ENTREPRENEURSHIP Taiwanese Counter Strike Fanatic Who Sold His First Business At 20 Taiwan-based social media analytics startup QSearch pulled in $73,000 in revenue last year. This year, the ten-person team is on target to make $300,000 — and next year cofounder and chief executive Roger Do is forecasting $1 million. That’s completely bootstrapped, with no outside funding to date. QSearch actually started out as a marketing analytics […] Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
CALLUM CONNECTS ENTREPRENEURSHIP INTERVIEWS Ashley Low, Founder & Photographer of Ashley Low Photography Ashley loves taking photos and being able to capture newborn moments puts a smile on her face every day. There is a market for newborn photography in Asia as more western influences filter into the culture. What’s your story? Do you love doing something so much that a natural smile appears on your face while […] Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
ENTREPRENEURSHIP Chinese Triads as High Impact Entrepreneurs I recently read The Snakehead: An Epic Tale of the Chinatown Underworld and the American Dream by Patrick Radden Keefe. The term “snakehead” is used for a person who manages human smuggling operations for people from China (note that “human smuggling” should not be confused with human trafficking). The book is a fascinating, and in some ways disturbing, […] Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
CALLUM CONNECTS ENTREPRENEURSHIP INTERVIEWS TT Chu, Owner of Brand Pit Analysing consumer behaviours through photos posted on social media networks. This young entrepreneur helps brands have a deeper understanding of their brands. What’s your story? Born and raised in Hong Kong, started programming at the age of 12. Trained as an engineer, but instead pursued a career in investment banking after graduation. After more than […] Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
BUSINESS & ECONOMICS ENTREPRENEURSHIP The Asian Couponing Market In the world of commerce, the humble coupon has always maintained its place in the value chain. After all, who doesn’t want to pay a few dollars less, get free shipping or take home that exclusive free gift? With a history dating back to the Gilded Age of the late 1800’s, the coupon has carried people through […] Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
CALLUM CONNECTS ENTREPRENEURSHIP INTERVIEWS Ada Yip, Executive Director of Urban Spring Reducing plastic bottle waste is Ada Yip’s aim with Urban Spring, a water dispenser business offering affordable clean water throughout Hong Kong. What’s your story? I left the banking industry three years ago and have been focussed on supporting social mission-driven startups since. I designed and led an incubation program for social startups in 2014. […] Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
ENTREPRENEURSHIP STARTUPS First Malaysian Startup To Receive Funding From Brunei Royal Family KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Jan. 18, 2016 — It’s a record-breaking feat for BookDoc, a Malaysian Healthcare Technology start-up, by achieving the highest pre-seed and seed funding valuations ever in the technology start-up history of Asia. BookDoc concluded its seed round led by Prince Abdul Qawi, a member of the Brunei Royal family. BookDoc, founded in […] Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
CALLUM CONNECTS ENTREPRENEURSHIP INTERVIEWS Jeremie Tisseau, CEO & Founder of Morphosis Apps Jeremie Tisseau set up a UX/UI design agency in HK and is now based in Thailand where he feels very much at home! What’s your story? It is a long story actually. I was working in the Canary Islands, Spain, in a solar telescope as a technician in optic. I never really loved my job […] Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
CALLUM CONNECTS ENTREPRENEURSHIP INTERVIEWS Karena Belin, Co-Founder of W Hub Originally from Germany, Karena has had a strong connection to Asia. From completing her studies to starting her corporate career and her family, she has now settled in HK and pioneered her first start-up. Where to next for this young woman? What’s your story? The short version: I am an optimist who loves making a […] Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
CALLUM CONNECTS ENTREPRENEURSHIP INTERVIEWS Luis Kho, Founder of BB.TO Streamline your life with a click on Luis Kho’s new App. What’s your story? BB.TO(幫幫兔), your Personal Assistant provides a convenient and efficient, high-quality, all-round popular, personal assistant service app in China. It’s core competencies come from a very strong team. Our frontline personnel are all professionally trained by a 5-star international hotel, our customer […] Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
NASA’s Search For Life On Mars Key Takeaway: NASA’s Curiosity and Perseverance rover missions are investigating the planet’s evidence for life, known as its “biosignatures,” in unprecedented detail. The rovers are acting as extraterrestrial detectives, hunting for clues that life may have existed eons ago, including evidence of long-gone liquid surface water, life-sustaining minerals, and organic molecules. The Mars of today […] Written by Amy Williams April 30, 2024April 30, 2024 Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
