Kimono, is the rare Y Combinator graduate to turn heads in both Silicon Valley and Asia. The service’s ability to address the universal desire for an easy way to retrieve and analyze data is a major reason why.

The internet is a goldmine of data, but there are few easy ways to extract and organize it to one’s liking. Unless you love copying and pasting things into Excel, or have cash to hire a fancy firm to do data magic tricks you’re not skilled enough to do yourself, it is not possible to easily rummage through the financial stats of all tech companies on the stock market or explore a potential correlation between gold prices and bitcoin value.

Kimono, operating out of Silicon Valley, offers technology which enables both developers and the technology-challenged alike to easily create APIs out of regular websites, thereby making data available for anyone. An API (application program interface) is a way of sharing data between two interfaces. In this case, data that is typically trapped within websites can be pulled out and played with through Kimono. Below is a simple video, one of many tutorials, showing how Kimono transforms websites into interfaces for quick data extraction.

The APIs can be set to continuously update, meaning the data remains fresh and reliable. Users can leverage Kimono to pull data from a website and put it on their hard drive, in the cloud or even in a mobile app for future use – all without writing a line of code. The service is currently compatible with Mozilla and Chrome browsers (Internet Explorer loyalists may wish to reconsider their life decisions).

The startup launched in January 2014, but it was first coded in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam last year by Pratap Ranade, an Indian national, and Ryan Rowe, an American living and working in Shanghai. The two long-time friends teamed up out of mutual desire to leave the corporate world behind.

Over the 10-week course of Y Combinator, Kimono’s fast and easy method for data extraction attracted a lot of attention among data-crazy internet users, growing from zero to 20,000 users. Interest from investors duly followed. Monetary figures have not been disclosed, but co-founders Ryan Rowe and Pratap Ranade intimated to Tech in Asia that the sum was quite considerable. Investors included Y Combinator VC, SV Angel, and the Winklevoss Capital.

Data knows no borders

Though based in Silicon Valley, Kimono is not limiting itself to the American market. Expert data scientists remain in short supply, and the need to extract data remains universal. Currently, Kimono’s top markets are the United States, France, and Japan.

“I don’t think we are going to have a US-centric view in terms of how we grow. Growth targets are going to be international and as agnostic as possible,” said Rowe. That is no empty promise. Ranade and Rowe have brought the entire eight person team for an extended stay in Tokyo to increase focus and explore the Asian market.

They are likely to find a lot of enthusiasm for the product. In Asia, some enterprising users have already used Kimono for some very impressive projects. One project leveraged Kimono to crunch publicly available Beijing air quality statistics and generate a program that reflected the quality in a bundle of plastic lights. The faster the lights wink, the worse the air quality. Other, more civically-minded forays tracked news and analysis in the recent Indonesia election and votes in India’s elections. Ranade noted that, in the case of India, Kimono essentially provided the backend for monitoring the world’s largest democratic election in history.

These sort of applied uses of Kimono could be very significant for Asian governments and businesses. The way Kimono’s founders see it, the next generation of government and business leaders in developing nations, including those in Asia, is coming up through the ranks right now. These are bright men and women who, with the right data, can more easily make the critical decisions that will have an outsized impact on their countries.

Because all that is needed is the ability to ask the right questions and know where to find the right data. “There is no way [they] should be employing a large firm to API-ify [their] stuff,” Ranade said.

Co-founders Ryan Rowe (l) and Pratap Ranade (r)

Designing the future

Though Kimono is ostensibly flush with cash, the company is in no hurry to dramatically grow its team. Its first priority is building the product. “We still feel like there is a lot of experimentation to do. When we hit that very clear path and know this is how we want to shape the next three to five years, that’s when we will inject [our capital]. But we’ve built this war chest that will allow us to stay in an experimental phase for as long as we need,” Rowe said.

As Kimono tinkers with its service – recent modifications include stronger multilingual support and letting users scrape data from websites that require a login – its fans are doing some experimenting of their own. When Rowe recently discussed Kimono with some Chinese friends, their first reaction was that Kimono could be used to fix China’s broken healthcare system by pulling data like appointment schedules from doctors offices and making it available via a mobile app.

These sort of yet-to-be-discovered Kimono-powered data analyses are what drive Rowe and Ranade. “Big data is not about the number of rows in a spreadsheet, it’s about the number of columns. It’s about how many different things you are comparing. But the cost of adding a new column to the spreadsheet is usually quite high. What Kimono does is reduce that cost to almost nothing. That allows to you find unexpected, serendipitous relationships,” said Ranade.

Top image via Flickr user Annie Guilloret

The race to cover Indian cities with on-demand cab services has entered a new stretch, with the entry of Olacabs into Ahmedabad just 12 days after its competitor TaxiForSure drove into the capital of Gujarat and home of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. This is the 10th Indian city in which Ola has launched operations since starting out three years ago in Mumbai, while its six-month-younger Bangalore-based competitor is now in five cities.

Ola has raised US$65 million in three rounds of funding, the latest being in June this year, so it has the fuel to speed ahead with its expansion. “We currently have over 12,000 cabs on our platform across these 10 cities and plan to double our capacity in the next one year,” says Anand Subramanian, director of marketing communications, Olacabs. TaxiForSure has a more modest US$14 million in its kitty, but is reported to be in talks to raise funding, and has a similar target of around 25,000 cabs in a year from now.

Gujarat is a leading business hub of the country, and Narendra Modi’s election this year was driven by the so-called Gujarat model of growth. Ahmedabad is often cited for its urban planning, but personal transportation services have been lagging behind other Indian cities. Now that gap will close rapidly. Amdavadis, as the denizens of Ahmedabad are called, enjoy the benefits of competition between taxi aggregators.

Cities like Delhi, Mumbai, and Bangalore have already seen intense competition, especially since the entry of global operator Uber.

In fact, the entry of Uber has shaken up Indian cab operators like Meru Cab, Mega Cab, and EasyCabs. Just last week, a letter from the Association of Radio Taxis to the Reserve Bank of India complained of illegal credit card transactions on the Uber app.

The GPS-based hassle-free ordering of Uber also stole the thunder from Ola, which had introduced mobile app-based ordering of taxis in India. The launch of UberX, the smaller car variant of the UberBLACK, has also brought it on par in terms of price.

Now the battle to sign on taxis and drivers is in full swing on these services, none of which keep their own fleets. Hence the race to Ahmedabad, in which TaxiForSure had its nose ahead of Ola. But then again, this race has just begun.

Ahead of announcing its latest quarterly results later today, Gree (TYO:3632 surprised the gaming and childcare industries by unveiling Smartsitter, a babysitter matching service for Japan. It promises to act as a one-stop-shop for finding a reliable sitter, arranging the appointment, and handling the payment.

