Thoughts about Next Generation of Entrepreneurs in Singapore

Yesterday (7.7.7), I attended the National Youth Entrepreneurship Conference in NUS Business School organized by the Exoro team. Other than giving a talk on “Meeting Strangers 101”, I also sat on a panel with Ron Sim (CEO and Founder of OSIM), Douglas Abrams (Venture Capitalist), Aileen Sim (Founder, First Meta) and Min Xuan (the incoming NUS Entrepreneurship Society President), moderated by Darius Cheung (CEO of TenCube). While listening to the other panelists and consolidating my own thoughts, I summarize a few interesting points on the challenges faced by the next generation of entrepreneurs in Singapore.

• The Infrastructure is there but the onus is on the People & Culture: In terms of the tax, the infrastructure, and the incentives, I am convinced that the government has done enough. They have even moved up to giving out grants and funds for people to start up. The question lies in the people. There are a few traits about entrepreneurs: calculated risk takers, resourceful (i.e. if you don’t have something, you will go all out to find it), lack of time (and don’t earn a lot of money until your business becomes a success) and always asking questions. Of course, if I compare people of my age group to the younger generation whom I spend a lot more time with, you can see a substantial proportion of the younger generation interested in becoming entrepreneurs.
• Ability to stomach a longer gestation period: Although the mindset of the people needs some re-configuration, the same goes for the investors. At the moment, there are very few investors in town who can tolerate a longer period for a start-up to turn profitable. A lot of people want to invest and get quick returns rather than to wait a bit longer to see longer term returns. Of course, it is difficult for investors to seed that kind of thinking. Here is a longer term solution: we need more successful entrepreneurs who will become investors and then have the ability to provide the funds to allow survival of good start-ups.
• Development of Private Venture Capital Funds: The term I like to use is smart money. Singapore is in lack of smart money. It is no longer difficult to find seed money in Singapore, given the grants from government and big money (above the S$10M range) from the investors and the private sector. However, between the S$500k to S$2M range, the small medium enterprises have a big difficulty with the non-existence of the venture capitalists in the country. That is the part which needs fixing currently, and of course, this is where the entrepreneurial spirit comes in. Whoever is the first to create such a fund will make a good start for the country on a whole. The private sector is still conservative about early stage investing and that will take some time to make it work.

To be honest, one simple way to gauge the real success of the next generation of entrepreneurs rests on the following conditions: (i) the government will not need initiatives to get people to become entrepreneurial and (ii) there is a robust private sector funding for the gap between S$500K to S$5M. That is where the golden path for entrepreneurship in Singapore lies..