Seed funding in Singapore isn’t dead. Here’s all the proof you need.

There’s been debate lately about the supposedly “dead” or “lifeless” state of seed-stage funding for startups in Singapore.

While many enlightening points were raised, there’s been a missing component in all this discussion: data.

So I did some research. I spoke with venture capital (VC) firms to get a sense of what’s happening on the ground. I also looked at Tech in Asia’s data of seed-stage investments in Singapore-based startups between 2012 and 2018:

Data: Tech in Asia

The picture that emerged isn’t a desert – instead, it’s an oasis. The trend lines are moving upwards, whether it’s the number of deals, the median funding size, or the total value of deals. 2018 has already surpassed 2017, and there’s still a month to go before it ends.

At the very least, the data shows no signs of a doomsday.

Our dataset is definitely far from perfect. (Which is why we launched a subscription program in the first place – to invest in better tools to data journalism on the Asian tech scene. Do consider supporting us.)

For example, there’s definitely a lot of angel and seed deals that go unreported because many startups are in stealth mode and aren’t ready for press coverage yet. A lot of angel investors stay low-key rather than announce their activities.

Yet we believe that our database captures a large chunk of the investments and gives a somewhat representative snapshot of the ecosystem (you can read about our methodology here).

Michael Smith, the partner at early-stage fund SeedPlus, has also not seen a slowdown.

“Our pipeline of deals seen has been growing quarter over quarter,” he says. “We continue to see good progress and significant activity in the ecosystem earlier than us in terms of startup development stage: whether its incubators, accelerators, professional angel groups, and syndicates.”

“We also have not seen any issues for our seed portfolio companies going to market for their next round – all have been successful.”

Likewise, Nikhil Kapur, head of South Asian investments at Gree Ventures, believes seed funding is going up, though he is worried that the growth is slowing. For a young startup ecosystem like Southeast Asia, “the seed stage is not seeing the growth it should see,” he says.

“You can hear almost every series A investor saying that there are not enough series A-ready deals to be able to absorb all of the capital that has been raised.”

Why is the sky appearing to fall?

One more thing… actually, two