Babysitting is a tricky business in Japan. Childcare is typically left to new mothers with some assistance from other family members. As chronicled by Goldman Sachs’ chief Japan equity strategist Kathy Matsui in her seminal study on women in the workplace (PDF file), the rarity of babysitting creates a difficult situation for new mothers who do not want to give up their working careers. Furthermore, the office of Prime Minister Abe’s released a white paper in June stating that there are roughly 600,000 certified childcare providers in Japan who are being underutilized.

It’s hard to argue that the need for this service does not exist, but it is more questionable why Gree decided to join the party. The gaming firm, which rose to prominence on the back of mobile games like Final Fantasy Artnicks and Monster Hunter, has struggled recently to find another hit. With decreasing revenues, it has been forced to implement layoffs and and office closures.

The firm clearly needs alternative revenue strategies. Examples of diversification from this year include the company’s release of the same-day hotel reservation app called Tonight. Yesterday it also announced the start of a new subsidiary, Platinum Factory, which will provide users information about elderly care facilities.

Smartsitter is Gree’s latest and riskiest diversification play to date. Platinum Factory and Tonight can gain user trust only by supplying plentiful and accurate information. Smartsitter needs to perform a much harder trick – convincing a skeptical market that it is better to trust their kids with certified strangers over family.

9月3日と4日にスタートアップアジア＠東京を開催します！8月29日まで、割引コード < latebird >を使ってみて下さい！
Startup Asia Tokyo 2014 is on Sep 3 and 4. Until Aug 29th, unlock secret level using code < latebird >

Legos. K’nex. Erector Sets. These brand-name toys have inspired millions of children and adults to build something with their own two hands, and can instill a “maker” mindset from a very early age. But with the exception of Lego Mindstorms, they’ve failed to keep up with the larger trend of merging hardware and software.

And even if you shell out the money for a Mindstorms kit, which costs upwards of US$350, much of the skills learned to program the custom robots don’t carry over into real-world application.

But Makeblock, a startup from Shenzhen, offers a cheaper, more practical approach. The company sells robotics kits for as little as US$120 and enterprise kits for up to US$500. Makeblock makes 200 different mechanical parts and growing, which can be programmed using either Arduino or Scratch – the latter is an MIT-developed drag-and-drop programming environment for kids to learn the fundamentals of coding.

CEO Jasen Wang says kids can easily make their own toy robots, while more serious hobbyists and even professionals can create robots to be used for more practical applications.

Once a robot is built, it can be controlled via mobile app, as seen in the demo video below.

The company received an angel investment last year, and expects to secure its series A round in the next few months.

Wang says the company sold RMB 3 million worth of kits last year, and projects that number will hit RMB 20 million by the end of this year. Most of those sales came through online channels, but Makeblock also found a friend in US-based electronics shop RadioShack.

The company also makes some parts for fellow Shenzhen-based personal robotics company, Hippo-ADK, which we covered earlier. The Hippo-ADK controller is not yet compatible with Makeblock, though.

Makeblock started selling the US market, but wants to look at the Chinese market next. Wang says there’s big opportunities in education, and aims to cooperate with schools around the country.

Malaysia-based online restaurant booking site TableApp has just received MYR250,000 (US$78,000) in seed funding. Singapore-based Crystal Horse Investments, as well as former Google Malaysia employee Hanson Toh, both co-invested in this round. Toh is also TableApp’s coach in Cradle’s Coach & Grow Program.

“The money will be used mainly for increasing our sales force, as well as for marketing,” says Benson Chang, TableApp’s CEO and founder. He adds that the amount will also be channeled towards their expansion plans beyond Klang Valley and into Penang and Johor Bahru. Right now, Chang is looking to hire business development executives to push sales in these states.

The booking site was previously working on a partnership with Groupon Malaysia, which officially began in July. The deal features a reservation widget powered by TableApp, which redirects customers to TableApp’s website, being placed on Groupon’s food deal page.

The team has also confirmed a deal with Tourism Malaysia, who are currently revamping their website. The partnership, which will go live in September, would see TableApp’s booking widget embedded on their homepage.

See: Forget food blogging: this startup aims to show that table reservations are the real money-makers

TableApp’s recently released iOS and Android apps have gotten over 15,000 downloads thus far, and Chang is confident that this number will multiply exponentially in the coming months. “There has been a significant growth in bookings coming from our mobile app,” he explains. “Overall, we hit our first 10,000 diners milestone within the first eight months, and and our second 10,000 diners milestone in the following four months.”

We’re now precisely three weeks away from the kick-off of Startup Asia Tokyo 2014, our first ever Japan conference, on September 3 and 4.

Amidst all the opportunities for networking, there’ll also be plenty of insights and chances to learn. For app developers and startups of all sizes, Yuji Kuwamizu (pictured below), the Japan GM at App Annie, will present a keynote (in English) on the subject of Japan and worldwide app trends. His presentation will be on the afternoon of the first day.

This ties in nicely with the advice that’ll be dished out by Changsu Lee from 5Rocks during his keynote about app engagement tips and tricks.

Kuwamizu’s keynote will give insights into the evolution of hot apps and games as well as the myriad challenges in monetizing them. Many startups that have apps will be aware that, according to App Annie’s figures from Q1, China downloads the second greatest number of iOS apps in the world after the US, but it still spends less money on them than the much less-populated Japan. However, China is the third ranked country in the world in terms of iOS revenue, so it’s now catching up. (Update: Added in a detail about China)

Southeast Asia is a very mixed bag as well. Startups need all the help and guidance they can get.

Get Startup Asia Tokyo 2014 tickets here. Use the code latebird before August 22 to receive a 10 percent discount.

One of Gree’s current titles

Gree (TYO:3632 isn’t leaving gaming. That was the message from today’s earnings report which covered the company’s entire 2014 fiscal year. Revenue and net income continued to slide both for the quarter and for the year. Revenue fell JPY 26.64 billion to JPY 125.6 billion (US$1.23 billion) and net income dropped JPY 5.1 billion to JPY 17.35 billion (US$169.6 million). Although it’s a far cry from the heady days of 2012 when the company scored JPY 47.97 billion (US$469 million) in yearly net income, Gree appears fully determined to return to its former glory.

The company believes that it must double down on “full native” games. A Gree spokesperson spoke with Tech in Asia and explained that the term full native refers to games that are purpose-built to make the most of the graphics and sound effects possible on smartphones and tablets. That’s in contrast to games that were built as web games and then adapted for Android or iOS.

In 2012, the company announced that it would focus on browser-based gaming using HTML5. That era is essentially over. Gree said in today’s earnings report that it decided to initiate an internal restructuring that will take the 700 employees currently working on browser games and have them join the team focusing on full native games. The company will now have 1,000 employees dedicated to full native games, over half of its 1,894 staff. Two titles leading the charge are Shometsu Toshi (released in May) and Cross Summoner (2015 1Q release).

