Innovation Forum with Dr. Paco Sandejas

Got an invite from Dae Unisa of Brain Gain Network last week.

What: Innovation Forum on Where VCs are Placing Their Bets in 2008
Who: The speaker is Dr. Paco Sandejas, the Managing Partner of Narra Venture Capital
When: March 13, 5-7 pm
Where: e-library, 2nd floor, AIM Conference Center Manila (ACCM)

There’s a P500 registration fee, with 50% discount for students and faculty members (with ID). To register, email innovation@ayalafoundation dot org

This will be a great venue for the techpreneurs of today and the future, to know where their next business venture is going to be.

• The talk by Dr.Sandejas will answer the following questions: What are the Global Trends in Venture Capital?
• Where are Venture Capitalists Looking to Invest Their Money?
• Where is the money coming from?
• Where is the money being invested?
• Who and what are the winning business ideas?
• What opportunities are there for Philippine-based techies?

View invitation (jpg)

UPDATE on March 13, 2007, 2 hours after the Innovation Forum:
Whew! Networking is a whole science. My heart’s still racing from meeting all kinds of investors, business people, and entrepreneurs. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

So there I was at the Innovation Forum, a young lady in an male-dominated AIM classroom with the movers and shakers of VC funds investing in the Philippines — a tech startupper’s dream come true, JP and Mau would say.

Dr. Paco Sandejas‘ (Narra VC and Brain Gain Network) talk on “Where VCs are Placing their Bets in 2008″ reached entrepreneurs and business people across a spectrum of technology companies — from micro chips and hardware and GLV laser technologies to open-source, SaaS (software as a service), and game developers.

Honestly, as a person trained to be a CPA, I couldn’t understand half of the acronyms and technologies he mentioned (micromachining? RFID? ) — but he was just telling a story and I’m happy I was able to grasp the story as a whole.

Some key points that might make you aspiring web startuppers from Dr. Paco’s presentation (because, fine, you couldn’t shell out the P500 registration fee):

• Investments into VC funds »» Investments in new technologies. The amounts invested into VCs is pretty volatile. Amounts raised in one year tend to be invested into partner companies the following year. US$30B was injected into VC funds in 2006 — ~$30B was invested into partner companies in 2007. Investments into VC funds whittled down to $17.5B in in 2007… so does that mean there’s less to go around in 2008?
• One of the 2008 Hot VC areas identified is Software as a Service business models focusing on consumers and small and medium business, a.k.a. Salesforce.com, 37Signals, and SuccessFactors models. So, I say, go join Morph Code on March 29.
• To find opportunities: read and study a lot (EE Times, Tech Crunch, The Deal, etc)… and Pinoy Web Startup, of course.
• There’s room for social networking, news, gambling, games, etc.

Some new people JP, Mau, and I met (or saw) were Bill Luz of Ayala Foundation, Dickie Gonzales of PESO Challenge , some young entrepreneurs including Diwa and some people I’ve made kulit in the past that I finally got to meet in person like Inquirer tech writer Erwin Oliva and Business World’s Dennis Posadas.

We’ll put up a listing of VC funds in the next couple of weeks. Dr. Paco says there’s money to be had (and I hope so — bootstrapping is so not easy). Make your web app meaningful. Solve a problem. And, just maybe, there’s a VC fund who will believe in your web app too.

Mau will post our photo from the event tomorrow.