Sriram Krishnan™ Live

OK here’s another one for you. I would like to send my love+heart+happy filled congratulations to Daniel Ek and gang (Spotify), Sorosh and gang (VideoPlaza), EricW and gang (Soundcloud), Honour Pearson and gang (Momail) and ThereseM and gang (Brainspiration) for receiving top pops at the IDG’s 2008 WebEntrepreneur of the Year awards. Duly impressed, these guys make me wonder when I should “take the plunge” myself . .. .

In case you’re interested, here’s the link so you can check out their rankings.

Not too long ago, Yujun and I took part in the first international Tata Crucible Business Quiz. Designed to challenge the best and the brightest, we thought, hey, might as well try our luck.

Around 159 two person teams from various universities took part (all three Singaporean universities, SIM, Australian and British universities etc). It turned out that we did pretty well in the prelims and ended up as one of the top 8 pairs. This meant we got to go up on stage for the final round which will be broadcasted in Channel News Asia. We performed quite badly in the finals, but in all honestly, our opponents from SMU and SIM were way superior. Yujun and I pocketed a cool iPod video nano, Nikon digital camera and a Titan watch each in the process.

Apart from this, friends Ramkumar and Adrian were also selected as the best 9th to 16th place finisher. All these teams were behind the 8th place team in the prelims by one point. Competition was that tough. Adrian managed to more-or-less save the 25 prelim questions here. Have a look at it and see how you fare. Yujun and I got 21 right.

Verbatim. It was aimed at VCs as opposed to the general public.
————
Can you imagine a way to advertise your company to everyone in this hall without having to pay anything to the people owning this hall or to ask for anyone’s permission. That’s what Attention! does.

Attention! connects young 3G users together. It unleashes new ways to flirt, gossip, organize a night out, or ask for an opinion.

For instance: While leaving school, Sophie’s boyfriend takes a picture of himself blowing a kiss to the camera. He then drops the picture for her to pick up. The next day, while entering the school premise Sophie’s phone notifies her that someone left something for her at that location. She looks at it and smiles. Nice way to start the day.

Our aim is to engage users’ attention on their cell phone and display non-invasive (…) geographically relevant ads - bypassing traditional advertising channels.

This coverage is brought to you by Ramkumar Shankar and me, during the Excitera’s Innovation Challenge final round presentations 2007. We took turns blogging while the other person stretched his legs or yawned or fidgeted. Both our teams qualified to the finals of this competition. We sat on the first row…busy blogging away. We were the only ones with a laptop there…

Here’s what my team won:

• 75,000 SEK and also support to start a company.
• 100,000 SEK in ear-marked funds for founding a company.
• An offer to join the incubator IQube.
• Free telecom infrastructure from Telenor during the company’s first six months of existence.

6.20pm
Opening speech by head organiser. The tone is set. It’s all in Swedish from now on. =( Why can’t organisers like Excitera or SSES etc organise something in English for a change? This would be excellent for a more global crowd.

6.25pm
Next up, is Ericsson’s Head of Innovation. Nice colourful ppt slides but he mentioned the hackneyed word “User Generated Content” =(
He speaks about the mobile phone as a wallet.
Ahh more market research. Some consulting firm brainfarted these numbers I guess. Ahh yes, it’s Gartner.

6.28pm
Oh no! More numbers! His talk on youtube reminds me of bubblare, a Swedish look a like
Example: SeeMe TV. They pay customers 0.01 pounds whenever a user video is downloaded. Service to expand.1.2 million pounds from 12 million video downloads. Interesting concept.
Ahh more colourful ppts. AND User Generated Content AGAIN!
Next slide, empower the consumer.Mobscene example. Interesting widgets.

6.30pm
This is getting interesting. I don’t understand one word he’s saying but his ppt says it all.
Integration of TV services. Mobile Joost in the future?
Everyone is reading his slides. There’s too much information there!

6.32pm
Ahh it took him 15 minutes to start on Ericsson. Nice on him.
World’s first Trial Interactive Mobile TV
World’s first Trial Personalised Mobile TV Advertising
He seems very excited – lots of hand movements
A mention on Click Through Rate
He’s still on the same slide =(

6.37 pm
MMS GPRS stuff
Best revenue model is from Ericsson! Yeah!

6.38 END!
(more…)

Congratulations!
Your innovation plan is one of ten that by the jury has been chosen to
participate in the final round of Excitera’s “The Best New Mobile
Service”. This means that your team is one of the ten finalists and that
you will be presenting your business idea in a one-minute-pitch at Berns
on the 15th of May 2007.

The ten finalists are:

Mobikk
Happy Birthday
Need You, Need Me
Connections
Drug Notifier
IceBreaker
Carry Security
Dictor
DateChallenge
Attention

Except for the announcement of the ten finalists, all the 25 executive
summaries will be posted on the Excitera web site this week.

Important things to keep in mind regarding the “elevator pitch” and the
final:

An “elevator pitch” is usually used in the context of an entrepreneur
pitching an idea to a venture capitalist to receive funding. In other
words it’s a brief overview of your business idea that at the same time
will be your last possibility to convince the jury! The expression, the
“elevator pitch”, is based on the idea that the message should be
delivered in the time span of an elevator ride. It is therefore very
important to not exceed the time limit. The pitch WILL, without any
exceptions, be interrupted after exactly one minute.

Due to time restraints, you will not be using any supporting slides for
the presentation. Furthermore, it is up to you how you decide upon
presenting the business idea – whether all the team members will be
involved or only one representative.

I will be looking forward to meet you at the entrance to Berns (entrance
from the hotel, Näckströmsgatan 8 ) at 17.40 on the 15th of May.
If you have any questions, do not hesitate to mail or call. Good luck!

Best regards
XYZ

Finally, I wanted to do this for a long time….

Big up to the following organisations and the people behind it for promoting the internet revolution back in Singapore. These guys are the pioneers of web2.0 awareness, technology and industry blogging and more. They have also helped to create an enormous public awareness regarding the useful-ness of the web (blogging, web2.0 etc) and to bridge the knowledge divide between Silicon Valley and Singapore.

The best part? They’re all students. =) Some of them are graduates of the NOC program and I am sure all of them will be the who’s who of the web2.0 industry in Singapore in the very near future. Cheers mates and look forward to meeting you guys back in Singapore later this year.

• The Digital Movement
• SgEntrepreneurs
• Entrepreneur 27 Singapore

Malaysia, where art thou?