Nexus

Initial Response to the Nexus Announcement

Since our initial announcement last week, the response to the Nexus Project has been surprisingly brisk. We're really just getting underway but it appears we may get carried forward with the current faster than we expected - and that's is all right by us. Honestly given the complete absence of startup activity in Thailand we expected it to be a lot more difficult to get interest in this effort. Fortunately it appears that we were wrong on that aspect - and that is all right by us. So thank you to everyone that has expressed an interest. We will try to get things moving faster than we anticipated and keep you all informed.

Promising Startups in Thailand

So today Dave and I met with a few startups participating in Software Park's incubator program. Was only 3 out of the 11 that I understand are presently active but we were pleasantly surprised with the people we met and the potential for their respective enterprises. I will write more about each of these companies once I collect some follow up information but all three clearly have potential and address technology needs in Thailand and the rest of the world. Happily none are new social networks or twitter aggregators. :-) Thanx go to K. Watanya, K. Teeranit, and K. Ubonrat of Software Park's Software Business Incubation Center for arranging the meeting and helping us out today. We look forward to working with you all going forward. 

Another Announcement Coming Soon..

Part of our major concern is being able to identify enough active startups to build the critical mass necessary for a self-sustaining entrepreneurial ecology. Today's experience gives us hope that this critical mass can be achieved far sooner than we expected.

Along the lines of building critical mass, we hope to be able to announce the first conference organized by Nexus in the same light as BarCamp. We expect to call it StartupCamp and have already received verbal encouragement and interest by a major sponsor which we will reveal once we have things arranged. The basic concept is a startup focused BarCamp with people participating in self-organized talks about what it's like to be a startup business, get funding, market your company, turn your product into a business, and anything remotely related to being a technology entrepreneur in SEAsia that might interest you.

The main difference will be two special sessions for startups to make their business funding pitches in front of a large crowd including some select Angel investors and other funding sources. A few startups will be selected as "finalists" and get the opportunity to give a longer pitch in the afternoon. The funding source guests will ask questions of the founders and make observations about their business plan and pitch. At the end they will vote and select a winning startup who will receive a significant cash prize to be used as seed funding for their company.

Throughout the day, of course, startups will be able to present their companies in the open space and all participants can network and attend talks of interest. There will be something for everyone - startup founders, investors, government agencies, and people who just want to learn whether or not being an entrepreneur may be right for them. I hope if you fit any of those descriptions that you will make a special effort to participate. Stay tuned...

Proteus Technologies is very happy to announce a new joint-venture with Karon Business Consulting called the Nexus Technology Program . The primary goals of this project are three-fold:

1. Create a dynamic entrepreneurial technical startup ecosystem in Thailand and SEAsia so that new tech business are successfully launched and funded on a frequent basis.
2. Generate obscene capital gains! (hat tip to @StephenFleming )
3. Help others do the same.

What inspired the creation of this project were a few things. First, the realization by Dave Shelters and myself that there was absolutely no identifiable startup community in Thailand whatsoever. In trying to understand why that was we discovered a few things - firms describing themselves as "VC" here have more stringent investment criteria than bank loans so there is no Series A in Thailand and, despite apparent programs to provide such things, there is no practical seed funding available either. Effectively, brick & mortar businesses that involve building large factories and buildings to house low skilled workers are clearly the focus with awareness of the technology businesses - especially those involving the software business - being completely absent.

In later blogs we'll describe some of the bizarre experiences we had along the way but one might reasonably ask if this is an issue of lack of demand rather than supply. If there's some good news in all this, it is that there is undoubtably now a demand for technical startup investment in Thailand. What is lacking is awareness and sophisticated funding sources. We have talked with Series A level funding sources that want to expand into technology in Thailand but they're concerned they don't understand the space well enough to jump in. Honestly, we haven't found any ventures reading for Series A funding - yet. But we're convinced that the Nexus Technology Program can address this soon.

What convinced us of this was our experiences with BarcampBangkok . Part of the reason Proteus Technologies sponsored the first Barcamp in Thailand was because it was clear that the awareness of Open Source and Open Standard technologies in the local developer community was basically limited to PHP web development and some MySQL. Since promotion of technology came from big firms like Microsoft (for .ASP) and Sun (for Java), that pretty much described the knowledge base in Thailand. My goal was to build a community to promote more Open technologies and build awareness for developers and companies alike.

I think we clearly succeeded. The first Barcamp attracted about 200 people and had a large PHP presence but we introduced Python, Django, Ruby, Rails, Erlang and even some process like Agile. Most talking was by foreigners (farang is the term here) but it was great fun and everyone wanted to know when would be the next one.

Second BarcampBKK filled up the 500 person limit for registration in 72 hours and went for two days instead of one. We had support from Google & Mozilla with speakers flying in and participating with us and we started getting questions from young attendees about funding and running a technology startup. While the questions often demonstrated a lot of naitivity about the realities of funding, it was a very promising occurrence. 

BarcampBKK 3 had nearly 700 show up for the two-day + overnight affair. Sripatum University (our hosts) had just announced the first major Open Source program at a Thai university. We had four or five sessions about technology startups and funding which were some of the best attended and highest audience participation rates. I gave a short talk on "How to Create a Successful Technical Startup" and Dave presented his "Finance for Geeks" talk which was well received. John Berns helped organize a round table discussion on starting a business, another young Thai girl gave a talk on her experiences as a Freelancer in Bangkok and I believe there were some other talks in Thai language on similar subjects so clearly a buzz was present.

In the space of 3 Barcamps in Bangkok and a few in Chang Mai and Phuket, awareness of the opportunities provided by Open Source and Open Standards technologies went from a barely discernible blip to a mature and expanding subject matter with many young kids looking to leverage it for their own business startups rather than limit themselves to doing offshore work in Java or C# for big companies.

This community is real and self-sustaining. It is the mission of the Nexus Technology Program to do the same for the young entreprenuerial community in Thailand. We hope you are as excited about the possibilities as we are!