Industry News

The Founder Institute has extended the Founder application deadlines for Paris, Singapore and Denver based on multiple qualified applicant requests. The Los Angeles semester is now closed, since sessions are starting next week. If you have been accepted into any of the semesters, please complete the requirements to reserve your spot in the program.

Paris and Singapore applications are due next Sunday, March 7th. Denver applications are now due on Sunday, April 4th. If you have not done so already, take a moment to apply to Paris, Singapore and Denver. More news on these locations and Mentors will be announced over the next couple of days.

Good luck!

SINGAPORE, February 8th, 2010 – Silicon Valley-based The Founder Institute, a four-month training and mentoring programme for technology entrepreneurs, announces its first-ever Spring 2010 semester for Singapore. With this expansion, the Institute will be the first Silicon Valley mentoring program in Singapore, and will now be on pace to graduate over 700 founders creating over 500 companies per year in nine cities worldwide.

The Founder Institute has appointed Singapore-based venture advisory and investment firm Battle Ventures, who is partnered with iAxil, the venture accelerator arm of Ascendas, to jointly bring their programme to Singapore and Southeast Asia-based entrepreneurs.

Run by founders for founders, this unique mentoring program nurtures aspiring and current high-tech entrepreneurs and employs a unique, team-work oriented ecosystem to foster the establishment of new start-up ventures. The programme also allows a small amount of equity to be shared amongst all participants in the
companies formed – including the experienced mentors who help grow the new businesses.

“We have discovered a formula to help passionate founders create meaningful and enduring companies in different markets around the world,” says Adeo Ressi, CEO of TheFunded.com and the Founder Institute. “We leverage leading social science methods to identify top talent, and then we offer an intense start-up curriculum focused on teamwork and guidance from leading local and global CEOs. Our unique approach has allowed the Institute to scale almost ten times larger than comparable incubators or accelerators.”
“iAxil is committed to fostering a nurturing and vibrant start-up environment that is vital to spawning innovative high-tech start-ups with the global potential and appeal,” says Mr Tan Yew Chin, Director of iAxil and CEO of Ascendas Land (Singapore). “The iAxil team of senior incubator managers will combine their
business skills; domain expertise and start-up experience with our wide network of partners to help graduates from the Founder Institute Mentoring Programme jumpstart their ventures.”

During the semesters, local aspiring and current entrepreneurs can gain access to founders and CEOs of world-renown companies, such as Philip Kaplan, Co-Founder of Blippy, Jeff Stewart, Founder and CEO of Urgent Career, Pete Deemer, Co-Founder of Scrum Training Institute, Dr. KF Lai, Co-Founder and CEO of Buzzcity and Jared Morgenstern, Product Ninja of Facebook as mentors amongst others.

“One of the greatest problems facing local entrepreneurs is the lack of credible and experienced mentors to help guide and advise them,” said Jeffrey Paine, Managing Partner at Battle Ventures. “With this programme, our entrepreneurs now have access to founders who have successfully created and run multiple start-ups
themselves and who are best placed to advise them.”

Applications for early acceptance into the Singapore semester are due on February 15th, 2010, with the final application deadline on February 28th. Anyone starting a technology company or with a dream to launch an innovative business in Singapore is invited to apply at http://www.founderinstitute.com/apply/11.
The Singapore Founder Institute mentoring programme is administered by iAxil, and is supported by SPRING Singapore under the Incubator Development Programme (IDP).

The Mobile Premier Awards announces the 20 finalists to the Mobile Premier Awards in Innovation: The best grassroots startup innovation chosen by their peers in partnership with MobileMonday, the global community of mobile professionals.

The finalists were chosen by an international jury of the most recognized mobile industry experts who will pitch their idea, application or project at the Mobile Premier Awards event that takes place in Barcelona, at the Petit Palau of Palau de la Musica on February 15, 2010 in front of investors, operators, media companies, peer entrepreneurs, and press and influential bloggers.

(We sent one nomination to MPA, but this year Indonesia didn’t make it to the finals).

The year’s MPA best in Mobile Startup innovation Finalists are:

MobileMonday Austria – Mobilizy

MobileMonday Barcelona – fonYou

MobileMonday Berlin – spendino

MobileMonday Bogota – RedSalvavidas

MobileMonday Chennai – mobiSiteGalore

MobileMonday Copenhagen – Cepa Mobility

MobileMonday Edinburgh – Mobile Acuity

MobileMonday Estonia – TaxiPal

MobileMonday Lithuania – SendFlow

MobileMonday London – Audioboo

MobileMonday Milan – Soundtrckr

MobileMonday Munich – Aloqa

MobileMonday New Delhi – Voicetap Technologies

MobileMonday New York – PercentMobile

MobileMonday Oslo – Bipper Communication

MobileMonday Rest of EMEA – Layar

MobileMonday Silicon Valley – CloudMade

MobileMonday Slovenia – Visionect

MobileMonday Stockholm – MoSync

MobileMonday Tel Aviv – waze

The finalists chosen to the Innovation Awards will present along with the winners in the other categories chosen by our partner networks (see below).