Despite the change in business strategy, Gree maintains HTML5-based browser games will not be a complete relic of the past. The company spokesperson said, “We’ll still be maintaining Gree Platform and welcome third-party game developers launching and operating web games on it. The idea is more to streamline our engineering operations for web games so that in terms of first-party game development we can shift our emphasis toward native games.”

Gree’s insistence that it can win in mobile gaming echoes the claims DeNA (TYO:2432) made during its own most recent subpar earnings. Also similar to DeNA is Gree’s quiet search for alternative revenue streams.

Just this morning, Gree announced a new childcare service to go along with a review site for eldery care homes that launched yesterday and a same-day hotel reservation app which went live in June.

Gree might be committed to mobile gaming but it is still smart enough to hedge its bets.

9月3日と4日にスタートアップアジア＠東京を開催します！8月29日まで、割引コード < latebird >を使ってみて下さい！
Startup Asia Tokyo 2014 is on Sep 3 and 4. Until Aug 29th, unlock secret level using code < latebird >

Chinese web giant Tencent (HKG:0700) has just released its Q2 earnings report. We’ll look at the financials later, but first the number that we all want to see – Tencent’s messaging app, WeChat, is now at 438.2 million monthly active users (MAUs).

Social gaming tied to WeChat and QQ (Tencent’s old MSN-style instant messaging service) generated RMB 3 billion (US$487.4 million) in revenue in Q2.

That newest WeChat MAU figure is up from 396 million in Q1; it’s risen from 236 million at the same period last year. Here’s a chart of every MAU figure for WeChat that the company has ever released:

WeChat’s growth is clearly slowing as it nears saturation point in mainland China.

For a sense of scale, Facebook-owned WhatsApp has 500 million MAUs. However, Tencent is still not revealing how many active users it has outside of China. The majority of WeChat’s users are in mainland China, but we don’t know the precise ratio.

Tencent has been pushing WeChat in numerous markets around the world in the past year, backed up by its big-name, big-bucks global ambassador, Lionel Messi. Tencent revealed that WeChat has 100 million registered users outside China precisely 12 months ago, but it’s been quiet on any such numbers since then.

WeChat also has a battle on its hands at home. Authorities in China last week issued interim provisions that crack down on WeChat and other messaging apps. They place restrictions on which official/brand accounts may post politically-related content, and might lead to enforced real-name sign-up for WeChat and other such chat apps.

The internet provides us with instant knowledge at the click of a button. MOOCs and edutech platforms – from the gamified Duolingo to video-chat lessons that put a virtual teacher in front of you – have taken online learning to the next level, but sometimes a computer or smartphone screen just can’t replace real human interaction.

LessonsGoWhere, which launched out of beta on July 30, offers an online marketplace where teachers and students can list, discover, and book offline lessons in Singapore. The online-to-offline concept isn’t necessarily a new one in the city-state – Learnemy has been offering such a service since 2011 and the now-defunct Kezaar made an attempt in 2012 – but LessonsGoWhere may already be ahead of the competition when it comes to sheer numbers.

A quick perusal of Learnemy’s site reveals approximately 60 teachers offering 10 classes. Another site called Skill Ministry, which Kezaar merged with, has 75 classes.

Ng E-Fei, LessonsGoWhere’s co-founder, tells Tech in Asia that his service already has more than 150 lesson providers offering over 700 different courses. Since the beta version of LessonsGoWhere went live in December 2013, the startup has sold more than S$60,000 (US$48,000) worth of lessons.

“We currently have 685 registered users in our database since we started collecting that data in May [...] In July, we had about 293 active users who either signed up for our newsletter, booked a class, or registered interest,” E-Fei says. “We see about 12,000 unique monthly visitors and about 4,200 of them return.”

E-Fei says that the company researched more than 200 lesson categories and subcategories before landing on its current setup: four main categories (baking, cooking, music, and arts) with 17 subcategories (i.e. “arts” offers drawing, painting, calligraphy, etc.). A quick glance at the site shows a huge variety of classes being offered – from capoeira and hip-hop dance to playing the ukelele and making sausages. Listings are free, but LessonsGoWhere takes a 20 percent commission for each lesson booked through the site.

The ACE scheme pays out in three waves, based on achieving milestones. E-Fei says that his startup has completed two of them, and that his short-term goal is to finish the third by mid-to-late September “so as to free up more capital for horizontal expansion in different verticals.”

As for longer-term goals, the co-founder is eyeing overseas expansion.

“We intend to expand the business to Hong Kong, Seoul, and Australia – Perth or Melbourne – by our second year,” E-Fei adds. “While we’ve yet to narrow it down to exactly which city we’ll enter first, we’re working on identifying key partners in those regions, as well as understanding the dynamics of the recreational education industry in those cities.”

Chinese web giant Tencent (HKG:0700) is still steamrollering along in its newest earnings report for Q2 2014. Tencent pulled in RMB 19.75 billion (US$3.21 billion) in revenue in its newest numbers, which is up 37 percent year-on-year.

Tencent saw strong growth come from smartphone gaming tied to WeChat, as well as from an advertising boost from the World Cup. Revenue from all its online “value-added services” hit RMB 15.71 billion (US$2.55 billion), of which RMB 3 billion (US$487.4 million) comes from social games that integrate with WeChat and QQ.

As we reported moments ago, WeChat has now grown to 438 million monthly active users, but the messaging app’s growth is beginning to slow to the point that its quarterly gains are nearly in single digits. From Q1 to Q2, WeChat grew 10.6 percent in terms of active users.

Tencent’s profit hit RMB 5.84 billion (US$948.26 million) in Q2, up 59 percent on the same period a year ago.

It’s not all roses and buckets full of cash for Tencent. The firm’s ecommerce-related revenues dropped significantly to just RMB 1.34 billion (US$218.1 million). The Q2 report explains the dip is due to Tencent’s major ecommerce restructuring immediately after its huge investment in JD, China’s second biggest ecommerce company. That entailed a big “traffic shift to JD” as Tencent entrusts JD with more of its ecommerce operations, even integrating JD directly into the online shopping part of WeChat.

Indonesia’s tech startup scene gets a boost of confidence today as the country’s biggest information and communication company Telkom (IDX:TLKM) announces its plan to invest US$200 million in tech startups, as reported today by Okezone. “As a CVC (corporate venture capital), Telkom is the first one in ASEAN,” says Telkom’s president director Arief Yahya. It will also be the biggest fund to ever come out of Indonesia for tech startups.

Telkom’s CVC plans to partner up with a few VCs to bring more expertise into Indonesia, one of which is Fenox VC. The firm is committed to bringing in experienced mentors from the Valley to help strengthen Telkom’s Indigo Incubator program. Telkom will also send its best startups to the Valley to undergo further mentoring in the US.

Some amount of money will be spent for Indonesian startups, but there’s no information as far as what other countries Telkom plans to invest in. We are reaching out to Telkom to dig up more information about this.

