Rent.ph to send team to Silicon Valley

CEBU, Philippines - Developers of the online rental solutions portal Rent.ph will be visiting the Silicon Valley in California next month to learn and explore possibilities of applying the culture and good start-up environment on the valley.

Rent.ph president Anthony O. Leuterio said that a 17-man team will explore Silicon Valley next month to encourage the Cebuano developers to adapt the culture of technopreneurship that the valley is known for.

The company, according to Leuterio, has already gotten a go signal for the tour from the Silicon Valley administrator, and the group is expected to visit successful start-up companies like Facebook and Google, among others.

Rent.ph, developed by Cebuano geeks, has already gained attention from different venture capitalists, including those that are based in Silicon Valley. However, according to Leuterio, the company has to re-think of accepting investors, as it is trying to develop a pure-Cebuano success story on start-up companies.

“The reason why the company decided to invest on the Silicon Valley tour is to encourage the Rent.ph team of developers to adapt the worth-emulating culture there,” said Leuterio

Rent.ph, which recently got its patent registration from the Intellectual Property Office (IPO), is so far the largest online rental solutions portal in the Philippines. It has spread its rent managers all over the key cities in the Philippines, as well as abroad like Dubai, United States (Los Angeles, Chicago, New York), among others.

Earlier, Khailee Ng, a young Malaysian geek, whose company the “500 Start-ups” based in Silicon Valley challenged good Filipino developers to change their mindset and adapt the “Silicon Valley” state of mind.

Ng that Southeast Asian culture of “scarcity” and pessimistic mindset could be one of the greatest barriers why Asian startups, despite their talents and brilliant ideas, could not take off and compete with that of the rest of the world’s start-up community.

Ng said said that "Silicon Valley's" abundance” state of mind should be practiced or adapted by the Asian brilliant geeks, particularly Filipinos.

Aside from giving strategies on how to succeed in the competitive start-up environment, Ng preferred to inspire young Filipino technology innovators to look at the positive side, rather than wallowing on the concerns and problems starting up with their business.

"Something else is missing within the Southeast Asian region. It’s not the lack of good strategies on how to succeed — we can find them in the internet — but it’s the 'belief system," Ng said, relating his personal story on how he was able to touch the "success" level and capitalized his creativity by adapting a change of mindset. —/JMD(FREEMAN)