The Thrilla in Manila!

~ michael_msft ~ 1 Comment

Just got back from a week in Manila – the epicenter of the Philippines. Had not been in a while but was excited to get back and work on some on the ground product execution. Manila is mostly known as the land of the call centers however the startup environment continues to grow slowly but surely. Not sure it will ever be as dynamic as say Singapore – but there are signs of life.

As with any large country there is an ecosystem all to its own with nary a care to expanding outside of PH – that is fairly typical of all the large countries in the region. There is a big enough domestic market with high barriers to entry that some companies can just concentrate on the PH market entirely. I would put Sulit in this category – focusing on listings for the PH market. Seems to be taking a fairly dominant share of the c2c category.

Then you have the global players who have fallen from on high to focus on countries or regions where they seem to have taken a large local position, even if by accident, but are going to alter their strategy to focus on a particular regional niche. I would put Multiply in this group. They seem to have a large user base in both Indonesia and the PH market. Seems they are going to focus on ecommerce and primarily b2c. You may recall that both Sulit and Multiply are now majority owned by MIH (Naspers). MIH seems to be focusing on emerging markets ecommerce plays. Time will tell if this pays off but it feels like a sound bet.

If you don’t know who MIH is you can listen to this podcast to get the scoop since these are some heavy hitters.

Recently Multiply announced that Jack Madrid, formerly of Yahoo PH, is joining as the country manager. We will miss Jack and wish him well in his new venture. It will be interesting to see how Multiply heads off in their new direction.

However most of this activity is based on old companies or fairly entrenched ones just maturing and focusing. All good but I am still not seeing anything really exciting when it comes to cool plays in PH. The one company I was really hoping to show the way has chosen to leave Manila and setup shop in Singapore – Insync. They took some money and are moving their HQ to Singers. I can see why but it shows that the funding environment, the employee base and the regulatory/IP environment is probably not a safe bet in the Philippines. This might change but for now in places like Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, and Philippines – it is probably a safer bet that if you want a regional shot at the champ you are better off heading to Singapore.

Hell even the champ himself see the bennies of taking the fight to Singapore…

Real Things

~ michael_msft ~ 3 Comments

First post of the new year – I have decided that less is more in general. The idea of always being plugged in, turned on and consuming info is just weird to me. So in consuming less I am probably going to produce less, quantity that is, but I think less is more. We shall see.

Having tooled around Northern Thailand this past few days I feel even more convinced that GPS devices are awesome but could do so much more. I found myself using the iPhone and the GPS to find stuff and drive. Searching with iPhone – getting there with the GPS. The GPS guys could fix this since I don’t see that getting there with the phone is an option.

Been spending some super quality time with the rents the past few weeks – been awesome as usual. It always reminds me that time is the most valuable thing in life. I think the tech world tends to not value quality time and we just spend more time in front of a machine pretending to socialize but truly not socializing at all. Pathetic it is. So time is important and doing things you love with people you dig is all that matters. Wealth just makes that easier but wealth for the sake of just having money makes no sense to me. Having money and no time is also painful.

Being part of this problem myself I find that so much of what we do is just not real – only bytes of information that many times has nothing tangible to show for it. Hence being with family, reading, riding the bike and making a meal just feels so much more real. Which is why I love when something internet related leads to real things.

Nothing seems to be doing that better right now than Kickstarter and with all the hype over companies worth millions but actually don’t make anything I want to bring the attention back to real companies.

I helped with Diaspora which got me a t-shirt – a very real thing.

My iPod Nano watch kit – TikTok. Very real and BTW I think the people complaining about the iPod as a watch are being premature since this is the first pass at real wearable computing – imagine this thing having a map or making a call someday. Apple will be there first and I would rather have an Apple product strapped to me than something Microsoft or Google would come up with.

I was getting a Kickstarter email update and the founder mentioned this company – I had to have a pair. They look cool, are made in America and seem to be tackling a real problem – there are no good flip-flops anymore. Teva has lost its soul, sad but true and most of the other stuff either falls apart, reef, or is just not comfy – Croc and Havaianas.

This stuff looks awesome and if it means this company gets off the ground then even better. Sign me up. Can’t want to get my pair with my name on them.

So if the internet can help real people make real things for real usage – I am stoked.

Now – let me get back to generating some bytes.

😉

Thoughts on GPS…

~ michael_msft ~ 1 Comment

Having had mobile GPS units for some years – coupled with experience using both an iPhone and a Nexus One – I thought I would chime in on a few thoughts I have been banging around. First off – mobile phones won’t replace real GPS units anytime soon for those who seriously get off the beaten track a bit. Not so much explorers per say but people who might be in foreign countries and need to try their best not to get lost. For this type of cruising around, especially on a motorcycle, stand alone or purpose GPS units have no equal.

