What a strange day. The beginning of something new for our start-ups and the end of the first JFDI–Innov8 bootcamp. We have a hunch there will be many more but, in the meantime, here are some quotes from people who were there:

@gherry: The best time of my life
@trafflers: The perfect environment for developing new businesses.
@markjco: I went through this amazing journey, met awesome people, and started something that matters.
@saumilnanavati: Awesome #jfdi2012 class.
@serrynaimo: Crazy good feedback on #jfdi2012! The best startup pitches in Asia so far!
@jofell: No B.S. It was one of the awesomest things that happened in my life.
@AskWildby: Awesome 100 Days!

Visitors to Singapore will note that the country is very fond of tracking Key Performance Indicators, so we present ours here, in the form of a timeline:

• 300 people downloaded the Request for Comments document we issued in January 2010
• 30 people showed up to hackerspace.sg to contribute comments in an open event and 50 people gave detailed written feedback by the end of February 2010
• 200 local businesses and individuals benefited from our pilot year in 2010, when 8 mentors came from around the world to share their insights, giving over 500 hours of mentoring and 44 public talks,
• 15 members of what was then called the TechStars network welcomed us as their first SE Asia member in February 2011. Now renamed the Global Accelerator Network, it has grown to over 35 members.
• 16 local business angels, 2 government agencies and 1 major sponsor committed to support JFDI by August 2011, so we pressed the Go button to do the full roll out.

• 31,602,696 impressions of our ads ran on Facebook, attracting 15,018 clicks through to our application page. Initially the image on the ad was of the frog. When we changed this to a picture of one of the younger female entrepreneurs who was joining us, the click through rate increased x2.1. In addition to Facebook, we reached thousands more people through LinkedIn and partnerships with start-up groups around the world.
• In all, 150,000+ unique visitors came to this site and the microsites we set up to run Startup Weekend events with partners in Australia, Indonesia, Philippines, India, Thailand and Singapore. In total over 1,500 people attended those events, forming over 200 teams that each developed a business prototypes. Hundreds more followed each event on Twitter and LiveStream video.
• Over 300 teams applied for the bootcamp, mostly from Asia but also from as far afield as Netherlands and New Zealand, through the Startup Weekends and the Global Accelerator Network gateway. We selected 12 teams to join us. 3 were from Singapore, 2 from Philippines and 1 each from USA, New Zealand, Netherlands, Indonesia, India, Malaysia and Thailand.
• 44 larger-than-expected plants arrived over Chinese New Year to create the JFDI Jungle in space kindly loaned to us at Block 71.

• 46 strangers arrived on 26 JAN 2012 and over 100 days worked with around 50 mentors through an incredibly intense experience.
• 1 team member became a Dad and another found out he was going to have a second child. 2 members of our community lost a parent or grandparents who raised them as children. 2 team members got married (to each other).
• 2000 Nespresso capsules and 18kg of cheese were consumed by teams and visitors to 58 public events. Opinion varies at to which was the best flavour of either.
• 2 teams (Kark and ShopSpot) announced investments before Demo Day.

• 11 teams presented on Demo Day. They were watched by 110 investors, all of which had been prequalified as active angels or working with over 50 firms. Over 80 initial meetings were set up immediately.
• More than 50% of the start-up teams pitching on demo day have firm offers for at least part of the cash they hoped to raise, as of today.
• 0 animals were harmed in the making of these startups. There were 0 fatalities in the forest and 0 hours were lost due to accidents.
• 26,330 viewers have watched one or more of the 243 videos we have so far posted on our YouTube channel. 82.9% of them are male and 17.1% are female. 52.2% of them are in the age range 25-44. In descending order, the top ten countries from which we drew viewers were: Singapore, Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand, United States, India, Australia, United Kingdom, Malaysia and The Netherlands. 10% of viewers were using mobile devices.
• 70,909 visitors had come to this website, as of this morning. They reached us most often, in descending order, through Search Engines, Facebook, Twitter, blogs, LinkedIn and the TechStars website.

We will keep those stats updated as the weeks and months go by on this site. We make that commitment because everything we do is rooted in the evidence-based Lean Startup approach … and JFDI.Asia is of course a start-up too. If anyone reading this would like to connect with us for the next leg of our journey, please get in touch

Meanwhile, there are some bigger ambitions for JFDI that can’t quite be accommodated in the Lean Canvas, metrics and all the other tools and methods that I’ve discussed in video blogs through the last 100 days. One look at our Facebook community shows that this is about much more than making money or hitting KPIs.

Meng and I talk often about building the social capital - relationships, shared insights and know-how – that will create a vibrant, sustainable start-up ecosystem here in Asia. That’s our ambition. We will have succeeded when some of our start-ups founders become funders for the next generation. We hope that will happen in the next 3-5 years.

