Entrepreneur First’s Singapore head shares his top advice for early-stage startups

This Q&A is edited from our AMA session with Alex Crompton, managing director at Entrepreneur First (EF) Singapore.

What is the best way to calculate market size? — Nguyen Anh Dung

This is a good starting point.

What does it take to find the right investor? — Your Design Juice

Raising investment often requires you to speak to lots of investors, but remember, you only need one yes. You need to see lots of investors because they have to say no to almost everything. Most startups won’t succeed (from an investor’s perspective), so they can only pick a few.

As a result, you need to treat investors like you would a sales funnel. Iterate your pitch based on the feedback you get, but understand that most people will say no anyway. The confusing thing is that, by definition, most people say no even when you’re doing well.

What steps should one take to translate idea and team into a startup? — Sze Chean

Assuming you’re B2B, your only focus on is figuring out the single necessary and sufficient feature that your customer group will pay for. Then, relentlessly focus on delivering and growing that. Everything else can wait.

The best founders don’t worry about looking like a startup. They don’t do unnecessary branding, hiring, or fundraising. They focus relentlessly on selling and making things (in that order), and the “startup” gets created as a means to support this.

What’s your take on B2B ecommerce in Southeast Asia? — Ricky Widjajakusuma

It seems clear at this point that SEA is going to be a key market for companies of all kinds.

The exciting thing in high-growth markets is to figure out whether there are new business models (e.g. Go-Jek) or market entry points (e.g. mobile-first) that can unlock the market faster than incumbents/international companies will figure out.

How would you value a pre-revenue and pre-product startup? — K.H. Lim