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Entrepreneurship Courses Singapore – That’s the main sentiment I heard over five years ago when I told an American venture capitalist about my plans to move my family to Singapore to oversee the investment and cultivation arm of Innosight. Since I have never done business investing before, I tried to get advice from as many people as I could. The conversation is all the same.
Sure, I will answer. At the time, Singapore didn’t have an exciting startup scene. But the situation seemed ripe for the development of one. Like Silicon Valley, Singapore has strong research institutions and limited antitrust enforcement, a situation that academics now suggest may be a major driver of innovation. Like Israel, Singapore is small, with limited natural resources, meaning economic growth requires an innovative macroeconomic approach. Both Singapore and Israel have liberal immigration policies for skilled workers. Both also require conscription for men (Israel also requires conscription for women), and as Dan Senor and Saul Singer argue in
Entrepreneurship Courses Singapore
“Yes, but Israelis and Americans are naturally innovative. Singaporeans are not,” critics would reply. “Name a startup in Singapore. I can’t think of one”
Entrepreneurship: A Source Of Pride Forsingaporeans
Fair point. If you had asked Singaporeans in 2010 to identify successful local startups, they might have paused for a few minutes at the mention of Creative Labs. The company is a pioneer in the audio component market, having entered the MP3 market ahead of Apple. But it was founded in 1981 and reached a revenue peak about a decade ago before being delisted from NASDAQ in 2007 and falling sharply.
With a word of caution in mind, I came to Singapore in March 2010. It was really challenging in those early days to find good investment proposals. We created a couple, but they were the proverbial haystack of our business plans and pitches that were at best amateurish and at worst naive.
Fast forward to 2015 and you see a changed island. There are dozens, if not hundreds, of interesting startups, many clustered in “Block 71,” a building adjacent to INSEAD, the National University of Singapore, and state-funded innovation hubs with Star Trek names like Fusionoplis and Biopolis. . The
During my first year in Singapore, we could hear news of a company going into venture funding every few months and exiting (cashing out either through an IPO or by selling itself to a bigger company) every year. Today there is one investment seemingly every week; Venture capital in the tech sector grew from less than $30 million in 2011 to more than $1 billion in 2013. And we counted 10 of those locally in 2014. Some called the event low liquidity by global standards, like $30 million for chat provider Zopim’s help desk picked up. But others are bigger, like the $200 million price Japanese e-commerce company Rakuten put on Viki, a video streaming service.
Push For Entrepreneurship In Singapore
Singapore’s rise may seem surprising given the city-state’s shaky reputation and stagnant startup scene just a few years ago. As governments around the world try to encourage entrepreneurship to drive job creation and economic dynamism, it’s worth taking a step back to consider the three elements that I see combined to strengthen Singapore’s story.
Friendly environment. Singapore is regularly ranked as one of the world’s easiest countries to do business. There are certainly rules, but they are clearly laid out and easy to follow. You can start a new business in hours, if not minutes. Intellectual property rights are respected and the rule of law is transparent. Immigration issues are no less prominent in Singapore than in other countries, but Singapore makes it easier to get highly educated workers to the country and has a special employment pass aimed at the entrepreneurs of the future. A clean, efficient city has several advantages over Shanghai, Manila, Jakarta or Bangkok.
Mindful of its international reputation among the creative class it is trying to attract, the government has been working hard to tackle the old view that it is not much if in the “Lion-bore” two casinos, Universal Studios, the largest an aquarium of Asia, a “botanical garden themed garden” called Gardens by the Bay, a multi-purpose stadium with 55,000 seats, an internationally recognized restaurant and an efficient, modern airport that makes it easy to leave the country.
Serious government skin in the game. Entrepreneurs have long been able to take advantage of a range of grants and related programs to help launch development activities. In 2008, under the National Framework for Innovation and Enterprise (NFIE), the government launched the Early Stage Business Investment Fund programme. The initiative, inspired by a joint Israeli-US program called the Binational Industrial Research and Development Foundation, allows five venture capital firms to receive matching funds from the government. A year later, we collaborated with the government to prototype a new program in NFIE. Eventually called the Technology Incubation Scheme (in Singapore, the scheme is a good thing), the program helps to flood various investors into the country by offering to put 85% of the capital into the startup while the investor puts up 15%.
University Of Toronto And National University Of Singapore Linked In ‘international Entrepreneurship Highway’
This support is important to us. We have long been interested in venture capital. But as a first-time investor without a deep track record in a country thousands of miles away from our US headquarters, it is unlikely that we (or a group of similar outside investors) would have been able to develop the financial backing needed to build. strong portfolio. without government support. This is not a free lunch though. We and other investors in the ESVF and TIS programs have to make a real commitment, because the state does not cover the team’s salary (and it usually takes years to invest in a start-up to produce important fruits) or something else. costs, and of course investors must raise the capital to activate the government’s matching program. It’s hard to create an ecosystem overnight, but the government’s steady and consistent efforts have given Singapore startups a serious boost.
Broadly uses soft power to address hidden barriers to entrepreneurship. It is a misconception that entrepreneurs take risks because they have little to lose. In fact, research shows that the number one factor that predicts whether a person will become an entrepreneur is whether the person receives an inheritance or a gift. Singapore’s phenomenal development over the past 50 years has meant that many citizens are savvy enough to take the entrepreneurial plunge without actually risking everything.
But doing something as precarious as starting a business when you could be working for a big bank or, more importantly, the government, was counter-cultural to the best and brightest a decade ago. So in recent years, political leaders have spoken about the importance of entrepreneurship (see, for example, this Facebook post from Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong); government-funded universities have pushed hard for innovation (the National University of Singapore has a program to send students abroad to gain first-hand experience in other entrepreneurial hubs); and the national television company MediaCorp (full disclosure, I sit on its board) has held television programs celebrating entrepreneurship.
Anafore, a company we invested in two years ago, shows how times have changed. The company’s software-as-a-service offering, called ReferralCandy, helps small businesses manage customer referral campaigns. The company’s founders, Dinesh Raju and Zach Cheng, are both Singaporeans, who earned them a prestigious government scholarship to study at a top foreign university, Carnegie Mellon, with academic success. In previous generations, both would probably have pursued lucrative careers in government or even spent time abroad. Currently, the company resides in Block 71 and is growing rapidly.
Pdf) Framing The Entrepreneurial University: The Case Of The National University Of Singapore
These three ingredients create a reinforcing cycle, where entrepreneurs who enjoy success find themselves wanting to do it again. For example, in 2010, Melvin Yuan founded YFind Technologies, a company with smart technology that can reveal the location of people inside buildings by tracking their mobile communications with WiFi access points. This capability can be the backbone of valuable business intelligence services such as retail “heat mapping” that shows in-store traffic analysis. We invested in the company in 2012 through our funds, with the government contributing 85%, and the US wireless service provider Ruckus Wireless scooped it up in 2013. Yuan did well in the business and was bitten by the entrepreneurial bug. He goes on to found other startups that develop disruptive ways to connect people looking for original art with the many undiscovered artistic talents around the world.
Some successful entrepreneurs in Singapore are starting to invest in a new generation of startups. For example, Hian Goh, who in 2005 founded the Asian Food Channel, invested in Chope in 2011, a regional restaurant booking portal backed by our investment arm. And after Scripps Networks Interactive bought the Asian Food Channel in 2013, Goh started his own venture capital firm to invest in regional startups.
International investors are increasingly taking notice. Dave McClure’s 500
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