Greek Complexity

Business opportunity for mobile game developers

Mobile gaming companies in Bangalore or other parts of India who have content that they would like to expose to a large, established base of paying subscribers in emerging markets, please ping me.

A different kind of start-up event

I was attending a closed-door, fairly free-wheeling discussion last week here in Singapore hosted by one of our coopetitors when someone brought up the topic of events for VCs and entrepreneurs. Now, if there's one measure of commercial activity in Singapore that's always flashing bright GREEN, it's the number of conferences, seminars, fora and networking events held for tech start-ups. So when this person asked the rest of the group whether, in our opinion, Singapore has a sufficient number of platforms for VCs and entrepreneurs to meet each other, the answer seemed pretty obvious. Even if one doesn't go to all the events, going to a few every year is sufficient to get to know pretty much everyone else in the space. Singapore's VC industry isn't that big after all. It's essentially the same in India as well.

But it struck me that one thing I (and my portfolio companies) continue to find difficult is finding good mid to senior staff to join existing start-ups. I think there's an opportunity for a platform specifically targeted at people who want to move into the tech start-up space but don't want to start one of their own for whatever reason. Yes, this exists to a small extent on online fora but I have yet to see an event specifically created to allow start-up teams to get to know their brethren from larger organisations and vice versa. The opportunity exists across all roles -- sales, finance, technology, HR, operations, you name it. Put a critical mass of qualified people in a room and I can practically guarantee that it won't be seen as yet another start-up networking event.

Who wants to do this?

Bringing banking to the masses via technology and telecoms

Here's a massive opportunity for technology companies serving the financial services sector: roving bank tellers serve rural India. Has the potential to be a great "Bottom of the Pyramid" success story. Opportunity across several areas including banking software, analytics, security, mobile payments, CRM and so on. I imagine a similar opportunity exists in nearly every emerging market, not just India.

Frothy valuations: Telling it like it is

Mahesh Murthy is on fire!

This was too good to just stick on my radar feed.

For non-slang Hindi speakers, "topi" literally means "cap" but in this context refers specifically to the dunce-cap. By "topi" investors, Mahesh means investors who've had the dunce-cap placed on their heads but hope to pass it on to an even bigger dunce in future.

Sounds familiar

The video's called Startup Entrepreneur by GI Startup. Somewhat offensive language.

Not better search; better-than-search

Earlier this year, Nova Spivack called for a better "decision-support engine" (my phrase; he prefers "help engine", which is definitely catchier). He doesn't say much about what form such an engine could take, either as perceived by the user or its entrails. However, you do get an inkling of what he's thinking about.

Quote:

Search engines cause choice overload. That wasn’t the goal, but it is what has happened over time due to the growth of the Web and the explosion of choices that are visible, available, and accessible to us via the Web.

What we need now is not a search engine — it’s something that solves the problem created by search engines. For this reason, the next Google probably won’t be Google or a search engine at all.

Spivack is a (the?) grandson of Peter Drucker, not that that's relevant to this article. I consider him one of the best technology futurists around in a world of pretenders.

Link: Eliminating the Need for Search – Help Engines

Social gaming's opportunities and challenges

At Echelon 2010 in Singapore yesterday and today. Vishal Gondal of Indiagames and others on the social gaming panel point out opportunities for social gaming beyond just the PC Internet and beyond Facebook specifically.

• Non-Facebook social networks around the world, such as Mixi, Renren, Cyworld, etc
• Mobile social games
• Interactive TV

Zaki Mahomed of Game Ventures thinks that payments still is a barrier to seamless roll-out and adoption of social games in Asia and on the mobile. He says there's no one simple way across games and platforms (OSs, devices, whatever) to make it easy for users to micro-transact within games. People aren't comfortable typing their credit card numbers into a mobile social game. Vishal agrees but with the qualification that in India at least premium SMS is one way to monetise.

Full house?

What would the movie business look like today if movies had only been invented a few years ago? The answer to that seemingly frivolous question comes up when I can grab half an hour to bang out my next post.

