That’s how wide the gulf between the two worlds are.
Journalists are essentially publicity whores that live in a fast-paced work environment, rushing to and fro to cover scandal after scandal.
Entrepreneurs, on the other hand, often live for years in obscurity before getting their big break — the makers of Draw Something are a good example. A lot of them, unfortunately, will remain forever mired in the bog of insignificance.
And when journalists and entrepreneurs work together, it’s often an uneasy, contentious symbiosis. Entrepreneurs complain of being misquoted and misrepresented by journalists, while journalists gripe about being arm-twisted to write an article a certain way.
But it doesn’t always have to be this way. Having some tension is natural, and a healthy working relationship is attainable.
Entrepreneurs and journalists do need one another, so understanding both sides is an essential first step to making the partnership work.
Having lived and breathed in a newsroom environment in both the print and online world, I thought it’s time I share five things entrepreneurs must know about journalists, but unfortunately, are often clueless about. Read more
So, a few videos interviews I did at DEMO Asia 2012 two weeks ago mysteriously disappeared and now have reappeared on my (i)phone. This short interview with Marc van der Chijs, Dutch founder of Chinese video-sharing site, Tudou, is thus a bit delayed but nevertheless still relevant.
In here, he talks about the diversity of ideas but yet how some of the companies he saw at DEMO Asia — a launchpad for emerging technology – had small visions, but “it’s okay, you can start with a small vision but still build it up to a bigger company eventually”.
Watch out also for his advice to foreign entrepreneurs trying to enter Asia. Read more
Reality shows that feature entrepreneurs are getting popular these days (Angel’s Gate is one example), and these shows provide the perfect opportunity to present your brand and products to a nationwide audience at close to zero costs.
As a young start-up, our appearance on a show called “The Potential” (aired on Channel U earlier this month), which gave entrepreneurs some air time to pitch their products, had a significant impact on our website traffic and revenues.
While the application process, auditions and the actual shoot required days of hard work and rehearsals, the exposure that BoxInBlue.com got out of it was indeed worth the effort.
There is definitely nothing to lose to be on national TV. However, we realized that it is even more important to determine what we want to achieve in that ten minutes of airtime. Just as many of the Angel’s Gate participants have admitted, we do not go into the show expecting a million dollars of sales revenue (or million-dollar funding in the case of Angel’s Gate), but instead be able to maximise this airtime to bring our message across.
Here are five tips and key takeaways that I got from the experience, through the auditions, to the actual show. Read more
Editor’s note (Gwen says): Yes, Kristine and I did take quite a few videos! If you have been following SGE’s live and post-event coverage of Asia’s largest launchpad for emerging technologies, DEMO Asia 2012, we have been posting several “quick and dirty”, “on the ground” video interviews with attendees here, here and here.
And with that, Kristine (and Gwen) interviews a few more people at DEMO Asia 2012 last week.
Gwen with Rebeca Hwang of YouNoodle
Kristine with Akira of UrbanCook
Kristine with Callum of Fitness Buffet
Kristine with Eugene Fabian of Microsoft. What is a huge company like Microsoft doing at DEMO? Find out!
Another few videos from our “quick and dirty” series of video interviews done at DEMO Asia. This time, take a look at a few investors we met at the conference.
Gwen with Amit Anand from Jungle Ventures (Singapore and India-based)
Gwen with Jackson Chan from DMGT International (Hong Kong-based)
Gwen with Antonny Liem from Merah Putih (Indonesia)
Gwen with Arnon Kohavi of Yarden VC (Israel, Silicon Valley)
We’ve done more on the ground short video interviews with teams that launched or pitched, investors looking to find the next big thing here at DEMO Asia. We are still in the midst of uploading all, but here are some more:
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