It was great for Fritz Demopoulos, former CEO of Qunar, to fly in from Hong Kong for the event.

In his panel with Yen-Lu Chow, founder of Whole Tree Ventures, a new venture accelerator, Fritz told us that the first thing he bought after his exit from Qunar – following Baidu’s investment in the Chinese travel meta-search engine – was a car for his wife.

And instead of lying on a beach in the Caribbean or playing golf at St Andrews, Fritz said that he is looking for new ideas, new ventures and vows he wants to be “more innovative, more flexible” in future.

“Sometimes when you are focused on your business, you can be too focused and almost obsessed and you don’t want to hear about anything else,” he said. “Now I can look at opportunities out there – and there are lots of them – and be more innovative and flexible.”

For Fritz, it’s taken six years to exit Qunar which Yen-Lu said is pretty good for most start-ups.

Yen-Lu, who used to work with Apple and founded his first business in Singapore 14 years ago, said a few things happened this week which had great significance for the tech world – Steve Jobs resigning as CEO, although “he’ll still be involved in the company”, HP buying Autonomy, killing its TouchPad and getting out of PCs – “they make most of the world’s PCs”.

He invested in an online travel company some years ago which didn’t do too well and now he’s looking at the budget hotel segment in line with the growth of low cost carriers.

His passion is “youth wellness” and a couple of his ventures involve youth education and English literacy. He shared a little detail about his “One Tablet Per Child” vision and using the tablets to improve English literacy among poor communities in Asia. (Yen-Lu pictured with National University of Singapore students)

Fritz meanwhile has invested in an OTA in Russia and was in Jakarta with some associates looking at the gaming business. “Jakarta is great – so much energy there, and all pretty nascent, so plenty of opportunities there.”

Steven Gong, founder of Impulse Flyer, Ewan Gray, who’s headingSkyscanner’s charge in Asia and Tai Parata, who’s heading deals site Ensogo’s foray into travel then took the stage.

Gong (right, picture below) said now that he’s started his own company, “I feel like I am not working – I am having so much fun, as challenging as it is.” His start-up is a private sale, flash deals site for luxury, boutique hotels and you can tell, like most founders, he is absolutely passionate about it.

Gray’s got his work cut out for him – he landed in Singapore 24 hours before WITNext and will move into new offices, hire a new team and roll out Skyscanner’s expansion plan.

Talking about the challenges of staffing in Singapore, Gray (centre) said, “If you think Singapore is hard, you should come to Edinburgh” proving indeed everything is relative.

Asked if he had encountered hostility from hoteliers who are generally suspicious about deal sites, Parata said he hadn’t met much resistance. “It’s a question of explaining what we do, and how we do it, and because it is such a new space, we can make up the rules as we go along.”

For the Kiwi-born Parata (left), life has to be a balance between work and play. He’s known to take six months off between jobs to ride his motorcycle through exotic lands. “You have to have a balance, it can’t be all about work,” he told the Gen-Y in the audience.

After that, it was up to a Gen-Y to hold the floor and Margery Lynn (below), who’s setting up the South-east Asian business for The Dachis Group, a consulant in social business, talked about how companies should engage with this generation more. 

Gen Y has different needs, wants constant feedback, loves to create and collaborate, see innovation as the responsibility of everyone and not just a group task and has no qualms about mixing personal friends with work friends unlike baby boomers.  

Okay, she was generalizing about an entire generation – but I applaud Margery, who arrived in Singapore six weeks ago, for daring to stand up in front of a new audience and staking her ground.

Later, over beer – which somehow kept arriving at my table – I asked Fritz what was the hardest skill he had to acquire as an entrepreneur. “Manage my emotions”, he said. “There are days when you feel down and you can’t let that show – and you can’t take it all to heart. Experience teaches you that.”

I’ll drink to that.
 

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