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Programmers and Startup scene in Singapore!
posted by Sneha Menon on Tuesday, September 1, 2009 at 12:13pm Categories: BlogSep01
I attended the inaugural #geekcampsg about a week back and was completely blown away and also a little bit humbled by the different technologies, platforms and applications that were discussed there. It was an eye-opener, in terms of the various range of talks, from Ruby applications to controlling robots to natural language processing: it had it all. The answer to whether we need more #geekcampsg is a resounding yes! For more, read Bernard Leong’s analysis.
Being from a computing background and having close associations with hard-core programmers, I see a lot of developers doing their own side projects, but never really venturing on their own. Mind you, I’m talking about passionate developers here and not the ones who have either been brainwashed to take up programming, or the ones who don’t really care about what they are studying. Let’s face it, most successful startups are started by geeks. Hence, this large conglomerate of programmers gave me a unique opportunity to actually ask developers on what they think about startup scene in Singapore.Before I discuss my findings, I probably need to make a disclosure that this is not very scientific and the sample-set was probably quite small, nevertheless it was interesting that I got a variety of opinions. There were probably five different vibes that I got from developers (none of them mutually exclusive), and they’re listed below:* I don’t careAs the title suggests, devs/geeks in this category don’t give two hoots about working for a startup or a corporate company or freelancing as long as you let them program in peace. They find the term ‘entrepreneurship’ overused and cliched, which probably leads to the don’t-care-attitude. Whatever the reasons are, these developers are really passionate about different frameworks, technologies and platforms, and would rather code and develop a product by themselves rather than schmoozing with non-technical people to do Business Development for their product. Some of them also have a disdain generally towards self-styled entrepreneurs considering them as nothing but a smooth-talking salesperson.(Not surprising, considering every Tom, Dick, Harry and his brother self style themselves as entrepreneurs nowadays).
* Is there a startup scene in Singapore?Now this was surprising, being part of the entrepreneurship bubble, one just always assumes that people know about the different startups here. Well, the bubble burst, and shows us how much needs to be done in terms of spreading awareness. The other possible reason as to why they are not aware is also because of the lack of coverage provided to the Asian startups in widely read entrepreneurship blogs like TechCrunch and ReadWriteWeb. Well, e27 and other Singapore entrepreneurship blogs like SGentrepreneurs, Youngupstarts are some of the blogs that try to address this pain.One another reason for this might also be that there is no Singapore version of youth idols like Mark Zuckerberg/Larry Page/ Sergey Brin to look up to, thereby reducing the glamour quotient of startups here.* The Government is not doing enoughNow this was definitely not surprising! There seems to be two possible explanations for this attitude. Either there is not enough awareness of the different funding schemes provided by government institutions, or it’s just the frustration that emanates from going through various gove rnment channels and incubators to attain funding. As some people rightly remarked, there is no dearth of funding schemes here in Singapore, its the quality of projects which is lacking sometimes. For an overview of funding landscapes in singapore, here is a great map by Meng Wong.* Not as good as Silicon Valley or other countriesThese are the widely travelled people, developers who’ve worked or studied there for some time and are still hungover from the excitement of their experiences in Silicon Valley. Well, no comparisons to the Valley culture, but the world is becoming increasingly border-less and slowly innovation is not something that the government can control, it’s up to every individual. Additionally, the glamour associated with startups and the bunch of rockstar programmers whom coders usually idolise is definitely lacking here.* It’s awesomeGenerally people who think the startup scene is awesome in Singapore are the one’s who attend e27 events :P Seriously speaking, these are developers who have already gotten some funding here to start on their own, or are working for awesome startups. They are given the full freedom to code, improve, do their own stuff, free flow of caffiene and sometime treated like royalty! I am not going to say that they live in a deluded world, but to reach awesomeness I still feel, there are some barriers to surpass.Having said that, ultimately, however many initiatives or encouragement we get, however awesome or bad we think the startup scene is, we still need developers busting their guts to develop kickass products!
