Singapore witnesses the rise of the entrepreneur

http://www.themalaymailonline.com/money/article/without-fuss-or-fanfare-singapore-witnesses-the-rise-of-the-entrepreneur?platform=hootsuite

by bootload • 11 years ago

60 28 11 years ago

themalaymailonline.com

logancg• 11 years ago

I spent some time in Singapore. The startup ecosystem has critical pitfalls and successes.

There is a lot of money (Government and private), accessible accelerators, mentors, and business ecosystem support. Taxes are low and registering a business can take only 1 day. [1]

But the ecosystem lacks genuine technological development and experimentation. Most startups I saw were ineffective copies of semi-successful American startups. My entrepreneurial friends there lambasted their friends' desire for stable careers at the expense of creative engineering.

If anything, it'll become a home first for lifestyle entrepreneurs. It's a lovely place to live, it's easy to start a business, and may become a great 3-year "start a business for fun" destination for expats.

However, Singapore has top-tier scientific institutions (NUS in particular) and the government is ruthless in attracting talent internationally. [2] This may be a good sign for proprietary science startups.

[1] https://www.quora.com/Is-starting-a-business-in-Singapore-di... [2] http://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/three-top-singaporean-...

crdoconnor3• 11 years ago

If anything, it'll become a home first for lifestyle entrepreneurs. It's a lovely place to live, it's easy to start a business, and may become a great 3-year "start a business for fun" destination for expats.

It's not that great for that either. Property rents/prices are sky high and cars are all but unaffordable except for the very wealthy.

If you're location independent you might as well pick somewhere with a lower cost of living.

Added to which, the ease of starting a business is something of a trap. You can only go so long before creating some jobs for locals which isn't so much fun if you want to keep your lifestyle business small.

ceoj• 11 years ago

>Added to which, the ease of starting a business is something of a trap. You can only go so long before creating some jobs for locals which isn't so much fun if you want to keep your lifestyle business small.

What do you mean by starting up a business being a trap?

nailer• 11 years ago

How does entrepreneurship tie in with Singaporean culture? Having worked at a company headquartered in Singapore, I'd imagine that a talented engineer would be be pushed towards getting a job at AltaVista rather than make Google.

creamyhorror4• 11 years ago

There's not much new here for anyone who's already read an article or two on Singapore's startup scene. My view as a local startup founder is, it's not as rosy as one would expect for a city of burgeoning startups:

- Singapore startups face the big difficult of a tiny domestic market (5m people) and a fragmented regional market (10+ different countries). To expand, you have to localise to multiple different languages and market environments. Entrepreneurs don't have exposure to the problems & conditions of these foreign markets, making it harder to find scalable opportunities.

- Therefore, the ideas that stand a good chance of success are mass-market, possibly copycat ones, not technologically innovative ones like one would find in SF or Boston. We don't have too many high-value niches here.

- The winning exceptions are startups that target a globally integrated market, e.g. gaming products (Razer) or web services (Zopim). If you can sell to the world (or very large markets) instead of struggling to penetrate many small markets, you're golden. Israel has been a leader in this regard.

- There's a lack of exits because most startups struggle to gain huge reach in such a fragmented region. Plus, monetisation can be a problem in the poorer countries.

- Angel investors are therefore more cautious and mostly take small or less risky bets. Which encourages entrepreneurs to focus on more mass-market, less innovative ideas. It's hard to build a Google without a wide-ranging and risk-taking investor network as exists in Silicon Valley.

- The government's general support for startups is a bright spot, but a startup's success general depends on whether they manage to expand overseas and build their partner/investor network. Those are high barriers for most startups.

A small market can't support that many competing ideas anyway, so as Dr Theseira says in the article, “Entrepreneurs should make sure that they are valuing their own time appropriately when making the decision to become an entrepreneur or when they are considering whether to remain or exit from an industry.”

crdoconnor3• 11 years ago

we have not yet seen many successful exits that are typically seen in mature ecosystems such as Silicon Valley.

This doesn't surprise me. Singapore provides tons of cash for new startups but the quality of the talent just... isn't that great. If your startup requires creative, detail oriented professional work (e.g. a developer), good talent isn't easy to come by.

This isn't really the fault of Singaporeans per se, it's just the nature of how the society has shaped them. Compulsory military service and test-driven schooling engenders this type of attitude at a subconscious level and on top of that, pay scales are way out of whack - you'll get paid more as an average manager as you will as a really good developer.

