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11/10 - Startup Metrics by Zave
11/10 - Startup Metrics by Zave
Achieving explosive growth in five easy steps
Achieving explosive growth in five easy steps
Zave pairs experienced engineers with leading accountants, corporate secretaries, tax advisers and payroll specialists, to build a technology-driven corporate services firm that redesigns corporate services from the ground up.
Their main goal is to save clients time and money, to provide them with more insight, and to enable them to focus on growing their businesses and managing their assets.
Importance of marketing
Through networking with the Zave Founder Alan Schmoll after his talk, we learnt the importance of marketing. We should always build up our social media before trying to bring in sales because when people are interested in our products, they will search up our social platforms like our website and social media. If there is nothing interesting there, they will find the business doubtful and unreliable. Interesting tips from this talk helped us to learn how crucial marketing is to start-ups.
Becoming the Agents of Change: Looking Past Your Limits to Create an Inclusive Society
Becoming the Agents of Change: Looking Past Your Limits to Create an Inclusive Society
The conference consists of a series of inspiring talks by Raul Krauthausen, Malvika Iyer, Dr William Tan and Mark Chay where they share with us how to become agents of change and create an inclusive society.
Raul Krauthausen
Disability Rights Activist, Social Startup Entrepreneur Raul Krauthausen
How to become heroes?
Heroes - they do it voluntarily, for others, even if it is risky and with no expectations. If you give yourself an excuse, you will miss the opportunity to become a hero.
Understanding People with Disability
When we create special services for the minority groups, it might seem like we are helping them but we do not realise that we make them feel uncomfortable by treating them specially and feel bad for making others go the extra mile for them. They do not want special treatment, they want to be 'mainstreamed' into the society.
Malvika Iyer
Bomb Blast Survivor, Social Worker, Disability Rights Activist and Fashion Model Malvika Iyer
How to overcome challenges?
To overcome your challenges, walk with your mind, not your body.
"Succumbing to my injuries was fate but staying down and wallowing in self-pity was a choice. A choice I didn't want to make."
Make them feel confident
She believes that it is very important for people with disability to feel confident. She designed clothes that were accessible yet fashionable. They are made without buttons and zips, making it easy to put on but still fashionable so that people with disability will not feel uncomfortable wearing them.
Dr William Tan
Neuroscientist & Physician, World Records Holder Paralympian, Author & International Inspirational Speaker Dr William Tan
Power of small wins
Take small concrete steps. See opportunities when others see problems.
"It is not the best who wins, but the most adaptive."
Mark Chay
Olympian, Sportsman of the Year (2001), Chairman & CEO, International Sports Academy Mark Chay
Secret to success
You have to visualise yourself accomplishing what you want. Move the conscious to the unconscious.
21/10 - FestivalForGood 2018
21/10 - FestivalForGood 2018
FestivalForGood is an annual festival held by raiSE Singapore that showcases and celebrates the acts of social enterprises in Singapore. Held at Marina One this year, there were over 50 pop-up booths showcasing the various products of social enterprises.
As we explored the area, these few companies caught our attention:
The Given Company
The Given Company
Marketing through freebies
Even though we went on the last day and the place was emptier than expected, there were still a lot of people crowding around The Given Company. We found out that they were giving out free t-shirts to those who participate in their lucky draw and like their Facebook page.
Attracting passers-by with free items drives traffic to your booth and increases the chance that they check out your products and get to know your company and brand. Besides strengthening their social media presence with the influx of Facebook page likes, they have access to all the contact details submitted through the lucky draw form and this can help them to increase their marketing profitability.
Glyph
Glyph
Appealing with beneficiaries
Glyph's social mission is rather similar to BitsGreat, except they have more first hand experience with the beneficiaries. They are very strong in engaging their beneficiaries, including them in all their pop-up roadshows and bringing them out for enrichment activities every other week whereas BitsGreat does more with bringing in sales to fund the youths' enrichment needs and formal employment.
From this event, we got to see a social enterprise that works on the other extreme end, attracting crowds with their beneficiaries instead of their products. As BitsGreat does not usually appeal with our social mission upfront as we prefer to create empathy instead of sympathy, it was insightful to observe another extreme marketing angle for social enterprises.