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31 Responses to “Programmers and Startup scene in Singapore!”
E27sg said :
New post: Programmers and the startup scene in Singapore: http://bit.ly/4l2vO5
This comment was originally posted on Twitter
Bjorn Lee said :
with regards to pt 3, i like to add on:
“there is no dearth of funding schemes here in Singapore, its the quality of projects which is lacking sometimes.”
Comments by TechCrunch’s CTO Nik Cubrilovic and also Joichi Ito (Silicon Valley “super-angel”), from their recent visits, have revealed that they are highly impressed by the quality of the startups shown (e.g. SocialWok, Zopim, First Meta among others). I like to say that the government is not to be blamed yet, they are already doing their best in such a short span of time. Perhaps, some might say they r trying too hard too.
The Achilles heel in the regional funding scene is not in lack of quality projects (relative to developer population), but in the lack of early-stage visionary investors who understand how to fund and support scalable, world-class startups.
To use an analogy, startups are infant babies, without the right kind of parenting support, they die. Thats the issue in the Southeast Asian region., There is no lack of babies, but there’s a huge lack of good parents.
jasonong said :
To my fellow geeks, you guys rock! RT @E27sg: New post: Programmers and the startup scene in Singapore: http://bit.ly/4l2vO5
This comment was originally posted on Twitter
Twitted by bjornlee said :
[...] This post was Twitted by bjornlee [...]
bjornlee said :
gd post, but i differ on blaming govt for lack of funding RT @E27sg: Programmers & startup scene in Singapore: http://bit.ly/4l2vO5
This comment was originally posted on Twitter
Mohan Belani said :
Adding on to Bjorn’s point. I would like to point out that there is also a lack of channels for startups to get exposed. Seriously, we have an abundance of great startups out there (Orsiso, 2359Media, FAME, GoThere.sg) but no real avenue to get them exposed in a massive manner. The lack of early adopters in this area further aggravates the problem.
Shalabh Pandey said :
Good article. With a practical take on the start up and entrepreneurial scene in Singapore.
“there is no dearth of funding schemes here in Singapore, its the quality of projects which is lacking sometimes.”
.,;l
There are many facets to this- and one point surely is that there might be initiatives, but are largely under marketed leading to less awareness.
I’d like to add a twist to the tale however. I think that there are many ways to evaluate fund seekers- but there is no clear source or direction using which you could assess/evaluate investors.
In these times, it might appear to be a funny concern, but really- there must be some ranking and sources where there could be details about investors average fund size, number and nature of industries funded, and so on. IMO it goes a long way in organizing things and optimizing precious resources.
And regarding promotion of start ups, apart from the great resources mentioned above, I invite the start ups, investors and authorities to speak to me- I mostly cover them on http://www.chasingthestorm.com
Cheers
Shalabh Pandey
Why NRF’s TIS may be the Fix that Singapore’s Tech Ecosystem needs — Master Of The Obvious said :
[...] already starting to see some early budding in our tech start-up scene. Still, with the right people in our ecosystem, the right support structures and culture will [...]
Geekonomics said :
@Bjorn – totally agreed on the point about needing good parents for our startup ‘babies’ here.
@Mohan – well at least in this aspect e27 is doing something right exposing our local startups to media buyers :)
Twitter Trackbacks for Programmers and Startup scene in Singapore! » e27 - Discovering Web Innovation in Asia [e27.sg] on Topsy.com said :
[...] Programmers and Startup scene in Singapore! » e27 – Discovering Web Innovation in Asia http://www.e27.sg/2009/09/01/programmers-startup-scene-singapore – view page – cached Organizers of — From the page [...]
Ryan Lou said :
I’m not sure about your comment, “Let’s face it, most successful startups are started by geeks”.
Most technology startups are started by geeks, that is true. But that is not the full story.
1) Obviously there are tons of successful entrepreneurs in other industries. They sometimes get more coverage then most. Recently Mary Chia.
