Malaysia’s Alphapod helps you with your ideas – and there’s no catch, it says

Ideas are easy to come by – browse the web long enough, and you’re bound to come up with an idea without getting off your behind. But ideas, as the start-up world will tell you, are dime-a-dozen, and worth even less until there’s something to show for it.

Making an idea see the light of day is what Malaysia-based idea incubator Alphapod plans to do. Helmed by Tee Tsun Joo, his wife Janice Tee, along with Clayton Narcis, Alphapod is an “idea incubator” that started in late-2009 and models itself partially after Y Combinator, but without the bootcamp drilling. Currently in Alphapod’s stable is W00tFood – a food discovery app similar to FoodSpotting – and is now working on a handful of other ideas.

We spoke to founders Tee and Narcis discover more about Alphapod.

What does Alphapod do?

Tee: We work with entrepreneurs, regardless of whether they have a tech background or not, who have some basic idea they want to realise. So if there’s an idea with no one to execute it, we’ll hook them up with designers and people and let the idea see the light of day.

The needs of start-ups here are different compared with what we see in the US or Silicon Valley. Over here, investors are very cautious, and great ideas get shot down before it starts to spread. We want to create an environment where anyone can feel free to tell their ideas, and see if it works or not. In Malaysia, it’s only when an idea is realised and successful are investors willing to hop on and jump in, but we want to be there at the start.

Of course, there are seed and pre-seed funds for entrepreneurs here, but they’re more skewed towards funding than mentoring. Even MDeC (Multimedia Development Corporation) is guilty of this – the only contact for its successful pre-seed grant applicants is the account manager, who handles close to 80 accounts. Their KPIs too, aren’t focused on the right points – it’s more focused on creating jobs and MSC-status companies, rather than the product being successful or commercialised. In quarterly meetings, for instance, account managers take whatever is said at face value and that’s it – there’s little networking and support beyond that.

How different is Alphapod’s model from Y Combinator?

Tee: With Y Combinator, there’s a need to be tech-centric. You need to have programmers in your team, and we feel it’s worthwhile to listen to people who don’t have a tech background but have great ideas. We’re just looking for new ideas and solutions to problems that users are facing.

Narcis: There are many creative thinkers here who just don’t know where to go with their idea. There’s no melting pot, no one place to gather and dish it out. And when that doesn’t happen, we move on and the idea just dies. That’s the problem with Malaysians – we just move on with our lives, we’ve got our day jobs to attend to.

What ideas are you focusing on for now?

Tee: I’d say apps at the moment, but you’ll never know – if you consider web-based HTML5 an app, we’re also open to developing that idea. Why we prefer native apps over of web-based apps is because of the better user experience and the native APIs. And besides, mobile’s everywhere. The time is ripe to move into this space with telcos fighting tooth and nail to get into the smartphone race.

Realizing an idea is all good, but what’s in it for you?

Tee: [Laughs] There’s no catch. For us, the main satisfaction is seeing an idea grow from being a thought into a product in the marketplace. If we can monetize from there, great, but we haven’t really figured it out yet in choosing between taking a board seat or taking a stake in the company.

Truth is, we’ve yet to come across a killer idea that we want to fund. The money would come when there are enough projects in the pipeline, but we’re not just sitting and waiting – which is why we started W00tfood first. If we were to look at monetization, I’d say the best bet is probably not in VCs, but in app sales and in-app sales.

Narcis: An exit strategy through VCs would be nice, but it’s unlikely to happen here as buyers don’t get into something that isn’t proven yet. Our main challenge here is to get as much traction, adoption, activity, and content-creation first, and then the money would come naturally.

What would your advice be to people who want to pitch their ideas to you?

Narcis: Get straight to the point; say what you want to do. Many here are scared of sharing their ideas for fear of rejection or it being stolen, and while there may be some validity to that, there comes a point when you need to tell people and see how far it can go. So find people you can trust to freely talk to.

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