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!

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 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

Please go here to download them: http://sites.google.com/site/idmomogroup/download-slides

Enjoy!

Happy New Year to you all… Opening the year, we will begin by revisiting the theme: mobile as the 7th mass media. A lot have changed since our first 2008 event on mobile mass media. Coming this January is a joint event about the upcoming trends, case studies, and opportunities in mobile media and new media.

The basic rules of brand building in the digital space are as important as they are for traditional forms of brand communications. Mavenix and MobileMonday Indonesia, supported by Mobile Marketing Association (Indonesia), are proud to present the first major seminar in 2010.

“New Year, New Media, New Ideas”

Tuesday, 12 January 2010 – that’s next week! And yes, it’s Tuesday.
Blitz Megaplex @ Pacific Place, 2pm – 5.30pm

Speakers are:

1. Andy Zain (MobileMonday Indonesia) – “Get more social and mobile: Mobile Social Networking in Indonesia case study”
2. Avi Marinstrauss (3GVision) – “QR Code creativity & technology: how brands can benefit from it”
3. Ashwin Puri (VuClip) – “Mobile video – new trend vs monetization”
4. Joerg Krahnert (NetBiscuits) – “The next generation mobile sites”
5. Michael Budi (AR&Co) – “Augmented Reality for branding – local case studies”

This event is geared towards our agency friends, brands, and content providers who are keen to explore the exciting and ever changing landscape of new media.

The seminar is FREE and seats are limited – RSVP is a must.

So please visit our website to register: http://www.mobilemonday.co.id/events/register-to-event

See you there!

MobileMonday Indonesia & Mavenix

I got the presentation from Rohit / MMA Global, Joseph / m-Stars, Ben Soebiakto / Octovate, and Amiranto / J-Spot.

Its exhibits profile will include:

• a wide range of ICT related product, equipment, services and business solutions and software
• a three days ICT FORUM focusing ICT Outlook 2010
• New Policies & Regulations, e-Government, ICT in Disaster Management, IT for Education, e-Learning, Broadband, Mobile & Wireless, Security and Storage, Digital Media

MobileMonday extends the invitation from the Organizer, so you and your colleagues are warmly welcome to the exhibition. Let’s use this opportunity share and exchange ideas with technical experts from around the world and find out suitable solutions to improve and increase your productivity and run your business process efficiently.

Visitors who pre-register their attendance online at www.ictindonesia.com under the VISITOR selection will stand a chance to win from a lucky draw and will also receive a free copy of ICT EXPO INDONESIA 2009 exhibition directory (Rp 50.000 value).

The Organizer, Pak Indra Putra, can be contacted at indra@ecmi.cc, should you need to ask more details and interested to display your products.

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.

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!