Month: September 2016

Indonesia Panel at Deal Street Asia Conference

~ michael_msft ~ 1 Comment

Full agenda is here :: http://www.dealstreetasia.com/events/?utm_source=dsa-website&utm_medium=top-banner&utm_campaign=2016Summit

I will be doing a panel on :: Indonesia, Poised for Growth! Will it deliver?

I obviously have my hunches about it. I mean, not trying to boast, but I kind of helped to kick off the scene when Yahoo bought Koprol. Of course that didn’t go according to plan but it still was a huge milestone in SEA region and was a big shot in the arm in the Indonesian scene.

You can read more about that journey here :: http://www.nokpis.com/2014/02/28/koprol-the-inside-story-part-1/

I am a big believer in Indonesia but I have my own feelings about how it will all play out but here is your chance to get involved.

Please leave questions you might have for the panel in the comments on this post and I will pick the best ones and use them during my panel and will also give credit to the person asking.

Get on it.

Product / Market Fit – is it the only thing that matters?

~ michael_msft ~ Leave a comment

Was catching up on my https://stratechery.com/ backlog of emails – BTW if you are in tech or VC and you don’t subscribe…

Nothing more I can say.

But on to the post – Ben linked to an old Marc rant on product/market fit. It is such a goodie though.

http://web.archive.org/web/20070701074943/http://blog.pmarca.com/2007/06/the-pmarca-gu-2.html

The only thing that matters is getting to product/market fit.

Product/market fit means being in a good market with a product that can satisfy that market.

You can always feel when product/market fit isn’t happening. The customers aren’t quite getting value out of the product, word of mouth isn’t spreading, usage isn’t growing that fast, press reviews are kind of “blah”, the sales cycle takes too long, and lots of deals never close.

And you can always feel product/market fit when it’s happening. The customers are buying the product just as fast as you can make it — or usage is growing just as fast as you can add more servers. Money from customers is piling up in your company checking account. You’re hiring sales and customer support staff as fast as you can. Reporters are calling because they’ve heard about your hot new thing and they want to talk to you about it. You start getting entrepreneur of the year awards from Harvard Business School. Investment bankers are staking out your house. You could eat free for a year at Buck’s.

The post is a long one and of course does not answer how to do it but is simply stating that it is all that matters. You can have a great team but never find the market. You could have an amazing product but never find the market. You could also have a shitastic product at the same time you discover the market.

No matter what you need both. The product and the market.

Ironically, once a startup is successful, and you ask the founders what made it successful, they will usually cite all kinds of things that had nothing to do with it. People are terrible at understanding causation. But in almost every case, the cause was actually product/market fit.

Because, really, what else could it possibly be?

Much to ponder…

SeedPlus Open House – JTC SwitchOn@Launch Pad

~ michael_msft ~ Leave a comment

Here is the official link to the event :: http://www.jtc.gov.sg/switchon2016

I dont have a link for you all yet but will add it once I do.

On September 21st JTC will be have an open house and other stuff over in startup central area – Launch Pad to be precise.

You can find our map here – http://www.seedplus.com/contact/ .

The SeedPlus slot is from 4:30 to 6:00 pm. We will have some snacks and drinks.

If you think you want to come please gives us a heads up via email so we get a sense of the interest.

Hello@seedplus.com

Hope to meet some new or familiar faces.

FB messenger bots and payments

~ michael_msft ~ Leave a comment

https://techcrunch.com/2016/09/12/messenger-bot-payments/

It was inevitable that this was going to happen – FB would connect their payment engine to the bots. I am curious what the fine print is here since now you essentially have an App Store within the android/Apple ecosystem that gives you payments from within messenger or the bot. 

I assume that the iOS payment rules cascade down in this case since Apple doesn’t allow for a virtual or subscription item to be paid for outside of the Apple payment ecosystem. Curious how all this will be policed since I imagine folks are already trying to figure out how to take advantage of it?

For physical goods Apple will allow you to connect credit cards and other payment systems in but for virtual stuff that is not allowed. Seems this is all a slippery slope given that the app within the ecosystem now becomes another full fledged ecosystem in and of itself. At some point these hyper controlled app ecosystem rules will be hard to police.

What is super interesting is how FB just increased their revenue base overnight with one swoop since now you can buy a FB news feed ad to point to your bot:

In an effort to show Facebook’s commitment to its platform for bots, Marcus announced that all types of News Feed ads can point to them and users can share bots they enjoy with their friends. And instead of forcing all bot interactions to happen through text, developers can now build web views into conversations to pull in interfaces from their websites. This way you could scroll a list of flights, consume different types of media, or even play basic games while still in the chat window.

Been talking to other folks about explaining the bot gold rush will be no different than the app gold rush when it comes to how to get noticed – you will have to pay FB to get placement or use ads to point people to your bot. This is not some new free land grab opportunity – this will be like every other new platform. Pay to play. Yes – new business models will emerge but one will have to figure out how to rise above the other bots and get customers.

Obviously this is a new frontier but I see the app stores becoming bot stores as pretty apparent.

Is Facebook messenger going to be the main, dominate cross platform bot economy?

Where to find the best coders?

~ michael_msft ~ Leave a comment

I thought this article was pretty interesting but not sure if the sample size is big enough to really declare winners but interesting to see the country breakdown.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2016/08/30/who-would-win-the-coding-olympics/

China and Russia at the top but also cool to see Singapore come in at #13.

People always ask if there is talent outside of the USA or the known ecosystems of record and I always say that there are but that things like culture, experience and supporting cast members have a lot to do with success as well. Hard to rival Silicon Valley or the USA ecosystem in general due to some of those factors and the shear size of the market but you can’t ignore Asia.

Impossible.

I tend to have always thought the raw coding skills in Asia are as good as the USA but the experience of working for large tech firms on global products is lacking but that is improving with time and the presence of companies like Google who are beginning to build product in the region.

Good time to be in Asia.