Category: Singapore

Google vs Apple

~ michael_msft ~ Leave a comment

Say what you will but this is the battle of our times. Why do I feel that way? Cause I still believe the mobile phone or let’s say the handheld computer that is always on, always connected to the Internet and happens to be in our pockets that is able to make and receive calls – is the biggest thing since sliced bread. It just is – bottom line.

There are still years to go for this global phenomenon to play out. Years.

That being said, even if you do not agree, it means that the biggest two companies in the world who control this ecosystem are Apple and Google.

You can click the Google or Apple categories on my blog to see what I have written before. I am not a fanboy. I am a realist. I started with Android and moved to Apple. As a startup wanting to dominate the world – I am fluent in managing teams shipping both Apple and Android apps. I won’t get into which app to build first or which platform is bigger or better – if you expect global domination then you have to ship Apple and Android apps. Period.

I won’t lie – there are reasons to like one platform over another but lately I have to admit that Google is pulling ahead. Not in hardware, software but in other places – sheer scale, better app store tools and in relationship building.

Knowing people is a big thing – it trumps developer docs, forums and conferences. I do my best to network and I think it’s important to reach out to folks you know when you need some help. Knowing people is a huge asset.

Do I know anyone in Apple for SEA region? No – only one developer contact who doesn’t respond to me much. Do I know anyone in Google SEA? Yes – many. Did I hunt them down? No – they hunted me down.

It started with someone from Adx and then grew into other connections from various departments and groups. Then it was over to some Android folks and then it is suddenly a meeting with four Android folks from around the region. Yes – they called me.

They updated me on the latest Android news, talked through some issues we had and gave us some guidance with our Google strategies. Was it groundbreaking or earth shattering? No – but is was helpful, meaningful and personal.

Does it make my team and I feel closer to Google? Yes. Do I feel even farther away from Apple as a result? Yes.

Apple seriously needs to step up their game. The OS’s are buggy, the developer support is weak and the App Store needs a redo.

Am I still a big fan! I am. But for the first time ever – I am starting to think Apple is spreading themselves way too thin.

Given their huge profit margins – I find this slightly appalling.

This team is killing it!

~ michael_msft ~ Leave a comment

You may not have heard of this team or know about all their apps they have built as a team or individually. I use dispatch, nextride and of course Spuul. Yes HC of clean shaven apps is the guy behind Spuul iOS. I need to check out clips.

This is a humble team folks but you know they are making it when they are having to explain how to prep for Apple promotions.

I stand by the statement – this is the best OS X and iOS team in Singapore – maybe Southeast Asia.

Love working with these folks.

http://blog.cleanshavenapps.com/app-store-promo-artwork-tips-and-sketch-template

Back in the US of A

~ michael_msft ~ Leave a comment

In LA for a few days. Hanging in the hotel cafe having a coffee and trying to stay awake. Of course every freaking TV has the piece of shit NFL on which is loud and annoying enough to probably help keep me awake.

I always find it comical to land and deal with immigration. Was surprised to see the computer kiosks for residents in place but what is comical is it just seems to add and extra step versus cutting down on time or process. First the kiosk but of course it seems you still fill out the dumb form on the plane. Why have both? Then the kiosk prints something and you wait to see an officer. He takes the paper from the plane and gives you back the receipt from the kiosk. Then go grab your bag. Talk to another officer to get out of that room. Then another line with another officer checking to see if they need to scan your shit. Seems I was not flagged for secondary this trip and sailed through but still comical there are so many checkpoints and that the computer part of it doesn’t seem to actually speed anything up.

Well the sun is shining, I have email to do, BigAssMeeting prep and some dinner to hunt down.

Happy Sunday!

Thoughts on SEA ecosystem and location

~ michael_msft ~ Leave a comment

Lots of twitter activity over the this post :: http://www.nokpis.com/2014/08/28/hong-kong-versus-singapore/

As mentioned I wanted to follow it up with some thoughts on this post :: http://thenextweb.com/asia/2014/08/23/time-founders-southeast-asia-accepted-location-used-advantage/

Let me preface I did not attend GOAB nd I don’t know Mona. I used to follow her on twitter but she broke my follow rule of never replying to my replies. One of my twitter rules is if I reply a few times to folks – famous or not and they don’t ever reply back then I figure there is no point in following. The point of twitter is reasonable discourse – at least for me anyway.

Mona nails well the recent rise of the SEA ecosystem and how one can most likely build a startup anywhere. Totally agree! However I think there are still some issues.

I will add that this is a tough soapbox to get on for me these days cause I will admit I am NOT in the scene as much as I used to be but this is also one of my weird opinions on the local scene. People talking about the scene and eventing tend to get more attention than those just heads down actually building a startup. Maybe that is just my personal feeling but the local media tends to focus on funding, rumors and covering events talking about the scene more than going deep on what is getting built, by who and the obvious failures that can happen. If I had more time I would do a few things – start a podcast talking to folks building things about how they got here and why they are building what they are building. I would start a review service going deep on all the consumer facing products that are coming at us everyday – some good and of course some bad. An investigative service trying to uncover why local startups fail so we can all learn from it. Alas – I don’t have the time. I am too busy with Spuul and my family to take on any more tasks. I will keep up my mentoring and writing as I see fit. The podcast idea is still brewing cause I miss TWIA and figure there is still some local demand for a good audio feed.