Indigo Incubator is now incubating its second startup batch. A dozen startups are currently taking part in the program – including online wedding organizer MeritYuk and Captcha solution Karamel. Telkom has also set up two coworking spaces to support its incubation program: Bandung Digital Valley and Jogja Digital Valley.

Indonesian startups have ample choice when it comes to funding. Systec VC, Ideosource, East Ventures, and Softbank are among those who are interested in contributing to Indonesian startups.

(Source: Okezone)

Disclosure: Fenox VC and East Ventures invest in Tech in Asia. Read our ethics page for more information.

Unless you’re a huge, established manufacturer, making a one-size-fits-all smartphone – or any hardware, for that matter – is getting tougher and tougher. But there are still fortunes to be made in niche products, especially in huge markets like China – where a niche group can outnumber a small country.

Meitu aims to cash in on China’s young female demographic with its lineup of photo and video beautification apps and its latest flagship smartphone, the Meitu 2.

Let’s start by saying that when you put the Meitu 2 side by side with similarly priced or even cheaper smartphones, the specs fall short. But keep in mind that your average 16-year-old Chinese girl probably isn’t going to spend hours poring over specifications and reading multiple reviews. For them, this phone could be the perfect fit.

Here are the specs:

• MeiOS based on Android 4.2.2
• 13MP front and back cameras with front and rear flash
• 1.7 GHz octa-core MediaTek CPU
• 4.7-inch, 1280x720p screen
• 2GB RAM
• 16/32GB internal memory, no expansion slot
• 2300mAh non-removable battery
• Nano-SIM slot (can’t use micro or standard SIM)
• 3G WCDMA compatible, no 4G

Cameras

If you’re buying this phone, you’re probably doing it for the cameras. The Meitu comes equipped with 13 megapixel shooters on both the front and the rear, making it a selfie-taker’s dream. The default camera app is directly integrated with Meitu’s suite of photo editing apps. Even without touching up your photos, the phone will make your skin whiter and smoother, your body slightly slimmer, and your blemishes will vanish. A physical button specifically for taking selfies is built into the right-hand side of the phone for quick snaps.

Special thanks to my friend and selfie lover Jonny, who test drove the Meitu 2 for a night.

Obviously, the colors and details aren’t what you’d call true-to-life, but they do make you look great. Of course, you can swap out Meitu’s camera app in favor of something a little more realistic, but you’ll have to manually load it from the gallery into the editing apps. For some reason, the Meitu app can zoom out further, getting a wider shot than when I tested Camera360 on the phone.

My mug using Meitu (left) vs Camera360 (right)

Meitu claims the camera works well in low light, but I found it tough to get clear pictures of anything that wasn’t standing absolutely still. The image stabilization in dim light just doesn’t function very well, even with a decent f/2.0 aperture lens. The photo is snapped as soon as you hit the button, but there’s noticeable recovery time afterward.

With default settings, the Meitu 2 is fantastic for selfies and does okay with snaps of food, but it falls down on action pics and landscape shots. Backlight and whites noticeably wash out onto the foreground, and colors that aren’t already vibrant look even more dull.

Look and feel

Pink. The phone is very, very hot pink. That’s the first thing you notice, then perhaps the huge camera and dual flashes on the rear. You can also buy it in white, but the pink suits the phone’s loud and fun vibe.

The Meitu 2 actually feels quite solid, if a little heavy. It’s a bit thick, even fatter than my OnePlus One, which touts a larger 5.5-inch screen.

I like the curved, bubbly top and bottom of the phone, but there’s too much unused space between the edge and the screen. The screen bezel is a bit fat as well. The left and right edges of the phone, along with the buttons, are plated in metal. A nice touch, except a short fall off a folding chair left a noticeable dent in the side. I apologize to Meitu for damaging their test model, but at least readers will know not to hammer in any nails with it.

Oops.

The back of the phone is also curved, keeping with the designer’s “bubbly” feel, but it’s a bit slippery.

It might not be the most ergonomic phone in the world, but you certainly won’t mistake it for a Galaxy or iPhone.

The 720p screen might be off-putting for some, especially with cheaper phones offering 1080p displays, but it still looks pretty crisp below the 5-inch display mark. Brightness was never an issue, and it’s easy to see even in broad daylight.

Performance

That lower-definition display combined with a massive MediaTek octa-core CPU means everything runs insanely quickly. I was amazed at how fast I could render a video into a GIF using Meitu’s specialized app. Games load in a snap and play without stutters. All that power comes at a price, however. With a mediocre 2,300mAh battery that can’t be removed, you’ll probably want to invest in extra chargers to leave at work or in your car.

While games run without hiccups, playing a 3D or other resource-intensive game makes the phone quite hot and will have your hand sweating after five or 10 minutes.

MeiOS

MeiOS is built on Android Jelly Bean, which is one update behind the latest version of Android. That said, Meitu has done an excellent job tying its photo software into the phone’s hardware to create it’s own custom skin.

The look of the OS matches the phone’s exterior: cute and bubbly. Icons have heavily rounded edges, pinks and purples decorate widgets, and even the sounds tinkle like the thing is full of fairies. You won’t get a ton of customization tweaks, but a few different themes are available.

Functionality on non-photo apps could use some work. During my time with the phone, several apps crashed or froze and needed to be restarted. A few bugs, even in mainstream apps like WeChat, were quite minor but added up to a less-than-seamless experience.

Conclusion

At RMB 2,199 (US$357) for the 16GB and RMB 2,399 (US$390) for the 32GB, the Meitu 2 is a no-buy for the general public. With other Chinese phone makers offering better specs at lower prices, including the upcoming Xiaomi Mi 4, we can’t recommend this phone to anyone except the most hardcore selfie takers. If you’re looking for a phone for your daughter, niece, or sister, I’d suggest buying the Mi 4, using the extra cash to buy a pink back cover, and installing all the Meitu apps (which are free).

But as we mentioned before, the kind of person who buys this phone isn’t buying it for specifications: they’re buying for the eye-catching looks and their own image positivity. This will be a must-buy for many teenage Chinese girls.

The Meitu 2 is available only in China via recurring flash sales on its website, and has no English or international version.

Meitu 2 pros

• Unmistakable eye-catching looks
• Amazing for selfies
• Good integration of hardware with Meitu apps and software

Meitu 2 cons

• Cameras not so good for non-selfies
• No 4G
• MeiOS is buggy, built on an older Android version
• Poor battery life without option to expand
• Priced above cheaper phones with better specs

After their baby fell asleep, Ashwini Asokan and Anand Chandrasekaran talked. Plonked on a sofa, they discussed artificial intelligence, endlessly, late into the night. The couple are fascinated by the science of machines that see – computer vision, in other words. Could this sophisticated technology be brought to smartphones, even low-end ones, and used to create a compelling experience for the mobile user? This was the dream that kept them awake through the nights in the heart of Silicon Valley.

