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The clock ticked over to a new year … so WHAT are you and your business going to do differently in 2013? ‘War stories’ from successful entrepreneurs like Derek Sivers are powerful because they can also help us figure out WHY we’re doing what we’re doing. In the first of an occasional series, Hugh Mason…

FDI.Asia’s year ends with over 250 applications for our bootcamp to sift through and more than 800 start-up founders waiting to hear the results. They all read 3,000+ words of notes and answered 36 questions and 115 submitted videos so we’re hugely impressed. Seeing that JFDI.Asia is itself a start-up, it seemed only fair that…

Do you know anyone who might be interested? The job description looks like this: Run the office operations, be in the office around 9-5pm. We are also OK with part-time. Timely book-keeping using something online like quickbooks online, make and record payments, record receipts of cash/cheques/direct debit to bank, handle invoicing, chase for payment, record…

Congratulations to TradeGecko, which today confirmed that it has closed a S$800k seed funding round led by WaveMaker Labs and including Golden Gate Ventures. Alongside Flocations, TradeGecko is one of two successful start-up teams from the JFDI-Innov8 2012 bootcamp raise a total S$1.5 million in the last ten days. Both teams shared the learning from…

Little-known fact: the current prime minister of Singapore has a diploma in Computer Science from Cambridge University. One of our two Deputy PMs has a Masters in Computer Science (Imperial College); the other is a trained economist. So if any country can build a hi-tech ecosystem from scratch, it will be this one, writes JFDI.Asia…

Huijia Phua is developing Project Skillseed, a career literacy marketplace for youths. China was an obvious market, so she set aside shame, gatecrashed a trade mission and learned how to hustle like the locals. As a born and bred Singaporean, recently returned to Singapore after four fruitful years in the US, it was an opportunity…

Paul Srivorakul and Piers Bennett are two co-founders at Ardent Capital, a Bangkok-based private capital fund that guides entrepreneurs with high potential and great business ideas down the path of wealth creation. Thailand’s start-up ecosystem is growing up fast, Paul and Piers tell JFDI.Asia CEO Hugh Mason. That’s why Ardent is now focusing on fixing…

Huge congratulations to Flocations.com, which confirmed today that it has secured S$700,000 Pre-Series Funding Led by TNF Ventures. SingTel Innov8 and Singapore-based business angel Ben T Ball also came in on the deal. The team’s roller-coaster ride began at Startup Weekend, took them through an early funding offer that would have forced them to accept…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nba-q9JwfgY San Francisco— Joel Gascoigne built Buffer on one philosophy: serving customers. In this interview with JFDI.Asia Ambassador Ray Wu he shares insights on how being helpful to customers can benefit product development, create a core group of passionate users, and increase the funnel of AARRR. Joel’s now applying his philosophy to help other entrepreneurs….

You may not be able to sell data you’ve gathered about users, veteran IP guru Robert Bond of Speechly Bircham, London, tells JFDI.Asia CEO Hugh Mason. At a JFDI.Asia open house event last night Robert shared his journey from the start of the computer games era, helping software start-ups to protect their intellectual property, to…