Singapore’s ACE Forum wants to create a safe environment for founders to bare their souls

As much as we might try, it is near impossible for non-founders to truly understand the difficulties that entrepreneurs face on a daily basis. It is particularly hard for solo founders – Migme CEO and founder Steven Goh describes it as a “lonely” and “hard” road: “During your down moments […] no one is going to get you out of wherever you are but yourself.”

It might be that only founders can understand each other’s predicaments, and the more experienced ones can offer the right advice that hits the spot. However, because founders in general have a tendency to bottle up their feelings and put on a brave front, many are unable to get out of the rut they are in.

Lim Der Shing, founder of career media company JobsCentral, hopes to change this in Singapore with the introduction of regular mastermind-like sharing sessions called the ACE (Action Community for Entrepreneurship) Forum. The idea stemmed from Lim’s experience as a member of the Entrepreneurs’ Organization (EO), which holds similar forum sessions that he found extremely helpful as a business owner.

“Forums are monthly structured closed-group meetings that run for three to five hours. Participants commit to the same people for years, and share on all topics related to life, business, and so on,” he explains. “It is akin to having your own confidential board of directors. And it is a non-judgemental environment.”

However, because organizations such as EO and YPO (Young Presidents’ Organization) tend to attract growth-stage or established businesses, startups are usually not eligible. As a result, when Lim was approached by ACE chairman Dr. Steven Fang to join its board of directors, he used the opportunity to create a forum specific to startup founders.

“The goal of ACE is to help create a thriving entrepreneurship ecosystem in Singapore. We see forums as a way to go deep and promote mutual learning among startups,” Lim adds. “I would be every happy if forum members achieve their business and life goals, and cite ACE forums as own of the factors that helped with their success.”

Each ACE forum will consist of six to eight startups, and will convene on a monthly basis. Strict rules are put in place to ensure commitment levels and the format of sharing. Lim’s goal is to create six to eight forums – with roughly 50 to 70 high-quality tech entrepreneurs – over the next few years.

The first forum started last year in July, and has so far received positive feedback from the members, who include the founders of PatSnap, MoneySmart, and 2359media amongst others. PatSnap founder Jeffrey Tiong even made it a point to fly back to Singapore specially for forum sessions as he found them extremely useful.

ACE Forum 1 members meeting in Bali.

“The forum has helped me tremendously. It’s hard to give a specific instance because there’s a lot of sensitive stuff. My forum mate has helped make introductions to key decision makers, shared how they structure and compensate their sales teams, and even helped me think through some merger and acquisition decisions,” says MoneySmart CEO Vinod Nair, presumably referring to its recent acquisition of KreditAja.

99.co founder and fellow ACE board of directors member Darius Cheung will also be helping to spearhead this initiative. “ACE Forum has been a unique place to talk about issues you can’t talk about anywhere else, with people who truly understand,” he says. “Such counsel is invaluable as startups become growing companies and doing the right things become more important than doing more things.”

This initiative is in line with Fang’s vision for ACE – which was recently privatized and put under his care – to complement the gamut of startup events and conferences that Singapore is host to. Lim tells Tech in Asia that they are now looking to create more ACE Forums, and will be holding a briefing for potential candidates on February 12 at the newly-launched JTC Launchpad, Block 79. For more information, startups can contact Lim at dershing@drwealth.com, or Cheung at darius@99.co.

See: Singapore’s IDA opens $200M fund to US startups, brings General Assembly to the island