That being said, unlike my time at Yahoo, I am not running around at events or attending many startup focused conferences. Which leads me to another need in the local ecosystem, there are not many events or communities to lean on for those in the local startup land that are a few years in and maturing. This will hopefully improve over time.

Back to some of my thoughts on the article…

– I think seed funding is getting pretty easy to get. However it might all depends on your definition of it. Let’s say less than 150k USD for starters as a rough estimate. I think anyone with some connections, a good idea and some perseverance can land some money in this range. But anything past this I think is hard – there are some trends that buck this. Do something in ecommerce or transportation and for some reason the money is just flowing. Try to do anything with a large risk portfolio, hardware or enterprise and I think the money is much harder to find. Jump in the 150k to 1 million range and unless you have rockstar metrics, a super connected angel or crazy PR – it gets quite hard to find. This is from my personal experience and what I hear from companies I either mentor or talk to a fair amount.

– Location is still tricky. We at Spuul experience this some. The local press tends to pass us up cause they don’t see us in Singapore much. The Indian press always wonders why we are not in India and the USA press tends to overlook global plays from Singapore in general. I think the funding conversations take a similar tact at times. I think for location to work well for you it might make sense to be sure that you can dominate in the market where you have your HQ. Then figure out your regional play and maybe the globe later. Saying you are here and working on the globe might not work for those that like a tangible way to grok things. Of course you may have built something killer or viral that just works for everyone. I am speaking in terms of products as well – not the notion of outsourcing or being a vendor.

– The silicon valley stigma. I look at this one from a different angle than others. I base this on doing some focus groups with yahoo and talking with anthropologists who also study tech. If you get in a room in let’s say in Indonesia. You have a set of normal people who use tech and the internet. You present them with a novel product idea, some screens and user stories. You ask some of these people would they use this if it it came from Indonesia. Or Singapore. Then ask some of them would they use it if it came from Silicon Valley. What happens is they almost always get more excited about the product from the valley. Always. I don’t think this will change anytime soon. It is no different than people loving a Hollywood movie. It is not about what is better but just the cultural aspects that appeal to folks. I think startups in the region have to contend with people on a very local level to win or doing something very unique. If you build something similar to something else that comes from the the valley I think it won’t be successful. Granted this does not pertain to closed or unfair markets like China or say Vietnam who don’t allow truly level playing fields.

The local scene is exploding – just figure out where to make your mark.

Hong Kong versus Singapore

~ michael_msft ~ 1 Comment

This is a good read :: http://ventureburn.com/2014/08/hong-kong-and-singapore-meet-the-evil-twin-startup-ecosystems-of-southeast-asia/

I won’t really dig into the startup issues cause my experience with startup land has mostly been from the HQ of Singapore. When I lived in Hong Kong, many moons back for about 5 years, I was focused on enterprise software and at the time Hong Kong made more sense. We were looking to grow in North Asia and Hong Kong was the better location for that. I think back in those days everyone felt that the “gateway” to China was Hong Kong. Now it seems the gateway to China is going to China. So for some the need to be in Hong Kong makes less sense than it did before.

Singapore is sometime’s known as the “gateway” to other parts of SEA region. Again – if you want to focus on Indonesia, you can just setup there. However maybe it is better to establish your HQ in Singapore for various legal reasons. Of course if you are looking at a regional play – Singapore makes a great base for SEA – easy to argue that this is a better place to setup than Hong Kong. It could be that for startup land the North Asia, SEA/South Asia split still plays out. You want to tackle Taiwan, China, Hong Kong, Korea and Japan? Hong Kong makes a good base. You want to go for India, Pakistan, and SEA? Singapore is the better choice.

However – maybe you plan on going after the globe, this is what Spuul is doing, and you still need a home base in Asia. For this I reckon that Singapore is the much better bet than Hong Kong. Again here I am not commenting on the HK ecosystem or the I want to live there and do a startup. Or I find HK is a better city for me so I plan on doing my startup there. Great. You should do it wherever you want. That is the cool thing about doing a startup – for the most part location doesn’t matter. I will write some more about this though since I have some stuff to debunk from this article :: http://thenextweb.com/asia/2014/08/23/time-founders-southeast-asia-accepted-location-used-advantage/.

So back to the I want to tame the globe and I plan on living in Asia – which place is better? Hong Kong or Singapore? I think for this decision to be made one has to dive into some of the practicalities of living – not just the startups issues. On this note I think Singapore is the only choice. Reasons:

– The air is much cleaner. Hong Kong air pollution is epic and worsening.
– Much easier to have a family in Singapore. Yes – not all startups are devoid of real adults, with families. Singapore is easier to manage a family than Hong Kong.
– Public schooling is English first in Singapore and much more modernized. In Hong Kong an expat must put their kids in International Schools unless they speak Cantonese as their main language.
– Permanent residency is much harder to obtain in Hong Kong. Seven years of residency and employment prior to applying. I got my Singapore PR in less than 3 years of working in Singapore.