Asokan was leading the mobile innovation team at Intel’s Interaction and Experience Research Lab (IXR). Her team of designers, anthropologists, and engineers were exploring the future of mobile technology. As for Chandrasekaran, he had just completed his post-doctoral studies in neuromorphic engineering – building computer chips that imitate the human brain – at Stanford University, and was working on neuroscience-based projects as a consultant. During his three years at Stanford, he was in the thick of artificial intelligence. He was part of the team that built Neurogrid, a system that mimics a million neurons in real-time. He also designed and simulated a chip that could mirror the plasticity of the brain – its ability to change with experience.

The couple had enough grey matter to work on their dream. It would take them a year or two to build the technology, they estimated.

At the time they were ideally located in Silicon Valley, which is the hotbed for tech startups. But it’s expensive. There was a baby and a toddler at home as well. So, after much debate, the couple decided to pack their bags, return to India, and start up in their hometown, Chennai, where they had a family support system and their savings would give them a longer lead time.

In less than a year from then, the couple’s startup, Mad Street Den, is up and running with a cloud-based platform that uses artificial intelligence to enable any smartphone with a camera to identify faces, detect facial expressions and emotions, and react to facial and head gestures. The expression acts as a trigger for a certain action – for example, frowning at the phone when an unwanted call comes in could make it shut down forthwith, or lifting an eyebrow could send the caller a message asking ‘What now?’

This image-recognizing platform, called MAD Stack, can be used by app developers and companies to create a futuristic mobile user experience. “The idea is to make machines more useful by making them a bit human: fun, intelligent, and relevant. We use computer vision to do that,” Asokan tells Tech in Asia.

The process of recognizing a human expression or responding to a gesture is simple for a human brain, but quite complex for a smartphone camera to do digitally. It is artificial intelligence that enables a camera to do this. What’s more, the app keeps getting smarter with use, through machine learning algorithms.

When machines can read your mind

Computer vision is a much-maligned technology. Science fiction, on paper and on screen, made sure that it’s as much feared as it’s glorified. From a nebulous Big Brother snooping on citizens to freaky Transformers that are aliens disguised as machines. This irks Asokan. “This technology can have countless fun uses. Why should lay people hear of it in a negative light mostly? Anand and I want to change that,” she says. “Our goal is to move the conversation around computer vision away from surveillance, security, and all the scary stuff to make it fun.”

She cites an array of applications for this technology, some of which are already out there: Amazon’s new Fire Phone can recognize barcodes, box art, or even TV audio, and help you find the object of your desire. If a phone can recognize a barcode, why not a child’s facial expression? And how might that be used in a fun game?

As for businesses, such a capability could take customer analytics to a new level. Amazon’s Firefly, billed as “visual search on steroids”, is only the beginning. Mad Street Den promises to bring similar visual search technology to any smartphone. Its object recognition feature could be a neat trick for Indian ecommerce companies like Flipkart, Snapdeal, and others competing with Amazon.

The Mad Street Den team has built its platform keeping these applications in mind.

From gaming to weeding

Technologists around the world are working on computer vision, and innovations like Amazon’s Fire Phone, Facebook’s Oculus Rift, and its Chinese rival ANTVR, the “all-in-one universal virtual reality kit” are hogging headlines. There’s even a startup, Blue River, which uses computer vision to identify weeds in organic crop fields and then selectively eliminate them. These involve expensive hardware, and for now, is limited to the few who can afford them.

In contrast, Mad Street Den’s technology is more mass market as it is software-focused and in the cloud. All it needs is to be coupled with a smartphone.

Besides potential uses in the ecommerce industry, Mad Stack can be used to build more immersive games, better social media experiences, and arm mobile analytics.

Take the popular game for kids,Talking Tom, where children can say something to a cat named Tom and he will repeat it in a silly voice. Mad Street Den can add another dimension to this game by allowing the app to see the kid’s expressions. The cat could respond by making faces in response. “Kids play with this game endlessly,” says Asokan, whose daughter stars in demo on the Mad Street Den website, where she makes all sorts of faces into a camera, which recognizes them and responds with emoticons that mimic her expressions.

MAD Stack can similarly make learning fun too. Asokan and Chandrasekaran are in talks with a developer of educational material for children, who sees many possibilities.

An eye on the competition

There is competition in the computer vision applications space already. The Eye Tribe, a Copenhagen-based startup, has a proprietary software that enables eye control of mobile devices and computers. It allows hands-free navigation of websites and apps, eye-activated login, enhanced gaming experiences, and cloud-based user engagement analytics, the company claims. But this software does need hardware components to run. Its plan is to partner with hardware makers who want to integrate these capabilities. The Samsung Galaxy S4 has an eye-tracking feature built into it, which utilizes the front-facing camera to follow a user’s eye movements. It can pause a video if you look away, resume it when you look back, scroll up and down on websites and email, and keep the phone’s display from going to sleep based on where your eyes are trained on the screen.

New York-based IMSRV is another player in this space. It has developed technology to measure human emotions using any webcam. This can be used by companies to analyze facial expressions, use this information to hone their operations, and tailor digital advertisements.

Coming back to the Mad Street Den couple, here’s the vision they had before they got to computer vision applications: Chandrasekaran used to work on the hardware side of artificial intelligence, designing brain-like chips in the Valley. But it was the worldview on artificial intelligence, or the softer side of it if you like, which preoccupied the couple during those long discussions through the night. What bothered Asokan was the slanted narrative of killer robots, cops in flying cars, and machines taking over the world. None of these predictions made decades ago in science fiction are anywhere near coming true. What about the other side of artificial intelligence, the useful side, the great applications it could have in everyday life?

Being so close to the technology, Chandrasekaran and Asokan knew what was possible. More than that, being new parents made them acutely aware of the false narrative on technology that kids are constantly bombarded with in comic books, movies, and computer games. Asokan especially wanted to change that. “I used to tell Anand, ‘It’s great that you are working on hardware. But that’s not going to change the narrative to a more positive, more real, and fun one. Beyond someone snooping on you, beyond someone scaring you, beyond someone killing you, right?”

Mad Street Den’s computer vision platform to put artificial intelligence to use in everyday life and bring joy to ordinary people is the first step in that direction. It now has an SDK for other developers to plug into. So we can look forward to a future with all sorts of delightful mind-abled devices – which is what ‘mad’ stands for.

From the left – Daniel Armanto (CTO of Adskom) and Italo Gani (CEO of Adskom)

(Update: We added additional information, such as funding size and company stats. We then revised the funding number, we apologize for the inconvenience.)

Indonesia’s Adskom, an advertising technology company that offers a programmatic advertising platform, announced today that it has received funding worth S$1.06 million (US$850,000) from four VCs: Japan’s Digital Garage, Singapore’s East Ventures, as well as Indonesia’s Beenos Plaza and Skystar Ventures. The team will use the newly acquired funds for its new data management platform and expansion in Southeast Asia, mainly in Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand, and Malaysia.

