Free passes for New Venture Creation Workshop by BANSEA!

If you are eager to learn practical fund-raising strategies and tools to woo investors as well as see things from investors’ perspectives.  New Venture Creation Workshop is the place to go!

You will gain a fresh perspective by drawing from successful angel trainers in various areas of writing and pitching business plans and equity financing mechanisms.  Learn the do’s and don’ts from the 2 angels’ personal experiences with start-ups they have invested and mentored.

Business Angels Network South-East Asia (BANSEA) in colloaboration with GEW will be holding their new venture creation workshop tomorrow on 19th Nov, 9:00 A.M – 1: 45 P.M.

Topics that will be covered for the workshop include:

* Business plan writing and pitching

* Causes of Entrepreneurship Failure – and How to avoid them

* Fund Raising Strategies & Understanding your Investor

* Funding requirements & Life Cycle

* Angels vs. VCs

* The Investment Process

* Plus real-life startup case studies

* Consultation session with business angels – Pierre Hennes and Wong Meng Weng

Interested applicants can mail kellyhan [at] bansea [dot] org quoting “E27 Guests”. Please note that due to limited free slots it will be on a first come first serve basis.

Singapore Web Technology Network: Meetup With Simone Brunozzi, Evangelist, Amazon Web Services

Our recent announcement on Amazon setting up the Asia Pacific cloud infrastructure in Singapore generated quite a stir of interest, with people tweeting about it and having online discussions about the benefits of this. Meng Weng Wong has even suggested setting up an AWS user’s group in Singapore, so for those interested in this intiative, feel free to get in touch with him.

If you want to learn more about AWS, as well as understand how this will affect your startup, there will be a Singapore Web Technology Network meetup with Simone Brunozzi from AWS on November 26th. Organized by the NUS Linux Users’ Group and Azione Capital, this will be an excellent opportunity to get all your queries cleared, from Amazon’s representative itself. Details below:

Event: An Afternoon with Simone Brunozzi, Evangelist, Amazon Web Services

Date and Time: November 26, 2009 @ 4:00 PM

Location:

What’s Next Studio, F11, Symbiosis Block, Fusionopolis

Singapore 138632

Singapore

(map here)

Agenda:

4.00pm Registration

4.30pm Presentation by Simone Brunozzi, Amazon Web Services

5.15pm Discussion and Sharing

6.00pm End

Simone looks forward to share with the audience on the latest trends on cloud computing, Amazon Web Services, and intricate details about Amazon S3. He will also have an open discussion following his presentation with the participants.

About Simone Brunozzi

Simone Brunozzi is a technology enthusiast, involved in IT and computing since an early age.

He joined Amazon.com in March 2008 in the role of Web Services Evangelist, traveling across Europe and vicinity to showcase the innovative new solutions by Amazon Web Services and to help developers build businesses and applications. He is following the “Cloud Computing” paradigm shift since 2006, and believes that it is going to replace the traditional computing model in a few years.

Of Italian origins, Simone loves traveling, meeting people, and connecting with them. He is a Linux and Ubuntu passionate, loves blogging on www.brunozzi.com, and has interests in the environment, clean energies, and technology in general.

Prior to joining Amazon, Simone had his own business focusing on web applications. He also served as a professor of Programming Languages and Compilers at Perugia University and worked as a network and system administrator at the University for Foreigners in Perugia. Simone has a Computer Science degree and spent six months at UC Irvine, California, where he studied the American approach to business and science. He gained early programming experience at the Ministry of Aerial Defense in Rome, Italy.

Singapore Linux Group November Meetup – Grails in the Cloud

If you are thrilled about the upcoming Amazon Cloud Infrastructure in Singapore, and a big proponent of open source, here is an event just for you. Singapore Linux group is hosting a meetup on Nov 18th, at SMU SIS Building, to discuss the effectiveness of Grails on Amazon’s EC2 as opposed to Google App Engine.

About Grails

Grails is an Open Source Web framework which leverages on the Groovy programming language. Grails is an advanced and innovative open source web application platform that delivers new levels of developer productivity by applying principles like Convention over Configuration. It helps development teams embrace agile methodologies, deliver quality applications in reduced amounts of time, and focus on what really matters: creating high quality, easy to use applications that delight users. Grails naturally complements Java application development since it is built on Spring and based on Groovy, the leading dynamic language for the Java platform.