You can follow their activities here on this MPA Finalist Twitter List.

Barcelona?

If you happen to be in Barcelona this February, please make sure to attend the MPA awarding ceremony… for details please check: link

Last week we had a joint event with Frost & Sullivan and Mobile Marketing Association (MMA, mmaglobal.com). It was also co-located with the Indonesia Telecoms Summit 2009.

Presenting were a number of who’s who in the mobile marketing in Indonesia… sharing their experience in running actual and successful mobile and digital campaign in Indonesia, plus also key statistics and insights about the future of this industry.

Rohit Dadwal from MMA explained the state of mobile marketing and how the association aim to drive and nourish this infant industry. He reminded us that Indonesia is BIG for mobile – more than 600 page views per user per month – well above global average of 250.

Next, P’ Sumantri from our own Indosat shared his experience in building Indosat’s i-klan mobile ad/marketing services. They have 1.5 million subscribers on i-kan now, and average response rate was ~20%. Indosat has quite comprehensive inventory: ranging from SMS, MMS, WAP, app store,  print ads on their vouchers and starter packs.

Andy Zain continued by sharing key stats from Indonesia mobile, telco, and advertising number, citing that currently only a paltry 0.02% from IDR 50T ad revenue went into digital/mobile ad.

Then we have Shinta “Bubu” sharing a very interesting success story about AXE integrated digital/traditional media campaign in Indonesia – the “Call Me” campaign. The statistics from the Axe Effect campaign run last year: 270k SMS, 760M calls from 32M unique numbers… The hotdog girl got 2 million calls a day! AXE sales up by 300%….

Oh, BTW, try to call 0855-889-0000 :p

Next Joseph “Joe” Lumban Gaol of m-stars also shared his precious experience running a mobile campaign for Green Sands. He mentioned something that I can’t forget: Go find the emotional benefit that you can offer to your users/subs, that is the stickiness factor for mob-ad – also the basics of marketing which applies here….

Benhard Soebiakto from Octovate was next on-stage, speaking from the point of view of a “traditional” media agency – the voice of a brand. Being cautious before jumping into the bandwagon, paying very close attention to the trends, eager to tap into this mobile media opportunities.

(Update: Thanks to Andy for the mention)

Ruben Eduardo from Pudding Media highlighted a very important point: SMS-based advertising, the old school. When 90% of all mobile subs used SMS, then you gotta consider this channel seriously. But he explained how to do it unobtrusively (not like these spammers…), for example ad insert in the bottom of reload SMS, etc. Talk to him, he’s got good ideas.

And finally Amiranto of j-spot talked about the potential of Augmented Reality (his latest pet project – Layar + Android), cool stuff. Some of their existing clienteles are looking into this technology, and how this can be applied into mobile marketing.

I guess all the presenters will eventually share their presentation slides (starting with Andy… soon…) for you to read and enjoy… so watch this space.

It’s time for the well-loved global events for mobile start-up companies! Announcing “Mobile Premier Awards 2010”

The MPA in Innovation is the same event we have all come to love. A global grassroots competition open to all MobileMonday chapters to nominate a local startup to eventually pitch in a full house of the industry’s influencers and decision makers in Barcelona, during the Mobile World Congress on February 15, 2010.

The MobileMonday chapters will vote for their local most innovative startup. An international jury of the most recognized mobile industry experts will select the 20 finalists from all the local chapter nominees to pitch at the event in Barcelona in front of investors, operators, media companies, peer entrepreneurs, and press and influential bloggers.

But there’s more!

As a new challenge, this year’s awards are our first attempt at bringing together more ecosystem players. We have partnered with some of the most influential networks in mobile to deliver other award opportunities for all participating startups.

Other Mobile Premier Awards 2010:

• MPA in Marketing – The best startup in Mobile Marketing
• MPA in Entertainment – The best startup in Mobile Entertainment in partnership with Mobile Entertainment Forum
• MPA in User Experience - The best startup in Mobile User Experience in partnership with MEX
• MPA in Social Change – The best startup using mobile for social change in partnership with MobileActive.org
• MPA in Female Entrepreneurship- The best woman-lead mobile startup in partnership with Women2.0 and the Women in Mobile Data Association

The Mobile Premier Awards 2010 selection process for MobileMonday chapters

1. Starting from November, online visibility will start on major mobile & technology blogs. Start-ups from all over the world can register themselves in the competition portal. [Make sure you select MobileMonday Jakarta as your affiliation]

2. On December 31 midnight local time, the competition will close and no new signups or edits will be allowed by the startups. Please inform us if you will have your nominee selection deadline later then this date.

3. MobileMonday Indonesia Chapter will nominate using its own methods: email voting, local momo event voting, founder’s voting, jury….your choice.

4. We will select ONE nominee by January 6, 2010 midnight local time, and notify the organizer about this nomination. Remember that nominees must be willing to come at their own expense to the Mobile Premier Awards in Barcelona.