In Tech in Asia’s interview last year with CEO Italo Gani and CTO Daniel Armanto, they explained how Adskom’s supply-side platform (SSP) can help both publishers and ad networks in Indonesia manage digital ads automatically and efficiently. Adskom also offers digital ad service plans to help clients further.

The company is currently managing about 500 million ad impressions every month. The team projects that number will go up to one billion monthly impressions in Q1 2015. Adskom is working with close to 70 demand side partners in the region like Tubermogul and Criteo, and with clients such as media giants Kompas, KapanLagi, and Detik, which use Adskom’s platforms.

Adskom was founded by Gani and Armanto in 2013. The latter also co-founded Indonesian social network Koprol, which got acquired by Yahoo in 2010. The team received seed funding from Japan’s Rebright Partners, and already has offices in Indonesia and Singapore. Adskom plans to raise series A funding round in early 2015.

Two months after Uber rolled its app-connected limo service into Hong Kong, the US-based startup is today launching UberTaxi in the city. This allows people to grab a conventional, licensed Hong Kong cab – and pay for it via a cash-less transaction – within the Uber app.

While Uber’s limos are available in over 20 cities in Asia-Pacific, this is only the company’s third rollout of UberTaxi in the region. It’s long been operating in Sydney, Australia, and earlier this month it also popped up in Tokyo.

Today’s launch of UberTaxi in Hong Kong is a direct challenge to EasyTaxi, the biggest taxi app in Asia – if not the world. EasyTaxi already operates in close to 20 Asian cities. Joon Chan, EasyTaxi’s regional manager for Southeast Asia, tells Tech in Asia that the service already has 185,000 licensed cabbies signed up around the world, of whom about 55,000 are in Asia. EasyTaxi is backed by Rocket Internet and its billion-dollar war chest.

UberTaxi is also a threat to Malaysia-based startup GrabTaxi, which is battling EasyTaxi in half a dozen Asian cities.

Uber’s post about this new UberTaxi launch explains that the app will follow the same regulated fares as regular taxis in Hong Kong and there will be no booking fees or additional charges to riders. We’ve contacted Uber for more details on how it’ll make money in Hong Kong and how many cabbies are on board. (Update: Uber’s Sam Gellman declined to say how many HK taxis are using this. He says Uber “decided to start with the pricing that riders and drivers are accustomed to [with regular city cabs],” which suggests the lack of additional fees is temporary).

Enterprise chat app Maimai this week announced it received US$20 million in series B funding from Morningside Ventures and IDG, according to 36kr.

The app, which describes itself as a “work version of WeChat”, reports 800,000 registered users. The app features individual and group chats, a news feed, and a referral system. Users can network and meet peers within two degrees of separation, as opposed to WeChat where users cannot see friends of friends. Anonymous messaging a la Secret is an option for office gossips.

This latest investment will go toward marketing and further product development. The app launched in October 2013; its series A round brought in US$5 million.

Tech in Asia has discussed before how WeChat has become an integral part of both the social and professional spheres in China. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t a market for people who prefer to keep the two separate. It’s here that Maimai hopes to find its audience.

While Maimai’s basic functions aren’t much different from WeChat or other chat apps out there, it tailors the experience for better efficiency and problem solving in the workplace. Referrals, resumes, and recruitment features are all built in.

Maimai is available for free on both iOS and Android.

On August 12 in Singapore, PandaBed announced its newest feature, PeerMatch. The latest add-on allows homeowners and travelers to get a better understanding of each other before they meet in person for a potentially awkward, contentious, or otherwise undesirable lodging experience. In theory, with PandaBed’s PeerMatch, Muslims can stay with Muslims, Christians can bunk with Christians, bookworms can keep each other company, and drinkers can keep the party going all night without upsetting potentially disapproving hosts.

Lester Kang says Asians in the private hospitality business are still reluctant to let strangers into their homes. “After speaking to countless homeowners, we began to see ‘fear triggers,’” explains Kang from his Singapore headquarters on Wednesday. Kang is the co-founder of Southeast Asian online homestay marketplace PandaBed. He says, “There were repeatable patterns in the things they said about hosting strangers. The fear triggers related to things like hosting someone from a different culture, religion, and age.”

Similar to websites like Airbnb, Wimdu, or Thailand-based Look Alike, PandaBed’s functionality relies largely on homeowners’ willingness to open their doors to strangers. According to Kang, PandaBed homestay providers prefer their guests to be culturally similar to them.

While traveling around Southeast Asia’s densely-populated Muslim countries like Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand for the past two years, Kang and fellow co-founder James Chua were able to speak with three hundred individual bed-and-breakfast homeowners. Kang says for the most part these people claimed to have apprehensions about harboring strangers, as they could turn out to be uncomfortably different from them. Regarding this as the key difference between Asian and Western markets, he says, “This was the ‘eureka’ moment.”

PandaBed co-founders Lester Kang and James Chua

See: Evictions? Regulations? Taxes? How can Singapore deal with sites like Airbnb?

Until recently, PandaBed simply acted as a portal where users could browse bed-and-breakfast listings, compare prices, and book rooms. In response to their market research, Kang and Chua decided PandaBed needed to tweak its service.

Kang says by the end of 2014 he expects PeerMatch to increase PandaBed’s overall business significantly, but that the feature must be executed correctly. He explains, “It’s huge. Probably bigger than we can even imagine at the moment.”

Since its 2012 inception, PandaBed has gathered 5,000 homes across Southeast Asia, Hong Kong, and Seoul. Kang says he expects that number to double within a few months as PeerMatch takes hold in PandaBed’s userbase. Kang did not comment on how much revenue PandaBed has generated so far, but claims that it has increased by 400 percent over the past three months.

In terms of scaling up in the region, PandaBed plans to run a program in September where it will send an intern on a 30-day paid trip around Southeast Asia. During the trip, the selected intern will blog and tweet about their experiences while staying with PandaBed hosts.

Kang says PandaBed does not currently collect any booking fees from its customers. According to him, the 10 percent fee that it does charge goes to the homeowners as an additional incentive to use the website. Regarding the competition, he explains, “Most of our peers have given up on peer-to-peer because they feel like Asians don’t want to share, or Asians are too scared. We think sharing is in our blood as Asians, but we need the right nudge to do it. PeerMatch is just the beginning.”

The early days of founding a startup are always the most fun, as any entrepreneur will tell you. Coming up with outrageous ideas, splattering them across whiteboards in glorious vagueness, and chowing on instant noodles together – veterans recount these moments with smiles on their faces.

Then comes the registration of the company, and suddenly everything gets serious. Given the proliferation of stories of founders getting ousted without a cent to their name (Noah Glass, anyone?), legal agreements can be a matter of life and death – or millions of dollars. For this reason, many well-meaning old-timers strongly suggest that founders get a startup lawyer in to settle all legal matters right from the start.

