They turned off the heater in winter to save money. Now they’re a leader in patent search

Left to right: Markus Haense, CTO, Jeffrey Tiong, CEO, and Ray Chohan, SVP of strategy

Jeffrey Tiong was a model student. He was a finalist in a business plan competition, won a young entrepreneurship award, and made the dean’s list.

After graduating from the National University of Singapore (NUS) in 2007, Tiong started Patsnap. His goal: to make intellectual property (IP) information easily accessible and affordable. Success was assured given his track record.

But the real world dulled his optimism. Raising money from investors proved hard. “The venture capital environment wasn’t buzzing. There was no series A or angel funding,” he tells Tech in Asia. Potential backers didn’t think his startup would make money.

His youth was a disadvantage. “Of all the software-as-a-service entrepreneurs I know, only Aaron Levie from Box came straight out of college,” he says.

With no revenue and a small amount of grant money, Tiong was losing a race against time to finish building his product. He needed to make time.

So he moved from Singapore to Suzhou, China, where living expenses were lower and he could hire developers for cheap. Tiong and his team rented a bare apartment and slept on double-decker beds. The living room became their office.

“We had a friend’s dog who would pee in the living room,” Tiong recalls. To save electricity, they turned off the heater. It was even warmer outside than in the apartment.

While the physical environment was trying, the real torture was mental. “I saw all my friends graduating and getting jobs and I was doing nothing. I had no income for a few months.”

Moving at China speed

Patsnap’s Singapore office today is a contrast from the dank Chinese apartment. While I feel cold as I sit in the spacious meeting room, it’s nothing a sweater can’t solve. Tiong seems at ease, but he’s busy as ever. He had to cut the interview short to take a call.

The China experience has left a deep imprint on him. Tiong saw how Chinese companies “whack” a market. “If something doesn’t work, they’ll discard that. If something works, they’ll double down. Somehow, they’ll get to the end point.”

The cutthroat environment and endless copying convinced him that speed matters more than precision in the hyper-competitive tech industry. He recites the contents of Amazon boss Jeff Bezos’ famous “day one” letter.

“A lot of companies make great decisions, but they’re not making them fast enough. That’s how a company dies: being bogged down by processes,” says Tiong.

Patsnap applies that mantra studiously. Its breakthrough came when in 2009, it snagged its first two customers: NUS and Singaporean government research agency A*Star.

‘He made me cry’