Singapore’s never-ending anxiety

Dear readers,

Singapore’s investment community woke up from the Formula One revelries only to face a hangover – and ever-pervasive anxiety about the future of the country’s startup scene.

In conversations with people, I get a sense that there’s a persistent worry about where the next wave of unicorns will come from, and why there seemingly hasn’t been an iconic born-and-bred Singaporean tech entrepreneur in a while. Call it a collective impostor syndrome.

This sentiment might puzzle some people. Many of Silicon Valley’s top entrepreneurs are immigrants, and that doesn’t take away the luster of that community but only adds to it.

Perhaps the worry comes from Singapore’s vulnerabilities – its tiny population, lack of natural resources, and its status as a city-state – which in turn create nationalistic baggage.

But to quote Thor in Marvel’s Thor Ragnarok, “Asgard is not a place – it’s a people.” Many locals have found success abroad, and we should celebrate them. Tan Min-Liang of Razer comes to mind, and more recently there’s Teo Swee Ann of Espressif. In the investment world, Jenny Lee and Foo Jixun have built GGV Capital into one of the world’s leading venture capital firms.

Perhaps we’re simply looking at the wrong places. Risk-takers are, by definition, the ones most likely to go abroad in search of opportunities.

Moving on, we had some great premium content last week. We looked at a company that’s pioneering digital banking in Indonesia, examined why the classifieds model is dead for startups, and analyzed why Southeast Asia’s co-working spaces are giving WeWork a run for its money.

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Happy reading,

Terence
Chief Editor