Of course, if you’re a fresh-faced entrepreneur right out from college, the millions are probably the last thing from your mind. Just the idea of starting a company probably seems incredible enough to hold your full attention, let alone putting in a few thousand dollars to bring in a legal professional.

According to Daniel Leong, founder and CEO of legal web service LawCanvas, the market rate for a standard website terms of service stands at about S$3,000 (US$2,400). That might not seem like much to most, but when you’re a fledgling graduate without a penny in your pocket and tons of debt, you’ll definitely think twice about spending your limited funds on what might seem like luxury.

Enter LawCanvas, the web service that wants to save nascent entrepreneurs thousands of dollars when they most need it. It does this by helping small businesses create legal documents quickly and easily by providing a library of free legal templates tailored for Singapore, with a smart editor that they claim makes editing clauses a cinch.

Their library currently includes six types of important documents: non-disclosure agreements, employee agreements, founders agreement, advisor agreement, website terms of services, and website privacy policy. “The most popular documents on our platform right now are ‘everyday’ business documents like non-disclosure agreements and employment letters,” Leong says.

Beyond these templates, he adds that the team has been seeing some demand and interest in other niche areas, such as investment documents. “We’re looking to include them when we expand our document library in the near future.”

See: Singapore startups, use these open-source investment templates, save yourselves from grief

Forget DIY

Founders would ask: why not do it myself instead? But actually getting down to sourcing closest competitors, finding their documents, and copying and pasting details to fit their situation is a maddeningly tedious process, according to Leong.

“The issue is that you can often spend five to six hours working on this in one go, and you’re not even sure if what you’re doing is correct,” he explains. “It’s frustrating and tedious, and we’d much rather be working on our businesses.” Copying overseas competitors would often yield the additional problem of applicability to the local market, Leong adds.

To date, hundreds of small businesses have used the web service, and the feedback has been generally positive. “LawCanvas has been live for about three months now, since May 2014, [and there has been] a steady stream of new users coming in everyday,” Leong enthuses. This is rather impressive, given that the team has not done any marketing for now – growth has come about largely through word-of-mouth.

He also adds that the team has gotten a lot of attention and demand from companies in neighboring countries, whom they met at the recent Startup Asia Singapore 2014 event – regional expansion could be on the cards. “The prospect of being able to serve them is really exciting, and we’d be happy to talk to anyone who can help us to expand LawCanvas regionally.”

Doubt from the legal community

It hasn’t entirely been a bed of roses for the LawCanvas team, though. Leong says that the service has received its fair share of doubt from the legal community, who say that they are attempting to “replace lawyers with technology” or “disrupt the legal market”. It might even eliminate the need for startup lawyers altogether. He is quick to emphasize at length that this is far from the truth:

There is an entire segment of people who would never go to lawyers mainly because of the prohibitive costs, and they would much rather spend the weekend cutting and pasting from overseas templates. Even so, it’s time that could have been better spent on their businesses instead. With LawCanvas, we are simply creating an avenue for them to help themselves. Historically, legal documents have been very unapproachable to most people and we are trying to make them more accessible to the common man. When people start to get more familiar with basic concepts through our platform [...] then they would be more open towards engaging a professional to review their documents later on. In that sense, we are helping to open up this whole new market segment for everyone.

That being said, he admits that the team isn’t legally trained – Leong’s background is in accounting, while his partner Mark Png is a tech guy. However, they are plugging that gap by forming working relationships with several law firms, and bringing on an experienced advisor in the form of Chin Hooi Yen, who is the founder and director of Polaris Law Corporation, and has over 14 years of experience in corporate law.

According to Leong, the team is now working on building up their document library and adding on complementary software features that would greatly enhance the user experience. These premium features would be their source of revenue, and will be released at a later date.

The team received funding from the MDA iJAM program and Crystal Horse Investments earlier this year. Now, they’re gunning for their next round of funding to further product development.

For the past few weeks, Xiaomi has been teasing its fans about which is the next country it will enter. Today we know the answer: Indonesia.

Xiaomi’s Indonesia website is now up, and its Indonesia Facebook account has also started. It means the Android handset manufacturer has officially entered the country, but there’s not yet a launch date for any of its gadgets.

The Xiaomi Indonesia website poses one question to visitors: what cool smartphone can you design with a budget of only IDR 2 million (US$171)? The website then lets you decide the smartphone’s specifications, like screen size, RAM, processor, camera, and battery power based on its price.

At the end, the new Xiaomi minisite will score your design. It then lets you know your priority when choosing a smartphone like mobility, fun, camera, or speed (pictured above). The site also promises visitors that they can win a phone (model not specified) or earphones if they like the new Xiaomi Indonesia Facebook account.

That price-tag of IDR 2 million (US$171) suggests Xiaomi is bringing the Redmi Note to Indonesia, not the flagship Mi 3. The Redmi Note sells for RMB 999 in China, which is IDR 1.9 million (US$162).

Xiaomi’s thunder may have been stolen by local estore Blibli, which is now selling two Xiaomi phones, the Redmi Note and the Mi 3. However, both phones are sold at a steep markup of IDR 3 million ($256) and IDR 4 million ($341) respectively. A Xiaomi representative tells Tech in Asia that they try to peg the phone’s price to be as close to the China price as possible, though prices might differ slightly in each market because of things like local taxes.

David Shelters has been a founder or advisor to tech startups for the past twenty years in both the US and Asia. Currently, he is the editor of Thailand Startup Review, a comprehensive blog and reference resource covering the Thai startup community. His recently published book, Art of Bootstrapping, discusses how an effective bootstrapping strategy can be conceived, planned, and executed. Publishizer, a Singapore-based crowd publishing platform, is conducting the pre-orders campaign, and their site can be found here.

Disclaimer: the opinions expressed in this piece are the author’s own and not those of his employer or colleagues.

Given the current global startup environment, I believe a re-definition of the term bootstrapping is in order. I believe bootstrapping is more than just an adverb and should be viewed as a comprehensive strategy for tech startups.

What is bootstrapping?

Historically, bootstrapping has been a term used to describe the efforts made by individuals to overcome a nearly impossible obstacle or to improve oneself through self-sustaining efforts requiring no assistance from others. The saying, “to pull oneself up by one’s bootstraps” has been a common Western expression during the previous two centuries. In modern business language, bootstrapping has primarily meant founding/starting a new business without external funding.

In the glossary of my first book, Start-Up Guide for the Technopreneur, I defined bootstrapping simply as “the practice of sustaining operations and development without raising external capital.” At present, the meaning of the word tends to be limited to financial situations.

I will now argue that bootstrapping is much more as it applies to entrepreneurial ventures. By definition, an entrepreneurial venture is a business undertaken knowingly without initial resources sufficient enough to achieve its objectives. The resources critical to be acquired by any entrepreneurial venture include financial, knowledge-based, and relational resources. Any decision or pursuit through which a startup tries to acquire any one or a combination of such resources at a cost, in both financial and non-financial terms, less than the cost of securing the investment funding or other traditional financing otherwise needed to acquire such resources may be considered a bootstrap.

