With an attitude like that, I’m sure I’m voicing out the shock of all my batchmates when we heard that the number of applicants for this time’s NOC intake had dropped.

The time we’ve spent here so far can be best described in one word – ‘Awesome’.

I can’t imagine why more students wouldn’t want to have experiences which help you discover yourself, your career and go back to Singapore charged with excitement!

Back home, all of us who are geeks at heart, dream of attending conferences like Google I/O, Apple WWDC, GDC. Well, here in Silicon Valley, we actually get to do it.

Jiuyu and Benjamin from batch 16 attending Google I/O 2010

Xiao Chen and Yuanlin from batch 17 attend GDC 2010

The people who inspire and motivate us to follow our passions – we get to meet them in person!

Xiao Chen, batch 17, meets Maria Shriver (First lady of California and award winning journalist)

We’re taught by famous serial entrepreneurs who are revered as Startup Gurus in the valley.

Prof. Steve Blank, taking MS&E278 for NCSV

You get to meet your career role models.

[ Correction: you not only get to meet them, you have them as friends on Facebook! ]

Elisha, batch 17, attends the Facebook f8 conference and gets to meet visual designer Francis Luu – the man behind the famous facebook ‘Like’

And most importantly, you get to work in companies that land up getting acquired by tech giants like Facebook and Google!

After listing only a fraction of the amazing things we’ve all witnessed in seven short months, I’m only wondering why this programme isn’t getting flooded with applications.

– Stuti Dhanvada

tenCube was founded in 2005 by NCSV alumni Darius Cheung and Varun Chaterji along with two other NUS alumni, Rishi Irani and Indradeep Biswas. When Varun Chaterji lost his phone – the frustration of not being able to track his brand new and expensive Nokia 6600 and losing all the data along with it, lead to the birth of WaveSecure. Since then, tenCube has come a very long way.

The young and energetic team did everything right. They used Start-Up@Singapore, Singapore’s biggest business plan competition, as a launch pad for their young company and won the 7^th S@S in 2006. Supported by NEC, they continued to grow globally and have won several industry accolades. Being recognized as one of the top 100 tech startups in Asia by Red Herring, voted ‘Most Fundable Product’ by the top VCs of Silicon Valley and receiving an investment of SGD $1M from an India-based company ‘One 97 communications’ were just a few of their major accomplishments. They developed a big user base and became established as serious players in the mobile security space within a few years of being around.

All of the above gave us more than enough reason to look up to Darius and his team. The recent acquisition by the tech giant McAfee made them heroes for the young aspiring entrepreneurs of NUSEA!  The founders identified a simple everyday problem of losing phones and converted it into a huge business opportunity.  They built a scalable startup and set out with a global mindset to get to where they are today.

Cheers to tenCube for this amazing feat – NCSV is so proud of you!

-Stuti Dhanvada