Pigeonhole Live, described as “the world’s simplest real-time conference Q&A tool on the mobile, enables questions and comments to be posted through a mobile browser real-time and allows audiences to vote for their favourite questions and/or comments.
Started last October, the service has gathered good customer feedback from organizations that have used it – for example, IDA, Spring Singapore, Millenia Institute, and A*Star, Agency for Science, Technology & Research.
Wednesday’s event held at Velvet Underground at Zouk will be Pigeonhole’s debut to the travel industry. It will allow our audience to ask questions, post comments, vote for questions from a mobile web browser which will be seen by everyone with a 3G or wifi-enable device.
Lyon Lim (left) and Hew Joon Yeng, the two founders, graduated from NUS in bio-medical sciences and were due to pursue their honours when they stumbled on the idea.
They were attending a video conference and found that because the connectivity was poor, they couldn’t hear the speakers but could see them and they had to post their questions through Skype.
“I then thought this must be a common problem facing event organizers, this handling of Q&A during sessions,” said Lyon, who is in charge of product development.
They enrolled in the NUS entrepreneurs’ class and were further encouraged by the lessons they learnt from other start-up founders.
“We actually had another idea, a grand one that would have cost millions and if we hadn’t attended this class, we would have failed from the start. It taught us how to get an idea to market, how to focus our efforts and how to make use of the resources we had,” said Lyon.
Their parents weren’t as enthusiastic though when the two shared their plans, particularly Joon Yeng’s. A Malaysian, he had been on an ASEAN scholsrship in Singapore since secondary school and his parents questioned the risk of doing his own business versus getting a stable job in a corporation.
“They said wouldn’t it be better if you just continued your education and then get a stable job,” said Joon Yeng, who is responsible for business development.
Lyon’s parents too tried to dissuade him but the two managed to persuade their vice dean that they wanted to pursue the idea, and so they were granted a year’s leave of absence to work on the project. All this was of course happening at the time that the Singapore government was encouraging young entrepreneurs.
After the year was out, they were even more determined than ever. They had built a prototype and was getting strong encouragement for the product.
Encouraged, they applied for a YES (Young Entrepreneurs of Singapore) grant from Spring and got a $50,000 grant to add to their own $12,500 matching investment.
“We put in our own money, earned from giving tuition classes and other jobs. We were determined not to be a burden to our parents,” said Lyon.
They both admitted it was easier to be a young entrepreneur in Singapore due to the support schemes.
“I guess we are a hybrid – we aren’t quite the daring risk-takers like in Israel nor are we the ultra risk-averse types people think most Singaporean youths are.
“We had a safety net – that one-year leave of absence and to be told that we could always do our honours later – and the YES grant is very good for young start-ups,” said Lyon.
Pigeonhole Live was launched last October. Its logo is modeled after the humble Singapore pigeon. They named it after the pigeonholes used in school where students would get their messages through the system. 
“it’s been exciting and scary,” said Joon Yeng, “but we’ve been lucky to get a lot of support.”
Lyon said, “Of course there are risks and moving ahead it’s very uncertain but we are giving it all we’ve got.”
The service comes at an introductory rate of S$250 per event. “We just want to get it out as much as we can and get word of mouth,” said Lyon.
The next challenge is now to recruit more programmers so the business can scale.
So join us at WITNext on Wednesday, June 1, and be part of seeing Pigeonhole Live fly at its first travel event.
