Startups To Slug It Out In Singapore

By | 30 January, 2012

February looks to be a promising month for innovators looking to bag seed money for their ventures. Asia technology news site Penn-Olson is  gathering up to 15 startup hopefuls to pitch their hearts out at the Startup Arena on 2 to 3 February. The winning team gets US$10,000, while everyone gets the experience of pitching to industry experts and getting valuable feedback — plus “a few nifty toys” such as laptops, mobile phones and SkySQL Enterprise subscriptions.

Startup Asia

Startup Asia Singapore, a two-day event for startup companies and investors. IMAGE: Penn-Olson

The following judges will be grilling the candidates at the Arena and picking the top contender:

  1. Ash Singh CEO of Interactive.SG and Investor at Angel’s Gate
  2. Daniel Saito Co-founder and director of SkySQL and Angel investor
  3. Eric Koh CTO of Jobscentral and Partner at Iconic Ventures
  4. James Tan Co-Founder of 55tuan and Managing Partner of QuestVC

Startups at various gestation levels and from all around Asia (but mainly those from Singapore) will be attending the event. Venture capitalists and investors are also joining this two-day event, hoping to catch a rising startup star.

Startup Asia also features talks from the experts such as Arvind Rajan, APAC Managing Director of LinkedIn; Dr. Lim Kuo-Yi, CEO of Infocomm Investments; Dr. Serkan Toto, Independent Consultant and Japan Correspondent for TechCrunch; Anuj Khanna Sohum, Founder and CEO of Affle;  and Tatsuo Tsutsumi, Director of GREE Ventures Investment Office;  among many others.

This event promises to be different, according to the organizers.

(W)e’re bringing in our attitude to creating (this event)… Startup Asia is deep dead focused on tech startups and entrepreneurship. Expect to be engaged in our one-to-one talks (aka coffee chats) with entrepreneurs and investors who will share their journey and valuable experience picked up along the way.

We’ll also be asking really tough questions to dig secrets up — at our best ability — to make the conversation fulfilling (oh yeah).  So expect NO one-man-show and boring presentation deck that many other events out there are doing.

With “Pitches, Demos, Founders, & No B.S.” as theme, Startup Asia does look to be uniquely fun yet educational and enriching — in more ways than one.



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