The event will be held at Singapore Management University, SIS Building, Room NSR 2.1 (Level 2) from 7.00 p.m.

Event: Grails in the Cloud
Date: Nov 18th, 7.00pm onwards
Location: Singapore Management University, SIS Building, Room NSR 2.1 (Level 2)

Yahoo! Selects Regional Developers for Open Hack Day

Yahoo! launched their first ever Open Hack Day in Southeast Asia in mid October and developers have been raving about it since then. Other than the usual hacker and developer group meetups, there hasn’t been any large scale hacking events going around in Southeast Asia. That definitely took a turn when Yahoo! launched the Open Hack Day initiative. It’s a refreshing change to the up and coming developer ecosystem, something even our friends have been raving about for a while now.

Best part of all is that Yahoo! is encouraging people from various regions to mingle and innovate by giving opportunities to talented developers around the region. They have done this through their regional developer selection campaign where they will be flying developers across the region to attend and hack at the event. They recently rounded up the selection process and 1 developer from each region (Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam and Philippines) was picked for an all expenses paid trip to attend the event . We are proud to announce the 4 deserving developers who will be joining us in Jakarta next week.

From Singapore

Siddharth Singhal is a technology enthusiast driven by innovation. His work has gotten many accolades around the world by companies like Gemalto, Microsoft, British Telecom, Tata Consultancy Services, Freescale Semiconductors, N.P.L. , N.I.C.(India), A.U.V.S.I. etc.. . His last two ventures Indriyaan and Jal gained a lot of traction worldwide. While his primary work has been in the field of embedded systems, the objective driving him has been to enable better lives, through technology. He has worked on a variety of languages and platforms from assembly level, C in RTOSes, hobby robots etc. to developing entire solutions on Microsoft technologies for Imagine Cup’07 and ‘08.

From Malaysia

Nazrul swings on the web, life, culture and free open source software technology leading a life as a creative information technologist. An experienced Web designer & developer, he programmatical-ly uses his left brain to create & develop web applications and participate in open source projects munching Drupal cookies & Open Source cakes. On the right, he embraces chaos & simplicity in design.

From Vietnam

Chan is an 18-year old chap who works as a freelancer in Ho Chi Minh City – Vietnam. Having gone through an intensive-algorithm program in high school, he is now only interested in web technology and has since then, dabbled with Flash, PHP, JavaScript and web design. After his senior year, he decided to take a year off and work for Zoes Creative Studio as an IT Manager. However, with a great desire for technology, he longs to finish his science bachelor degree in KAIST University for the next four coming years. During his spare time, Chan. loves to travel and get his hands dirty with the traditional Japanese paper folding art called Origami. Check him out on Facebook and Twitter.

From Philippines

After a five-year stint as head of VAS and later, of Innovations, at Sun Cellular, Dominick Danao founded Happy.Mobile Corp., a mobile VAS content aggregator in the Philippines. Happy.Mobile is also into consulting services, listing as clients Nokia,Siemens Networks, Bayan Telecommunications (CDMA network), Bluemedia Communications (WiMAX provider), among others.

Mr. Danao’s primary success as an IT innovator and entrepreneur happened 10 years ago when he founded and ran Pinoymail Corp., a free e-mail company catering to Filipinos worldwide. The company was sold at the height of the dotcom era in 1999, making it one of the Philippines’ biggest tech stories at the start of the millenium.

He has now replaced a cozy corporate life for a startup and is back into writing code. Obviously, his main interest is mobile applications; however, of late, he has been working on casual games on Facebook and online social games for kids with his nine-year-old daughter, who is the “chief creative officer” in his nascent gaming company.

iMatch International Launchpad 2009: Pitch to Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Benchmark Capital and Google

i.Match was launched in 2008, with much fanfare and hype, to help bridge the funding gap between the seed funding that MDA offers for their iJam scheme and series funding offered by venture capitalists. This is primarily offered to Interactive Digital Media companies (more specifically IDMPO funded companies) looking for that extra juice to commercialize their products and grow their companies. The upcoming Launchpad 2009 event looks like a great way for startups to do that.