This conference discusses challenges and opportunities facing the social sector due to disruptions caused by technology and highlights tips and tools that social sector agencies can tap into to enhance their impact. It consists of talks from 10 different speakers from all around the world.
Among the multiple speakers at the conference, we found the information shared by the following three speakers most interesting and relevant to us.
Professor Dean Williams
Professor Dean Williams
"As we invent new things to tackle existing problems, we create new other problems like a divided world and increased tribalism."
People do not want change unless there is something in it for them. As a change agent, you will need to make sense of that change for them.
How to be a change agent and lead in this crazy world?
- Have a deep sense of purpose
Have an ambition to be someone great and aspiration to create something good and impactful.
2. Leadership
Leadership is an activity, not an authority. You have to know how to distinguish leadership from authority.
3. Lead at the boundaries.
Diversity is necessary to create better adaptation but it is the leadership work to bring diverse people to get together to solve problems. Racial, age, profession and community. We need to transcend boundaries as a leader. We cannot solve complex problems without crossing boundaries.
4. Think like an artist
Jack Ma said he does not need experts who are experts of the past, he needs people who can carry us forward into the future.
5. Pursue Wisdom
We need to do things like decide how much power to give the artificial intelligence. Where is the need for humans in the world of A.I.?
Mr Prantik Mazumdar
Mr Prantik Mazumdar
How to avoid email fatigue?
Personalisation and segmentation through demographics, behaviour and preferences. Customise your information as much as possible
How to adapt to current digital shift?
1. Be led by consumer insights and behaviour, not technology
2. Partnerships versus Ownership
3. Perpetual Beta - You have to improve constantly. There is no perfect solution, its all about experimenting and optimizing along the way.
4. Data is the new oil - It can help you understand and get consumers. Having no data is a weakness.
5. Adopt a consistent and integrated approach
So Young Kang
So Young Kang
"I don't believe tech will replace humans but instead empower humans."
Issue on technology reducing jobs
Technology is not only about replacing jobs. Sometimes, the opportunities are there but people are unwilling to adapt and refuse to be disrupted. One of the common needs across United Nation's Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is the need to develop people in the ecosystem - volunteers, donors, victims and family members. However, the social sector lacks the urgency to address this need.
Jobs may be replaced but other opportunities open. It is only whether humans are willing to adapt into someone the society requires. Although a pen has the potential to poke someone's eyes, the intention of a pen is to write and we need to see the good intention behind every invention.
12/11 - Singapore FinTech Festival
12/11 - Singapore FinTech Festival
Organised by the Monetary Authority of Singapore in partnership with Association Banks of Singapore, the Singapore FinTech Festival provides a global platform for the FinTech ecosystem in Singapore and beyond.
Experience at FinTech
Experience at FinTech
We gained insights into the new financial technologies that were making bigger entrants. We explored companies such as NEC where they showcased their NeoFace Watch bio-metric surveillance technology. The technology uses facial recognition to identify faces from real-time CCTV feeds. Through this way, it can help banks to identify VIP customers in bank branches.
Application of technology to BitsGreat
Similarly, this made us ponder upon how the same idea of 'face recognition' could be applied to BitsGreat. As BitsGreat requires a mock-up photo of their interested customers, this 'face recognition' can be applied to passers-by. When these customer's photos are captured, BitsGreat could perhaps be able to automatically generate instant mock ups without having customers to send their images over.
The Alipay-NUS Enterprise Social Innovation Challenge aims to identify and support the growth of start-ups in Southeast Asia that are using digital technology to build a more inclusive society.
The use of digital payments
Digital payments can bring down the cost of transaction of donations to charities, increasing the funds that actually go to relieving the unfortunate. Besides making donations more effective, it is more transparent so people will be less likely to make use of donations for personal gain. Therefore, it is recommended to use digital payments in our businesses.
Framing of business
It is important to frame our business right. There are a lot of people investing in GrabFood and Foodpanda but are they as willing to invest in food relief? We need to frame our enterprise well in a model that helping the beneficiaries seem compelling.
Focus of Social Enterprises
A Social Enterprise should prioritize the business part because we first need to be sustainable for our Social Enterprise to continue to impact our beneficiaries. Placing all our efforts on our beneficiaries and neglecting our business will still not be beneficial to our social mission in the long run as we lose the ability to empower them. Building our business gives us that ability.
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