For now, a huge thank you to everyone who helped us do this. The Frog Has Left The Building but he’ll be back soon

Huge thanks to SG Entrepreneurs for capturing these reactions to our startup team presentations on Demo Day:

Chow Yen-Lu, Entrepreneur and Business Angel with WholeTree Technologies and BAF Spectrum, said: “I saw 3 or 4 companies that are interesting to us. What’s impressive is what they were able to accomplish in 100 days … With this Demo Day and other events like it, Singapore has clearly become the hub in the region for early stage investment. Investors are flocking to Singapore and companies are coming to Singapore to set up their base here.”

Ronnie Wee, Founder and Managing Partner, IncuVest, said: “I loved the presentation and the way they engaged the audience … all the presenters were very good. They had understood the problem, came up with a solution and a pretty well defined market. So kudos to JFDI for helping to mentor these companies. Early stage entrepreneurs that we see need a lot of this guidance … This is great for the ecosystem. The question is how can we scale this up to include more investees. This is exactly what investors are looking for … We should do a lot more of this.”

Rani Francois-Marie-Saad, Director and Head of Corporate Development at Abacus, said: “It was a great show today … they guys were really showing innovative ideas and very keen on taking it forward. They know what they are doing and they were great on stage.”

Tanguy Lesselin, Managing Director of Cartouche, said: “Really Interesting. Here I can see projects with high quality and surprisingly good execution.”

Paul Santos of TIS incubator Wavemaker Labs said: “I got the chance to meet a few of the startups during the 100 days and they have come a long way … So hats off to JFDI for trying something like this and hats off to the entrepreneurs for working really hard. It looks like a few of them will get some funding. The fact that the first one has worked and companies are interested and will get funding will inspire the next batch of entrepreneurs to sign up to JFDI. JFDI have been through the process once so they now have a ton of learning and the next batch of incubatees will benefit from that experience.”

Leslie Loh, managing director of TIS incubator Red Dot Ventures, said: “I think they are all quite interesting. The key challenge for any digital media business is answering this question: Are you going to get market traction in a profitable manner in a short period of time? Clearly a lot of these are not ready for series A – the VCs – but the angels, the incubators like ourselves would be their market and in Singapore I think there are enough of them. NRF have appointed 15 incubators that are all looking for opportunities to invest. So funding should be the easier part. They need to really find an incubator that can help them to find that initial market traction.”

Vinnie Lauria of Golden Gate Ventures said: “JFDI is an amazing program – great teams, great environment – I have spent the last 90 days with them mentoring a lot of the companies. I have tried to spend at least one day a week there. I have seen a lot of teams come a very long way in a hundred days. I was blown away by the demos today, just in terms of peoples stage presence, keeping it quick and interesting. Everybody did a really great job. The opportunity here for companies that focus on the Asian or South East Asian Market. It’s a huge opportunity.”

Yasuhiko Yurimoto-san, President and Chief Executive Officer of Global Brain Corporation, said: “I was lucky enough to be shown around JFDI’s incubation center during my time in Singapore last month. Their premises, which they appropriately refer to as ‘The Jungle’ exudes energy and life, partly due to the giant ferns and tropical plants adorning the space, but mostly because of the young, talented people that had taken up temporary residence there. 11 companies, all with fresh, innovative ideas, working away for 100 days to see just how far their team work, capabilities and, most of all, their spirit, could get them. And, like the plants, they kept on growing and growing. Demo Day, held on May 4th, was where this talent was unveiled. Unfortunately, I was unable to attend Demo Day in person, but watching the ventures pitching sessions on YouTube I was extremely impressed by how entertaining, informative and well presented they were. Many of the ventures have the potential to make waves in the future. It’s always very exciting and uplifting to see such creative, talented people coming up with ideas that may change the way we go about our daily private and working lives. Can’t wait to see what happens next!”

Edgar Hardless, CEO of SingTel Innov8, said: “We are the key sponsor and partner for the JFDI–Innov8 2012 bootcamp … These guys have been based at block 71 over the 100 days next to us so we have had the privilege of seeing them in action. What’s been amazing is to see the progress the teams have made from the first day of the bootcamp to now. They are completely different teams: The level of confidence, the level of enthusiasm is miles higher and it shows in terms of the pitches they made today. We are talking to a number of the companies about potential funding for their next steps. We think some of the companies that have come out of this this bootcamp are exciting and very relevant to what SingTel is doing.”

Amit Anand, founder and managing partner of Jungle Ventures, said: “Incubators came into existence to fill a particular gap. There are always good technology people, there are good business people there but there is a lack of knowledge about what is a great product … I think that JFDI has done well in toning some of these startups from where they were before to where they should be … Beyond this it will be about investors like us and some of the others to back some of these companies and help them in execution.”

