PropertyGuru founder on the real reason he stepped down, hard lessons, and new adventures

Image credit: Tech in Asia

Entrepreneurs often have a defining moment that leaves an indelible mark on them. For Steve Jobs of Apple, it was a trip to India in the 1970s, at the height of the hippie movement. For Howard Schultz of Starbucks, it was a trip to Milan where he tried the local coffee. For Steve Melhuish, co-founder and vice chairman of PropertyGuru, it was a six-month sojourn in Southeast Asia with his wife, Liz.

“We were living in London at the time, and I was running this telecom cable company,” says Melhuish. All his clients were in the telecoms, internet, and mobile content industries. “It was also the time of the post-dot-com bust. All my clients were going through downsizing, and I had to basically downsize my team every six months.”

Melhuish always preferred building things rather than dismantling them. “I took a six-month break and went traveling with my wife,” he recollects. The two went off the beaten track in Nepal, Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam, spending four to five weeks in each country.

“We saw extreme poverty, which was very humbling,” he adds, recalling his Laos visit. He also remembers that their guide “had 15 kids, but only two survived.” The others were lost to “malnourishment and unclean drinking water,” Melhuish says.

This experience left him with no doubt as to where he wanted to be next.

Singapore calling

Inspiration, they say, comes from the most mundane of sources.

For Melhuish, his eureka moment was when he tacked a Post-it on his bathroom in London. It read, “Digital media, Asia, Startups.”

“It really did drive everything that I did and saw me push closer to Asia.” He still has that note.

The initial plan was to head out to China with Liz’s job. But a chance reorganization at her company changed their plans – and their destiny. Liz’s company brought her to Singapore instead, and the couple decided to start here. “It’s easier to go from Singapore to China rather than London to China,” they thought.

As the family settled in, Steve dove straight into work and explored the startup scene. “I was bitterly disappointed because there was hardly anything. This was way back – almost thirteen and a half years ago. The digital space was defined by Yahoo and Microsoft competing with their messenger software.”

PropertyGuru

Steve started work with Singaporean startup ComiAsia, but he soon gave that up in 2007 when circumstances led him to launch PropertyGuru.

“My wife and I were renting a property in Emerald Hill. In 2007, the government opened its doors to immigration and the population exploded from 4.3 million to 5.5 million very quickly. So the doors opened, immigration happened, and it put an immense amount of pressure on housing and infrastructure. There was a definite crunch,” he recalls.

“The property was up for an en bloc sale. So we had to move out very fast. I went online to find a new place but there wasn’t anything,” he says.

Tough lessons

The professional and the personal

Wavemaker Partners