Technorati Tags: movies, hollywood, internet, media, strategy

Singapore's government 'gets' consumer power -- at first sight

Singapore's government launches a lot of websites. One of their latest is 10 TouchPoints. On November 27, one of Singapore's ministers introduced the concept as follows:

The creative cluster helps improve our quality of life.  To this end, we launched 10 TouchPoints, an initiative which encourages the general public to identify 10 everyday things to be redesigned with a more user-centric focus. It could be ideas to improve our bus shelters or our currency notes which we use everyday without paying much attention to it.  The response to this initiative has been very encouraging.  Within two weeks, we have already received over 70 nominations of what need to be redesigned.  Such ideas could lead to better appreciation of good design and enhance our public service and lifestyle.

(The site today has 124 nominations, one of which is mine. Go and vote!)

But what is this website? Some Singaporean bureaucrat has cleverly realised that the culture of participation and user-generated content that has quickly become a way of life for many consumers could be harnessed to good effect by the government to improve design in public services. (See the website for more information.)

What this initiative does is to not only get suggestions from the public (something the government already does via various media) but also allow people to vote. Voting is crucial, IMO, because this harnesses collective intelligence, which is the key strength of large groups of reasonably informed people thinking and acting independently. In the ideal scenario, you would get zillions of ideas, the 'best' of which would bubble up to the top (however you define 'best').

What remains to be seen now is whether this initiative really takes off and what comes of it in the end. I think that will depend to an extent on the the number of ideas they receive but, more importantly, on how actively people search for and vote for their favourite suggestions. I think it is a fair assumption given Singapore's reputation that the best suggestions will make it to implementation, so I don't think implementation is a concern. It seems to me that publicising the initiative and making it easy for people to vote should be the key areas to focus on.

I guess the last word on this subject --at least for now-- should go to someone called Chris (bottom of this page):

Fantastic concept of asking people's opinion for free R+D btw. Innovative

Technorati Tags: C2C, innovation, government, social networks, social software, internet, media, collective intelligence, singapore

Replacing banks with... people?

A few days ago, a colleague sent out a news article by email to a bunch of us. My boss responded with:

Not resorting to hyperbole - but this is the most brilliant idea I've read in a long time.

I am being a little aggressive here, but this is the biggest threat that banks will ever see to their model.

It will take 10 years, but this IS the bank of the future.

This may well be to the consumer lending business what the ATM was to retail banking.

What was he so excited about? Something definitely worth getting excited about:

Prosper's users lend money to and borrow money from other people on the site at what the company says are better interest rates than those available through traditional financial institutions and without some of the risk that comes from typical person-to-person loans.

"We looked at eBay and said, 'Why can't we do this for money?' " said Chris Larsen, Prosper's chief executive.

He noted that consumers make, at most, about 4 percent on their savings accounts, which banks then lend to credit card customers at 14 percent or more.

"That's just a huge spread," Mr. Larsen said. "We think if you allow people to participate directly, it's a more efficient marketplace. People can make a better return on their deposits, which then become the source of credit to others."

Borrowers can also join or create groups with defined interests or characteristics that, they hope, will make them more attractive to some lenders. Prosper's group leaders receive a commission on the group's lending and borrowing activities, which they sometimes share among the group. "If the sites are able to recruit strong group leaders with strong affiliations, they shift the marketing burden to those people, who have the incentive to go after others to become part of the group."

The community aspect of the site, Mr. Larsen said, is an important component. "It's satisfying to place money in little bits with people who have stories, and in groups that you know and trust and want to support."

Link: It's Like Lending to a Friend, Except You'll Get Interest

I think this will turn out to be as big a phenomenon, or perhaps even bigger when all its implications are considered, as mortgage-backed securities were in the '80s.

I went to Prosper's website and Larsen's point about the community aspect certainly rings true. The human touch (I'm all about the human touch today, it seems!) was apparent in listings like this one:

Requested:	$10,001.00
Lender rate:	4.50%

Description

I just want to put in a new sink and john and shower.