Ups, downs, and advice from 3 women entrepreneurs in Singapore

Every year Tech in Asia celebrates International Women’s Day, in support of equal representation and opportunities for the female tech community. This article is part of “Women in Focus,” Tech in Asia’s campaign for International Women’s Day 2021.

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Starting up is no easy task, but the road seems especially tough for women entrepreneurs, who have to grapple with a host of challenges, ranging from funding access to discriminatory cultural norms.

Many cities have been making steps towards fostering entrepreneurship among women, and Singapore has done pretty well, coming up as the no. 1 city in Asia for female founders according to Dell’s 2019 Women Entrepreneur Cities Index. However, only 26.3% of business owners in the city-state are women, indicating that there’s plenty of room for female entrepreneurship to grow.

Still, Singapore’s in a strong position relative to the rest of the region, and aspiring founders can look to those who have taken the same path for inspiration. We hear from three female founders in Singapore about where their entrepreneurial journeys have taken them.

1. Mandy Chan, co-founder of The Bold Company

Mandy Chan / Photo credit: The Bold Company

In 2015, Mandy Chan was just 19 years old when she started Bow, driven by the desire to create a multifunctional bag that could address all of a customer’s needs. Now known as The Bold Company, the company funded its first product – the Quiver backpack – through Kickstarter, raising US$45,798 in 30 days and selling about 670 bags in total.

What was the toughest challenge you faced on your journey as an entrepreneur and how did you overcome it?

Balancing the short- and long-term action plans for the company. Just because something screams the loudest doesn’t mean that it’s the priority; sometimes, it’s the things that no one pays attention to that we should focus on the most.

An example is the rebranding of our company from Bow to The Bold Company in March 2021. No one told us we had to do it, but we knew that in order for us to represent ourselves better and not have people get confused over our branding, we had to do it once and for all.

What tech solutions or services have helped you in your business so far?

Aspire has helped us with its user-friendly interface and enabled us to reduce costs for our ad spend due to the marketing and software-as-a-service (SaaS) cashback it provides through its corporate card. This allowed us to allocate more resources for other parts of the business.

Notion is another great platform that the whole team loves because of its all-in-one features, including task management, calendar scheduling, writing space, photo gallery, and so much more. It’s everything we need in just one place.

And Easyship has been great in enabling us to get reduced shipping to our customers all over the world!

What is the best piece of advice you’ve received, as a female founder?

Asking yourself: “What’s the worst thing that could happen?”

This forced me to define my fear instead of letting my imagination consume me. It was especially useful at the start, when I had to take a leap of faith and start this business during my gap year, right before going to university. The worst thing that could have happened was losing life savings and wasting one year of my life.

After defining it, I was pretty sure that I could earn back the money in my lifetime and even take on part-time jobs during the gap year to fund the venture. Plus, the year would not be a waste, given the different experiences that I would go through in starting the business.

But the feeling of regret [if I had not gone through with it] is something that cannot be undone. In the end, I concluded that there were limited downsides and unlimited upsides to starting my own business. Thus, I took the leap.

2. Clare Chan, co-founder and managing director of Her Velvet Vase

Clare Chan / Photo credit: Her Velvet Vase

Clare and Magdalene Chan founded fashion ecommerce company Her Velvet Vase in 2007, when the sisters were still in their teens. Since then, the company has grown significantly, expanding beyond ecommerce into physical outlets and the business-to-business space in New York.

What was the toughest challenge you faced on your journey as an entrepreneur and how did you overcome it?

I used to struggle with managing a team, and sometimes I still wonder if I’m doing it right. I also used to feel like I was stumbling everywhere with being a leader and wished I had experience or at least some sort of template to learn from.

But I’ve come to realize that there isn’t a template for this journey. It’s double-edged because it’s terrifying that there isn’t just one template to fall back on, but the beauty of it is that you get to build your own template.

I’ve also learned that while we’d like to control many things, the only thing that we really can control is ourselves, our thoughts, and our reactions.

If we’re clear about our values and surround ourselves with people who have the same values, replace being hurt and reactive or defensive with being curious, and ask why and learn to view things from a second or third perspective instead of taking things personally, we end up taking out the emotions. And in its place, we begin to form clarity, openness, and the foundation to becoming better and stronger.

What tech solutions or services have helped you in your business so far?

With Aspire, our team is managing our business finances end to end via a single banking platform, from expense management to remittances and team budgeting.

We also love the marketing and SaaS cashback options on the Aspire corporate card. The savings go back into the business, and [we also save] on foreign transfers since most of our suppliers are based overseas.

What advice do you have for female founders who are starting out on their journeys?

There’s so much merit in inexperience, yet so many of us – myself included – assume that it’s a disadvantage to us. The beauty of it is, it’s precisely because of this inexperience that you end up innovating.

Liz Wiseman’s book Rookie Smarts puts it across beautifully: When you’re forced to create something and you don’t know how to do it, you go out and you ask.

That’s really when the most powerful form of learning comes about, when you’re desperate and have no choice but to learn. The learning curve is the steepest because you’re desperate and uncomfortable, but it’s also during this time that you end up creating and recreating your own boundaries on your own terms.

3. Sandhya Sriram, co-founder and CEO of Shiok Meats

Shiok Meats’ founding duo, Sandhya Sriram (right) and Ka Yi Ling / Photo credit: Shiok Meats

Sandhya Sriram is what some would call a serial entrepreneur, having established three businesses to date, including a biotech and healthcare news website and an edtech and events firm. She started her latest venture, Shiok Meats, in 2018, growing crustacean meat in a lab using stem cell technology. The startup’s ultimate goal is to develop a more environmentally friendly means of meat production.

Why did you decide to start Shiok Meats?

I am a stem cell scientist by education and training, and a vegetarian by choice, mainly due to environmental and ethical reasons. Hence, I put my passion for science and love for food together to start a company that produces meat and seafood using stem cells.

What was the toughest challenge you faced on your journey as an entrepreneur and how did you overcome it?

Every day is a challenge for an entrepreneur, isn’t it? I’ve faced numerous challenges, right from getting investments and funding, talent and hiring to technology, finding a lab space, and so on. But I’m very resilient and strong-minded. When you decide to be an entrepreneur, you need to be ready to face challenges on a daily basis.

What advice do you have for female founders who are starting out on their journeys?

Just go for it. There is never a perfectly good time to start a company. Go ahead and keep your head held high.

Currency converted from Singapore dollars to US dollars: US$1 = S$1.33

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