Founder’s Drinks for Hangad Founders

Sir David — Fri, 23 Mar 2012 09:01:57 +0000

Hangad Head Honchos David Lleno and Johan Sales attended their very first “Founder’s Drinks” last March 21, 2012 at Pasto El Pueblo in Ortigas. I tagged along, curious about this event that my husband has been talking about for weeks. From what I understand, the event was for founders of Startup businesses, primarily in the web and software development industry.

The event was sponsored by Amazon Web Services and E-27 from Singapore with the help of Roofcamp and WebGeekPH. 300 participants attended, with a good mix of CEO’s, VC’s, programmers and foreign delegates from Asia and other parts of the world. Amazon Web Services Sales Head for the ASEAN Region, Rich Harshman talked briefly about how Amazon’s cloud computing services helped various startup companies in Asia. the program continued with a talk from Dr. Serkan Toto, a German tech analyst based in Japan. He talked about how tech development is shifting from the west to east as seen from heavy web and mobile usage of Asian countries compared to their counterparts in the west. He expressed excitement in the emerging developments in Asia and the Philippine market. Dr. Serkan Toto made a lot of good points but I was particulary intrigued by his predictions about the tech and gaming environment in Japan and the Philippines. He said that Social Games is the next best thing. Dr. Serkan Toto would also like to encourage and invite more Filipinos to pursue startup businesses in the emerging web and tech industry. I wonder what would it take for risk-averse Filipinos to take that leap, from employee to entrepreneur, a tough question that even Dr. Toto had a hard time answering.

-Ciello Lleno