Hi, I am Jacky Yap.

Update 2018-07-01

As on 2018, Jacky is currently the managing director of GRVTY Media, the digital media company behind Vulcan Post, Discover SG, Millennials of Singapore, with regional offices in Malaysia and Philippines.

This publication will be a space where he shares his experience in the personal finance space, as well as thoughts on the digital media and tech startup space.

Popcorn (Last Update: 2013)

I am currently doing business development at Popcorn, the top cinema showtimes movie app in Singapore. To date, the app has been downloaded over 850,000 times in Singapore.

FAQ:

1. My role in the company? Business development + Sales + PR + Fund raising.
2. What’s so cool about the company? We have about 850,000 total downloads to date, something which attracted me to the company in the first place. And nobody is disrupting the movie/cinema industry in Singapore.
3. How big is the team? I work alongside the CEO and the CTO. I’m the first hire.
4. Where’s the office? Orchard road. So hit me up for coffee if you are around the area.
5. How’s work so far? Stressful and exciting. While I have been writing all these while, it feels good to be in the game in the real world, making things happen.

So what have I done during my first month at Popcorn?

1. Launched the company website: popcornapp.co
2. Closed 3 advertising deal (mixture of CPA and CPM)
3. Partnering with 3 other companies for marketing campaign
4. Set up meetings with several media agencies as well as film distribution companies

Vulcan Print

Vulcan Print is an ebook teaching first time entrepreneurs how to reach out to journalists in Southeast Asia. Often times I get questions from new startups on how they should go about pitching to journalists. So I decided that I should turn it into an ebook. I have always wanted to publish a book, and now I’ve got that checked off my list.

 

Actionable tips you can start applying to get the attention of top tier tech media outlets in Southeast Asia.

• One stop guide on how to pitch your businesses to journalist.
• Case studies of two companies who have done an exceptionally good job in their PR.
• Learn how to write a compelling email pitch and press release with professional standards.
• Bonus: Curated frequently asked questions from Quora including questions such as: How do journalists find their stories and Can you send a “Thank You” gift to a journalist?

The ebook comes at $4.99. I started the project early August where I worked on it every night. ebook was done in a month, and launched in mid October.

e27

I am currently the senior writer at e27, one of the main tech blog covering technology and startup news around Asia. e27 runs one of Asia’s leading technology conference called Echelon, and is backed by B Dash Ventures (Japan), Ardent Capital (Thailand), Pinehurst Advisory (Taiwan), Dan Neary (Singapore), and 8Capita (Singapore).

Update 15th September: I am no longer full time with e27, and is currently a contributing writer there. My editorial schedule remains the same, and I will continue to write about great companies and products, as well as penning down my thoughts on the startup ecosystem. 

Editorial

I joined the company back in August 2011. In 2012, I wrote a total of 472 posts for e27, generating about 32% of e27’s 2012 total page views. The total page views of e27 in 2012 also grew more than 200% since 2011. On top of that, 8 of 10 of e27’s 2012 most read articles were written by me, with the other two authored by guest writers. I cover startup news around Asia, particularly, Singapore, Australia, Taiwan, Thailand, and Malaysia.

Dave McClure, founding partner of 500 Startups also dropped a comment on an article I wrote for e27, showing his nod of approval on some of the facts I wrote about FoodSpotting’s exit.

Read the full post here: Foodspotting’s US$10M exit: Is it attractive? What does it mean for other players?

Some of my recent featured article in 2013 include:

1. Here’s why investors should bet big on m-commerce startup Carousell
2. Here’s Lazada’s scoresheet on conquering Southeast Asian e-commerce
3. Why the Pirate3D Kickstarter campaign won’t work in Asia
4. Video sharing apps: Goldmine or sinkhole?
5. The curious case of Flocations’ pivot
6. foodpanda announces new partnership, but are they really the leader?
7. Dave McClure: We’re only scratching the surface of SEA’s opportunities
8. The rise of employee benefits platforms: AnyPerk, Rewardz, PerkPool
9. Photo sharing goes collaborative – Pixbento, Seconds and Shutterpair
10. [Exclusive] The secret Angel of Impulseflyer, Drive.sg and Redmart

Products

I am also was the product manager for e27’s Startupkit (rebranded to Bundles). I crafted the whole product single handedly. This is what I did in 2 months from 1st February to 1st April:

• Created the overall product vision + branding
• Mocked up the UI of Version 1.0 + finetuning UX (ongoing) and customer funnels
• Single handedly pitched and secured the partnership of more than 30 partners, including Facebook, Shutterstock, Zendesk, 99designs, Freelancer, Airbnb, WP Engine, Vsee, Zendesk, Microsoft Bizsparks, as well as coworking spaces around in Southeast Asia.
• Set up pricing strategy
• Strategized publicity/marketing outreach and media partnership
• Generated revenue for e27
• Customer acquisition + customer feedbacks
• Launched the product exactly 2 months since the initial idea inception.

See live website here and version 1.0 here.

Community Management

Other than that, I also run e27’s monthly Founders Drinks, a free community event for e27 to connect with the community and our partners. Each event saw an average of 100 attendees attending the event. I curate and craft the content for Founders Drinks, as well as handles publicity of our events along with my colleagues. Here are some of the events I handled:

• January 2013: January Founders Drinks: Revisiting 2012, Exploring 2013 [content curation, securing panel of speakers, publicity of event, worked with sponsors] – Sold out, 120 attendees.
• February 2013: Inside the minds of CTOs [content curation, securing speakers, panel moderation, publicity of event, worked with sponsors] – Sold out, 90 attendees
• March 2013: March Founders Drinks: Building an e-commerce empire, Soldgers style [Content curation, securing speakers, panel moderation, publicity of event] – Sold out, 90 attendees. See: Feedback on moderation
• April 2013: 21 growth hacking tips [content curation, securing speaker, emcee, publicity of event] – Sold out, 85 attendees. Generated event revenue.
• June 2013: Raising $1M from Kickstarter in 1 month [content curation, securing speaker, emcee, publicity of event] – Sold out, 84 attendees. Generated event revenue.
• July 2013: Growing your app to more than 800K users [content Curation, securing speaker, emcee, publicity of event] – Sold out, 77 attendees. Generated event revenue.

Others

Some of my other past involvements in the Singapore startup scene include:

1. Cofounder of Lunchsparks (closed down due to low margins + founding team’s other commitments. Received 2 seed funding offers.)
2. Startupquote.sg (closed down due to difficulty in scaling and it was only a side project). See screenshot here.
3. Startup Weekend Singapore 2012 (was the coorganizer of a 140 pax Startup Weekend. I was in charge of mentor relations, media relations, some logistics. The paid event was oversubscribed, huge success, and spawned off Singapore based Carousell.) See screenshot here.
4. N-House (I was the pioneer resident assistant, tasked to lead 100 residents during their stay in Singapore’s first entrepreneurial themed dorm. I pioneered the weekly Wicked Wednesday session where we invited speakers to come and speak to the residents of N-House. N-House was featured on Bloomberg too).
5. iLead Silicon Valley Overseas Study Trip 2012. (Was the facilitator for the NUS iLead programme. Brought 19 entrepreneurial students to Silicon Valley for a study trip in December 2012. I was in charge of deciding which companies the students visit in the 2 weeks trip. I arranged company visits to Facebook, Twitter, Dropbox, Kiip, Evernote, 500 Startups, Zendesk, Meetings.io, Coursera, Pair (now Couple), as well as 20+ other companies.)
6. Judged at Start-Up Dynamo, a lean startup and growth hacking workshop by Start-up at Singapore, Singapore’s largest business case competition.

– At 500 Startups, iLead December 2012

– Startup Weekend Singapore March 2012

If you are working on something cool, feel free to email me at jackyyapp [at] gmail [dot] com. 🙂

You can also find me on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.