This post is a part of our coverage of Startups in Asia (Singapore), Penn Olson’s first tech conference. Our full coverage of the event can be found here, for our RSS feed, click here. Well, it has been a pretty busy two days for our team here in Singapore over the last few days, covering all the action at Startups in Asia Singapore. For those of you who missed it, here is the entire wrap-up from our two ...

If you are keeping track of Singapore’s gadget space, you've likely heard of iTwin, the wireless file sharing USB drive. The hardware startup has earned several accolades and most recently won the CES Innovations Design and Engineering Honor. Lux Anantharaman, CEO and co-founder of iTwin, was nice enough to meet up before our coffee chat at Startups in Asia to talk more about iTwin and startups in Singapore at large. He humbly notes that iTwin isn’t ...

Serkan Toto is one of the more prominent bloggers covering startups and innovation across Asia on TechCrunch, Asiajin, and his own blog. He resides in Japan (speaks fluent Japanese too) and can often be seen at many tech conferences held across Asia. Serkan is a good friend of mine and has been very supportive on our work in Asia. So when we decided to do our Startups in Asia Singapore event, I knew Serkan would ...

Founder and CEO of Affle, Anuj Khanna Sohum, isn’t often in the media limelight. I only got to know him through Affle’s PR firm after his company recently raised $10 million from D2C. In Singapore, there aren’t many funding rounds that cross the $5 million mark so Anuj’s case is rare. During a one-to-one interview with him last year, I came to learn a lot from Anuj, who humbly shared his startup experience. He founded Affle ...

Our Startup Arena competition on February 2nd and 3rd is almost upon us. The startups lining up for Startup Arena are all pumped to pitch and battle for the top prize. So far, we have selected more than 15 startups from Korea, Japan, the Philippines, Taiwan, Malaysia, and Singapore, to compete at Arena. These startups were chosen from the hundreds of applications we have received so far. So, if you think your startup has what it ...

Arch-rival DeNA was one step ahead of GREE entering the Southeast Asia market. It’s kind of self-explanatory why GREE is also taking an interest in this region, as there is so much potential in regions like Thailand, Vietnam, and Indonesia. But GREE isn’t just eyeing the social gaming space. If you’re an avid reader of the blog, you may recall that a $25 million investment fund, GREE Ventures, was recently established to invest in Southeast Asian ...

The social and mobile gaming industry in Southeast Asia has seen a recent boom, which explains why DeNA (TYO:2432), a mobile gaming company from Japan is actively exploring opportunities in this space. Southeast Asia might be fragmented but companies can still find gems in each country. DeNA, for example, has been very busy in Vietnam. It acquired Punch Entertainment last year, and had also recently announced a partnership with Vietnamese game studio, VNG, who will help create ...

We blog a lot. But most wouldn’t know that behind the scenes, we’re occasionally used as the Asian bridge to help entrepreneurs connect with investors (and vice versa). We love to help, because we think it’s good work. We have looked at the community from a bird eye’s view, and we realized there aren’t many such opportunities in Singapore, and perhaps in most other parts of Asia, for investors and entrepreneurs to meet up. And when ...

Running an event is fun, especially when you’re selecting folks for a competition. At our upcoming Startup Asia event, one of the key highlights is Startup Arena, the startup pitching competition. That competition, thankfully, got quite a bit of traction. We have a couple of hundred applications so far. Some even contacted me on my mobile to apply. It is great fun to meet, Skype, and learn from fellow entrepreneurs. I must say I have ...

Our growing list of participants for Startup Asia Singapore has us very excited. I’m not too sure how our small team has managed to put this together, but we certainly have worked damn hard to create this event. We want the best experience for all who are involved: founders, investors, developers, and sponsors. The work is far from complete though, as we continue to prepare for the event which is just around the corner on February 2nd ...

32 days ago, we announced our conference, Startup Asia Singapore. It was supposed to be held at Singapore Expo. Unfortunately, we have to pull away from that place because it’s just too effing expensive, an error in planning on our part. So we wanted to pick another venue that we thought would provide an even better conference experience and wouldn’t hit us too hard in the pocket. I think we’ve found it. It will be the Singapore ...

Singapore is an interesting place to start up a business. We have a lot of access to capital, both from the private and public sectors. Some folks say that we’re uncreative, arrogant, and over-reliant on government funding. Others say that Singapore is an ideal place to start up in Asia. I recently had a meeting with Dr. Lim Kuo-yi (check out his profile here) to discuss what are the topics that we’ll be discussing live on ...