Pitch6, first startup under 123JumpStart to complete Tier 2 funding.

123JumpStart is proud to announce our very first completion of Tier 2 project, Pitch6 on 1st of April 2015. Congratulations to Carl Wong, founder of Pitch6 and his team!

Pitch6 having completed their Tier 2 funding of $200,000, has managed to gain substantial traction in Indonesia which is their primary market of focus. Just a brief background, Pitch6 is a mobile social platform that allows users to record and share 6 second looping videos similar to the popular app, Vine but with a twist: they enable brands to start campaigns to crowdsource video content for their brands to generate publicity. To date, Pitch6 has completed campaigns with Brands Essence of Chicken as well as with Indosat promoting their e-commerce website, Cipika.

Their future plans would be to generate a community of creatives in the Indonesian market producing ads for advertisers and distribution of these creatives through an aggregation of Instagram influencers.

Investing Note secures $200,000 iJAM Tier 2 funding

On the 1st April 2015, Investing Note pitched and secured their Tier 2 funding of $200,000 (not an April’s Fool joke). Congratulations to Shanison Lin, Founder of Investing Note.

Investing Note is a social network for stock investors which allow retail investors to connect with professional investors and brokers as well as share trading and investing ideas. Its business model consists of subscription for premium content, targeted advertising, trading commission as well as providing a white label social network service for brokerage firms.

Since completing its Tier 1 funding of $50,000, Investing Note has since garnered almost 1400 registered users, a monthly unique visitor count of 2000 and monthly page view of 14,000 as well as prominent corporate users such as Phillip Capital.

With the successful approval for $200,000 funding from both iJAM and private investors, Shanison plans to develop a mobile-based collaborative investing platform as well as Investing Note web Platform-As-A-Service. This will include a recommendation engine to intelligently recommend stocks as well as trading ideas for investors to follow.

JumpStart Connect 3 was different from the previous 2 events that we had as this time the tables are turned and instead of having the startups to pitch, it will be the investors who will be ‘pitching’ instead. Aptly named JumpStart Connect: Turn the Table, this event is actually a collaboration between 123JumpStart and Digital Media Wireless Chapter.

Recognizing the lack of info on most Series A investors, we decided to focus only Series A investments and invited an impressive line-up of Series A Venture Capitals to share about their funds and how they could value add to the startups. Investors who pitched include: Monk’s Hill Ventures, Mirum Agency, SPH Mediafund, Extream Ventures, Vickers Ventures, CyberSecure Asia, NSI Ventures, Bluehill Asset Management, SBI Venture Capital and a talk by IIPL on getting prepared for fundraising.

The event was well received by the startup community as a record 139 registrants signed up for the event out of which 115 guests turned up for the event. This exceeded our initial target and expectation of 80 guests. Naturally the networking that followed was brimming with vibrancy and excitement as startups and investors alike bonded over food and drinks sponsored by our event partner, SoftLayer.

Join us in our upcoming Jumpstart event whereby Series A investors who will pitch to startup! Mingle with investors, start-ups and mentor over beer and food.

The second JumpStart Connect was held in conjunction with the SITF Meet-the-Members (MTM) X'mas Get-Together on 4 December 2014 at Plug-in@Blk71 with more than 150 guests from the ICM industry attended. This time, the theme for the event was retail solutions to suit the overall X’mas atmosphere.

The event started off with SITF’s Executive Director, Ho Semun giving updates about SITF’s upcoming events, activities as well as new staff additions.

Next up, the spotlight turned to the invited startups to fire off their elevator pitches to the invited guest judges which include Jean Yip Group, Konica Minolta, Denni International, Sheng Siong Supermarket and Far East Flora.

After the fast-paced pitching session, the judges had a difficult time selecting the Best Pitch Prize which was eventually awarded to Ms Christine Liu from StaffOnDemand. Mr Michael Sim from StarHub Ltd presented the prize to Christine.

The evening ended off with networking and refreshments.

SITF 123JumpStart held its first of a series of startup matchmaking and networking events on the 26 September 2014. The main purpose of the event is to match make startups with well-established companies for the purpose of go-to-market, partnerships and investments. We were very fortunate to be able to gather quite a number of well established companies for our first event including SingTel, StarHub, UOB, Mediacom, eBay, SPH, Starcom Mediavest, Havasmedia, Dentsu and Huawei.

The event kicked off with the opening address by Mr Roger Yuen, CEO of Clozette and Co-chairperson of 123JS. We had a total of 14 startups enthusiastically pitching their innovative solutions to an audience of about 80 guests in elevator pitching style.

In between the fast and furious pitches, we are honoured to have two guest speakers whom have taken their time to attend and speak at our event. Dr Stanley Lai, Head of Intellectual Property Practice, Allen & Gledhill and Chairman of IPOS Board spoke about a checklist of dos and don’ts from an intellectual property perspective before pitching to investors and collaborators.

Mr Ronald Jones, Head of APAC Operations and Workforce, eBay spoke about the story of GSI Commerce, the startup that went from a hobby to being acquired by eBay for billions.

After the conclusion of startup pitches, Mr Michael Yap, the founder for The Co-Foundry and Chairperson of 123JumpStart wrapped things up by giving a brief introduction to The Co-Foundry and their accelerator program.

Finally, the winner for the best pitch prize of $300 sponsored by Starhub was announced. Lawrence Chan from StarHub presented the gift to the best pitch winner, pitch6 - Carl Wong.

The evening continued with guests enjoying their meal amidst networking and making connections.