Ken Mandel, Asia Pacific managing director of Buddy Media and Angel’s Gate judge, said: “I loved them – I thought the team did a great job putting them together. They were professional, they were sharp, I loved the Rock and Roll atmosphere – a great job from JFDI today.”

This Week In Asia, the tech podcast compiled by local industry commentators Daniel Cerventus, Bernard Leong and Michael Smith also reviewed the Demo Day at length:

JFDI.Asia CEO Hugh Mason continues the video log of the JFDI-Innov8 Bootcamp 2012. Today: reflecting on Demo Day at the Hackerspace.sg after party with JFDI.Asia Co-Founder Meng Wong, Mentor Ravi Mantha and Senior Associate Ong Chiah Li.

The bootcamp was made possible by sponsorship from key partner SingTel Innov8 and grants from SPRING Singapore and Singapore’s Media Development Authority. Each start-up received free access to technology facilities worth over S$100,000, provided by technology vendors and S$15,000 capital from local business angels. In addition, 50 local and international mentors provided advice, insights and experience.

Sindhu Prabowo, CEO of bootcamp start-up Kark Mobile Education said: “The JFDI–Innov8 Bootcamp has been a really good experience. The mentors have been great, helping us refine the financial and technical aspects of our project. Our mindsets shifted when the mentors challenged us to think bigger and see our project as something that could go global. Now that is happening.”

Hugh Mason, CEO and Co-Founder of JFDI said: “This is a great result for the start-ups, the JFDI–Innov8 Bootcamp and the regional start-up ecosystem. For the first time, the fast-track accelerator approach pioneered and proven successful in the US by TechStars has delivered real results in South East Asia. Just as in the US, the bootcamp has been a community effort that would not have been possible without the huge generosity of many people and organisations.”

Edgar Hardless, CEO of SingTel Innov8 said: “We are delighted to be part of this pioneering programme. Working with partners such as JFDI, we hope to help create the confidence and processes to inspire and deliver innovation for consumers and businesses across the region.”

Teams participating in the JFDI–Innov8 2012 Bootcamp were selected for their technical and communications skills as well as their passion to solve problems in a particular domain. Many were first-time entrepreneurs with no formal business training, but had the commitment to apply the ‘Lean Startup Methodology’ which lies at the heart of the TechStars method. Coupled with community support, this method is the ‘secret sauce’ that offers the chance to create valuable companies quicker and more consistently than ever before.

Meng Wong, Co-Founder and Social Engineer at JDFI said “The Lean Startup method is all about finding ‘fit’: a fit between an idea and a team; problem/solution fit and product/market fit in a way that maximises the chance of success for a start-up and makes investment attractive to early stage investors because they can see that a business has eliminated many risks. Our aim was to have teams focus on customer discovery, hypothesis testing, market validation, and development of a minimum viable product. Some have gone farther than others but all have used a scientific process that roots their decisions in evidence from the real world.”

The start-up companies featured at today’s event were:

• ShopSpot, a C2C mobile app that makes buying and selling items as easy as sending a tweet (watch demo).
• Kark Mobile Education, a B2C tablet game platform using collectible QR cards to make 4–12 year old children masters of a simulated world (watch demo).
• Tradegecko, a B2B web-based service providing supply chain management for independent brands and their retailers (watch demo).
• Remember, a B2C mobile app is the family Time Capsule in your pocket that makes it simple to capture and relive memories on your smartphone (watch demo).
• FamilyKo, a B2C multi-platform app that allows families separated by business to bond and grow together (watch demo).
• Flocations, a B2C web travel service that visualizes nearby destinations on an interactive map, so leisure travellers can browse by budget and book their next getaway in minutes, not hours (watch demo).
• Fetch Fans, a B2B web service that gives brand franchises with local businesses control and analytics as they use social media to maximise impact for all their franchisees (watch demo).
• Trafflers, a B2C web service that makes it fun to discover and plan vacations with friends, thereby increasing the frequency and size of group travel bookings online (watch demo).
• Stubb, a B2B document sharing service for the masses that connects your printer to the cloud. Anything you can print, you can publish online (watch demo).
• Wildby, a fun talking encyclopedia on your iPhone that 5 to 12 year olds can enjoy without needing any literacy skills (watch demo).
• TribeHired, the social recruitment platform for fast-growing start-ups that puts friends to work (watch demo).

Also available on YouTube: Demo Day Introduction and Closing.

JFDI.Asia CEO Hugh Mason continues the video log of the JFDI-Innov8 Bootcamp 2012. Today: a tour of the frog forest as the startup teams make final preparations for the Demo Day