Venuerific, Among Top 8 Startups for Channel News Asia’s Reality Show “Start-UP” Season 5

Singapore, 1st November 2017 – Over 900 start-ups competed to grab the position of top 40 start-ups at Slingshot@SWITCH 2017 an initiative by SPRING Singapore to provide a platform for budding start-ups in the hunt for the “The Next Best Idea” from a passionate team that is commercially competent. Venuerific was chosen as one of the top start-ups by a pool of top-tier Venture Capitalists and also rose to success by becoming the title winner of “Audience Choice Award” securing 20% of the overall votes among the 40 start-ups.

In addition to this accolade, Venuerific was also chosen as one of the top 8 start-ups to be featured on Channel News Asia’s reality show named “Start-UP” on its 5th season. Start-UP is a hit reality series that follows the journey of top start-ups through a series of rounds with assigned challenges to win the attention of 3 biggest Venture Capitalists and a grand prize of up to SGD 2M worth of funding. The show will take its airtime at 10.30pm next Saturday, 11th November 2017.

Having started as one man’s dream, Venuerific has now become a shared vision among its young and dynamic team. Ricardo Sentosa, formerly at JP Morgan, RBS and Susquehanna felt stuck in the humdrum of a 9-6 job and dared to take the leap into solving the problem he had realized. As they say “a smooth sea never made a skilled sailor,” after series of storms and wrecks that taught him the skills of a persevering entrepreneur, Venuerific sprouted. Over four years, it has expanded into Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines and Hong Kong with a strong base in Singapore and a collection of over 900 unique event venues making it the biggest event venues marketplace in Southeast Asia.

“Apart from getting to meet so many interesting people, we also get to discover amazing spaces and have the opportunity to work with their businesses. Like other industries that have been disrupted by technology (i.e. uber for transportation, airbnb for accommodation), the events industry is also undergoing a major transition. Venuerific is at the heart where this change is taking place and we are very excited to see what happens over the next few years” says Ricardo.

The co-founder, Cynthia Kim, a Canadian with Korean heritage with previous experiences at the PR firm, Weber Shandwick along with her studies in Social Sciences will be representing the team on the show together with Ricardo. Both individuals share a common ground of having been organisers of various events since their school years and understand the struggles to make an event successful. With Ricardo’s entrepreneurial and business development skills complemented by Cynthia’s Marketing & PR knowledge, they have been working hand in hand ever since and share the passion in letting anyone ‘Celebrate Anywhere’ especially at great venues.

“The entire team is very excited to be featured on the show. Every time there was a new challenge thrown at us, the team worked very hard together to overcome it and so we are looking forward to seeing how other people will react to Venuerific. This may be a spoiler but for the first time ever, we will be introducing our upcoming newest feature on the show so if any of the viewers has any feedback or comments on the idea, write us an email and we would love to hear from you!” says Cynthia.

Will they break under pressure or will they break the expectations? Answers revealed next Saturday, 11th November 2017 at 10.30pm. Catch them on Channel News Asia’s Start-UP Season 5 and follow their journey.

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