What we learnt on the US startup culture from our trips

A picture may paint a thousand words, but nothing can replace the real learning experience of being there in the heat of action of the start-up scene in the Bay Area and other communities in the US.

And that is what 4 different start-up founders from Singapore and Malaysia did, who took 4 different journeys from a 2-week to a few months visit to the US from February till August 2015. I took the opportunity of asking them to share their experiences to the TIA community.

How they got to the US

Like any typical start-up with limited funds, it is all about bootstrapping, but kind-hearted sponsorships and generous hosts that help make the trip possible.

Paul Yang of Lomotif took the hobo track and roughed it out for 5 months, sleeping on various couches of kind-hearted NUS NOC students in expensive SF. “After launching Lomotif for a year, good organic growth was coming from the US, and I decided to be there to closer to the users, as well as to understand the funding situation,” he explains. “We are grateful that NUS Enterprise helped us get a space at BLK71 SF to work.” With the only other major cost which was food, he survived mainly from home cooked meals or leftovers from events.

Thomas Wong (second from left) with his newfound friends from Bhutan, Israel and Tanzania at Innovation Center of Rockies, Boulder, Colorado. 

Thomas Wong of ORT Solutions was lucky to get sponsorship from the US Department of State under the IVLP to cover part of his visit. He took a nice 5-week trip across various cities from SF, LA, NYC, Washington DC, Kansas City, Denver and Boulder. For parts of the trip not sponsored, he had kind hearted old pals who offered couches to sleep on.

Shaun Lee of Milkadeal was also lucky to be selected by MaGIC to attend a 2-week e@Standford innovation and entrepreneurship program, spending most of his time at Standford, Palo Alto and sometimes to SF.

Kenneth Lou of Novelsys, who is currently on a hiatus, always wanted to go SV, due to influence of reading TC, Mashable and good reads. He felt it is was important to be in the heart of the Bay Area to understand and get a feel of the place. So off he went for 3 weeks out of his own funds.

What was their favourite company / community?

Thomas, a techie at heart, felt Colorado was an interesting place with a strong engineering culture of past and present. He comments, “It is one of the few places I found young startup employees or founders that want to stay and settle down there, unlike many cities where being there is merely a stepping stone to career progression or a short few years of fun and exposure. They have schools there (free) which teach young teenagers enough about technology, enough so they send 3D printed machinery to space with NASA used by the astronauts. It is a community of deep passion and conviction, which helps me understand much more when Brad Feld talks about the “give before you get” mentality he promotes in his startup communities, the founders I’ve had exposure to there have a much deeper sense about what and why they do what they do.”

Shaun Lee (centre) and his fellow entrepreneurs visiting the AirBNB Office

Over in the Bay Area, Shaun enjoyed the visit to AirBNB’s office where meeting rooms were replicas of real AirBNB listings. “It was cool that there was a pet friendly policy allowed dogs to run around freely around the office,” he quips. For Paul, he liked Dropbox, which was a stone’s throw away from BLK71 SF. “I frequently asked them to invite us over so I could get free lunches and save money,” he laughs. “But on a better note, I came to love the culture of collaboration which was made possible by how their office was designed.”