2) There comes a point where the geek starting the company passes the torch onto other programmers they hire, and focus on expanding the business. That is sometimes more important to the company’s eventual success.
Finding avenues where there are few, opening up new markets, speaking brillantly at events like those organised by e27, making sure the technology reflects the market need, making sure the company’s accounts are balanced.
For instance, not many people are apple fanatics for the technology. Ask anyone that has tried to use a macbook to make a presentation and had difficulty connecting to the projector.
Only when the founder realizes that these elements of their business is just as important as making the software scalable, fixing pertinent bugs and introducing a new feature, then the startup baby can grow.
Maybe just maybe, Singapore already has great programmers. Perhaps what it needs is more charismatic CEOs.
Sneha Menon said :
@ Ryan: I have to clarify my comment when I said “Let’s face it, most successful startups are started by geeks” does not imply that most unsuccessful startups are started up by non-geeks
I agree that there are tons of sucessful companies in many industries, but since the focus of this article is on Programmers, this article focuses mainly on tech startups and not general businesses like MaryChia.
And if companies indeed needed charismatic CEO’s then am guessing Steve Ballmer would be the first one to go:)
Ryan Lou said :
@Sneha : There… that’s something we can agree on. Although Steve Ballmer’s not running a Startup (and probably could not).
My second point is that being a great programmer does not equal success as the comment seems to suggest. It’s definitely important for a tech startup, but getting there also requires founders to develop business and marketing acumen. Take Alltop and Squidoo as examples of what I mean.
That’s the shift in mindset I’m suggesting the tech startup scene also needs.
Jeff said :
went to the briefing, in short:
- good intent
- great deal for funders
- slight misalignment for a “full time successful incubation manager who don’t need a salary” – if you are successful you have other business to deal with which makes you hardly fulltime, if you are not successful but skilled you need to be paid to do the necessary on a full time basis
- criteria seems looser which is exactly what will make this a success, transplant deals.
so if you have no access to solid home runners which can be transplanted, it dont matter whether you are full time angel…
This comment was originally posted on Master Of The Obvious
Granova said :
RT @e27sg Programmers and Startup scene in Singapore! » e27 – Discovering Web Innovation in Asia http://bit.ly/wwAmw
This comment was originally posted on Twitter
jitsion said :
RT @e27sg Programmers and Startup scene in Singapore! » e27 – Discovering Web Innovation in Asia http://bit.ly/wwAmw
This comment was originally posted on Twitter
Justin Lee said :
Frankly one of the biggest challenges for SG based startups is Crossing the Chasm.
And the Chasm for English oriented consumer startups can be quite large because it comes in the form of the Pacific Ocean.
Singaporeans can easily pick up American tech.
Americans can’t be bothered to pick up Singaporean tech.
Imagine if Facebook was Made in Singapore. Gonna be quite tough.
However there is a strong niche that Singapore can actually play quite well in. That is from the enterprise web services angle which is not so social graph dependent.
In fact Enterprise Open Source companies would find that Singapore is a good base to HQ because you can easily find all the management functions here. Have your core-developers based here on competitive rates and since the community version is open-sourced and hence world-sourced over the Internet you don’t need a location for the community contributors. In fact a transport hub like Singapore is good for meetings of global participants.
Chris from the Evil Empire said :
@mohan Microsoft has featured 5 Singapore startups in the BizSpark Startup of the Day. Their profiles showed up in websites like techmeme.com, mashable, to name a few. I think that’s a good exposure channel. Check them out at -
http://www.microsoftstartupzone.com/BizSparkDB/Pages/Featured_Company.aspx
If I can have enough SG startups up there, the world might just take notice.
Leonard said :
Kudos to NRF for taking a tough stance against preventing TIS from being abused. Some incubators (no names to protect the guilty) just try to “flip” as many startups as fast as possible to benefit from the other schemes not unlike the property market right now.