First off let’s state that smart phones with maps are awesome – no doubt about it. For pre-planning, walking around a city or for searching for things, GPS units suck at this, I find my iPhone a critical mobile asset. My Google phone was cool as well but so far I tend to get more mileage out of my iPhone since my life is not played out in the Google cloud which makes an Android based phone less appealing. The convergence of wireless with maps – plus the ability to make calls is great and I am sure will get better. However strapping a phone to the handle bars of my bike while I explore Southeast Asia will never happen. Simple as that.

Given this though I am surprised the Garmins of the world, my chosen GPS company, don’t realize that convergence, ease of use and adaptability are key. So here is what I wish Garmin would do to make my exploring even better.

This is not listed by importance but just some thoughts:

  • Add Wi-Fi. How hard can it be? I don’t need the phone, I don’t need email but browsing might be handy in a pinch since exploring the maps on a GPS device is not easy. What I want the Wi-Fi for though is to be able to download new functionality, update the maps, buy new regions and maybe someday use the power of the Internet to enhance the experience. The idea that I have to hook up to a PC to update my maps totally bites.
  • Make browsing maps easier and make searching easier. Typos, hard to spell street names and the way regions work makes it hard to locate something you are trying to find. Simple universal search box would be cool.
  • Make saving trips with waypoints, not just destinations, much easier. If the Wi-Fi was there allow me to back up my device to the cloud.
  • Make it easy for me to get from point A to point A but highlight cool things along the way, plot a course to them but keep me heading to point B. It is all math right? Point is I need to get to where I am going but the device could do better at helping me to enjoy the ride and see things I did not know where there. The attractions function works but only when you stop and you can’t control the radius. Works but could be much better.
  • Allow me to ping the web somehow to finds things that are around me – I think tomtom does some of this but clearly much more could be done to use the Internet to find interesting things created by users. This could dovetail with users sharing routes – I would even pay for this.
  • If I had the Wi-Fi, browsing, and some way of sucking things in – let me grab a route and plot it on the GPS since the direction capabilities on purpose built devices are top notch.

These are some ideas that would allow guys like Garmin to prosper even in the face of smartphone competition!

Android versus iPhone

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I won’t get into the nuances of Android OS versus iOS since this is not meant to be a technical dissertation. I remember an old buddy of mine constantly arguing with another buddy about PC versus Windoze. He used to say – everyone drives a Toyota does that mean I have to? I want to drive a Porsche – they make me feel good, they look cooler and they are expensive so less people have them. Status – does mean something to some people but not so much in a pretentious way but in a – well I work hard and I want to have what I want – what I can afford. Is it a crime? During this time Apple looked to be over and chumps like Michael Dell were saying Apple should close up and return money to shareholders. I think Apple could buy like 10 Dells now – not machines but the company.

So here we are again with the age old debates of the digerati telling you, the consumer, what you should buy. I carried a Nexus for like 6 months. It was okay. Nothing amazing really but then again I am not a big Google guy and the Android phones only excel if you are married to Google. My activesync hooks would die about every 4 weeks and I would lose email and contacts since the configs does not sync to the cloud – only the data does. I don’t use gMail and a lot of the other services only seem really relevant to the US.  Sure it was a smart phone and it killed my BB in every way but the battery life was deplorable and I honestly mostly used it a wi-fi hotspot. Which is a cool thing – I wish my iPhone did that.

I decided to get an iPhone 4, I have never had an iPhone, and I well – I can’t get enough of it. Better syncing, better battery, better camera and lots of wicked apps. Better app store and it syncs like a charm to iTunes. Yes – all of us know iTunes is the Trojan horse and I accepted that fate when I bought my first iPod 5gb – cause well it worked.

So now I am back to using my device to enhance my life more – rather than caring about openness, freedom and all the shit that honestly means very little to overall user experience. I reminds me back when I had to convince my friends that paying more for my Mac was worth every penny – yes Windoze was cheaper but overall it was more expensive cause it wasted too much of my precious time. I think the same with my iPhone. Maybe Android is more open, cheaper and so on – so? A Yamaha is cheaper than a BMW motorcycle – but ask me which one I would rather ride? A BMW. Any day of the week.

My point is – people buy what makes them feel good and what enhances their life. Android will appeal to some people but it won’t appeal to me. Is that such a big deal?

As usual DF sums it up well:

The differences between the iOS App Store and Android Market are a microcosm of the differences between Apple and Google. Apple is a retailer, a purveyor of well-crafted goods that people will line up to purchase. Google is an advertising company that builds popular services that command large audiences.

There’s a difference in culture — from the platform creators, from the developers writing software for the two platforms, and from what the users of these devices expect. For iOS, it’s about emotional appeal — art, design, the ineffable.