I am sure there are other issues to consider or even good reasons to refute the list above. Local people may not need to factor any of these issues but I would argue that startups are global in nature with employees from all over the world. These employees will look to settle, have families and for this – Singapore is the obvious choice.

How I try to Product Manage… (part 1)

~ michael_msft ~ 2 Comments

I am usually brutally honest. I am the first to answer I don’t know when I don’t and when I think I know I tell it like I see it. I probably need to take my own advice here more often and getter better at the soft middle of knowing and not knowing. Hell – we all can get better at what we do right?

That being said the role of product management is like a craft one hones over time. I don’t think it is easily taught and I don’t think it is easily learned. It comes with time, experience and lots of mistakes. I excel in the lots of mistakes category so I guess in some sense I am still learning and trying to improve.

I try to listen to lots of podcasts, still haven’t found a good PM podcast, and I read a lot. Plus – I try lots of products. I use my own as well. Personally I am always baffled when you hear people give product advice and you find out they don’t use a lot of products apart from the main ones everyone uses. There is no right or wrong when it comes to product taste since it is a taste and I think taste improves with experience. So I like the school of hard knocks when it comes to acquiring taste – you have to have built some things and you have to have used a lot of things. Of course this is not relevant to the folks who have an idea and build their own stuff – I think that is a different form of PM. I wish I was talented enough to have the coding skills to build my own stuff but alas I don’t. Probably never will.

All that being said I am always looking for tools and techniques to get better at what I do.

Over time I keep settling on the same stuff:

– email
– dispatch
– evernote
– asana
– slack
– spreadsheets
– keynote

I use lots of little things for idea tracking or idea generation or I guess note taking, but still don’t have something I love:

– paper with the paper stylus
– vesper
– IA writer
– probably other things I can’t remember and also just a normal notebook

So I use the tools to manage the team and other tools to convey ideas to the people in the company. I guess then the rest of it is the things I use to manage myself, my ideas and my communication. Communication is so huge and this is why slack is just taking off like a rocketship. Communication is key. Really interested to see how slack will tackle email. Asana is partially tackling email but I will admit that a lot of my interaction with Asana is actually via normal email.

Looking for any comments or ideas on this stack of ideas or products.

I will follow this up with a post for how I manage the team so to speak. Or shall I say unmanage them…

More semi-random thoughts on the consumer services wave in Singapore

~ michael_msft ~ Leave a comment

Had the pleasure of meeting Jeremy yesterday for a coffee finally. One of those people I would chat with over twitter but we had never met in really life. We chatted about the local startup scene, our tour of duty in Asia, politics and of course – consumer services. More info on Jeremy here – http://www.loosewireblog.com/about

Back to the consumer services thing – what I find fascinating is that essentially two girls with an idea and some money can start a consumer services company overnight. Which is cool but unfortunately what happens is that a service is now offered to the public before it is really ready. A blog or some website that is not selling anything doesn’t really factor here but if a service is selling something then it gets real. The customer expects it to work. Just heard about a local service yesterday, JFDI company, that woefully missed their scheduled delivery window with nary a phone call. Pretty much a fail on all levels for a company that has to show up on your doorstep at a specific time.

My own story about iCarsClub hints at a bigger issue which is a well funded company in some ways is no better in delivering their service that a not well funded company. Just look at the comment train for similar experiences to my own.

To summarize, I searched for and called up all the car owners (90+) as shown in the system and was unable to even book a car for just an hour (I had reduced my initial idea of booking for 6 hours down to just one hour to see the response).

Being utterly disappointed in the system, i promptly called up the hotline intending to withdraw my credit and but was simply met by an utter silence. No pickups and no return calls. I will be posting a formal complaint (claim) against the company for intentional fraud or otherwise to the small claims tribunal if there are no answers from the company in the coming week.

And imagine my surprise when I came upon news that the company has recently secured $10 million in Series A funding, with a purported 1,400 personal cars available for rental in Singapore, when in actual fact, reality depicts otherwise.

What I am still surprised about is no one in the local media seems to think it is worthwhile to follow up on funded companies to see how they are doing, how the consumer is fairing and a general update on the progress. Maybe there is no money or readership in this – I don’t know but I think there are people who want to hear about it. A product idea is brewing – but I don’t have the time. My take on iCarsClub is they care more about rapid expansion than about the quality of their service. To this day no one has responded to me about my experience or review. Huge customer service, social media fall in my opinion. If this was my service and someone wrote about it I would be chomping at the bit to respond and hopefully correct the perception. iCarsClub clearly doesn’t give a shit.

Recently tried Redmart and everything worked as planned. They did not have one item – I need to see if the refund processed on it.

This is the new thing I want to try :: http://www.joob.sg/juice-detox-program/

Feel free to leave comments about any experiences you had with local services.