In Conversation with Keith Ng, co-founder of FAME & Socialico

Are you one of those who are always chasing entertainment news about celebrities? Or, are you someone who prefer to spend the time on the stock exchange to sieve out the most interesting stocks to invest? If you like both, then the Facebook application and game, FAME will be something that you will check out. An interesting application that combines a stock market exchange game and people, FAME, started by two founders, Keith Ng and Damon Widjaja who have worked with each other for the longest time – 7 academic projects before deciding to get into it. Since they have launched the FAME beta on March 2009, they have started talking about their product at tech conferences within Singapore and was a finalist in the FB Fund 2009 (a contest run by Facebook to source for the latest and innovative apps out there). We have managed to catch up with Keith Ng, one of the founders from FAME (under the company Socialico Pte LTD) for an extensive interview, chatting with him about FAME and its features, the tips on how to develop on Facebook Platform and entrepreneurship in general.

Bernard Leong: Tell us about your background. What did you do before setting up FAME?
Keith Ng: Damon and I have Ngee Ann Polytechnic to thank for our software engineering roots, and later SMU where we met, for our business and management education. We both graduated with BSc (Information Systems Management); Damon pursued Organizational Behavior & Human Resource as a double major while I majored in Finance for my second degree, Bachelor in Business Management.

Personally, FAME was not my first foray into entrepreneurship. I started my own party lights stall along Orchard Road risking fines for illegal hawking when I was just 16, which the turnover of $500 per night was irresistible. When I was 18, I earned my first freelancing contract developing CRM solutions for a TCM firm. I registered my first startup, SWOOZH, in my second year of undergraduate mainly for Web development services to my clients.

Damon has strong family roots embedded deeply in entrepreneurship, especially in where he comes from – Indonesia. As a foreign student, he actively participates in events that assimilate him to the local culture, such as being an acting vice-chairman for the ushers in National Day Parade 2006. He too enjoys helping others through voluntarism and acts as youth advisor in Heartware Network.

Bernard Leong: What motivated you and your fellow co-founders to set up FAME? How did the idea come about?
Keith Ng: Damon Widjaja (my co-founder) and I have worked together in at least 7 academic projects, amongst which we landed a top 5 Software Engineering team award as well as $12,000 from Standard Chartered Bank as one of the top 3 teams for our final year project. In early 2008, we discussed the possibility of starting a venture together in view of our complementary strengths and buddy relationship, also with 2 more regular teammates (aka drinking buddies), who unfortunately opted for job offers later on to enhance their working experience.

After much brainstorming, FAME was an eureka epiphany over beer in our school’s pub when we revisited our internship in Standard Chartered Bank developing a virtual stock exchange trading prediction ideas (which did not commercialize eventually). Prediction market is a great research tool for corporations compared to traditional expensive and slow methods, but has not gained mainstream popularity. We decided that we could package this concept into Facebook trading real life personalities, in a similar fashion like “Friends for Sale” or “Human Pets” on a stock market platform. Through this interesting concoction, we also hope to attract players into our prediction market realm within FAME, which consists of prediction-based securities like “North Korea to release US Journalists by 2009”. As such, FAME was a novel combination of a few existing ideas.

Evolvement of a product is always to be expected, especially after we began to feel the market pulse and listen to our users. In general though, FAME remains true to the original intention; to be a multi-faceted game that appeals to a niche group of sophisticated players.

Bernard Leong: Can you tell us what is the FAME exchange about and is it a game or a stock market exchange about people?
Keith Ng: You can say it is a hybridization of both a game and a market exchange of people! FAME (Famous Market Exchange) is a social game for buying and selling virtual shares of players, celebrities, predictions and other unique stocks based on real stock market features. FAME is also the world’s first virtual stock exchange of people where anyone can apply to be listed. Users like your friends or yourself can be traded like any other counters in this free-to-play social game with virtual FAME dollars. Popular personalities will rise in price and their shares can be owned. Primed as “NASDAQ of Social Networking”, FAME is currently deployed in social networks such as Facebook and as a standalone site.

Each and every one of us is a brand and a promise, whether you like it or not. Every individual will be subjected to sentiments of others. Now, the question here is how can you measure your own brand and fame? How so too, for everything else, such as a slogan, a football player or a product? In FAME, we cast you and these subjects as stock securities and let the market determine the price, and that’s our answer to measuring fame. We build a stock market environment where prices go up or down demanding on market orders. We pay dividends on stocks that meet certain performance targets, such as profile views, or even a TV appearance. We also empower our users to be individual research analysts who can give ratings and insights to every stock in the game!

We seek to build a sizable community by enticing with visually attractive interfaces coupled with an innovative game experience to list their online personas, and even get famous in the cyberspace! To further incentivize players to participate, 3 lucky winners will walk away with US$100; players with higher profits have better chances.