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Sunday, October 30, 2005
London
I nip over from Finland and stay the weekend with Roy and Belinda Davies. R&B spent last winter in France near to where I lived. It's very cool to spend time with them and on Saturday Francis and Trish and baby Sam come round for a curry. I fly back to Helsinki on Sunday evening.
posted by Guy Nicholson, 11:10 am 0 comments 
Sunday, October 16, 2005
Back in Finland
My first working trip to Finland, now that my sabbatical is over, and I am back to work. Over the weekend I stay in Tampere where I lived from 1997 to 1999. Tampere is a great city: plenty of history in the architecture and nestled between two lakes; sufficiently small that you can easily travel around yet large enough to have plenty going on. It's good to see the families of Timo and Juha - everyone is a father these days! Timo took the sunset photo on Sunday evening.
posted by Guy Nicholson, 4:01 pm 1 comments
Sunday, October 09, 2005
Phuket
We spend the weekend with Bonnie's sister and family at the Dusit Laguna in Phuket. Lots of fun swimming at the beach; I took a windsurfing lesson, and Kishen and nephew Rishav and I went for a sail in a Hobie cat. We all ate far too much.
posted by Guy Nicholson, 3:42 pm 1 comments
Friday, October 07, 2005
Walden talk VC in Singapore
Yesterday evening I went to a fascinating talk at the Business school at NUS. Mr Chua, partner in Walden's Singapore office, talked for an hour.
The talk, unsurprisingly, described how Singapore is a small domestic market relative to others in Asia; it does not have companies that are global industrial drivers like Korea has LG, Samsung etc; and there is a small talent pool of managers; the culture here is more averse to risk than other growing markets. No real surprises here
Despite there are many VC firms here in Singapore, not much investment is being given to Singapore startups. Most of the money is going to India and China business plans. Mr Chua talked of a "China bubble". Another insight is that successful Singaporean entrepeneurs don't seem to be investing their money into new startups, unlike Silicon Valley. Not the same ecosystem here.
Mr Chua told many interesting "rules of thumb" on Walden's approach to VC investing such as
- startup must have great team, not an individual
- prefer not to invest in a company with a sole owner, instead "four-five people each with 15-20%", in case of changes ahead
- the business has to be scalable, and not dependent on key people. In response to one question, he said consultancies are not what he is looking for as "there is no way to replicate human minds exactly"
- exit strategies typically five years, looking for 5-10 times return on investment. Biotech is tough for a VC because of the long produc cycles.
Finally for current investment opportunities, Mr Chua sees Services/Broadband/Wireless technologies are all hot areas, also Open-Source software. Some in the audience expressed frustration on the lack of seed capital for new startups; Mr Chua said there are very few VCs in Singapore who provide seed capital.
The talk, unsurprisingly, described how Singapore is a small domestic market relative to others in Asia; it does not have companies that are global industrial drivers like Korea has LG, Samsung etc; and there is a small talent pool of managers; the culture here is more averse to risk than other growing markets. No real surprises here
Despite there are many VC firms here in Singapore, not much investment is being given to Singapore startups. Most of the money is going to India and China business plans. Mr Chua talked of a "China bubble". Another insight is that successful Singaporean entrepeneurs don't seem to be investing their money into new startups, unlike Silicon Valley. Not the same ecosystem here.
Mr Chua told many interesting "rules of thumb" on Walden's approach to VC investing such as
- startup must have great team, not an individual
- prefer not to invest in a company with a sole owner, instead "four-five people each with 15-20%", in case of changes ahead
- the business has to be scalable, and not dependent on key people. In response to one question, he said consultancies are not what he is looking for as "there is no way to replicate human minds exactly"
- exit strategies typically five years, looking for 5-10 times return on investment. Biotech is tough for a VC because of the long produc cycles.
Finally for current investment opportunities, Mr Chua sees Services/Broadband/Wireless technologies are all hot areas, also Open-Source software. Some in the audience expressed frustration on the lack of seed capital for new startups; Mr Chua said there are very few VCs in Singapore who provide seed capital.
posted by Guy Nicholson, 12:33 pm 0 comments
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