If serial entrepreneur John Fearon has a personal motto, it’s probably “Wanna Be Startin Somethin” – to quote the famous song by Michael Jackson.
The South African started six failed businesses before arriving in Singapore, but wasn’t deterred. He went on to launch or invest in at least a dozen more. These 12 ventures occurred in the past three years.
He started outdoor ads marketplace EatAds in 2011, then left it dormant to launch website and email backup services Dropmysite and Dropmyemail a year later. He then resurrected EatAds by bringing new founders on board, and started investment and incubation firm Gilcrux Holdings. It has portfolio companies like invoice-to-cash company ApexPeak (which he started), Kluje, a website for finding home renovation contracts, and Telr, an online payments platform.
Now, Fearon is applying his scattered method back into new startups in Singapore. He has hopped into a new gig, launching JF2 (pronounced J-F-squared), a “startup studio” that works on various startup ideas simultaneously. It’ll allow him to get his hands dirty by building businesses from scratch again.
Two startups coming out of the JF2 furnace are Folr, a location-tracking app that gives real-time data on the whereabouts of family members, and VoiceMap, an app that tells stories about a place based on your phone’s GPS location. Four more ideas are apparently on the way.
Singapore’s Betaworks
Think of JF2 as a company that starts companies. It is building a full-time team of software developers, marketers, designers, and growth hackers which will be shared by all the startups it creates.
“The start-to-end approach with shared resources provides much more value and insights than traditional incubators,” says Fearon, CEO and founder of JF2, which focuses on mobile, financial tech, and the business-to-consumer realm. The company will own a majority stake in all its ventures.
It’s difficult to classify a company like JF2, which has raised an undisclosed angel round. It’s not an incubator, accelerator, or venture capital firm in the traditional sense. A close relative to it though would be Betaworks, a “startup factory” that develops products rapidly, kills off those that don’t grow, and builds around those that have legs.
Gilcrux will still be active, with former COO John Sharp taking the reins as the new CEO. Sharp has raised over US$100 million for Gilcrux’s ventures. The firm will focus on its current ventures and add more fintech companies to its portfolio in the future.
Fearon’s approach of launching so many ventures in such a short span of time may be perceived as unfocused. After all, a classical view of successful entrepreneurs are those who turn tiny startups into empires. Yes, you have serial entrepreneurs plying their trade, but the best ones often build their businesses into giants before starting another one.
Fearon, meanwhile, puts his feet into many young and fledging boats. The approach is not necessarily flawed, but it’s certainly different.
Fearon argues that bringing all developmental resources under one house brings economies of scale, and the staff would feel more motivated with many fun projects to work on. The approach hasn’t deterred investors either.
Nonetheless, we can only gauge its success a few years down the road.
Stay updated on the go with our mobile app.
Get latest insights with smoother, more personalized experience through TIA mobile app.