5. On January 11, 2010 all nominees will be announced and will be available to all registered members globally through the mobilepremierawards.com home page.

6. An international Jury (more on this topic soon) will select the 20 finalists to the Mobile Premier Awards event in Barcelona. The finalists chosen to present in Barcelona will be announced on January 18, 2010.

Next Steps

For more details go to: http://www.mobilepremierawards.com … and hurry up to register your start-up!

Yahoo! is hiring… Aren’t you interested? You’ll be working alongside these cool Indonesian dudes at Yahoo! office in Suntec City Singapore office.

There’s 3 openings as of now :

1. Lead QA for Yahoo! Mobile in Asia
2. Mobile Engineer (Apps) for Yahoo! Social Products
3. Mobile Engineer for Yahoo! Social Products

Cheers,

Andy

continue

If you remember Christopher Billich from Infinita, Japan. He visited us during MobileMonday Indonesia launch on December 2007 sharing the great things about mobile industry in Japan. You can still grab his slides “Mobile 2.0 and Next Generation of Mobile Applications” here.

Christopher Billich when presenting at MobileMonday Indonesia launch, Dec 2007

Infinita have just released three new reports on the top mobile social networking services in Japan. Without a doubt, all three – mobagetown, GREE and mixi - are doing some incredibly cool things in terms of service design, strategy and business model that are highly relevant to social networking plays, advertisers/brands, agencies, carriers and mobile games studios/publishers trying to figure out the SNS equation on mobile anywhere.

mobagetown Research Report (V2.0) – 206 pages

“Social Networking, Games and Avatars: The Incredible Success Story of
Japan’s No. 1 Mobile Portal”
Info: http://infinita.co.jp/en/research/mobagetown_research_report_v20.html
Samples: http://www.slideshare.net/cbillich/mobagetown-research-report-v20

Mobile GREE Research Report (V1.0) – 180 pages
“Rags to Riches: GREE’s Transformation into a Top Player”
Info: http://infinita.co.jp/en/research/mobile_gree_research_report_v10.html
Samples: http://www.slideshare.net/cbillich/mobile-gree-research-report-v10

mixi Mobile Research Report (V2.0) – 111 pages
“Going Mobile: Japan’s Most Successful Social Networking Service on the Big Small Screen”
Info: http://infinita.co.jp/en/research/mixi_mobile_research_report_v20.html
Samples: http://www.slideshare.net/cbillich/mixi-mobile-research-report-v20

All three are priced at US$ 3,000 each for a company license; they also distribute them as a bundle for US$ 6,750:
Info: http://infinita.co.jp/en/research/mega_bundle.html

… our deepest sympathy for the families and the casualties of recent Ritz/Marriott bombing. (news)

Great list of new services and applications from Europe: TechCrunch Europe Award. Ranging from business application like virtual workspace, social networking (read: Twitter) client, mobile IM clients, social sharing mobile applications, collaborative online audio platform for musicians, and clean technologies…

Good source of innovation inspiration.

It’s time to observe, copy, and modify…

bioLocate and its FireAnts application (described as crowd-sourced real-time traffic information to help drivers and commuters in Jakarta avoid traffic jams) is nominated as one of 20 finalist in Mobile Peer Awards final in Barcelona. Yes, that’s the best 20 applications in the mobile world for 2008!

If you’re wondering what FireAnts does, please check their explanatory video and slide on their page.

FYI, on this year’s Mobile Peer Awards, MoMo Indonesia have nominated two applications for the international jury to select.

A complete list of 20 innovative start-ups selected for the final are (source MoMo Barcelona):

EARLY-STAGE STARTUPS

Addict Digital Media - Mobile Monday Buenos Aires
aka-aki networks GmbH - MobileMonday Berlin
Babajob.com - MobileMonday Bangalore
Big in Japan Inc. - MobileMonday Dallas
bioLocate - MobileMonday Jakarta
Dial2Do - MobileMonday Dublin
Fortumo - MobileMonday Estonia
Mob4Hire - MobileMonday Vancouver
Orbster GmbH - MobileMonday Munich
Oxynade - MobileMonday Brussels
Tellmewhere - MobileMonday Paris
Xumii - MobileMonday Sydney

EMERGING STARTUPS

Aradiom - MobileMonday Istanbul
fring - MobileMonday Tel Aviv
Getjar Networks - MobileMonday Lithuania
Keynetik - MobileMonday Washington DC
Mobintech A/S - MobileMonday Copenhagen
PopCatcher AB - MobileMonday Sweden
Soonr - MobileMonday Silicon Valley
Unkasoft Advergaming - MobileMonday Madrid

Congratulations for bioLocate!

If you are coming to MWC Barcelona, make sure to attend the Peer Awards event at the 16 February. The best networking event in the industry… Meet and greet the mobile industry celebrities there, personally! More information about the Peer Awards event can be found at their homepage: here.