This comment was originally posted on Master Of The Obvious
Venturepreneur said :
There is no fees for managing the startups. So there will be few takers for this scheme. Not many new wanna-be incubators will meet the criteria of finding a linkage to a local IHL. Many IHLs already got their own incubators. Good effort by NRF but I’m afraid this is another academic exercise like the previous ones.
This comment was originally posted on Master Of The Obvious
Varun Arora said :
Motochan,
well written blog. Glad to’ve discovered it – welcome to my bookmarks.
- Varun (@HomeCamera)
This comment was originally posted on Master Of The Obvious
Mohan said :
Good read. I think the schemes are starting to get smarter and with the government learning from previous successful models (NRF TIS is modelled after Israel), a lot better quality startups will emerge.
I am particularly interested in the foreigners taking up this scheme to invest in the local ecosystem and giving it a much needed mentorship jab!
Exciting times ahead
This comment was originally posted on Master Of The Obvious
James Chan said :
Fees are not necessarily the best form of motivation for NRF to extend to these incubators. The good ones will figure a way out to pay for the operational expenses.Not many new wanna-be incubators will meet the criteria of finding a linkage to a local IHL.Notice how NRF was not particularly clear on what ‘linkages to iHLs’ mean?Many IHLs already got their own incubators.There’s always room for more. Besides, ‘incubators’ is but a term – the final form may not be what you and I imagine incubators to be.
I wouldn’t want to speak too quickly in both of these cases…
This comment was originally posted on Master Of The Obvious
Dionne Chee said :
Banks in Singapore, including Singapore Government owned banks could not care less than startups financing. They have no interests in supporting Singapore entrepreneurs despite all the nice TV ads. They will offer financing if you are cash flow rich, then again if you are cash flow rich you dont need financing. SPRING schemes are on the borderline of useless. Too many conditions, great pains and disturbances to your business to prepare an application just to get SGD 100K ! Many forms, interviews, grand jury, etc for SGD 100K of equity funding (ie taking from the start 40% of your business away – Really motivating). Also the several SPRING officers we got to meet were really not business savvy. Very aunty like and red tape focused. We when saw that, we did not bothered and moved on, far away from SPRING’s schemes. Seems to be the same experience of several of my entrepreneurs friends.
Jeff said :
i think it will have its share of applicants. it could be both a feeder fund to the NRF 1 to 1 funds like Exstream, Walden OR being fed deals from iJam (provided they are solid in the first place).
all in all, personally keen to take a step further at this.
This comment was originally posted on Master Of The Obvious
James Chan said :
Among the loads of startups there, they were picked by the Silicon Valley community as THE BEST startup at the Demo pit.There are actually 2 DemoPit winners on each day, and not just one. Please verify.
This comment was originally posted on e27 – Discovering Web Innovation in Asia
Mohan Belani said :
@james: Yup I’ve ammended the post to reflect other winners like Odesk and Clynde. Thanks for point it out :)
This comment was originally posted on e27 – Discovering Web Innovation in Asia
Sean Seah said :
Are they funded by any local VCs yet? Though I am sure ming dun need that right now, haha.
This comment was originally posted on e27 – Discovering Web Innovation in Asia
Varun said :
Thanks for the kudos, Mohan.
@bjornlee: Of course, we can, should, and are moving beyond awards. The thing about industry awards is they help establish credibility. Remember the old saying “no one ever got fired for buying IBM”? Similarly, for risk averse distribution partners like ours (ISPs, telcos), external validation makes it easier for them to get internal consensus. And, of course, from a funding perspective, these are useful too.
@Sean: dunno about the others but we’re friends-and-family funded (close to 200K) and are now going out to raise a small round (why small? because there’s no point raising a lot when you don’t need it – better to raise a lot when you’re able to put it to the right use AND are in a position to demonstrate value).
Cheers,
- Varun
Co-founder, HomeCamera.
This comment was originally posted on e27 – Discovering Web Innovation in Asia
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MITEF Singapore’s Open Call « MIT Enterprise Forum Singapore said :
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