The successful businesses in Singapore that I've noticed tended to be rather blatant imitations of other businesses and a lot of the failures tended to be cargo cultish SV wannabes.

Added to which, the local market is tiny and the regional market is highly fragmented.

sjogress• 11 years ago

Do you think it would be possible, and if so a good idea, for foreign talent to form startups in Singapore targeting foreign markets?

crdoconnor3• 11 years ago

No, since you'll have to maintain a proportion of local employees in order to keep your business there. Most companies I had dealings with ran up against this limit all the time.

xiaoma• 11 years ago

The biggest problem I see in Singapore is that regulations are directed at making startups hire locals. Aside from strict quotas, there are also rules about not being able to underpay or overpay foreign talent. This means paying 5k/month for a programmer can often be deemed "overpaying" and the application gets rejected. This is a problem because you can't make a top-tier tech hub on Singporeans alone.

Even Silicon Valley wouldn't be Silicon Valley if it only employed Americans as early employees either. Just look at all the Indians who were early Google employees, Jan Koum of Whatsapp, the Canadian team behind Flickr and Slack.

The US immigration system is deeply flawed and hurts the tech ecosystem. Singapore has a golden opportunity to compete on this axis, but it isn't.

https://www.techinasia.com/talk/dark-side-tech-development-s...

http://sbr.com.sg/hr-education/news/singapores-new-hiring-ru...

https://www.quora.com/How-does-a-Singapore-based-startup-hir...

creamyhorror4• 11 years ago

My startup was actually incubated by the writer of that first article you linked. I agree with his points.

I fear the truth is that it's simply hard to hire good talent from overseas when you have limited funds anyway. This goes back to the larger issues of limited investor risk appetite and difficult market conditions/access.

Personally I've seen fellow startups try to hire foreign developers, and successfully get approvals from the government (yup it's troublesome), and then the developers decide not to come to Singapore after all, or come but don't perform to par. You can't mitigates risks like these without significant cash in the bank (which only the top-funded startups have).

My chosen alternative was to hire remotely and not muck around with approval from government, which also meant benefiting from lower market salaries in cheaper countries. It's taken a lot of filtering of employees, but things are going fine so far. This approach won't work for everybody, of course.

All that said, I do think the core issue holding Singapore startups back is the market size/access thing. It leads to most of the other issues, including startups' inability to pay for skilled developers. Looser government regulations on employment by startups would help somewhat, but it might not change the outcome significantly.

toni2• 11 years ago

it's simply hard to hire good talent from overseas when you have limited funds anyway

Interesting you mention that. I applied for a JavaScript job in Singapore and expressly mentioned that I don't want a Google-esque salary, just something I can live by in Singapore. I would even pay for my own relocation expenses, I said.

They flat-out told me "Sorry, locals first."

mdda2• 11 years ago

One issue that seems to resonate with people in Singapore is that while in the rest of the tech world :

Developer == Essential (e.g. : CoFounder)

in Singapore :

Developer == programmer == glorified typist == someone whose job can be outsourced.

This gets in the way of attracting people to programming in the first place.

The environment is also disappointingly oriented towards local graduates aspiring to become Trainee Managers at Multi National Companies (MNCs). It's not a money thing IMHO - more of the status associated with working at a recognisable brand-name firm.

Clearly, there are exceptional people around, but there's an additional (surprising) hurdle for local tech talent here.

ripitrust• 11 years ago

Singapore needs a Role model. For years parents and teachers in Singapore encourage their children and student to stay stable and follow the traditional way of success - work hard, steady income and promotion. The role models of Singapore society are always those who did so. in fact, it is not even possible to name a sound,successful entrepreneur. But in a real startup ecosystem (US and China in particular), the role models come from the entrepreneur world. Their success encourage people to take risk. If Singapore can have one or two Mark Zuckberg or Jack Ma, it will greatly help the ecosystem to grow

ValentineC2• 11 years ago

The role models of Singapore society are always those who did so. in fact, it is not even possible to name a sound,successful entrepreneur.

There's, among others, Sim Wong Hoo [1], the founder of Creative, and Tan Min Liang [2], the CEO of Razer. I think a problem comes from these companies preferring to identify themselves as "foreign", as being "local" is, ironically, not looked upon as favourably in Singapore.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sim_Wong_Hoo

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Min-Liang_Tan

lyonlim• 11 years ago

It's true that the number of entrepreneurs in Singapore has increased dramatically, compared to 5 years ago when my cofounder and I started our company. When we started back then, many investors told us that to succeed, we needed to move to SV. However, being based in Singapore has numerous advantages.

