Building a startup ecosystem based on lessons learnt at MaGIC

Photo credit: Jeff Sheldon

1. Cultivate a culture of fearlessness, risk taking, hunger and pure execution prowess.

This is fundamental to anything big worth doing. Startups will die by the hundreds, if not the thousands. Such is reality and it should be an accepted fact that only a few elite ones will survive and henceforth, early signalling is required to improve chances of success.

2. Create more icons and superconnectors across startups, communities, corporates and investors.

A healthy ecosystem would need 30-50 of them instead of 5-10. In ASEAN, we are also fortunate to have friends across countries, and press such as Tech in Asia, e27, Amazon, Microsoft, IBM and Google who are extremely well connected and are always helpful. ASEAN is also unique because the fragmented market also allows us to build exciting and empowering bridges across countries together.

3. Benchmark startups across countries.

Focus and double down on the winners and cut the losses on the losers. It is important to create and continue to support a few Garenas, Grabtaxis, Lazadas, Zaloras, VNGs, Catchas, iFlixes, Razors, Mindvalleys and 123rfs that can employ hundreds if not thousands as their multiplier effects are much higher.

4. Train technical people at scale across computer science, data analytics, languages and frameworks.

The government can subsidise the training of 500 good enough senior developers a year. The key is senior, and the focus should be on more advanced skills and languages.

If you know WhatsApp runs on Erlang to serve a billion users with just 40 people, then focus on tools which are future-proof. Perhaps, one day, we can have a privately supported world class technical school at the ASEAN level instead of having everything concentrated in Singapore.

We also need vocational placements and proper work experiences after training these people.

5. Have pricing transparency as well as a functioning marketplace for talent.

We must import more foreign talent not just from across the region but from beyond the region, especially Europe, JKTC, ANZ and the Middle East. Besides skills, multiculturalism is critical because it broadens the mindset. Hiring is the most difficult thing, and we simply don’t have enough good people banding up together at scale. Many teams are fragmented.

6. Place more young people in large startups and corporations which need talent and have capacity to train people.

Offer tax breaks and incentives to take in graduates and interns by the hundreds. One way is to align incentives with private sector employees. One example is to train data scientists by the hundreds. If there is backing, I would really love to see more pan-ASEAN graduate and internship programs.

7. Set relationships with private sector players across industry, startups, services, media, ecommerce companies from top down.

Align these NOT only to the social and PR mission, but to strategic and commercial angles.

In ASEAN, besides the startups, you need the venture builders, investors, community leaders and government agencies held tightly to centralise and optimise resource deployment and accelerate the velocity of the flow, akin to money supply in classical economics.

8. Educate the C-suites to give back by being mentors, or route to market partners.

Founder-led conglomerates, unicorn startups, telcos and banks are key and they would need to be educated and gradually be encouraged to take more risk. Sometimes, it is easier if they face existential threats to their current business models. The best scenario is if they are a bunch of pirates who can act fast and deal decisively and quickly.

9. Connect the top 100 startups together across multiple touch points and tier them by maturity.

Use community events, WhatsApp, Slack and Facebook to maximise interactions especially by verticals. Social infrastructure is everything. A mindset of generous sharing is important.

10. Consolidate and polish the deal flow and investors will come with or without subsidies.

Focus on unlocking local private capital through education as well as attract international capital via active engagement.

11. Focus on founder education.