Launchpad 2009 aims to showcase great, game changing innovation in Asia. The platform provides the opportunity for startups to mingle with investors, fellow entrepreneurs, incubators etc. Apart from networking alone, there will be a pitching element to it as well. The top 5-10 startups will get an opportunity to pitch to top notch international investors from Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Benchmark Capital and Google (more panelists will be confirmed). Pitching to them is good, but let’s hope they follow on with some funding please.

Companies interested in taking part can do so in the following manner:

(i) Submit a copy of their 1-minute elevator pitch to Junus Eu from Expara. Her email id is Junus [at] expara [dot] com. The email subject should be labelled as: “CFP for i.MATCH International by [Name of Company]”.

(ii) Submissions should include all relevant company information as requested above (this is based on the information available here).

(iii) Submissions received after the specified deadline (November 24th 2009) will not be considered.

Some of the overseas panelists for the event include:

Benchmark Capital – Jonathan Teo

Jonathan Teo has spent his career helping companies build distributed engineering organizations that enable technical teams and infrastructure to expand and scale globally.

Most recently he served as Engineering PM in the Search Properties and Enterprise Products groups at Google in Mountain View, and was an early member of its Strategy and Business Operations team. In both roles, he created highly leveraged engineering and product organizations in countries around the world, with a focus on expanding R&D to Asia and Eastern Europe. Prior to joining Google, he worked at Bain & Company, helping a Fortune 100 client optimize and grow its technical support organization. He also served as a consultant to Intuit, Electronic Arts and other technology companies, spent two years in the Republic of Singapore Air Force and was a founding member of a software development group focused on developing security protocols and analyzers. He currently holds patented work in the area of link layer security.

Jonathan’s investment areas cover enterprise software and infrastructure as well as mobile technologies. He is currently involved in investments in Twitter and Eucalyptus.

Education: M.S. from Stanford University. B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Sydney University.

DFJ India – Mohanjit Jolly

Mohanjit Jolly has spent the last ten years working with and investing in technology startups. Prior to DFJ, Mohanjit was Managing Director at Garage Technology Ventures, a seed and early stage venture capital firm. While at Garage, Mohanjit worked with over 30 companies, including LeftHand Networks, PureSight (BCGI), Jibe Networks (CTRX), Qumu, Thermoceramix, Kaboodle (Acq: Hearst Media) and SimplyHired. Prior to joining Garage, Mohanjit was part of the strategic planning group at Mattel where he helped launch the Mattel/Intel joint venture, Intel Play. He also spent several years in both engineering and business development roles with Itek Optical Systems, a manufacturer of high-resolution reconnaissance systems for both military and commercial use. While earning his M.B.A from the Anderson School at UCLA, Mohanjit helped launch ViaSpace, a technology incubator in Southern California in conjunction with Caltech and Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Mohanjit earned a B.S. and M.S. in Aeronautics and Astronautics from MIT, with a specialization in electric propulsion systems.

Google Corporate Development Group – Mike Pearson

Previously, he worked in investment banking with Goldman Sachs both in New York and London. Michael holds undergraduate degrees in Economics and Italian from Emory University and a Masters of Business Administration from Harvard. Michael joined the Corporate Development Group at Google in 2005 and is a senior member of the team responsible for all the company’s acquisitions and strategic minority investments. Prior to Google, Michael held positions at the private equity group McCown De Leeuw & Co focusing on investments in early stage companies.

Google: Corporate Development Group – Thomas Duterme

Tom is a Corporate Development Manager at Google. He focuses on acquisitions for Google in both the US and international markets. Tom previously worked in the New Business Development in Google and spearheaded early stage businesses for Google including Adsense for Games and also helped develop infrastructure partnerships for Google

Voice. Prior to joining Google, Tom helped launch two companies in the Internet space in China, playing the role of CTO and head of sales for each venture. While in China, Tom also helped multinational corporations negotiate market entries in the form of domestic acquisitions and joint ventures.

Tom graduated with a degree in physics from Macalester College. He also possesses an MBA from the MIT Sloan of Management. Tom is fluent in Mandarin and French, and has lived in China, Japan, France, Belgium, and various parts of the U.S.

Images courtesy: MDA