Nuffnang Founders’ Story and Their Lessons Learned (Startup Asia Preview)

I have huge respect for blog ad network Nuffnang founders Ming Shen and Timothy Tiah. If you want to read their entire story, please click here. But here are a few reasons why these guys command my respect:

1. Bootstrapping pros: Aside from the founders’ own money, Nuffnang didn’t receive any venture funding. All the founders had is the willpower to see their startup baby grow. Bootstrapping became a part of their survival instinct; I think there’s a lot we can learn from that.

2. No fear, keep building: They didn’t sell. They kept growing even when Singapore Press Holdings (SPH) knocked on the door wanting to buy Nuffnang. Knowing that SPH could potentially build something similar to Nuffnang, they didn’t give in and instead took on the challenge. And in hindsight, they won.

3. Gone regional: Nuffnang didn’t get stuck in tiny and cozy Singapore. They went regional and were pretty successful. Today, Nuffnang has 160 staff across Malaysia, Singapore, China, Thailand, Australia, and the Philippines and is working with one million bloggers who generate 13 million page-views per day. Are they profitable? Hell yes.

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4. Good culture: I have had the privilege to visit both their Singapore and Kuala Lumpur offices. Both of them have a similar bubbly and hippy culture. It really ain’t easy to build a culture that is similar across different countries.

5. Still an entrepreneur: Fast growth and success didn’t slow them down. It sped them up. In addition to Nuffnang, the founders are also running ChurpChurp (a social influencer network), Jipaban (an e-commerce site), Ripplewerkz (a web design studio), and more recently NuffnangX (a mobile blog reader).

Ming Shen, Co-founder at Nuffnang

As you can see, these guys have a lot going on, and plenty of experience the rest of us can learn from. That’s why we invited Nuffnang co-founder Ming Shen to speak at our upcoming Startup Asia Singapore conference.

His speaking slot is on April 5 from 2.00 to 2.30pm and we’ll be digging deep into what he’s learned from Nuffnang’s success as well as his experiences with all of his other businesses. Don’t miss it!

And of course, don’t miss any of the other speakers at Startup Asia Singapore 2013 either. That list includes:

• Sirgoo Lee (CEO at Kakao Corporation)
• Ole Ruch (managing director APAC at Airbnb)
• Steve Melhuish (co-founder at PropertyGuru)
• Stefan Jung (Co-Founder and Managing Director SEA, Rocket Internet)
• Daphne Lee (international business director at Taobao)
• Darius Cheung (co-founder at BillPin)
• Evan Spytma (Regional Director at Popcap Games)

(Update: Our code didn’t work earlier, so we’re extending the 10 percent early-bird discount to one more day.)

Today is the last day for our early-bird 10 percent discount, so if you haven’t grabbed your tickets, do so quickly! We will see you at Startup Asia Singapore on April 4 and 5.