The second year of the Philippine Emerging Startups Open (PESO) was finally over. The finalists presented their sales pitch before venture capitalists, the media and supporters of technology entrepreneurship. And the winners eventually emerged. It was such a great day last Sunday.
Although I do not really have any event organization skills, I decided to volunteer for PESO because I believe in its advocacy: that an important driver of economic growth in this small country will come from home-grown technology startups. I also believe that it’s a good way to combat brain drain, that competent people can choose to stay here and still make good money.
I only contributed little for the event, things like manning the registration desk and fixing the sponsors’ banners. Actually, I think I was the one who benefited from volunteering.
That day, I was fortunate to have met Peter Valdes, one of the founders of Tivoli Software (an IBM subsidiary) and local company Vinta Systems. His latter company is particularly interesting to me, as it uses operations research and artificial intelligence to solve business problems such as media planning and credit evaluation.
This is clearly a company I look forward to working for someday.
