Category: Opinion

[Guest Post] Angry Birds is A BRAND

Editorial: talk about startup, we can’t separate it from “branding”, and this time Narenda Wicaksono will tell us his experience attending CommunicAsia and his view aout Angry Birds and branding.

In CommuncAsia 2011 last Sunday in Singapore, Indonesian developer from Agate Studio, GITS Indonesia, Kompas, and ITB had the opportunity to attend a seminar with one of the official in Rovio Mobile as the speaker about “The Making of Angry Birds”, after that the developer from Indonesia had lunch together with him whom share stories about the company.

Born from a Mobile Developer Competition

In 2003, three students from Helsinki University of Technology, Niklas Hed, Jarno Väkeväinen, and Kim Dikert participated in a mobile game developer competition held by one of Finland mobile company. At that time they won the competition with their game called “King of the Cabbage World” and in the end they decided to make a startup called “Relude”. “King of the Cabbage World” sold to “Digital Chocolate” and change name to “Mole War”. It became the first real time and multiplayer supported game in the world! Eight years ago.

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[Guest Post] Enthusiasm, Idealism, and Culture: University’s Main Asset to Trigger Innovation

Editorial: This article is the continuation theme about Silicon Valley, University in Indonesia and their relations with innovations and entrepreneurship. Sigit Purnomo as a lecturer surely has an interesting view about this theme. This article was written by Sigit Purnomo as a guest post.

This article tried to continue the trilogy of Angelina Veni about Silicon Valley, Rama Mamuaya with Universities in Indonesia Must be a Trigger for Innovation, and Wiku Baskoro withChoosing to Establish – Work in Startup or Work in a Large Company? In those trilogies there are similar topics of discussion, which is how university and industry collaborate in harmony to make a beautiful symphony called “Silicon Valley”. In this article I would like to talk over what have been said by Angelina Veni: “Silicon Valley is more than just a building, company, and universities – there is enthusiasm here, idealism, and culture.” Enthusiasm, idealism, and culture, my opinion is that these three things is very important for University in Indonesia to trigger an innovation.

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Build a Startup or Work at Big Company?

I came up with the tittle above when I ask a question while trying an online polling service, but I think the question is relevant to ask and I wrote it as a separate article. There are several reasons that I want to discuss in this article, the first is the development that occurs in universities, brand approach for developers as well as my brief chat with Dr. Serkan Toto, who recently came to Bandung.

That kind of question could be a classic question, in a sense of frequently asked questions, as a subject of startup, developers or students who are preparing to complete their study. Which is an option, establish or work on startup (new company) or work in an already established large technology/Internet companies?

Some time ago, Rama wrote about the role that should be improved from the university to support the birth of entrepreneur or businessman (in the field of web technology, internet and mobile), one of them is changing the mindset from looking for a job to create jobs.

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Government to Regulate Non-Bank Money Transfers

Watch out people, following the amazing growth of Indonesian e-commerce, the government is starting to tinker with the regulations. This time, the government want to rule the money transfers between non-banking institutions, services like PayPal, KasPay, Doku, and basically all carrier/telco companies, these guys would have to get government approval for doing such transactions.

Government officials said this regulation is made to protect banks and also consumer but I honestly don’t see the point for protecting the consumer. Banks would definitely appreciate this effort from government, and of course giving out licenses puts the government in a very strategic position in the whole problematic and troublesome e-commerce ecosystem.

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Incubator and VC’s Complaint on Indonesian Startups Readiness

For the past few months big groups are penetrating investment on tech startups in Indonesia, even companies from Japan, Singapore, Malaysia, China, and US  are slowly trying out Indonesian startups market. Most of them are financial company ready to invest Indonesian “sizzling” tech startups.

Unfortunately, some unprepared startups have disappointed the investors the moment they met. The startups are too infatuated with the term “Romanticism of Silicon Valley” – like Budi Putra said.

You have brilliant idea, find a co-founder, funded by investors, acquired by Google, and become ultra rich with outstanding reputation and perhaps a red Ferarri in the garage. And life is beautiful.

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Indonesian Developers Shouldn’t Be Afraid to Develop Paid Apps for iPhone

Us, Indonesian, by nature are freebies lovers – and pirated goods lovers too. Of course that applies only to some of us, but compared to other countries with higher GDP it is understandable why not many software are bought legally no matter how affordable the offers are. Even so, Distimo‘s publication on iPhone apps market in Asia, including Indonesia, shows surprising result. Indonesian users are considered to be the largest numbers who buy apps on iPhone.

According to Distimo’s publication, out of 300 the most popular applications in each country which significantly has a very large number of downloads, there are 5.18% paid application in Indonesia market. The conversion is among 300 popular apps – where mostly are free apps- there are 15 paid apps listed. The average price is US$1.84, higher than most application bought in USA, US$1.48. 5.18% is the third highest number in Asia, under Japan and Sri Lanka. Even more shocking, that number is much higher than Singapore (3.24%) and Malaysia (2.53%).

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What’s in Investors’ Mind: Data and Research

On Echelon 2011, one of panel discussions talked about investors. The theme is always interesting or at least can bring a good discussion.

What’s in investor’s mind became the main question, especially for startup that needs funding and been wondering how investors think of a startup and what are the considerations before they fund any startup.

Panelist of  Willson Cuaca – East Ventures, James Chan – Neoteny Labs, Tuff Yen – Seraph Group dan William Klippgen – Tigers Capital exposed many interesting things, and there are at least two things that interested me, data and research.

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Paying attention to the behaviors of mobile users

I spent half the day last Friday working from Yahoo’s Jakarta office and they showed me a very early mockup of what the iPhone app for Koprol is going to look like. At this stage there’s really no point in showing you what it looks like as the interface is still being worked on and there’s a good chance that the released product will look quite different. The reason for this post isn’t so much about leaking photos of the app as it is about understanding what your audience would do with the app.

Upon seeing the mockups, it occurred to me that there are so many things that a social site can offer that it’s entirely possible to have a number of different apps serving that single site. Take Facebook for example. TechCrunch revealed the other day that Facebook is working on a photo sharing app that may or may not be separate from its current mobile app. Facebook doesn’t need to release a separate app but apparently photo sharing seems to be the next hot app category on the internet so it’s something they’re likely to consider.

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Focus.

Opening an event with wide scope of participants can be tricky. Perhaps it’s similar with creating curatorial text for art exhibition, the opening needs to be able to cover the entire theme and provide inspiration. Of course we need to avoid too many formalities because it is not a speech.

Echelon 2011 was opened by presentation or Talk session by Derek Sivers, representing CD Baby. CD Baby is one of internet industry’s milestone in 1999- 2000 that provided record store as their main service. The business went very well, it grew very fast, but Derek decided to sell it away and pursued other dream. He now lives in Singapore to prepare his new startups, MuckWork.

There are two things Derek “talked” about that I’d like to share with you here. Focus and Version 1.0.

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Indonesian University Should Trigger Innovation

For the past several months, I’ve met with academics from universities all over the island. The chat I had was insightful and somewhat clarifying a theory I have had bouncing in my mind since last year about how universities have a big role in shaping Silicon Valley to become how it is today and of course how it’s related to Indonesian universities.

Silicon Valley’s history cannot be separated from universities surrounding the area, Stanford, UC Berkeley, Carnegie Mellon, etc. If you look at these universities, they aren’t just contributing through education and human resources, but rather to the spirit of entrepreneurship and innovation, the very soul of Silicon Valley.

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