Three types of resources

The three resources vital for every tech startup are financial, knowledge-based, and relational resources. Financial resources include all monetary and tangible assets of a venture. Knowledge resources include the aggregate skills and experiences of the founders, employees and advisors, intellectual property possessed, the learning achieved and the principles and processes that are followed.

The learning achieved includes institutional knowledge, best practices used and what has been specifically learned on the target customers, marketplace and product. The principles and processes to be adhered to include the values and organizational structure of the startup and the processes followed to reduce waste and improve execution.

The relational resources of a startup include the personal connections of the founders and employees, online presence, the chemistry, incentive and morale of the team. Relational resources also include relations with various stakeholders and other external parties such as media, government regulators and trade associations.

Garnering third-party credibility is often an underestimated relational resource, and branding represents the most potent relational resource. Acquiring relational resources is primarily about acquiring the most valuable asset of any startup venture – trust.

Why bootstrap?

Bootstrapping is very important for the following reasons. First of all, it reduces or avoids the dilution of the Founders’ Equity. Before founders get excited about securing equity funding they should remind themselves that equity funding dilutes their equity interest, likely leads to the forfeiture of a certain amount of decision-making control and creates external obligations that must be honored now and in the future. Founders should ask themselves, “Is the equity round currently being considered necessary, and is it worth it?”

Secondly, necessity breeds innovation. Founders may not like to hear this but the act of bootstrapping creates an environment of palatable risk in which resides the source of the greatest innovation and the likelihood of optimal efficiency.

Finally, it demonstrates “skin-in-the-game.” When it is time to solicit for investment funds prospective equity investors will be heartened by your personal commitment and trust that your managing team will allocate their invested funds wisely. Later we will discuss the condition when a bootstrapping strategy is to be finally abandoned.

Components of a bootstrapping strategy

A variety of bootstrap decisions and opportunities represent the numerous possible components of a bootstrapping strategy and plan. Bootstrapping decisions include any actions, policies, processes, or structuring that are undertaken to reduce an actual financial or opportunity cost, increase efficiencies, and reduce the time necessary to attain objectives or successfully complete development efforts.

Any decision to better position a venture to take advantage of any bootstrapping opportunity – either potential or planned – may be deemed a bootstrap decision as well. Implementing a lean and/or agile process, decision to relocate, and assembling a complete founding team are examples of bootstrapping decisions.

Bootstrapping opportunities are any external activities or programs that can be leveraged to effectively acquire resources without the expenditure of equity investment capital. Bootstrapping opportunities can be considered either “minor” or “major.” Minor bootstraps are minor in that these opportunities primarily or exclusively offer only one of the three resource types to be acquired. Securing related project work, competing for prize money, securing public funding, attending workshops, pitching, and other startup events are all examples of minor bootstraps.

Major bootstraps simultaneously offer all three resources: financial, knowledge, and relational. The five “majors” include co-working spaces, incubators, accelerators, crowdsourcing/funding, and strategic partnerships.

Identifying, selecting and optimally timing the most appropriate bootstrapping decisions and opportunities requires strategic thinking, a holistic perspective, and an opportunistic vigilance as each startup is unique and the needs of each startup are in constant flux as it rapidly progresses through different development stages.

Prevailing conditions

In today’s startup world there are four prevailing conditions or imperatives that make a bootstrapping strategy both more possible and more pertinent. The first prevailing condition is shorter life cycles for startups. The time to commercially launch and exit has greatly shortened in the last decade. This can be attributed to several factors including the widespread use of open source tools, the availability of numerous global platforms allowing startups to reach ever larger audiences, the cost-reducing use of cloud computing, and the dramatic decrease in bandwidth costs.

Shorter life cycles have created a greater need for efficiency and reduce the aggregate amount of investment required thereby making it more important to identify and secure more timely sources of financing as an alternative to more traditional venture capital entities and direct acquisition of non-financial resources.

The lean movement currently sweeping across the globe is a second prevailing condition that is totally consistent with – indeed an integral part of – any effective bootstrapping strategy. In the Lean Era, failing and learning fast is the path to greater efficiency, cost-cutting and speed to market. A “good money-bad money” determination has become increasingly important and relevant in determining whether a bootstrapping opportunity is worthy.

As I defined in my first book, good money is received from a funding source that is a willing source of intimate knowledge of your technologies, business, and market (i.e. “Know your space”), possess the same objectives as the founders, leave sufficient incentive for management to achieve such mutual objectives, and does not impede future fundraising efforts or decision-making abilities.

However, in relation to bootstrapping, the definition of “money” needs to expand to include knowledge-based and relational resources as well. Being able to secure non-financial resources without expending equity investment capital is an example of “good money” and often represents a bootstrap.

A fourth prevailing condition associated with bootstrapping is the wealth versus control dilemma very well articulated by Noah Wasserman in his excellent book, Founders’ Dilemma. Based on his findings he convincingly demonstrates that those wealth-seeking founders who are willing to accept a “smaller piece of a larger pie” usually are rewarded with greater financial returns than a control-preserving founder whom typically attains a “larger piece of a smaller pie.”

However, bootstrapping may allow founders to “bake their cake and eat it too” by offering an opportunity to enlarge the pie (acquiring vital resources and time to build traction) while being able to carve out a larger piece of the pie (preserve equity interest and decision-making control). Indeed it may be accurate to say that a bootstrapping strategy that lessens the amount of investment capital required is actually reducing the baking time and hastening when the pie can be eaten as well.

Formulating a plan

Given the three critical resources required of startup ventures, the various ways to bootstrap, and the current prevailing conditions prevailing in the startup world, it is recommended that startups conceive a bootstrapping strategy and formulate a bootstrapping plan to enjoy all the benefits to be derived.

A properly constructed bootstrapping plan will illustrate the most optimal bootstrapping path that will track as far into a venture’s life cycle before the necessity to secure equity funding occurs. However, it remains highly unlikely that a tech startup will be able to successfully exit before being compelled to raise equity funding.

So when is it time to discontinue a bootstrapping strategy?

The decision to discontinue bootstrapping is one of the most important decisions founders of tech startups will have to face. A bootstrapping strategy should only be abandoned when the opportunity cost of not securing equity investment funds in sufficient amounts and/or in a timely manner proves to be too great.

This often occurs due to a crisis situation, when a short window of opportunity presents itself, or when execution of a vital undertaking requires funding greater than what is currently available through bootstrapping.

Concluding remarks

Having a clear, well-thought out bootstrapping plan will improve the probability of success for any tech startup. I am not so impressed when a founder excitedly reports to me that they have secured equity funding. What is much more impressive to me is when a founder presents a lengthy list of all the traction garnered thus far by their venture without the need to acquire and expend investment funds.

(Image credit: Flickr user Blog Optical)