Archive for September 2012

Tax incentives for angel investors in Malaysia

Today there were some incentives for angel investors announced in Malaysia as part of Budget 2013.

Who qualifies as an angel investor? Your annual income must exceed RM180,000 per annum and you must be a tax resident to qualify for the deduction.

What do you get? Total investment as an angel will be allowed as a deduction against all income.

When is this valid? From Jan 1 2013 to Dec 31 2017, and you need to apply via the Ministry of Finance.

Some details: as an angel, you must hold at least 30% of the shares in the company you’re investing in for 2 years, and you must pay up for the shares in cash. The company needs to have at least 51% Malaysian ownership.

What do I think?

Quite simply, the qualification income is something I see some people complain about, but this is similar to what America calls an accredited investor. I have no issue with the RM180,000/annum income. Feel free to hit up all those people you know with Visa Infinite, World MasterCard, Premier banking, etc. ;-)

Application via the Ministry of Finance (MoF) seems a little dodgy. The potential of red tape here is high. This is definitely a turn-off.

Does this benefit startups? Angel investors shouldn’t be making a 30% investment in a company. It is ridiculous. Consider giving away 20% of the company in an angel round, sure, but with just one angel walking away with 30% of the shares for 2 years?!?

Angels in Malaysia typically make RM20-50k investments (for up to 20% on the high side from what I’ve gathered). Very rarely do they hit the RM100k mark. Most accelerators are taking up an average of 6-8% for about RM15-18k investment already for 3 founders.

Startup founders are also not going to want to give away 30% of the company for a small sum of money. Many believe they are worth more. I guess you have to thank the media hype cycle for this.

Alas, it is a good start for Malaysia to be looking out for such things. Possibility to help boost the startup ecosystem.

Update: I thought about this a little more and realised that I applied a very myopic view to this piece. Reason is simple: I focus on tech startups & the angels that go with them. In this day and age, software (be it mobile or web-based) doesn’t take much in terms of cash to prove yourself. In other industries like manufacturing, biotechnology, film making, etc. you might look at much higher investments for 30% or more, but it isn’t something I know much about.

Offensive Facebook status update on Islam lands Malaysian man in hot soup

In today’s online beat, you’ll see reports of a 25 year old man who’s been picked up by the police for questioning on a Facebook post of his. The Star covers it. As does The Malaysian Insider.

Some facts that we know from the above two reports:

  1. Man made the posting in July 2012.
  2. Yesterday (Tuesday, 25 September) at 10pm, some 20 people visited his house and damaged it.
  3. 11.03pm on 25 September a police report was made.
  4. On Wednesday 26 September (today) at 11am the student had been picked up & a laptop confiscated.
  5. He was arrested under Section 4(1) of the Sedition Act and Section 298A of the Penal Code for causing disharmony, disunity, enmity, hatred or ill-will on grounds of religion.
  6. Man claims he had been hacked and his laptop had been stolen before.

How do we go from a Facebook posting to people finding his house? I decided to do a little sleuthing while sitting in the airport lounge.

The first post mentioning his name (Gopinath Jayaratnam) that Twitter search can find was made at 4.58pm on 25 September 2012. Its clear from his Facebook profile he lives in Klang. The first post providing information about where he lives came from Ariff Amran at 7.44pm on 25 September 2012. It also includes his identity card (IC) number. It didn’t take long before the masses were united under a hashtag: the KL traffic update hashtags #kltu & #klrb. First posting that was retweeted came at 9.35pm (this includes an image of the original Facebook posting which has since been removed – now all that exists is an apologetic message), followed by 9.57pm with his IC & home address.

At 10.09am today (26 September), a user has uploaded a photo of Gopinath’s damaged house. Its clear it was taken the night before. Another gem is at 8.58am today morning, they decided to talk about his car as well.

I find all these acts unwarranted and unjustified.

I don’t know what will happen in this scenario as its too early to tell. I am not going to comment on the law with the exception that I was under the impression that the Sedition Act was to be repealed. A lawyer in KL, Foong Cheng Leong was quick to jump on the fact that even though Gopinath claims he had been hacked, the new evidence act amendments, section 114A applies.

The Twitter stream has nothing but nasty comments towards Gopinath. There are Facebook posts that have 20,000 likes talking about him. At 25, I’m sure he has a bright future ahead of him. After all, I can think of many politicians that violate Section 298A of the Penal Code.

My advice to users of the web: be careful of your passwords. Be careful about being broken into. Be careful about having your personal devices stolen. Also be wary about your personal information that you have available on the Web. And never assume that Facebook status update is private.

Google eventually blocks video in Malaysia

Protests in KL today - not deemed illegal?On the 15th I wondered what would Google do? On the 17th, it was clear that Google buckled and blocked the video to Malaysians. To be fair, it did the same in Singapore and many other nations. That did not stop angry protestors to hang out in front of the US Embassy in Kuala Lumpur on the 21st.

But on the Internet, one cannot stop the free flow of information.

This is something Malaysian censors have to come to grips with. After all, even the chief censor in Myanmar has decided to call it a day.

That’s why the offending clip is still online as reported on the 18th. People, citizens of the world, have made copies of the offending video (it is a no brainer to download the video from YouTube) and have re-uploaded it. So now it becomes a cat & mouse game to find the video for the Malaysian authorities and report it to Google. I have no doubt that at least 3.8 people in some government department is working on this task.

Only way for the Malaysian government to ensure that Malaysians never see this content? Block YouTube. I’m sure that would be hugely unpopular. Besides, isn’t there Vimeo and plenty of other services?

Malaysian Government: 0 Internet: 1

my pre-upgrade iOS6 thoughts

My Twitter, Facebook and Google Plus streams are just filled with people complaining about iOS 6. The luddite that I am, I haven’t upgraded my phone nor my tablet. One thing I’ve learned about relying on my devices? Never ever do an upgrade until the kinks get fixed.

Most common complaint? Maps. Google Maps is gone and now there is a new, inaccurate maps app. A blog tracking it has been setup too. I presume that this is better in the long run — you’ll get better crowd sourced maps. Question is, will it go back directly to the source? I have no idea.

The YouTube app is now missing. This is easily fixed by downloading it.

What annoys me about iOS 6? The fact that it won’t run on my first generation iPad. I bought mine the first week of April in 2010 (2 years 5 months). This is just a little over two years old. The iPhone 3GS has been around since mid June 2009 (3 years 3 months and continuing). It receives the iOS 6 upgrade.

This isn’t a problem yet but when I can’t get apps on my iPad, I will start to get thoroughly annoyed. I know uber-iOS developers like Marco might drop newer Instapaper support in future releases, which will annoy me.

I after all have a 64GB iPad which I use to consume content mostly: read the NYTimes, Instapaper, Kindle, browse the web in Safari, watch videos in VLC, watch video podcasts. That’s pretty much all I really care about. There are games like Scrabble which I play with my family, and Plants vs Zombies which I finished a long time ago, but this isn’t its core usage. Oh, and the iPad “just works fine”.

I’ll eventually update my iPhone 4 (because I don’t plan to buy the amazing iPhone 5). I know a friend mentioned that there was no Siri on the iPhone 4. I don’t think Siri is a killer feature unless you’re living in the USA (with all its tie-ins to data sources).

Changing connectors? Application inconsistencies? In retaliation, I did pick up a Google Nexus 7 (its half the price of me upgrading to the new iPad 3 64GB size; and is cheaper than the 16GB iPad3 by RM500). Its 16GB size is too small for me to load up with movies, it comes with no casing, and the 7″ screen size might be too small to watch TV on, but we’ll see.

Gary Vaynerchuk: an entrepreneur’s life video

Watch An Entrepreneur’s Life: Gary Vaynerchuk. It is a little less than 8 minutes long, but it is awesome. Some quick points:

  • Live life in lifetime value. There’s a great anecdote on looking to hang on to good customers rather than having to find new customers. He cares about who wins the war not the battle (similar saying: it is a marathon, not a sprint).
  • Storytelling in business is underrated. Care about the way things get presented. Storytelling is important. Understand what the consumer wants, then backtrack. Tell a story and get them  there. This is the difference between marketing & sales. Steve Jobs was a good story teller.
  • Content is king. However, content is also a commodity.
  • During his Wine Library TV days, it is not just the 40 minutes a day he spent in front of the camera. It’s the 15 hours a week spent replying to every email, tweet, forum message. I guess this is the important thing about building community.
  • What drives Gary? The climb to the top of his goal (owning the NY Jets). The journey.

Faith in Bernama the national news agency wanes

I just read that Bernama has admitted to doctoring a photo with the Prime Minister. Of course they are crying sabotage and denying any previous edits. Stop and read that, its well worth it.

I’m not surprised. Neither should you be. Anything that comes from Bernama tends to be pro-government. I gave up trust in them since 2006, when I had a little issue with them stealing my photo without attribution which I’ll talk about in a bit.

Bernama is an independent body placed under the Ministry of Information, Culture & Communication, started by an act of parliament. Wikipedia’s Bernama entry isn’t half bad, and if you’re inclined, you can read the Bernama Act 1967. Its quite clear that beyond subscription income, they’re probably funded by the ministry (this isn’t a fact but a presumption – I have no time to dig this up).

So from a Nineteen Eighty-Four perspective, these folk are akin to the Ministry of Truth

What’s my beef with Bernama? They have no issue with using what’s not theirs, i.e. they don’t believe in proper attribution. They do not respect the Creative Commons licenses either. They didn’t in 2006, and they probably don’t in 2012.

Imagine my shock when a photo of mine was attributed to be a Bernamapic in an article? Besides a tighter crop, the news agency didn’t respect the attribution, non-commercial aspect of the CC license. Bernama charges up to RM500/month to access its newswire for blogs, and this cost is bound to go up for other print publications. Can’t afford a photographer?

Speaking to them, they claimed that they would investigate but naturally, nothing came of it. I had thought of taking legal action but decided against it as my life wasn’t in Malaysia.

Alas, I have never had much faith in them, and neither should you.

X-Mozilla-Status: 0001

X-Mozilla-Status2: 00800000

Message-ID: <4545AC7E.704@aeon.com.my>

Date: Mon, 30 Oct 2006 18:40:46 +1100

From: Colin Charles <colin@aeon.com.my>

User-Agent: Thunderbird 1.5.0.7 (Macintosh/20060909)

MIME-Version: 1.0

To:  ungkubesar@bernama.com

Subject: Using pictures without attribution

Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed

Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

 

Hello,

 

We spoke on the phone recently

 

Here are the photos (sources): http://bytebot.net/tmp/Take1FiestaMalaysia/

 

It was used in the star: 

http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2006/10/30/nation/15861794&sec=nation

 

And in the NST in a article titled “A taste of Malaysia in Melbourne”

 

Now, I don’t mind you using the photos, but you have to accept copyright 

and attribute it to where you got it from. Saying it came from Colin 

Charles, will be a start. (i.e. I’m not even asking for payment)

 

This is a sample of more pictures to come, from the event at: 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/byte/281750614/

(there’ll be a fiestamalaysia group on Flickr, if you’ve noticed from 

the above picture)

 

kind regards

— 

Colin Charles, http://www.bytebot.net/

Lenify! http://lenify.wordpress.com/


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