First, compare the result of the two queries below (click image to get a better view). Notice that they are different and that Gothere.sg suggests a shorter route (Note: the two services estimates travel time differently so the numbers do not compare). Gothere.sg suggests the A1 bus for the last leg of travel. What’s not obvious is that the A1 bus is not a true public bus, but rather a NUS campus bus. What’s also not apparent is that the A1 bus only operates at certain hours. If the query had been made, say, an hour before, Gothere.sg would give a result exactly the same as Google Maps’. 

My point here is that being Singapore-based business, Gothere.sg has a closer relationship with local companies, including NUS. Thus, they are able to have better information about the location they are serving and the quality of their offering proves it. This is in fact the market positioning of Gothere.sg. When Google first came to Singapore in late 2009, Gothere.sg wrote the following in their blog post:

I wish I could end this post with a positive note for the small guys, but the truth is, as a business, there is a lot of challenge for Gothere.sg. Google is now local in Singapore, so they are as close to the ground as Gothere.sg. Google also has a lot more resource and a more complete family of products that can help keep users in the Google.com domain. I don’t see a lot of options moving forward for Gothere.sg except to license their technology.

Gothere.sg may not be the best example of David killing Goliath, but let me go back to my original point. By being on the ground, local startups do have advantages over global internet competitors. Knowing the local matchmaking culture is what powers Zhenai.com to compete strongly against Match.com in China. Mint.com may have the US market locked up, but local startup NgaturDuit.com can make partnerships with Indonesian financial services much faster. The same principle can be applied by location-based social network service Koprol which is decidedly focusing on Indonesia and is now facing competition from Foursquare. The internet makes the world a much smaller place, but focusing on the local market can be a viable strategy and a profitable one.

• Rebecca Fannin - Journalist whose writings appear in Forbes and The Huffington Post, among others. She has a book titled Silicon Dragon which I haven’t read, but will. Her expertise is on entrepreneurship and venture capital in emerging markets.
• Michel Birnbaum (Genral Partner of iGlobe Partners) and Jeffrey Chi (Managing Director, Vickers Venture Partners) - Both are venture capitalists who have extensive experience in Asia.
• Neo Kok Beng - Co-Founder and CEO of AWAK Technologies. He shared his experience developing the wearable dialysis device as an entrepreneur in Singapore (AWAK stands for Automated Wearable Artificial Kidney). He brought the device to the event and it was impressively small. 
• Saeed Amidi, CEO of Plug and Play Technology Center incubator based in Silicon Valley. Plug and Play has been approved to setup an incubator in Singapore and they are also opening another satellite in Kuala Lumpur. Rather than bringing in a foreign business to be implemented in a country, Saeed believes it is more effective to have local entrepreneurs working on local solutions.

• There are a few areas where the venture capitalists are excited about: clean tech, mobile, geolocation, social gaming, and biotech. 
• Views on mobile technology are very bullish, particularly with smart devices like the iPhone — they will change our lives forever. 
• Digital content was talked about, especially from the angle of distribution. How content, e.g. a video show, can be distributed to different devices (TV, mobile phone, computer, streamed, downloaded, etc.). 
• Singapore is a great location to start a business as the government is very supportive to entrepreneurs. This situation is different from, say, India and China, where the government doesn’t proactively take actions to grow the startup industry. 
• In China, the telco operators have very strong clout. They take actions to ensure their revenue stream. For example, they can order phone manufacturers to have wi-fi disabled, even though the phone has wi-fi capability outside of China. 
• Rebecca Fannin just came back from a tour of India. She thinks the tech startup industry in India is a step behind that of China.

It’s easy to see why Singapore is the technology hub of the region. Besides a supportive government which brings in knowledgeable investors and incubators from overseas, Singapore also has a good climate, good infrastructure and efficient visa processing for foreigners. As for Indonesia, I honestly don’t think the government can be relied on much, so it’s up to the Indonesian players to really step up their game and make foreign investors take notice.

Why foreign investors? Because let’s face it, there is little expertise domestically and little interest from local investors. There is lack of forums bringing investors and entrepreneurs together. This article (in Indonesian) shows the difficulties in finding funding for Tokopedia.com (a popular Indonesian ecommerce site) due to lack of knowledge and interest from local investors. An incubator like Plug And Play in Indonesia can help so much in passing the know-how and connecting entrepreneurs with various funding sources. The more money that flows in, the more entrepreneurs jumping in and the more innovations coming through. And the cycle becomes larger and larger.

So, let’s get to work!

But why didn’t Yahoo Update generate as much excitement as Google Buzz when it came out? Let’s look at the components: