Web Product

Innovation in
Emerging Markets
Michael “Smitty” Smith
Shanan Delp
Yahoo! Inc.
We’re not
Daniel Raffel
 Yo

We’re the dudes that convinced

Yahoo! that Koprol is awesome
Working Hypothesis
Web innovat ion is
becom ing globally
decent ralized
While Em erging Market s
are boom ing

How Interesting
 The Old Way:
Valley Web Exporters

Silicon Valley Satellie View, 硅谷卫星地图 by Yan and Yung’s

Album
 The Old Way
• Global companies launch global
products with language sensitivities
• Global companies launch language
specific regional products
• Regional companies launch locally (and
stay there)
• Global companies excel at
scale/monetization but tend to fail at
being regionally adored
• Regional adoraton scales poorly
 The New Way:
Distributed Innovation
Hytle by
Why there needs to be a new
way

Almost half the 500M



internet users coming

online in the next 5
years are from emerging
markets
Has the old way been blown
away?
Different cust om er
pat t erns, but not t hat
different
Plat form s allow anyone t o
scale globally

Regional com panies can

shoot for t he globe
Younger – first web citizens in
family
Social is the killer app

Mobile (will) dominate PC

Origins of Innovation
Follow the Platforms
 Platforms (disruptive &
unranked)
• Hosting
– Cloud (RackSpace,Joyent), Amazon, YQL, AppEngine,
MSFT
• Federated ID
– FBconnect, yConnect, OpenID, Google
• Location
– Maps, checkins, places – part of the platform?
• Social
– FB, twitter, diaspora, OpenSocial
• Ads
– Display/search moving to – mobile, social, location,
network generated
• Payment
– FBcredits, PayPal, MOL, Tencent, virtual goods as
currency
– No true global dominator yet!
Operating Systems (unranked)
• Web
– IE, Mozilla, FF, Safari, Chrome – HTML 5 to rule them
all?
– Location becomes common place building block
• Vs. Native apps
– Native OS: Nokia, Blackberry, Android, iPhone
and ???
• PC
– Windoze, MacOS, iPad, Netbooks, Chrome and ???
– Browser and cloud are the OS of the future
• Don’t forget SMS/Notifications
– The ultimate universal OS (see Twitter and Gupshup)
Plat form s
 The Language Platform
• Is English a common web platform,
critical to crossing borders?
• Localization is important? Customers
are doing this for some products like
Facebook.
• English + local language +
crowdsourcing covers your bases
– Works to scale system across borders
– Local language from customers fills a
need for locally relevant content
Plat form s
 Distribution
• FB / Twitter

Platforms
Facebook_yoville1 by Narisa
Platforms
Power Brokers
• Big internet companies exploring emerging
markets – not limited to US. Ex: Tencent
• Startups with regional dominance and/or a
view to emerging markets growth. Ex:
MiG33
• Local VCs today but big VCs with global
views could easily take over. Ex: IDG
Vietnam
• Emerging markets incubators – Singapore
looks like a nice base!
• Internet entrepreneurs with both valley and
emerging markets exposure
– China $$$ are flowing out of China
Which countries are innovating?
 BRIC
• Brazil – Social! Dominated by local
media players, and late to mobile
revolution.
• Russia – Money flowing through and
out, but tough political environment
for outsiders
• India – Huge opportunity. Mobile is key,
but mobile web is nascent. Telcos are
powerful. English? So far, tough to
monetize.
• China – Tough for non locals. Will they
export ideas, or just capital?
•
 SEA
• Vietnam – Closed-feeling. Will it open up?
• Philippines – on the cusp? Funding
environment needs work. Too focused on
outsourcing? Mobile is a huge.
• Indonesia – Mobile is the key. Very open but
online monetization still weak but lots of
eyeballs
• Malaysia – regional hub? Maybe but not if
Singapore has a say. Local market small.
• Thailand – huge potential but technically the
backwater of SEA. Not open enough.
Strife?
•
 Singapore as a Global Web
Hub?
• Yes
– Singapore government is engaged
– Funding pools have arrived – private &
public
• The incubator schemes are attractive
– Infrastructure in spades – pipe, cloud,
money, law
• Many big internet companies use a Singapore
terms of service throughout the Southeast
Asian region
– Hacker community & incubators
• Hackerspace, barcamp, seedcamp…
– Good location – nice travel hub
• Jus a few hours away from anywhere that
matters
 Singapore as a Global Web
Hub?
• No
– Talent pool is small– startups are
competing with the government and
global companies
– Funding might be too easy & focused on
locals
• Funding metrics should be associated with
milestones achieved outside of
Singapore
– Startups need to start local and go
global
• Singapore is too small scale wise for EM
testing
 Prediction
Em erging m arket s will export
innovat ion

Follow t he m oney, and t he

users crossing borders

Will you need int ernat ional

part ners t o do t his?
Thank you

http://twitter.com/dreampipe

http://twitter.com/shanand