Last Saturday proved to be another engaging and exciting forum about the new brand of entrepreneurship in the country as guest speakers from hot and upcoming startups were on hand for another informative episode of Vigattin Radio at Radio Inquirer 990. This episode is part of a series on the growth and development of a new generation of entrepreneurs and the support they get from various groups and organizations. This issue has become more relevant as Filipinos are becoming more and more innovative and more resourceful of business opportunities, especially those that make use of information technology and the Internet.
Invited as speakers for this episode of Vigattin Radio were Ron Baetiong, Founder/CEO, of Guestlist.ph; Dexter Feliciano, Co-Founder/CEO of MyLegalWhiz; and Ken Reyes - Lao, Issa Reyes - Lao, Shiela Jocona, Co-Founders of Giftlauncher.
The speakers are part of startups chosen by Kickstart. Globe Telecom pioneers Kickstart Ventures, Inc., a business incubation acceleration program for deserving startups. They also have the Launch Garage Program where they provide funding and mentoring and other support services for a period of five to six months.
Ron Baetiong spoke for Guestlist.ph, a startup that aims to assist people in getting into clubs, parties and events. he said that Guestlist.ph is “partying made easy.” He said it started out as his college thesis in entrepreneurship. He said it was borne out of his passion for clubbing. From his simple concept and using the technology of the time, he now has 50,000 users and using updated technology. Ron Baetiong says that he continues to improve user experience through feedback. He says that entrepreneurs need to take pride in what they do. He said that he has turned his passion into a business.
Dexter Feliciano, Co-Founder/CEO of MyLegalWhiz, then talked about his startup. MyLegalWhiz is an online subscription service that gives access to thousands of references to lawyers and law students so they can access the topics and cases they are looking for through their laptops, tablets, and PCs. They no longer need to filter cases as references are already arranged, so that cases and legal topics are easier to find. Now lawyers and students can be more efficient in researching relevant cases that best fit their particular needs. MyLegalWhiz is a paid subscription service, and they also offer virtual legal assistant services that can aid subscribers in looking up law topics that are hard to search. Dexter said that it was hard when they started as they didn’t have the funding and strived to make it work within the span of four to five years until 2012 when they were chosen by Kickstart.
Then there were Ken Reyes - Lao, Issa Reyes - Lao, and Shiela Jocona, co-founders of Giftlauncher, also a startup picked up and supported by Kickstart. Giftlauncher was founded on the concept of crowd funding where people contribute or share resources so they can give a gift to a particular recipient. The group said that they came up with the idea through their own experiences about the difficulties on giving gifts.
The guests then shared to the audience the difficulties of starting your own business and discussed the many interesting aspects of making a startup succeed despite the many competition present today.
They stressed that Filipinos need to be innovative and daring and patient to be able to succeed.
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