As with most conferences, Seed Forum will be packed with company presentations, company pitches, keynotes and a networking lunch.

Attendees of the event include individual investors, investment companies and other key finance intermediaries who will gain first-hand insight into a select group of innovative born global companies looking to expand their internationally. They can expect to meet executives of aspiring born global companies from Scandinavia who will be presenting their investment case at the forum. Each of the presenting companies have been pre-selected by the Seed Forum selection panel.

About Seed Forum

Seed Forum is a global organization hosting investor conferences in more than 30 countries and is considered as one of the most professional and experienced venues for presentations of investor ready start-up companies.

You can find more information on Seed Forum at www.seedforum.org

Online spams or comments with negative contents such as profanity or those containing malware could hurt your website’s credibility as well as hurt your SEO and Google ranking. Businesses and websites owners dont want this to happen. Tandif, an Indonesian based startup, aims to provide the solution to help businesses filter out these unwanted contents. We at e27 spoke to Ahmad Fathi Hadi, CEO of Tandif, to find out more about their solution:

Could you introduce Tandif to our readers?
Basically, Tandif is high accuracy filtering platform that is capable of filtering and moderating any negative digital contents such as profanity, spam, malware/virus domain, etc. As a platform, Tandif can cater to a wide range of different customer segment such as website, blogs, forums, mobile, social media, etc.

How is Tandif doing in terms of user traction, specifically the number of users (paying and non paying), as well as user growth?
Currently we are still in beta and we are doing lot of product development. Since our launch in 29 Jan 2012, we are focusing on accuracy and speed, not on traction. Currently, Tandif is used by our partners for testing purposes on their websites, and some of our major partner includes MindTalk and Indonesia’s Adobe user group. Once we are happy with our product, we will shift our focus to marketing and gaining more traction.

How does the technology of Tandif differs from the other existing moderation technologies?
As I mentioned before to the judges at Jakarta Echelon Satelite, you have to try it yourself. We can confidently say this: Our accuracy is really good. Mollom and Akismet focus on spam filtering, while Webpurify and Tandif focus on profanity filtering. That said however, we are more than just spam and profanity filtering, we want to make filtering easy and accurate.

The Tandif team. Photo: Tandif

What is in the pipeline for Tandif? Are there any exciting updates and features which the community can expect soon?
Yes, first we are going to release Tandif for free, and secondly, we will also be lauching image filtering service and mobile filtering service, complemented by a management service. What we are really excited about is that users do not need to install any application on their mobile devices, because filltering will be made at telco operator/provider service level. Tandif will also add more language support and language detection system in the near future.

Could you let us know what Tandif is looking for at Echelon?
We are looking for investment.

Tandif will be exhibiting at Echelon 2012 Startup Marketplace. The team pitched their product at the Indonesia Satellite in April.

Founder of Guestlist.ph, Ron Baetiong

Like to feel like a VIP everytime you party? Want to be up-to-date about the latest clubbing events? Hate to get confused on which event to go? Guestlist.ph is here to help.

An online guest list to Manila’s best nightclubs, lounges and bars, Guestlist.ph makes sure that having difficulties in finding the right access to the right parties becomes the thing of the past.

e27 interviews founder of Guestlist.ph, Ron Baetiong, to find out more about how he is shaking up the night scene of Manila.

How did the idea of Guestlist.ph come about? And what difference has it made to the partying scene in the Phillipines?

Guestlist.ph was first conceived when I was writing a thesis while studying Entrepreneurship in the University of Santo Tomas in 2009. Our thesis involved actualization the business during our senior year and running it for a whole year.

Longing to start something creative of my own, I decided to combine my passion, clubbing, into my brainstorming sessions of how I could improve the whole system. I discovered that the main problem of clubbing is that if you didn’t know any club promoter, you’d have to pay the cover charge at the door. Plus, one may be limited to a certain promoter depending on which night it is.

Thus, I thought that it would be a great idea if everyone could just choose where they want to go without going through the hassle of looking for a promoter. With no marketing budget, it became a hit. Guestlist.ph revoluntionized the whole guest listing system and we were able to get 50,000 party enthusiasts to use our free online guest listing system.

Do you think Guestlist would be able to be exported to other countries too? How well received do you think it’ll be in other countries? (Since the partying scene is different in different countries)

Wherever you are in the world, being on the guest list is always considered a privilege gaurantees free entry. It is a way for clubs to drive traffic to their venue and thereby increasing their chances of having higher bar sales (their main revenue stream).

Rules may vary in other countries but there is a common denominator for all clubbing enthusiasts nontheless. Everyone wants to save money or at least maximize their money’s worth. With that being said, we are confident that we can transplate this to other parts of the world no matter which country we are in. It is just a matter of adjusting to the culture but the system is pretty much the same.

What problems have you encountered during the actualization of Guestlist?

The main constraint that we have encountered in this project is awareness. Clubbing is a habit-forming business. People are used to doing the same things over and over again, until they realize that there is a better way for them to do things easier.

So far, we are doing a good job reaching out to people and telling them the good news that we are here to make partying easier for them. However, there is still much work to be done in order to reach everyone and tell him or her the good news.

Were merchants open to this idea since Guestlist is essentially bringing all the competitors closer to one platform?

At first, clubs were skeptical about the idea but when they saw how much traffic I was able to give them. But they soon realized that Guestlist.ph allowed them to promote their venue and their events with much greater conveneince. We started to build a lasting symbiotic relationship with them.

What are your future plants for Guestlist? E.g. partnerships, feature developments, market expansion etc.

Guestlist.ph is just the first step of the 3-step process that we have laid out. We are in the process of partnering with big telecommunications sponsors and brands that would give our users more perks when they go out.

Also, we are developing the e-commerce functionality of the site and after a few months we will be launching the app. The next step for Guestlist.ph is to usher in 2 more projects that would give our users the choice to go out to more nightlife hotspots (not just clubs) and by January, we want to migrate our site to Singapore or Thailand under a name that would be globally known.

How is the traction like for Guestlist and what are some of the feedback you’ve gotten from partygoers so far?

We have grown rapidly ever since Guestlist.ph was launched 3 weeks ago and there have been increasing number of users who use the site and the Facebook app. We have been getting positive feedback about it and have been featured on several radio stations, magazines and other sites.

This is only the beginning. We expect to be full blown during our launch party by late June or early July.

Vincent Lauria (Co-founder of Lefora and Founding Partner at Golden Gate Ventures)

Vincent Lauria spent more than half a decade  in Silicon Valley building two different startups, Meetro.com, a location-based chat service which was dissolved with many lessons learned in 2007; and Lefora.com, a hosted forum service which grew to over 100,000+ communities and was acquired in 2010.

Spending 2011 traveling around Asia, meeting with startups, investors, and budding entrepreneurs, Vincent Lauria  is part of a panel discussion, “State of the Investment Ecosystem in Southeast Asia” at Echelon 2012.

More lovingly known as Vinnie, he is passionate about the startup and entrepreneurial lifestyle and truly enjoys bringing the Silicon Valley spirit to other places. He is also sometimes known as “Paul Bragiel‘s other half.”

From your journey as a startup founder to an investor, what is the biggest takeaway for you?

‘People’ are what make great startups, not ideas.

What attracted you to settle in Singapore and look for investment opportunities in the region?

The community.  Singapore has a really strong community of entrepreneurs and developers helping each other out.  I had the fortune of first seeing this at HackerSpace, then a few months later at SuperHappyDevHouse.

Vincent Lauria (Co-founder of Lefora and Founding Partner at Golden Gate Ventures)

How do you view the ideas coming out from Southeast Asia and where do you think their potential lies?

Quite honestly, not as refined as the valley on how to get to market.  However, I see great potential across the region.   A lot of entrepreneurs here are doing this for the first time, there isn’t the same platform of the valley, with an ecosystem of serial internet entrepreneurs and angel investors to help with mentoring and connections.  I can feel some exciting changes coming over the horizon.

We have seen many products making the West to East move, but few in the other direction. Should startups here concentrate on the markets close to home or attempt to expand into the western markets? How can they do it better?

My bet is that startups should concentrate here on the markets close to home as the ‘low hanging fruit’.  As the ecosystem matures, it will open up opportunities for competing in western markets.

Vincent Lauria (Co-founder of Lefora and Founding Partner at Golden Gate Ventures)

Vincent Lauria (Co-founder of Lefora and Founding Partner at Golden Gate Ventures) is one of the awesome speakers at Echelon 2012. This tech conference is a two-day, double-track event on 11 and 12 June 2012 with over 1,100 delegates, a demo pit of up to 50 regional startups per day and various workshops. Get your tickets now!

Unwired 2012 Photo: Unwired

With the mobile industry exploding and more opportunities unveiling itself in this industry, companies are no longer undermining the mobile phone.

Singapore’s independent wireless and mobile conference, UNWIRED 2012 conference, have thus emerged to explore the various opportunities and challenges in the mobile industry.

Some of the key issues which will be addressed in the conference includes smarter networks for a smoother mobile experience, machine-to-machine communications in future, the future of mobile cloud services for consumers and corporates, a unified interface for phones, tablets and PCs to access cloud services, and more. Third of its kind in Singapore, UNWIRED 2012 will not only see representatives from Google, IDA, StarHub, Samsung, Microsoft and more on stage for its keynotes, but also demos of the first Windows 8 devices this year.

Details:

What: UNWIRED 2012 conference
When: May 31, 2012, 1pm
Where: Angsana 3F, Level 3, Marina Bay Sands Convention Centre, 10 Bayfront Avenue, Singapore 018956
Website: www.unwired.com.sg

There will also be after-event drinks at MBS for a great networking session.

Each conference pass costs S$80. Members would be entitled to a 25% discount upon entry of the discount code – MBS50.

Three complimentary passes would be given to readers of e27.  To stand a chance to win at the passes, simply leave a comment telling us why you want to be at the conference.

Redmond-based Vice President Walid Abu-Hadba on stage

A  session held on the 15 May for Indonesian local startups, “Microsoft BizSpark Startup Night” witnessed the presence of a special guest speaker, Walid Abu-Hadba.

The Palestinian-born tech executve, who was also the main presenter, is the Redmond-based corporate vice president, developer and platform evangelism group at Microsoft.

In his 40-minute talk, shared about Microsoft Cloud Computing Platform“Windows Azure” and how he leads efforts in building vibrant solutions ecosystems through technical evangelism, community engagement and audience marketing.

Hadba invoked a new perspective into audiences when he challenged app designers to think about cloud design first amongst other things during app design. Afterwhich, think about how and where to deploy.

“Design the app and cloud as if it will scale up unlimitedly. Never limit yourself or you will suffer. Microsoft offers public, private and hybrid cloud services because it sees the Asian market as very appealing due to its highest 67 percent adoption rates for cloud computing, which is comparitively higher to 61 percent and 57 percent adoption rate in the US and Europe respectively,” says Hadba.

Those who join the BizSpark program will be entitled to technology access such as necessary software, documentation and white papers, trainings in both technical and business aspects. Startups will also be listed in Microsoft marketing collaterals to be circulated all over the globe.

Another program introduced is BizSpark Plus. Targeting small and promising firms, it provides full hosting worth US$ 60,000 Windows Azure for free, instead of tech access, software (such as MS SQL Server, Visual Studio .NET), training and publication as mentioned earlier under the BizSpark program. Azure, an open and flexible cloud platform, proffers unlimited servers and storage so one can scale their applications to any size based on the needs.

Hadba also mentioned Windows Azure Store where developers can build, submit, and share their codes and apps with other developers. Another store is the Windows 8 Store (widely known as Windows Store) which is currently designed for Windows 8 Beta (also known as Consumer Preview.)

Although the long-awaited Windows Phone store will be available for Indonesians soon, no exact date as given as Microsoft Indonesia declined to disclose the information.

Combining developer platform, tools and ecosystems of the respective developer-centric company, the store which was first announced in September last year offers up to 80 percent revenue share for apps sold. Set the price in local currency and our piece will be available in more than 100 languages. The currency conversions and local tax laws will be handled by the store. Pricing model is flexible and rewards popular apps with a better percentage of the net receipts while delivery options include in-app purchases, trial versions, in-app adv, and third-party transaction services.

Lastly, Hadba highlighted Windows9.com as a site where one can find everything  – videos, samples, design, codes, guides, roadmaps and tutorials – in order to develop a Windows 8 app.

The 3-hour event was wrapped up with showcases from Mobile Game Development Studio Nightspade, KOMPAS app for foodie SajianSedap, City lifestyle directory Urbanesia and a presentation by Agate Studio – all lead by Microsoft Indonesia Developer Evangelist Norman Sasono.

Adobe User Group Indonesia will organize Adobe Camp Indonesia to raise the awareness of the local Adobe community and introduce attendees to the local user groups.

On the 24th of May 2012, participants of the Adobe Camp Indonesia would hear from a strong line up of 12 speakers, and be exposed to the various Adobe tools through multiple approaches such as demos, hands-on trainings, and team coding sessions, etc. There will also be case studies featuring examples of projects build using Adobe technologies.

The speakers of the event includes:

Tomas Krcha (Adobe Platform Evangelist)
Harrie van der Lubbe (Quince Asia)
Ahmad Fathi Hadi (Adobe Community Champion, Founder & CEO Tandif)
Ade Herdiansyah (Senior Interactive Developer)
Xing Jun Long (CEO Jotter Production)
Bisri Mustova (Founder Parampaa)
Arief Widhiyasa (CEO Agate Studio)
Arie M. Prasetyo (Developer of @GamelanApp)
Tubagus Saepul Anwar (Senior Adobe AIR Developer)
Harry Saputra (UX Designer, JomSocial)
Jesika (RYK Media Creation)
Muhamad Salman Alfarisi (Creative Multimedia)

Details:
Venue : Al-Azhar University Jakarta, Indonesia Jln. Sisingamangaraja, Komplek Mesjid Agung Al-Azhar, Jakarta Selatan, 12110, Indonesia
Date : 24 May 2012, Thursday
Time: 8am – 6pm
Fee : Free

For more details, please visit http://www.amiando.com/adobecampindonesia2012.html

Klik-eat Logo Photo: Klik-eat

Have you ever been caught in the following situations?

“It’s raining outside, I don’t feel like going out for dinner”

“Exam crunch time! I need food to pull me through my revision at night!”

And the most familiar feeling that we get when we think of ordering  in, “What? MacDonald’s, Pizza, KFC again?”

Not sure about most people but I sure have been through all three situations. I understand how frustrating it is to only have those few food delivery options on days when we are all too lazy to get our butts off to dine out or cook in. Intrigued by how Indonesian online food delivery startup, Klik-Eat.com,  has managed to tackle this problem, I talked to Co-founder, Michael Saputra to find out more.

Can you share with us how Klik-Eat came about?

The idea came to light when some of us were hanging out in one of the apartments in Sudirman area (one of the central business districts in Jakarta). It was dinner time and we had planned to go get some food. We looked out the window and saw gridlocked traffic everywhere.

Not wanting to be stuck in the traffic for hours, we decided to have the food delivered to our apartment. Bored with the usual McDonalds, KFC and Pizza Hut, we decided to get delivery from non-fast food type restaurants. We went to google and started searching for restaurants that would deliver to our apartment. We managed to find a lot of telephone numbers, and started calling them one by one.

That was the moment when we realized how difficult it was to find and actually get in contact with the restaurants to order food. In addition to that, not all restaurants provide delivery services. Ordering food delivery shouldn’t be this difficult, and that’s why we created Klik-Eat.com.

Klik-Eat founders. Photo: Klik-Eat

Unlike most businesses which are either B2B or B2C, Klik-Eat deals with both customers and  businesses (i.e., restaurant partners). Can you share with us some of  the main challenges you encountered when dealing with both sides? And also, how did your team coped with these challenges?

You’re right on. Handling the B2B and B2C sides of the business requires a two-pronged approach. And that is also how we divide our marketing responsibilities between Andrew and I.

Since the performance of both aspects are highly dependent on each other (customers will be disappointed if there  are not enough restaurant options, meanwhile, restaurants will also be disappointed if there are not enough orders) it is crucial that we get this balance in growing our business.

For the B2B side (getting restaurant partners) some of the main challenges are:

How do we deal with this? Persistence. Understand the needs of the restaurants. And, be flexible on a restaurant to restaurant basis.

For the B2C side, some of the main challenges are finding the ideal and most cost effective user acquisition channel. We believe we had an early start and we will use that advantage to grow our user base.

The Klik-Eat team. Photo: Klik-Eat

Currently, Klik-Eat is only based in Jakarta. What are some of the plans you guys have in the pipeline?

As of right now, we are concentrating on our main target market –  local office workers and apartment residents. So, we will go all out in Jakarta for the short and medium term.

Other features that are in our pipeline includes mobile site or application development and further enhancing our order taking ability from multiple sources such as internet, telephone, BBM, IM Chat, website live chat, mobile site.

What would you mainly be looking for at Echelon 2012 Startup Marketplace?

We’re mainly looking for investments and strategic partnership to boost our growth and revenue.

Klik-Eat will be exhibiting at Echelon 2012 Startup Marketplace. The team pitched their product at the Indonesia Satellite in April.

Jon Yongfook (Founder of Tinytrunk)

Yongfook is a serial web entrepreneur. He was previously a Director of Glamour Sales, a high-end commerce  flash site with operations in Japan and China, which was funded up to Series-C. He was a consultant for Dentsu, Avenue A and Razorfish, and sold his first Internet company, Nibbledish, a food recipe social network. His last position held was Director of International Product at Cookpad, Japan’s largest recipe site. Jon has more than a decade of  of experience in development and marketing for consumer internet, e-commerce and mobile, with professional experiences in London, Tokyo and Singapore.

Yongfook is currently working on his new startup, Tinytrunk, an online shopping neighborhood of Southeast Asia’s best independent retailers, fashion labels and merchants.

With a flamboyant personality and a hint of fashionista in him, Jon is not your typical startup guy. He is part of a panel discussion, “Process for Success: A Discussion with 5 Regional Startup Incubators” at Echelon 2012 this June.

Tell us more about TinyTrunk and how you got started on the product.

Tinytrunk started in February 2012 as a simple peer-to-peer marketplace where you could sign up, post an item to sell and easily accept payment via PayPal. I built it because I just wanted a simple way to “hook up a photo with a paypal button”.

Quickly though, I received demand from other types of sellers such as retailers and fashion labels who wanted to use the platform but in a more organized manner and had ideas for features they wanted.

The direction I’m steering Tinytrunk in now is a shopping destination for the best of Southeast Asia’s independent retailers, designers and merchants – a place for them to easily set up a shop and be surrounded by their peers. Kind of the “Anti-Gmarket”, which focuses on generic, low-price goods and I find hard to navigate and generally unpleasant to use.

Jon Yongfook (Founder of Tinytrunk)

You were previously with Glamour Sales in Japan, what was your main role there and key takeaways that is helping you with TinyTrunk now?

Glamour Sales is the No.2 online destination in Japan for luxury retail (I lived in Japan for 10 years before deciding to move to Singapore). I joined as Web Director back in 2009 very early on in the company’s life and assumed responsibility for basically all the online activities, both development and marketing related.

We went from 0 users to around half a million by the time I had left and were doing $XX million in revenue annually. The company is still going strong and I’m still an advisor. My key takeaways from my two years there were that e-commerce is not really about fancy technology stuff at all. It’s about customer acquisition, marketing to those customers, and fulfilling your promise to those customers. Ideally, I want to make those three things easier for all my tenants on Tinytrunk.

What is your opinion on the tech startup environment in Singapore and how can it be better?

I’ve only been here a year, but one thing I’ll say is that I’m very impressed with how many people I met who *want* to do a startup. I think that’s a good start for any growing startup scene. It’s very different to living in Japan where you rarely meet young people who have ideas that they want to build into a company.

I would like to see more startups thinking regionally though. The Southeast Asian market is around 600 million. It’s fragmented as hell but it’s closer to home and it’s underserved by Silicon Valley startups. Any local startup that can crack Southeast Asia or parts of it will reap significant rewards. I still think there’s tons of opportunities to be explored in B2B2C in Southeast Asia, Groupon and Airbnb-style businesses were just the beginning.

Jon Yongfook (Founder of Tinytrunk)

As both a programmer and a designer, what do you think are some of the key elements that make or break a startup?

I’m a hybrid marketing hacker and product hacker (Ruby on Rails). One thing I’ll say – don’t forget about sales. You need good inbound marketing sure. You need great design and beautifully-written, maintainable code, sure. But don’t forget that you also need someone whose sole job it is to go round town knocking on doors, getting people to sign on the dotted line.

I’ve worked with people who are very good at that and I feel they are a key player in moving the businesses beyond the early product development phase.

Jon Yongfook (Founder of  TinyTrunks) is one of the awesome speakers at Echelon 2012. This tech conference is a two-day, double-track event on 11 and 12 June 2012 with over 1,100 delegates, a demo pit of up to 50 regional startups per day and various workshops. Get your tickets now!

A tech ecosystem usually consists of startup founders, angel investors, VCs, government, universities, media, and communities. What often happens is that most people focus only on the entrepreneurs and the ones who invests in them — angels or venture capitals. But local communities are where all of these stakeholders meet, and there are more than a few startups being born or getting investment out of such meetups.

We have at least one strong startup community in each of the big cities across Indonesia, starting with StartupLokal in Jakarta, FOWAB in Bandung, Bancakan 2.0 and Gamelan in Jogjakarta, SuWec in Surabaya, and Stasion in Malang. They are holding regular meetups periodically to give updates about what is happening in the ecosystem and quite often they have a session to showcase newest product launches.

We will have five initiators from these communities talking on stage on the first day of Startup Asia Jakarta 2012:

StartupLokal community is a community that based in Jakarta which acts as a melting pot, gathering start-up founders, digital industry enthusiasts, investors, and media, giving them a chance to collaborate in one way or another. This community started in April 2010 and has been growing since then. The StartupLokal community held Jakarta-based regular monthly meetups, in total 25 up until this month. It also has launched Project Eden, a startup incubator/accelerator aiming to provide pre-seed investment.

Founded back in February 2010, Bancakan is a gathering for all Jogjakarta startups and developers. They have already held more than nine meet-ups to date. It also manages Hackerspace YK, inspired by Bandung’s Hackerspace by FOWAB. Bancakan is Javanese term referring to ‘gathering’ or ‘eating together’

Bandung in West Java, Indonesia’s third largest populated city, is well-known as a creative city. It is also a high-tech city, as Insitut Teknologi Bandung, arguably Indonesia’s finest technological campus, is there. It’s not surprising to know there’s a creative tech community in Bandung too. FOWAB is community for creative people who get connected through the Internet in Bandung, so in a sense FOWAB is not exclusively for IT startup people only. FOWAB is for everyone from the creative industry who has the same vision to make Indonesia a better country and a better place to live. Since its first meetup in February 2010, FOWAB has held eight events. It has also created shared workspaces for creative workers named Hackerspace Bandung. It has held Geek Fest, a SXSW-like conference at the end of March 2012 and plans to make it an annual event.

Stasion is a Malang, East Java-based local startup community that aims to build synergies among the members who work in digital business and technology. Founded in March of 2011, they have so far held four meet-ups and three public workshops. ‘Singo Edan’ is the term often referred to Arema FC, Malang’s beloved football club. Lately Malang is making a name for its developers after some hackathon/developer days that have been held there.

Surabaya, East Java, is Indonesia’s second most populated city after Jakarta. So it’s expected that this city will have several tech communities as well. SuWec is a community for web industry practitioners folks in Surabaya. It helps and connects like minded people to collaborate and work together. Since its founding in September of 2009, SuWec has been a regular monthly event.

Not only will our speakers talk in depth about what their community is and what are they doing to help startups in their respective cities, but they will also discuss the advantages and disadvantages of being in their city. They will also speak to the difference between startups in these cities, and their plans to help the Indonesian startup ecosystem.

Interested to know more? Get your tickets to Startup Asia Jakarta 2012! Or if you have an interesting product or idea that you believe can wow the judges and audience, please register your startup for the Startup Arena competition and win US$10,000!