How Should a New Startup in Singapore Find Funding?

This question originally appeared on Quora, and the answer that follows was provided by Thomas Wong, a local Singaporean.

Thomas Wong, Local Singaporean

I drafted up a few quick diagrams to explain the funding scene in Singapore. It’s not complete, but might be helpful to some. There are three main sources to look into when starting out. Of course I am presuming you are not planning to fund it entirely on your own.

1. Friends and family
2. Private funding
3. Government funding

Friends & Family

I’ve seen mixed advice on this aspect, and I agree that you’d mostly only get one shot at this. But I’ve seen enough businesses that exist on support from supportive family and friends, a famous one would be Sir Richard Branson. It’s great to get started and get you off the ground, but you’d want to get familiar with raising funds from cold contacts/investors as soon as you can.

Private Funding

This is a pretty unmapped territory as there are a plethora of options. There are some networks like BANSEA, which pool together a mix of private investors and government linked ones as a collective of seed investors. There are also MNCs with funds dedicated to identify interesting startups to invest in, [like] Google Ventures, Gree Ventures, Intel capital, and even Singtel’s Innov8.

Recently, the entire Hackathon trend has been ported from the US to Singapore, where people who want to begin on their startup journey can participate in these thirty to ninety day events. They form a team, pick an idea, and patch together a product that they then pitch to investors at the end of the process on “demo day.”

There are private funds and investors, Innosight, DFJ, and some invest considerable amounts even at seed level. I personally know two companies who raised a million dollars from individual investors, without a technology or traction in place when they pitched. Basically, it’s a jungle out there, you’ll need to talk to people, do your own research, and keep your ears on the ground to identify which funds to approach.

A good way if you have the connections, though, is to identify these funds from a higher level on the value chain. If you have friends in finance, fund managers, fund of funds, wealth managers, they might be able to give you a quick take and even introductions to the people running these funds. Most of these guys work with or fund these angel investors, venture capital, or seed investors.

Government Funding