When you think of Bangkok, normally the images of the Hangover 2, the beach paradise, the great food will come to mind and not startups and technology. However, once you stay in Thailand long enough, you will see entrepreneurial activity everywhere from the street food stalls to high street fashion shops, and technology playing an increasingly important role in everyday life from the digital billboard signage, the Skytrain zipping across town or the monks, street food vendors and businessman all glued to their mobile devices.
As a country of almost 66.7 million people, we have over 24 million Facebook users (up from 18.5 million accounts a year ago) and more mobile devices than people, there is a massive untapped market to be made. Despite the nascent startup scene, there is a technological renaissance underway, propelled by the massive mobile phone penetration rates, the accelerating growth in internet & smartphones and Thais love for social media, chatting and shopping and the massive potential that the ASEAN Economic Community will integrate most of Southeast Asia's 600 million people economics into a more unified market. Hence, the number of active technologists and startup founders have grown massively and become much more organized and supportive of each other, forming over 100 Meetup groups and numerous communities online in order to trying to grow and nurture the tech scene here. We now even have our first Y-Combinator alumni (AdsOptimal under Social Nation Inc, http://www.adsoptimal.com/), 500 Startups Batch 7 (Builk, www.builk.com) and a sizable number of geeks in Google, Facebook and Twitter in Silicon Valley!
Given that Thailand is strategically placed in the center of Southeast Asia with a highly connected international airport, with many affordable leisure, travel, and entertainment options (scuba diving, fine dining, clubbing, shopping etc.) and blessed with all year round tropical weather, it is not hard to see why so many multinational companies would want to set up their operations here or startup founders relocating here to bootstrap their startup. Furthermore, with all the support ecosystems that are emerging in Bangkok, there has been no better time in the history of technology industry to be a startup founder. J
Therefore, join us with StartupGrind Bangkok's inaugural event which will be held on Wednesday, February 12 7 pm - 9 pm. Our speakers are Chaiyos Arthur and Sittiphol Phanvilai, CEO & CTO of MOLOME. MOLOME is a mobile app that helps people appear funnier, cleverer, hipper online, by helping them mark up their photos with text and stickers. MOLOME is also a participant in the JFDI.Asia accelerator program running August-December 2013.