Flirq交友 心理測驗&好文分享

by JAMES HILL



On Friday the five teams that were selected back in early February for the world’s first Startup Labs event presented their progress to a room filled with investors, executives and press. Having followed their progress closely (I’ve been somewhat of a spy) it was extremely validating to see the reactions of the audience and the enthusiasm shown towards the program, even from some surprising quarters (the MOEA doesn’t send people to just any event you know). Having presented their original concepts at Microsoft three short weeks ago, the teams once again took to the mike, giving everyone a chance to see how they’ve done.

 

Foodjing

The Taichung-based team moved north to test and validate their online menu and ordering platform among the office workers of Taipei’s Min Sheng district. What they quickly realized is that the office workers enjoy queuing for food at the area’s busy food spots because it gets them out of the office, and no, we don’t want that taken away from us! CEO Adarsh (Adam) Menon then went onto explain that the team have refocused their product offering and instead have decided to concentrate on food influencers, working with restaurants to push deals to those that comment, post photos and check in, gaining repeat custom for the stores and benefits for the influencers. In a nutshell? Klout meets Foodspotting if you will. The Facebook app was built in the last few days, which you can try out here. I scored 68 when I tested it a few days ago. It’s a pretty neat idea as I am known, much to the annoyance of my friends I’m sure, for religiously checking in and posting photos of my culinary exploits.



 

Flirq



Pitching a dating site often makes people’s eyes roll. They’re often spammy, full of weirdos or worse, full of people you’ve already dated. In comes Flirq, with a smart spin on things: put women in the driver’s seat. If she likes the look of you she can ask you tailored questions and unlock her profile so you can learn more about each other. Over the last few weeks, Flirq has been reaching out to large corporations and attracted interest from some heavy hitters: Yahoo!, EVA Air and KKBox have all expressed a desire to help out their single employees. Feedback from users has been great too; their closed beta version has soared to over 1,000 users in just over a week. You can sign up here if you have an activation code.

 

Gumhoo



Wa Ga Li Gong! Gumhoo has had a pretty cool makeover since we last saw them, honing their sights on the main drivers of their web traffic: young women. The site has been completely revamped and traffic is up 120%, thanks to a Pinterest-inspired layout and new color choice. The site is much cleaner and navigation is more intuitive. Startup Labs must’ve been a breeze for these guys; they even had time to host a party for their users! The seed funding has also come in handy, they now have the means to run promotions, like this Japanese makeup cart, on offer for $3500.



 

InsureMe



So, insurance isn’t sexy right? Wrong. The founders of InsureMe believe there is an up-tapped market for insurance brokers who are looking to expand their business via recommendations. During the three weeks they validated their theory and discovered that the price they were suggesting, NT$365 was way too low. The insurance agents they spoke to were prepared to pay ten times that, and in some cases more! They’ve already signed up 30 or so brokers and have begun generating revenue. Not bad for 22 days work.

 

Lucent Sky



The startup formerly known as The True Sense stands out as the only real B2B team under the Startup Labs banner, a point made by Steve Chang of Trend Micro, who gave a speech opening the event. In fact, the team couldn’t have played it better, having built a suite of web security and cloud computing products that would fit well with Trend Micro’s product offerings. The team will no doubt be following up with Mr. Chang, who said he’d be interested in meeting for a coffee some time. In their three weeks, the team has made over US$4,000 in sales, pretty impressive.

 

It will be interesting how the teams progress from here on out, especially now they’re somewhat free of the spotlight they’ve been under for the past month or so. No doubt that having gone through the Startup Labs process they are in a better position to tackle their respective markets with conviction and determination; We hope to see great things from them in the coming months.

[ Original article ]