Just one day ago, Azione Capital celebrated its 1st year anniversary with little pomp or noise. It was a time where the core team came together to reflect on our progress for the past one year and chart out our strategy for 2008. What made it all special was that just one year ago, none of us were ever in this industry of startup "management", and the results that came through so far was pleasantly surprising. On top of that, it was another pleasant surprise to me that this corporate blog actually has a fair number of readers, and a quick check at the viewed numbers at the comments page located here was heartening to say the least.

To bring everyone up to speed, here is a quick summary of what has been going on for the past 6 months:

• Peter Tan has moved from the Board of Directors into the Board of Advisors due to his time commitment in his new venture RentCars Pte Ltd.
• Azione Capital is exploring setting up initial operations in Malaysia, with a representative presence forcasted for Q2 2008.
• A private investment fund is being structured to capitalize on the Location Based Services expertise within the Azione Capital startup portfolio, interested qualified private investors may email me at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it with your contact details.

Falling sick and staying sick for 1 ˝ weeks after an overseas trip is never fun. That said, it has been a really busy sick week, juggling media queries, startup reviews and never ending emails.

Day 2 (01/06/2007)
I am amazed how Philippine entrepreneurs can sit through an entire day of talks, gala dinners, party at Zouk KL the day before (30/05) till 3.30am, party today (31/05) at Bed till 3am and still wake up earlier than me for breakfast.

I was invited early this week about the 1st ASEAN Young Entrepreneur Symposium, more affectionally known as A-YES (and constantly trumpeted by feisty Viet Nam delegate Mr. Phuc Tien), which gathers representatives from 10 ASEAN countries together for a 4 day event to foster greater co-operation and relations. Having barely 48 hours left to the start of the event, I was ill prepared to “up and go away”. Nonetheless, having the movers and shakers of the 10 ASEAN countries all in one location was too good an opportunity to be missed.

Over the past 5 months since Azione Capital was set up, the 2nd most common question I keep hearing is "do you have a blog?" (the 1st most common question is "Can you give me money?"), the reasons I get ranges from "the blog is a way to talk about what you really do at Azione Capital", "I want to pick your mind and glean insight on your views of the market" and on how the startups under our care are coming along. Along with the fact that Azione Capital is positioned as an "OpenSource" styled business incubator, I decided to start this corporate blog and see where it goes; like any opensource project, feedback and contributions are always welcomed.