Venture Engine (Happening)
I’m at Venture Engine now. The boys from Swara are doing a demo of their Simon Cowell app, which judges your singing. Today I saw some presentations from design school grads with ethical fashion ideas. I pitched YAMU, a location based cab app. Interesting stuff.
I wrote earlier that Sri Lanka doesn’t have a startup culture, but that’s changed. Blue Ocean Ventures and the Indian Angel Network are essentially starting up startup culture, which is here, I guess. And I think there are other venture ventures running in parallel.
A VP from Google India is here, as are local investor types. Unlike Hackathon, which was productive, there seems to be actual investment dollar at the end of this. Methinks. They’re asking some good questions and giving some semi-decent advice. But the main draw, of course, is money.
The gap here isn’t necessarily ideas, or even technology. Getting things together into a business plan is, which is where this type of support helps. Even I only learned what a Net Present Value and assorted financial terms are. I’m not even sure that’s right. It’s NPV, a way of discounted projected cash flow (cause a bird in the bush is worth less than on in hand). For Sri Lankans to approach venture guys with a structure they understand, this type of stuff is required.
So anyways, YAMU is running in the sense that I use it to get around, but it needs some investment to be awesome enough for public consumption. And tightening up the business model is a big part of that. I mean, communicating to investors forces you to think about it and makes a better product in the end. But I think I’d like the money now.
Posted on Tuesday, May 29th, 2012 in Business, Sri Lanka, Tech.
I’m happy to be featured in Echelon magazine’s 40 Under 40 feature, profiling young people who contribute to the economy in some way, mainly in business but also in terms of innovation and thought leadership. It’s an interesting article not just in that I’m in it (mainly for work on indi.ca and 
I won’t add too much commentary, but just read I guess. The youngest Rajapaksa, Rohitha (Chi Chi) has given an amazing interview to the 
In 2009 this strange character appeared on the Sri Lankan Internet scene, getting angry, flaming, trolling whatever. Then he started naming anonymous bloggers, posting comments as people’s kids, nasty stuff, for which I removed him from 
The chutzpah of this government knows no bounds. Every government since Independence has had to balance placating Sinhala nationalists (AKA racists) while at the same time actually running a sensible, inclusive nation that doesn’t send minority citizens, capital and foreign investment fleeing. Basically, they’ve had to pay lip service to nationalists while at the same time trying to run an actual nation. Every government has also generally failed, SWRD being killed by a nationalist monk and everyone after almost losing the country to various rebellions. In that context Mahinda is actually doing a better job by virtue of not being dead and not losing control of the country. But he’s still not doing a good job.
I appreciate the fact that Prageeth and all at least started this. Sure there’s a long way to go, but I guess we all need to appreciate the start. :)
Haven’t seen much in terms of incentives for local entrepreneurs, any idea if there are any? For example BOI projects get (or used to get) good tax breaks, Shangri La gets tax breaks but a local person trying to set up a business doesn’t to the best of my knowledge?