My bootstrapped startup is not consumer focused, so having a large local population is not key. But working with corporates, it's a bliss being based here. There are hundreds of multinational companies, of which many base their (edit: regional) headquarters here. It's so easy for us to reach to potential customers, and from there, to expand to other regional and global offices of these multinational companies.

Hiring can be an issue, but it's not difficult to get work passes for skilled foreigners here. Yes, there are quotas for companies hiring foreigners, but these are largely for less skilled foreigners. Many foreigners study in local universities like NUS and in turn have a bond to work in Singapore after they graduate. If you have a degree from a good, recognised university, it's not difficult to get an employment pass here.

lxcid2• 11 years ago

I stay in Singapore and used to work remote.

I want to differentiate the tech scene and start up scene.

There's a lot of noise in the start up scene just like most places. Over the years, I have definitely seen an increase of entrepreneurs. But I care only at a gossipy level.

The tech scene on the other hand is closely knitted. Running the tech scene is challenging here. We haven't have much support from companies as successful local start up don't end up paying forward as much as we hope they would, but it's improving. We often depend on some government helps and a few very passionate and committed people.

Over the years, the tech scene have grow slowly but surely. More people are contributing back in term of sharing knowledges through meetup or doing open source stuff. This is what truly make me hopeful of Singapore.

I think if we just focus on ourselves and be open to things and grow together. We can be decent together. :)

Here's some links to get a sense of how far we have come:

Events: https://webuild.sg Data: https://data.webuild.sg Talks: http://engineers.sg

xyzzy42• 11 years ago

Is it hard to get a visa there if you're going to not work at a local Singapore company?

lxcid2• 11 years ago

It could be challenging I think. But I think tourist visa is 90 days if I'm not wrong. I really recommend visiting. The food is great and the city walk at night is kinda beautiful and very safe. :)

nopzor2• 11 years ago

I lived in Singapore for 15 years. I founded a startup in the US, and we ended up opening an Ops and Sales office in Singapore.

Being +12 hours ahead of NYC, it worked out great for us to get to 24x7. Back in 2008 it was easy for us to bring in foreign talent (both from the region and from the US), and we built a great team there.

It's much tougher now, for foreign startups that want to hire foreigners there. Quotas and salary thresholds to get visa approval are much higher.

Why did we want to hire foreigners instead of locals in the first place? Definitely both educational and cultural. Educational: I can relate to this since I went to a Singapore school for a while and the only thing they cared about were your test scores. You really weren't encourage to think; just memorize stuff. It was awful. Cultural: there was a bit of a stigma working for a small scrappy startup, good candidates always wanted to go work for a large multinational bank. This was much more extreme than in the US.

Overall, it's changing for the better. The Singapore government is actually super competent, and this problem isn't lost on them. Hopefully it will change quickly and Singapore will have a better local start up scene over time.

hackerboos• 11 years ago

The Singapore government is actually super competent

They are given the room to think long term because the PAP will be in power for the foreseeable future. Singapore doesn't flip-flop between governments as there is no credible opposition due to various obstacles [1].

[1] http://thediplomat.com/2015/02/soft-repression-the-struggle-...

ValentineC2• 11 years ago

I can relate to this since I went to a Singapore school for a while and the only thing they cared about were your test scores. You really weren't encourage to think; just memorize stuff. It was awful.

Did you try hiring people from the polytechnics (pre-university institutions, for those unfamiliar with Singapore)? I studied at one, and it felt like there was less emphasis placed on test scores, and more on creative thinking and getting the job done. An increasing number of students are starting to choose this route instead of the more conventional A Level system.

hellofunk• 11 years ago

Quotas and salary thresholds to get visa approval are much higher.

In Singapore, this is partly (or more than partly) due to a strong, rising anti-foreigner attitude that has caused much formal protests from the locals. The government has allowed the free hire of foreigners to take the nation to a point where nearly half the population is from other countries, and this has finally weighed thin on the others.

It's certainly not a unique problem: many nations (certainly the U.S. included) are having problems convincing the locals that foreigners/immigrants can be a good thing for the society. But it's up to that society to decide.

I lived in Singapore for several years and enjoyed many parts of it, but I agree that global success for any company based there would absolutely require foreign talent.

The last 2 years in particular have seen a significant change in the government's open-arms strategy for foreigners to work there, and it is now much harder indeed.

Singapore witnesses the rise of the entrepreneur

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