Peace.

Gillmor speaks…

~ michael_msft ~ Leave a comment

Usually I get bashed for bashing facebook…

But the rise of the walled-garden, the exportation of one closed social graph and the new “email” – leave me concerned for the future of the internet. Maybe I am paranoid or just getting too old but I just don’t see this as progress – no matter how technical superior the platform may be.

Now someone else, on good authority, says it much better than I could:

We should all be uncomfortable about moving more and more of our cyber-activities into the embrace of a single company — and I don’t care if it’s Google (one reason I rarely use Gmail) or Facebook or anyone else. Facebook has federated its “Like” button all over the Internet, so it’s not trying to entirely capture your browsing and communications, but in the process it’s turning its service into a glue — replete with extremely granular data about what you do online — that should make everyone cautious about putting so much power into a single enterprise’s control. Easy to use, which Facebook certainly is, does not equate with good for you in the end.

enter : http://www.joindiaspora.com/

My 7 minutes…

~ michael_msft ~ 1 Comment

Gotta take it while u can. Today Koprol was on TechCrunch: http://techcrunch.com/2010/11/09/southeast-asia-one-thing-yahoo-has-done-well-tctv/

Awesome.

Thanks Sarah!

If you want to see more about SparxUp – go here: http://www.sparxup.com/

More on Indonesia scene: http://dailysocial.net/

My slides from SparxUp: http://www.slideshare.net/dreampipe/sparxup

Podcast on Asia : http://thisweekinasia.net/2010/11/this-week-in-asia-episode-74-the-indonesia-internet-juggernaut/

long live Koprol!

Indo Indo Indo!

~ michael_msft ~ 2 Comments

Been a crazy couple of days and a few more busy ones to go.

Been at the Sparxup event which has been awesome. Just check out Sarah Lacy over at TechCrunch for all the latest coverage.

I presented during the morning session and if you are interested my deck can be found here.

Monday we have a minty launch event and a blogger meet up at night at Loewy. All great stuff.

The volcano action has been a bummer and I hope it clears up soon and the area returns to normal. Lots of people are in a bad sort over this and I feel for them.

I always get asked about Indonesia, since I spend a lot of time here, and people wonder what the biggest issue might be for Indo’s long term success. I have one word for you but as always a picture is worth a thousand words:

traffic

I have been coming here for about 10 years and regularly for the last 18 months or so and the traffic is getting worse and worse.

It is not uncommon to waste an hour or more getting from one part of town to another. Even on the weekends now the traffic is getting bad – for sure the whole snarl has to be a drain on business.

It will take years to fix it but there is not even any signs of anyone doing anything about it. Everyone cuts corners. There are carpool lanes but you can rent someone along the way to make it look like you have a carpool. There are bus lanes with cars in them. There are pillars that were once erected for tollways or overpasses but they were never completed. There is no work being done on a subway or an above ground train.

Jakarta will suffer if something is not done soon but I fear the government will not be able to tackle it and corruption will force more failed attempts. I think immediately they should instigate some sort of central congestion based pricing cause we all know money will be the only way to impede the issue even a slight bit.

I love Indonesia but the traffic is starting to grind on me the wrong way.

more soon!

Oh Singapore!

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Lots of talk of Singapore these days. Been here over a year and the buzz keeps growing but the bark is still louder than the bite.

I first wrote about Sing here – Musings on Singapore… Most of what I said there still applies I think.

Sure – the economy is cooking and sing dollar is almost as nutty as the Baht but I would have way more confidence in the Sing dollar long term.

When it comes to the startup scene though I think there is a chance things change but so far it is tough to tell. I think Sarah Lacy is also picking up on some this with her article here:

There’s also another problem: One employer has optimized the system to find and make lucrative offers to the smartest kids in the system– that’s right, the Government. People who could have made the country’s top entrepreneurs instead make comfortable salaries trying to craft policy to encourage people to be entrepreneurs.

That comment is so telling and I also feel like you see a lot of zombie like easy startups but it is early days and Sarah also says she thinks people should to pay attention to Singapore. I agree but I tend to think the real action will be regional but possibly based out of Singapore.

Of course throw in some web celeb spotting at the Butter Factory to help the hype machine continue unabated.

Will be speaking here next and then over to Indo to speak at SparxUp.

cya

Much to do!

~ michael_msft ~ 4 Comments

Just wrapped up another TWIA – check this video!

We should have another one this week with some special guests from Indonesia!

This week in Indo and then off to Bkk for Barcamp. This is one of the biggest in the region!

After Barcamp back to Singers and then maybe KL, Indo and possibly China.

So much going on but still having fun.

cya at barcamp!

ps. just back from India – more on that later. Some photos here.