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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).

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