Asia’s tech community is not what you assume

Full disclosure: I lead marketing for SurveyMonkey in Asia. I shared the link to the survey in a handful of places, but huge kudos to Huiyi for pushing the Tech in Asia community to take the time to respond.

As a recent arrival to Southeast Asia, I was very curious about the type of people that are engaged in the regional tech scene.

Since people share their best insights anonymously and when they don’t really know what they are being asked, I figured a survey was the best way to find out who people really are.

There were 68 responses, which is just the right sample size I would need if the total tech population in Southeast Asia is 1 million and I needed an 80 percent confidence level with a margin of error of 8%.

In short, statistically significant insights can be drawn from the survey as a result of the sample size. In many cases, however, you don’t even need an accurate sample size to create conclusions.

Without further ado, here are the results:

•    62% answered that they work at a startup
•    22% at a non-startup employer
•    6% government
•    10% answered that they are investors.

The survey asked why people are involved in the tech community. I made an assumption of involvement by the very fact that they had seen the survey, and this is where I got my first surprise.

While most people might think startup folks are motivated by the money or the impact they were making on the world, exactly half of the respondents answered that “it was just interesting.”

• Only 6% were interested in the financial upside
• 34% wanted to make the world a better place

My final plain vanilla question asked users if they considered themselves to be entrepreneurs. 62% said yes while 38% said no. Using this question, I did a comparison on the other results to see what the self declared entrepreneurs answered as their reason for involvement in startups.

Surprisingly, or maybe not, the biggest motivation for entrepreneurs is to “make the world a better place!”

Key takeaways