Nicholas Tan

Working for the past two years helping to manage the Microsoft startup programme BizSpark, I’ve definitely been stuck in meetings where I desperately wished the startup could have presented their businesses in a much better manner. Here are four quick tips I think will help founders who are looking to work closely with corporate incubators/accelerators/programmes in Singapore. 1. Clearly articulate what you do I cannot emphasise how deadly important it is to give a concise introduction of what you do. It seems like a really basic premise, but so often I’ve had to search through jargon-filled websites and rambling speeches telling me that the startup is looking to “change the world”, “provide innovative solutions” or “be the disruptive transformation”. To what, exactly? I find that the best introductions are often short and worded within a single sentence. I’ve also had a meeting where the founder couldn’t decide if he was a startup, incubator or accelerator - he said he was a “mix of all three”, and still couldn’t explain this strange definition after an hour of convoluted presenting. Although not completely implausible, this is still a bit of a red flag. Tip: “We provide a [specific solution] to address [problem] to help [target audience]” is a great opening starter. ...

[caption id=“attachment_18832” align=“aligncenter” width=“960”] Clearly the coolest table at the awards ceremony[/caption] The annual Microsoft Partner Awards were held on the evening of 29 October, at the grand ballroom of One Farrer Hotel & Spa - a hotel so spanking new that the taxi uncle didn’t know it existed and got a bit lost trying to get there. Spiffy location aside, it was a night of honouring the many diverse partners Microsoft works with, from resellers to retailers, customers to vendors. Of course, my obvious bias was towards the gathering of BizSpark startup partners. Clearly we were one of the tables with a much (ahem) younger demographic, and though the fried rice I was waiting for on the dinner menu was slightly dry in the end - it was a good opportunity to catch up with the goings-on of some of our brightest Singapore BizSpark stars. Here goes my shameless plug for all four of them. ...

So you’ve signed up for and gotten approved for BizSpark; the next step is to activate your Azure credits so you can start running backend stuff for your app. Here are 7 steps to activate your free monthly USD150 worth of Azure benefits. 1) Primary user logs on to BizSpark 2) Click on ‘My Benefits’ > ‘Microsoft Azure’ > ‘How do I get it.’ 3) Clicking on ‘My Account’ will bring you to the MSDN Subscription page, where first-time users need to activate their accounts by clicking on “Activate your account” link ...

We recently sent out a survey asking BizSpark startups what they wanted to learn about Azure. The results were interesting, with most responding that they wanted to learn how to scale on the cloud. As such, we decided to run an Azure lab for startups this 1 September 2014. You can register here: http://bit.ly/bizsparkazurelab1 Schedule Keynote Compute PAAS IAAS Data and Storage Networking, Caching Things to Bring Microsoft Azure Subscription login details (MSDN subscription from your BizSpark account) ...

As someone who’s been fortunate enough to have a foot in two rather different worlds - the local startup ecosystem and the local music scene - I’ve found some curious similarities. When I speak to startups in my course of work managing the Microsoft BizSpark programme in Singapore, I often joke that a musician in Singapore is very similar to an entrepreneur in Singapore - the only small difference is that as an entrepreneur, there’s at least a chance for you to make your money back. ...

I recently got an opportunity to share what Microsoft is doing in the Singapore startup scene at *SCAPE, where HubQuarters is one of many established local co-working spaces. In general, the audience seemed surprised at the existence of BizSpark, which offers local tech startups more than 900 current, full-featured software development tools, platform technologies, and server products to build software applications. I also got asked many interesting questions, the most repeated of which I’ll reproduce below. ...

In this Developer Feature series, Spiffy talks to up-and-coming developers to learn what makes them tick. This time around, we have 26-and-a-half-year-old Natalie Ip, the CEO and founder of delivery startup dilivrit. Describe yourself in three words. Hong(kong)kiwi. Resilient. Persistent. = Scrappy. Describe dilivrit in a sentence. On-demand delivery at your fingertips. What motivated you to start dilivrit? How did you come up with the idea? I love starting up things, it’s like achievement unlocked. I actually started wanting to do a food startup, I even had business cards for the name FOODIP. In the end I opted for food delivery and an investor suggested I should create a great delivery system for other higher margin items as well. So after researching the market I pivoted to a crowdsourced delivery platform. Why now? Riding on the bandwagon of e-commerce and instant gratification! ...

In this Developer Feature series, Spiffy talks to up-and-coming developers to learn what makes them tick. For our first feature in 2014, we have 35-year-old Team Westeros, made up of computer engineers Du Lingyi, Huang Geng, Meng Kaizhi and Zheng Naijia. Together, they developed an a Windows Phone/Windows 8 app for NUS’ internal Integrated Virtual Learning Environment (IVLE). [caption id=“attachment_17079” align=“aligncenter” width=“640”] Team Westeros members: Huang Geng (Back row second-rightmost), Du Lingyi (Back row third-rightmost), Meng Kaizhi (Back row fourth-rightmost)[/caption] ...

[caption id=“attachment_17241” align=“aligncenter” width=“650”] Image from vulcanpost.com[/caption] At the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Nokia has announced that the global food delivery app foodpanda app will launch across the Nokia Asha, Lumia and X family of devices. Many partners such as Facebook, BBM, Twitter, LINE, Viber, Electronic Arts, Gameloft and Rovio are also making their key apps available across Nokia’s device portfolio of feature phones, Asha, Nokia X and Lumia. Nokia also unveiled new affordable handsets including a new family of smartphones debuting on the Nokia X software platform. ...

Do you want to deploy Windows 8.1 the “right way”? Find out how to avoid deployment pitfalls and how to streamline the process with a team of experts, including a key Developer of the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT). Benefit from their real-life experience with early adopters, in this recorded session with live Q&A. They start with the basics and then dive deep to teach you how to plan, configure, and manage client deployment to Windows-based computers in Microsoft System Center 2012 R2 Configuration Manager and the MDT. Get tips on saving time and money by automating some (if not all) of the process. Why learn the hard way? Join us here on Microsoft Virtual Academy to find out more. Course Outline: ...