Welcome to the latest Atom CTO newsletter where we share tech news and stories for founders and entrepreneurs who are starting and scaling businesses.
Editor’s Note
I’ve been in Asia this past week talking to business leaders, investors, entrepreneurs and ecosystem partners and guess what is on top of people’s minds….AI!
It can be no surprise that most companies in Asia are looking to embrace AI in some form (who isn’t) but what has caught my eye is the number of AI solutions that are homegrown here in Asia and that are tackling some extremely complex issues.
Perhaps it was just me, but the companies I saw were not focused on building a solution on top of a LLM wrapper, they were looking to build models from scratch, ones that would serve specific needs. One presentation I saw even juxtaposed ChatGPT with their own model to show how poor that LLM was at finding solutions for the specific use case this company was trying to solve.
What does this tell us and why should we care? Well, the pace of innovation here in Asia is rapid, solutions are popping up even faster than I’ve seen in Europe and the most important thing is that they are gaining adoption fast.
We always talk about how Asia is ahead when it comes to tech but what we don’t always recognise is that different parts of Asia move at different speeds so though Malaysia is perhaps ahead of the likes of Cambodia, they are years behind the likes of Taiwan and this should make all of us in Europe sit up an think.
The Malaysian government is putting a lot of money into start-ups, they are announcing a 1B MYR fund for start-ups and the government already provides grants of $35k to start-ups as long as they meet some fairly basic criteria and once you scale you can receive up to $130k in additional grant funding.
This means that more ideas will be spawned and importantly, they will have money to get themselves started unlike in Europe where we are seeing less and less angel investment and the government (at least in the UK) doing very little to support early stage businesses.
One positive note for UK businesses is that we were very well received on our trade mission. Companies in Asia are open to collaboration and they want businesses, skills and knowledge to come over as well as wanting access to our markets.
At Atom CTO, we’ll be looking to see how we can help bridge businesses from Asia to Europe and vice versa….watch this space.
As ever, if you are interested in learning more or have a tech challenge you need to solve, then we are here for you! Email bhairav@atomcto.com
Bhairav Patel
Managing Director
Atom CTO
Interesting Insights
Latest events and articles in tech and entrepreneurship collected by the Atom team:
Monzo has recently announced a share sale but it was limited to current staff. 50 former employees have put a petition to the board to be included and get a piece of the pie 🥧
If you think that LLMs are built on the ability to reason - think again! Apple engineers have blown a hole in this assumption, saying instead that AI reasoning can actually be quite flimsy. 🤖
The email provider landscape was very different before Gmail came along in 2004, read more about how it has changed the way we do emails. 📧
The Verge have also create a 2004-style homepage of articles about tech trends of the time, take a look if you’re looking for some nostalgia! 🕶️
The role of CTO is to understand how to grow a business, build the budget to spend on people that will build the technologies that will grow the business. Read more about the best financial metrics for a CTO. 🦉
Atom CTO Podcasts
Fall in love with your problem, not your solution 💡
Tom Green from MVP development agency Verticode busts a few common myths about developing an MVP and how to ensure the best success.
Understanding product management and idea validation 🧠
Experienced product consultant Diana Matei chats with Bhairav about how to determine whether a product idea is worth pursuing and how best to validate it.
⭐️ Essential guide to software contracts 👨🏻💻
A commonly overlooked aspect of starting a business is the software contract which outlines the expectations between the software developer and the customer. Bhairav talks to legal expert Rustam Roy about the benefits of legal contracts for tech work.
Tech conferences past and future
We’ve been busy! At the beginning of October we were in London at Sifted Summit and recently we got back from the APC Tech Trade Mission in Kuala Lumpur. Next up is Business Show at Olympia, London. If you’ll be there, come and find us!
The Business Show - stand B1970 (November 13-14, London)
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Keeping in touch ✉️
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