Category Archives: Contests

Japanese Venture Capitalist Firm Pivoting to South East Asian Startups

Innovation Weekend Winner

Japanese venture capitalist firm, Sunbridge Global Ventures, is aggressively moving into the South East Asian startup scene, which has exponential growth over the last couple of years.

Like many savvy incubator investors, Sunbridge Global has recognized the scene is to hot to miss out on. What is more, and unlike Japan in many sectors- it remains relatively unsaturated, as this excellent “opportunity map” from TechinAsia shows:

SE Asian opportunity map

Sunbridge Global is partnered by some of the biggest corporations in Japan, such as NTT, Kao, VEC and in the US with the likes of Amazon. Last week at the Innovation Weekend at Singapore, hosted by Sunbridge Global Ventures. The winner, StudyPact, and the runner-up Haystakt– both taking the new crowdfunding fad to new and unique levels. Both projects qualified for attendance, and a chance to pitch, at a Tokyo-based pitch contest in December of this year. Joining them will be the winners and runners-up from pitch contests in Boston, London and Osaka this year.

Sunbridge Global, along with many other established and up and coming venture capital firms in Japan- are evolving from being traditional VC types, to “incubators” who provide platforms and guidance to startup ventures. With their Jannovation Week in Silicon Valley, they are investing in companies all over the world, such as the US platform AnyRoad. It is surely a sign of the times that the new way of approaching investment in South East Asia, with many collaborations between Japanese and Chinese VCs and technology firms (such as LanguageCloud, which Sunbridge Global also invested in)- will not be overly influenced by the older generations still harboring grudges over events which happened over 75 years ago, such as the nanking massacre. The younger generations are not only tech savvy and forward looking, along with awareness that previous generations didn’t have (e.g: the environment, health, etc)- but they also recognize that socially aware entrepreneurship and staying connected to their fellow men and women around world, without censorship, is the best chance the world has for peace and prosperity for all.

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    Originally posted on May 14, 2014 @ 2:39 am

    How an Online Idea Contest can Benefit Your Business

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    When running a business, it is very important that you come up with an effective marketing strategy. Constant monitoring and updating of your strategy are a must as well moving forward. These steps are aimed at ensuring that you get the word out about your products or service to as many people.

    A tried and proven method is running an online contest. This applies not only to businesses that operate on the internet but as well as those that have not yet established an online presence.

    With online contests, using the social media channels is a popular choice today. As millions of people often hangout on the various platforms on a daily basis, indeed they are a marketing avenue worth tapping. Companies have also taken advantage of social media to raise awareness of their brands, attract more customers and gain profits.
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    Originally posted on July 7, 2012 @ 9:25 pm

    Why Graphic Design Contests are so useful

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    If you are looking for an effective graphic design for your own website and are not really happy to outsource the work to any of the available freelancers, then you may sufficiently think about the option of throwing open graphic design contests at various levels. These contests ensure that you get the right graphic design for your website.

    Holding graphic design contests has its own benefits and advantages. One of the most important benefits of holding such contests is that you will have a good number of graphic designs at your disposal so that you can start your own business of providing web design and graphic design to other websites as well. All the competitors of the contests will be sufficiently compensated of course. If they are sufficiently compensated for their creations they cannot exercise any sort of right over them anymore. Hence you can conduct your own business of graphic design. It is also for sure that such contests will attract good number of designers from across the globe. The good the designs the better it would be for the blogs or websites. Web design has an active part to play in the positioning of the website in the search pages across the Internet.

    As a matter of fact web design along with methods like article marketing, forum posting, link building and other forms of organic traffic building methods is very vital as far as the search engine optimization techniques are concerned. Graphic web design is no exception.

    Originally posted on March 29, 2011 @ 5:02 pm

    Win Consulting Time at Blogging Tips

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    I have thrown my hat into another contest, and hopefully this time it will work out well. Blogging Tips has a forum that they are looking to revitalize, and to do so, they have started up a simple contest.

    Basically there are two parts. The first part can be won by being one of the most active participants. The grand prize for that is $200 which will be Paypal transferred into your account. Their are one thousand dollars in cash prizes to be won, so it can definitely be worth it to try you hat if you love being part of forums.

    The second set of prizes include books, Premium WordPress themes and plugins, as well as a chance at a two hour consultation with me. To win these prizes, you have to stay active in the forums and each week a question or challenge will be placed on the board for people to take part in. The winner each week will win the prize of that specific week.

    If you are interested in a great and easy way to earn yourself some nice prizes, check out Blogging Tips Forum contest.

    Originally posted on October 15, 2008 @ 8:10 am

    Netfirms Twitter Domain Purchasing Feature and Contest

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    Recently, one of the few domain registrars that I trust with my money (especially for .ca domain names) has launched a new feature: registration via Twitter.

    Here is an example of registration via SMS to Twitter:

    You send a Direct Message to Netfirms via Twitter asking us to register a domain name for you. If the domain name is available we will register it for you and automatically add it to your existing Netfirms Control Panel and bill to your current billing profile. The only prerequisite is that you add your Twitter username to your Netfirms Control Panel. Please visit our tutorial with full details on setting yourself up for domain registration via Twitter. The instructions should be completed once only and you’re good to go after that.
    1. Log in to your Twitter account (You can use any of the available Twitter apps)
    2. Send a dm to @netfirms with the following: reg mynewdomain.com
    3. We will confirm by replying to you via direct message at which point the domain will be added to your Netfirms Control Panel. The domain is now ready to be used.

    To celebrate the new feature, Netfirms has launched a contest (see the Netfirms Contest here) that runs until October 7th. You can win a MacBook or one of four iPod Touches just by doing one of two simple things:

    • Tweeting about the contest
    • Registering a new domain name

    If you are going to tweet about the contest, they ask that you use the following:
    “Win a #free iPod Touch or Macbook from the @Netfirms #contest. Domain registration services via Twitter http://bit.ly/yJfJK”

    To make it easy, just head on over to the contest page, and scroll down until you find “Click here to post this to your Twitter account”. Makes it easy, quick, and earns you an entry.

    Don’t forget, you have to be following @Netfirms to have a shot at winning a prize, so don’t just push out the message, or you won’t qualify.

    One retweet equals one entry per day. One domain registered equals one entry.

    What does having more routes to register domains mean? Well, for me, it means that I’ll be spending even more money on my domain buying hobby. (I sometimes swear I should be banned from buying domains unless I have the content and design ready to go live.)

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    Originally posted on September 14, 2009 @ 11:45 pm