech

Use of this site is subject to terms of use, which prohibit commercial use of this site.
By continuing past this page, you agree to abide by these terms.

Creative Commons License This work by is licensed under
a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0
Singapore License.