Entrepreneur First Singapore: one year later

When I’m writing this, it’s exactly one year and one week since Alex and I moved our lives from London to Singapore to set up Entrepreneur First’s first international office. In January 2016, we had no fund, no team, no office, no cohort, and definitely no companies. The difference a year makes.

Here’s where we are in January 2017:

1. 53 outstanding individuals quit their high paid, prestigious jobs in September 2016 to try and build companies with us. For the first cohort, EFSG1, we screened over 1300 candidates and interviewed over 300 technical applicants. The quality of the cohort is outstanding: over half of them has a PhD in a technical subject, 80% has been educated at NTU, NUS or SUTD, and people have left hedge funds, Google and Garena to join.
2. We have proven that the EF process of team building and company creation works in Singapore, too. The 53 individuals have formed teams and come up with ideas, which has led to us investing in their now incorporated companies in December. They are working on everything ranging from computer vision for wound management to wastewater treatment using electrocoagulation and sensor network security. They will first show their progress to the investor community on the 21st of March at the first EF Singapore Investor Day. We can’t wait to show them off.
3. We did a first close on our Singapore Core fund. Half of our s$16M target has been closed, and we’re aiming to close the second half in Q2 of this year. We are grateful for all the support we’ve gotten from the investor community, and from our partners at SG Innovate. We have also moved into our new office at 32 Carpenter Street, where we are located together with SG Innovate.
4. We now have an absolutely extraordinary team. We have grown from 2 to 11 over the past year, and I couldn’t be more happy or honoured to work with every one of you, every single day. Especially proud of our Venture Partners Shao-Ning, Teik Guan and See Ho, who are not just role models, being exited entrepreneurs in Singapore themselves, but the best strategic advisors any of the companies could wish for.

This is just the start. In 2017, we’ll scale 400%, going from about 50 people to 200 per year, we’re hiring for lots of exciting roles, and we of course show our first batch of companies to the world.

• Interested in joining EFSG2? Find the application form here.
• Interested in working with the EF team? Find job descriptions here.
• Are you an investor and you want to come to Investor Day? Sign up form here.