Smartphones & The Source Of Our Anxiety Key Takeaway: Jonathan Haidt’s book, The Anxious Generation, calls for action to limit teenagers’ smartphone access and address the mental health crisis caused by the widespread use of smartphones. Haidt cites the “great rewiring” period from 2010 to 2015 as a time when adolescents’ neural systems were primed for anxiety and depression by daily smartphone […] Written by Hugh Breakey April 29, 2024April 29, 2024 Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
The Greater Secrets Of Stonehenge Key Takeaway: A project involving archaeologists, astronomers, and photographers from English Heritage, Oxford, Leicester, and Bournemouth universities, as well as the Royal Astronomical Society, aims to study the lunar alignment at Stonehenge. The project aims to identify the layout of certain stones and the major lunar standstill, which occurs when the northernmost and southernmost moonrises […] Written by Fabio Silva April 22, 2024April 22, 2024 Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
Time May Not Exist Key Takeaway: Modern physics suggests that time may be an illusion, as Einstein’s theory of relativity suggests the universe is a static, four-dimensional block. J.M.E. McTaggart, an English philosopher, published a paper in 1908 arguing that time is unreal using logic alone. He proposed two ways to describe time: the “B-series” and the “A-series”. The […] Written by Matyás Moravec April 19, 2024April 19, 2024 Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
Humility Is The Secret To Leadership? Key Takeaway: A study has found that humble leaders can become more promotable by growing others through a “humility route”. Human capital theory suggests that employees’ value can be enhanced by investing in their knowledge, skills, and abilities. Humble leaders focus on the learning and growth of their followers, creating human capital value for themselves. […] Written by Elsa Chan April 18, 2024April 18, 2024 Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
Did Ancient Scientists & Philosophers Believe In Aliens? Key Takeaway: In 17th-century Europe, there was a debate about the existence of life on other planets due to the transition from a Ptolemaic view to a Copernican view. This led to the idea that if we were more like other planets and moons close to us that revolved around the Sun, they were more […] Written by Philip Almond April 17, 2024April 17, 2024 Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
The Building Blocks Of The Universe Key Takeaway: Peter Higgs, the creator of the Higgs boson, has died at the age of 94. Higgs, a great scientist in particle physics, discovered the Higgs boson in 1964 after reading a paper by American theoretical physicist Philip Anderson. This led to the development of the Standard Model, which explained how fundamental particles and […] Written by Harald Fox April 16, 2024April 16, 2024 Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
Rethinking Education Key Takeaways: The Industrial model of education that fueled the modern era and its dizzying reach did its job incredibly well. In his writing, Flynn illustrates study after study, spanning nations and decades, in which modern educational gift of abstraction — a transcendent sign of intelligence, as we saw in Raven’s Matrices — has been […] Written by Anthony Fieldman March 2, 2022October 19, 2022 Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
How China Is Transforming Its Economy Through Learning I highly recommend reading the McKinsey Global Institute’s new report, “Reskilling China: Transforming The World’s Largest Workforce Into Lifelong Learners”, which focuses on the country’s biggest employment challenge, re-training its workforce and the adoption of practices such as lifelong learning to address the growing digital transformation of its productive fabric. How to transform the country […] Written by Enrique Dans February 1, 2021February 1, 2021 Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
Why You’re Not Seeing Success With Influencer Marketing With the new year around the corner, now is a good time to re-evaluate your past marketing strategies and gear up for the year ahead. For some businesses, influencer marketing has simply not seemed to live up to its lofty promises of genuine engagement, credibility, and transparency. Some have claimed that it has been failing […] Written by Michael Tan January 14, 2021January 15, 2021 Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
A New Philosophy of Business I’m about to ask you to take a mental leap. For the next 8 minutes, suspend your notions of what a business is, and I’ll propose a new lens for you to look through. There are a lot of questions asked around what “community” means for business. “Where should community fit in my organization?” and […] Written by Empirics Asia September 5, 2018September 5, 2018 Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked