​Are you a consultant or an entrepreneur?
- Learn more about Growth Academy Online Training & Certification Programs
Download our startup booklet and watch our videos to learn more about our framework to help startups to grow without "reinventing the wheel" and without wasting lot of time trying to connect the dots.

The framework is based on the startup development phases and aims to remove the highest universal risks on the startup journey.

Last week the German Government approved a regulation to protect small investors investing through online securities crowdfunding portals. The law drafted in 2014 was seen by many industry players as way too restrictive, potentially able to kill the growing German market of digital investments. For the relief of many stakeholders, the approved version is softer than the original one, having eliminated a couple of the most stringent restrictions.

The regulation on online investing was on the table of Angela Merkel for a while. The first draft received many criticisms from the German crowdfunding ecosystem. In fact, the proposed rules included points which created unnecessary obstacles to online investing. For example, there was a rule that investors have to send an investment information sheet via mail and sign it manually. 

The approved version of the Small Investors Protection Bill includes a reviewed Crowdinvesting Exemption, which leaves out previous points regarding mailing of an investment information sheet and signature. It also increases the cap under which fundraisers do not need to produce a long prospectus: from €1million to €2.5 million. Furthermore, the investment limit for retail investors has been increased up to €10,000 if they can provide a proof that their assets or income are at a sufficient level to bear the risk of loss. Otherwise, it remains at €1,000.

Soon we will see if this crowdinvesting regulation has struck the right balance and will help digital investing to flourish in the country.


Reference:
Nienaber, M. (2015). Germany approves crowdfunding rules to protect small investors. Reuters. 23 April.

Singapore has been ranked as one of the best places for startups in Asia and around the world. It is well-positioned geographically, offers great infrastructure and logistics, as well as diverse, well-educated talent pool.  Singapore is strategically located within hours from fast growing economies such as China and India and consistently attracts the best and brightest minds from different parts of the world. Venture funding, government support and developed startup ecosystem, together with features mentioned above makes Singapore an attractive place for entrepreneurs. more than 50. Let’s have a closer look at some incubators and accelerators in Singapore.

1.  Golden Gate Ventures

It is an early stage incubator helping internet startups build and launch successful companies across Southeast Asia. Golden Gates Venture’s founding partners share a rich background building successful Silicon Valley startups and managing investments in Silicon Valley and Asia.

What is interesting: For startups at their Ideation and Concepting stages, Golden Gate Venture offers 100 Day Bootcamp Program, which is run once or twice per year.   Since March 2012, Golden Gate Ventures has been accredited as a Technology Incubation Scheme (TIS) incubator by Singapore’s National Research Foundation.

Results: Last year Golden Gate Ventures invested $10 million into startups in their first year. The portfolio includes RedMart.com (online grocery), Coda Payments (mobile payments), and Nitrous.io (web dev tools in the cloud).

2. The Joyful Frog Digital Incubator 

The Joyful Frog Digital Incubator is recognized as the most successful in Southeast Asia. It is also the oldest among the pack, which should highlight why the company has the most comprehensive, systematic and consistent programs for a wide range of startup companies. The Joyful Frog Digital Incubator piloted its startup accelerator programme in 2012. Over two years JFDI startups raised over $ 7.2 million in seed funding.

What is interesting: consistently achieving 60%+ success taking startups to investment in 100 days. Typical startups raise around $ 550 000.  In exchange for a minority stake every team, who has been selected for the program is offered a package including cash investment, mentoring, working space.

Results: 38 startups have graduated, out of those 34 are still active.

3. Jungle Ventures 

Jungle makes seed to early Series A investments across Asia Pacific and also operates an early stage accelerator in Singapore. Founded in 2011 with focus is on early stage investments into Singapore, India, South East Asia and other regional hotbeds of innovation. 

What is interesting: Startups through the seed fund accelerator can look to get: S$50-500K in startup funding, co-investment by 500 Startups, a leading SV based fund, and more.

Results: Current portfolio companies include micro-lending platform Milaap, mobile commerce app ShopSpot, and vacations rental site Travelmob which was acquired by Homeaway last year. So far 27 investments has been made, 24 startups still active and 3 successful exits.

Start-up ecosystems around the world are scaling new heights. Startups raising millions of dollars and numbers are growing. Here are 9 things to consider before raising funds for a start-up:                                                
1. Never have more than 3 founders
Too many cooks spoil the broth. Having 2-3 founders is an ideal choice. In case you need more experts, you can always hire them. In rare cases more than 3 founders stick together; if the number is more, ultimately, it boils down to 2 or 3. Having one founder is also a bad option. Having different perspectives and divided risks is always a favourable position to be in.

2. Analyse the market; the idea may be good, but the market may not be ready
It is primarily important to interpret the existing market scenario in terms of your idea. Broadcasting your idea at the right time is where most of the startups fail. Therefore, first analyse the market and then take a call. If needed keep patience and wait for the market to develop according to your perspective.

3. Pick the right mentors
Having the right mentors to guide you and help you manage risk is a blessing in disguise. Even though there are no hard-and-fast rules of choosing a mentor, make sure that your frequency and belief matches. A mentor should believe in your idea and ambition, as a result, making your journey easy and a learning experience.

4. Maintain your accounts
A list of expenses of the previous and the upcoming months should always be maintained. This helps you keep track of where the money is going and how much money will be needed. As a result, while going to an investor, you can always show them the accounts and logistically present the amount of funds required.

5. Ensure financial stability in your personal life
Giving up an existing job to start a venture is quite a challenging task. Knowing well that the risk may or may not bear fruit, it is of utmost importance to ensure that all the debts are cleared. Also, make sure that the medical insurance, family savings and credit cards are in place. Alongside, keep a minimum runway of 9-12 months. Once all the basic things are taken care of, it will become easier for the risk taker to concentrate on his venture.

6. Family money
Keeping personal reputation at stake is riskier. Considering that most startups fail, ideally, family money should not be more that 5-10% of the total investment.

7. Consider funds as a bonus
Planning a startup on the basis of bootstrapping is considered to be an ideal one. This helps you concentrate on your business completely rather than hunting for an investor. Also, this will help you control the company completely without any pressure from outside investors.

8. Go to 3-4 investors see what they are asking for
Meeting an investor can be a learning experience. Listen to all the questions he asks for after you give your presentation and make a note. Remember, those are the areas the investor is not comfortable with. The more you meet investors, the more you will be able to understand the loop holes in your venture.

9. When a startup does not work, it is good to accept it
The bitter truth is that approximately 80-90% of start-ups fail. It is good to make your call and move on if things don’t fall into place. Of course, this should be the last resort but as a risk taker, remember that at times you need to let things go.
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This is an edited version of a post originally posted at yourstory.com, by Richa Maheshwari (reporter from Yourstory.com). You are free to re-edit and repost this in your own blog or other use under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License terms, by giving credit with a link to www.startupcommons.org and the original post.

Make no mistake about it. Silicon Valley is expensive. Actually, it’s very expensive. But if you’ve ever spent any time in the Valley then you already knew that. For those on the outside, then you can believe that rumors surrounding Silicon Valley’s pricey cost of living are true. 

Should you move your business to Silicon Valley?  Before you make that decision, here are a few things you should keep in mind? But, just how expensive is Silicon Valley really? Compared to the rest of the country, the cost of living is 87% higher in the Valley than any other American city. 

When it comes to housing, Silicon Valley is also the most expensive in the U.S. In fact, based on a survey conducted by Coldwell Bankers in its “Luxury Market Report 2014,” Woodside, CA is the nation’s top luxury market. Woodside wasn’t the only town located in Silicon Valley to crack the top five. Portola Valley was third, with Hillsborough coming in at number four. So, if you wanted to relocate to Woodside, expect to spend $949,000 on a two bedroom house with one bathroom and a fireplace – this for the record was the cheapest listed house in Woodside. 

Trulia, however, found that the average listing price for homes in Atherton at $9,347,107, which could make it the most expensive city in the country. But what’s a couple million dollars when you’re living in the same area as the guys who founded Google, Larry Ellison, Mark Zuckerberg, George Lucas and Paul Allen? In case you were wondering, there are 71 billionaires who call the Bay Area home, so of course it’s going to be expensive. 

So what if you’re not a billionaire? Let’s say you’re just you’re a teacher or even an engineer, what’s the price range? The median price for a home is $550,000 in the whole bay area.  If you’re looking at San Francisco, it’s around $1.1 Million. And rent?  You’re looking at around $3,000 a month for a two-bedroom apartment, which is 76% more than the national average.  I personally pay $2,700 a month for my one bedroom in Palo Alto.  I had to consider this before I moved my startup to Silicon Valley. 

To put it another way, if you have a family of four, you would need $90,000 a year to cover rent, food, transportation and childcare. To be more upfront, Silicon Valley is the 7th least affordable housing market for middle class families, San Francisco captured the top spot. 

Of course, the housing situation isn’t the only major cost in the Silicon Valley. Living in California also means that if you make over $46,776 a year, the state is going to hit you with a 9.3% income tax. Speaking of taxes, whenever you go out and do some shopping, just remember that California has the second highest state and local sales tax rates at 9.08%. Even Hawaii has more favorable sales tax rate at 4.35%. If you look at the ten most expensive cities in regard to sales tax, Fremont and San Francisco are included. 

As for basic necessities. Silicon Valley is 62% higher than the national average. And gas prices? Both San Jose and San Francisco are included in the ten most expensive cities for gas at over $4 per gallon. Is any of this that big of a concern when you reside in one of the highest paying areas in the country? (Web developers earn $25,000 more than the national average and customer service representatives and lawyers also do well here). Well, it should. 

Despite Silicon Valley having a reputation for having a higher median income (it was $60,000 in 1993 compared to the $30,000 elsewhere in the country) it’s still a concern if weighing your options on whether or not to live in Silicon Valley. For example, if you made $92,300 a year in the Valley, you would need $74,800 to live that same exact lifestyle in New York City. That’s not saying that you should relocate or never move to the Valley. It’s just bringing up a comparison to give you a better understanding of how pricey, it is to live in Silicon Valley. 

If you already reside in the Valley, then you already know how expensive it is for housing, gas, food, etc. And hopefully you’ve been fortunate enough to make enough in your salary that you can enjoy the weather and everything else that Silicon Valley has to offer. However, if you’re looking to move to this area because you think it’s magical and can help make your startup a success, you may want to consider other options if money is tight. While it’s an incredible place to work and play, the Valley is really, really expensive.
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This is an edited version of a post originally posted at yourstory.com, by John Rampton (President at Adogy), an entrepreneur, full-time computer nerd and startup expert. You are free to re-edit and repost this in your own blog or other use under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License terms, by giving credit with a link to www.startupcommons.org and the original post.

It is very typical to measure mature of startups ecosystems in terms of new startups, growing startups, investors, investments, exits, etc. and it makes sense as cities use these statistics in the best possible way to communicate their economic growth at high level and to attract other relevant people, investors, big companies, more entrepreneurs and other stakeholders.

These indicators are however the result of many smaller activities present in a startup ecosystem that contribute to these higher level results - as any startup ecosystem is the sum of multiple variables of an unbalanced equation inherent to the interactions of the startup ecosystem itself.

So, as you can figure out, you need much information to talk about matureness of startups ecosystems. But most of all, you need a good understanding and analysis of your startup ecosystem at different levels and mapping it usually is a good starting point to set up new strategies and achieve a better economic development.

But the thing is that properly mapping a startup ecosystem is more than just to create a good map to show who is who in your city or region. It is crucial to work at different levels and in more detail:

1. After mapping out all relevant organizations and services, you should introduce a common language and understanding among all stakeholders to start identifying startups at different stages and how to best support their progress from stage to stage
2. You should then discuss everything around this and further identify any organization supporting startups, to which stage it caters for, in order to avoid replicated entities, focusing on better allocation of resources or to identify bottlenecks or gaps in services at some stages
3. Implement rights and detailed metrics to measure your startup ecosystem performance as a whole, but more importantly at all services at all stages to better understand what activities best contribute to these overall results. ie. what to measure and what is the sub target being aimed
4. To define how to best work collaboratively and connect services from one organization to another between all parties and how the information about startups, people and data is flowing on real time between core services
5. Understand the current return of investments to innovation in for of impact and value creation 
   
6. How the services are being funded and how sustainable is your startup ecosystem in terms of overall and in most crucial operations
   
7. Open data to show what’s happening in your area as the best marketing campaign to attract people, talent, investments, etc. and to benchmark your activities with other comparable cities and their startup ecosystem 

We truly believe everyone should work on this model, as it makes the investments to growth and innovation truly visible and measurable - as only the things that can be measured can be improved. And the faster the feedback loop, the faster things can be improved.

Actually we are working with this model with few key cities like Helsinki at ecosystem level and even more broadly with independent organizations and we are clearly seeing that it is possible to build a vibrant startup ecosystem in a city in three to five years, what is half or less, compared to known average. 

Future entrepreneurs and current startups deserve this new scenario that we at Startup Commons are creating and we encourage others to contribute and develop innovation, better, faster and with less resources.

​Are you a consultant or an entrepreneur?
- Learn more about Growth Academy Online Training & Certification Programs
Download our startup booklet and watch our videos to learn more about our framework to help startups to grow without "reinventing the wheel" and without wasting lot of time trying to connect the dots.

The framework is based on the startup development phases and aims to remove the highest universal risks on the startup journey.

The 12th annual Innovation Africa Digital Summit (IADS) held recently in Gambia in western Africa highlighted the growth of ICT infrastructure and innovative services in the region. 

Gambia has the highest teledensity in Africa, and despite its small size, punches above its weight when it comes to ambitions and targets. Industry and government agencies indicated at the conference that the country plans to become an ICT hub in the next 3-5 years. 

According to a recent Media Monitor International report, Gambia displays a great enthusiasm towards entrepreneurship, as reflected in its investment in youth, competitions and awards for entrepreneurs. The Children and Community Initiative for Development (CAID) and Africa Youth Panel (AYP) have rolled out a range of capacity building initiatives for youth. 

The Gambia Investment Export and Promotion Agency (GIEPA) conducts an annual Business Plan Competition for MSMEs. The ministry of Trade, Industry, Regional Integration and Employment has also launched an innovation grant as part of the Social Development Fund, to commercialise local projects. An estimated two-thirds of Gambia’s economy is powered by MSMEs. 

MNCs such as Intel and Microsoft have announced initiatives to invest in local startups in Africa. The companies are promoting local app development as well, considering that much of Africa is a ‘mobile first’ economy when it comes to ICTs. Gambian ICT entrepreneurs such as Muhammed Jah have been covered prominently in local and international media such as the BBC. Jah is the founder of QuantumNet, an ICT company with over 300 employees, and was recently estimated to worth around $156 million. 

Momodou Drammeh, enterprise director at GIEPA, explains that Gambia is one of the safest countries in Africa, a melting pot of eight different ethnic groups, competitive in its labour force, stable in economy, and speaks English as an official language. Gambia’s membership to the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) trading bloc ensures market access to over 300 million people. 

International players are also active in Gambia’s entrepreneur movement. Africa Startup, based out of Norway, has launched two projects in Gambia: MyFarm (a one-hectare farm-based educational centre focusing on ‘seed to business’ agri-activities) and MyFarm Produce (to promote better packaging of agricultural produce). 

Gambia is already a cultural hub with a unique blend of local and international music, with a range of fresh talent also using digital media for music discovery and promotion. Notable musicians include Jaliba Kuyateh, Foday Musa Suso, Tabou Diop, Jalimadi, Pa Bobo Jobarteh and The Kaira Band, to name just a few

Read the whole article on yourstory.com

Any startup ecosystem in the world needs a constant flow of people coming and going in order to refresh the ecosystem with new ideas, startups, investors, people who upgrade their skills, multiple resources, etc. That’s key to keep it alive.

Alex Farcet seems to have pretty clear this flavour through StartupBootCamp accelerator, focused on Europe not only fostering entrepreneurship and supporting global startups but also building a new breed of angel investor with AngelsBootCamp, a two-day workshop to train executives, entrepreneurs and finance professionals in interesting topics like due diligence, legal trends, portfolio management or investments with a practical approach, interacting with experienced investors. In a nutshell, the first great approach that you need if you feel attracted by startup world but you have no experience, or if you are a successful entrepreneur with some money in the bank and watching and mentoring projects and need the right skills to start support them from the investment perspective.

The first AngelsBootcamp  took place last year in Berlin on 7-8 June and now StartupBootCamps has just launched a new AngelsBootCamp again in Berlin on 17-18 March. 

From Startup Commons perspective, we encourage and support this kind of events that aim to build a better scenario for entrepreneurs in Europe and aligned with our mission  to develop a global startup ecosystem more accessible, transparent and efficient for all stakeholders in the startup ecosystems.