Conference Bay: Dutch entrepreneurs stimulating Singaporean start-up culture
Written on March 5, 2008 – 2:34 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Every week we publish an interview with a start-up. We ask five questions, hoping the answers will give you inspiration and new views. Well, actually six questions, since we also ask the start-up to who he or she is passing the mic to.
This week we’re interviewing Arnout Mostert, a Dutch entrepreneur who lives and works in Singapore. Together with Frank Bomers he founded Conference Bay. This is a service that aims to make visiting, organizing and speaking at conferences a more pleasant experience. They do that by offering innovative online services to conference organizers, delegates and speakers such as an online bidding tool for tickets and an online booking application. They’ll soon launch a speakers section where speakers can create their own profile page.
How did you come up with the idea of Conference Bay?
“When I was working in Marketing for Shell in London during the the late nineties, I got the chance to join a new business that was set up to investigate the opportunities that new media could bring to a company like Shell. I attended quite a few conferences at the time and was amazed how often I would get calls or emails from the organizers offering me the ‘exclusive’ opportunity to bring a colleague for free, which basically is a 50% discount. One day I was sitting at a particularly boring conference and after finishing off the Mentos we sketched the idea for Conference Bay on a napkin. Basically, we borrowed the Priceline model where people can name the price they’re willing to pay for something.” (more…)
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