Walkabout SG and what I learnt about Singapore’s Startup Scene
Singapore, the first and only Smart Nation to-be, is a country that enjoys tossing about big words — ‘ecosystem’, ‘hub’, ‘innovation’, you name it. When I participated in Walkabout SG, a day-long event where basically the entire startup scene here opens its doors to the public, I was pleasantly surprised how infrequently these words were uttered. I had initially thought that there will be little meat behind the relentless publicity Singapore’s startup scene had recently gained, and the buzzwords that flood the press. Yet it seems that there is substance behind the words, and Singapore’s startup scene is fast-maturing into a creature of its own.
I spent most of my time at LaunchPad@One-North, more commonly known by the startup community as Blk 71, 73 and 79, the numbers of the buildings that comprise this space. Collectively, this 5-hectare cluster houses hundreds of startups, tens of venture capital firms, and a handful of accelerators and incubators. My journey started at BASH (Build Amazing Startups Here), an integrated open office space housing startups such as Glints, investors such as IIPL, and accelerators such as StartupBootCamp. Soon I found myself in the other parts of the cluster, checking out some of the hottest startups in Singapore — Carousell, 99.co and ViSenze, the Games Solutions Center, e27.co, and Joyful Frog Digital Incubator. It may only be 3 hours of talking to enthusiastic founders, eager interns, sharp-eyed investors and friends whom I bumped into at each venue, but here’s my 2-cents worth from what I gathered.
A key characteristic of Singapore’s startup scene (and much of Singapore anyway) is the strong influence the government has on it. Besides pumping generous amounts of money into local technological innovations and startups (the latter through grant-matching schemes), the government spearheads key infrastructural developments including developing places such as Blk 71 for the startup scene to thrive.
And it’s paying off. Venture capital funding has increased 60-fold since 2011, and the number of startups have grown significantly too, with some with successful exits. The deeper question exists though — structurally, does it make sense to have so much governmental intervention in what is fundamentally a free-market construct? For instance, a friend mentioned to me today the concept of a ‘grantrepreneur’, an entrepreneur who comfortably relies on heavy and frequent grants the government is so willing to dole out, without actively having to seek funding and use it wisely.
In other words, does such extensive governmental support wipe out the hunger and drive founders and teams so desperately need?
No, it seems. It may be a selection bias, but talking to these founders and their teams, there is still a raw desire to succeed, if anything within the local market. Be it Qin En from Glints, or Suwan from 99.co, or Vincent from ViSenze, their teams seem to be developing their products and services rapidly and round the clock, with a degree of obsession most Singaporeans don’t display. Many of the startup employees are also local Singaporeans, so for the hungry Singaporeans out there, there is a place for you.
So perhaps we are not as risk-averse and ‘by-the-book’ as we think we are, and that somewhere in our DNA the fierce pioneering spirit that got us to where we are today over the past half-century is not yet extinguished.
Yet, here are a couple things that gives Singapore’s tech scene its own distinct flavor altogether. I’m hoping to be proven wrong for this point, but for many successful startups in Singapore, their core product often does not contain much deep technological innovation in hardware or software. I hope that I am wrong because there are a good number of spin-offs from the universities and research agencies that likely show this other side of Singapore’s startup scene, but I have yet to see. I’m also not saying that many of the startups in Silicon Valley do, but in the Valley, there is a stronger emphasis on creating enabling technology no one has done before, besides products and services.
Perhaps as a consequence of the first, there is also limited potential to expand beyond regional markets. Most startups I’ve talked to today, and that I’ve interacted with over the past few years, grow toward Southeast Asia, and find it difficult to expand beyond, into greater Asia, or the US markets. I hope we are merely waiting for the first successful one, and it will take me a greater understanding of the scene to be able to see how that will go.
So here goes, my rudimentary understanding of the startup scene here in Singapore. The bottom line: the scene will keep growing, but perhaps not at the exponential pace Silicon Valley tends to worship. More to come in the coming months as I learn more.
For more information about Singapore’s startup scene, check these out:
http://e27.co/heres-everything-you-want-to-know-about-singapores-startup-scene-20150528/
http://recode.net/2015/06/16/how-singapore-is-jumpstarting-startup-culture/
http://recode.net/2015/06/16/singapore-rising-the-plot-to-be-the-next-big-tech-hub/
http://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/singapore/singapore-s-smart-nation/1886696.html
https://www.techinasia.com/singapores-startup-scene-is-overrated/
http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702304071004579406393779804868
