From Adventures to Communities in Southeast Asia with Kristine Lauria
In this episode, Kristine Lauria, the country manager Elance–oDesk in Singapore joined us for a conversation on her interesting work in building and managing communities in Singapore (TheList.SG and Walkabout.SG). Starting from San Francisco, she told the story of her adventures in Asia through her blog: UrbanHikers. After settling in Singapore, she created two major initiatives which have infused the culture of community building and engagement in the Singapore entrepreneurial ecosystem (and they are still in running today): TheList.SG and Walkabout.SG. She also discussed her thoughts on Blk 71 and the startup real estate in Singapore, best practices on community building and engagement and on a larger scale, on her thoughts about other rising entrepreneurial ecosystems across Southeast Asia.
Here are the articles which form the basis for our discussion:
- UrbanHikers: the story about how Kristine moved from San Francisco to Singapore.
- The story behind TheList.SG and Walkabout SG. If you want to know the true pulse of Singapore every week, you must subscribe to the list and it’s highly recommended.
- The discussion on Blk 71, the most talked about startup area in Singapore and how long start-ups should be staying there before moving to their next stages.
- A short chat on companies under the portfolio of Golden Gate Ventures: RedMart, Nitrous, Carousell and Bilna (Indonesia). Other companies of interest in Singapore: Referral Candy
- Other interesting start-up real estate in Singapore (Spuul in Joo Chiat, Homie in Geylang, Tanjong Pagar, Amoy Street) and a short note about FailCon SG 2012.
- A brief discussion on start-ups and the respective ecosystems across Southeast Asia (Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand).
- Best practices about community building & engagement in your own ecosystem: empathy, authenticity, localizable, actionable, transparency and consistency.
- Last word on Singapore start-up ecosystem: the problem of zombie companies and cultural shift on failure.
Podcast Information:
The show is hosted by Bernard Leong (@bleongcw) and is sponsored by Ideal Workspace (Twitter & Facebook).
