Singapore’s Vertex Ventures is investing a tidy sum in community building

Vertex Ventures is one of Singapore’s largest venture capital firms with US$1.3 billion under management. It’s a subsidiary of the government’s sovereign wealth fund Temasek, and had an early bite at Grab, arguably Southeast Asia’s hottest startup. Yet it isn’t satisfied with its branding.

“It has offices from Israel to Singapore, India and the US, yet it’s virtually unknown [outside of Singapore],” says Anh Minh Do, the firm’s new director of communications, with a candidness that’s rare in this part of the world. “In fact, that’s a problem we see across different venture capital firms here.”

To fix that, Vertex will pump out content in an attempt to become a thought leader among venture capital firms, says Minh, a Vietnamese-American and San Francisco native who was previously an editor and writer at Tech in Asia.

A full circle

Its outreach will also have an offline element called Technopreneur Circle (Tech Circle), which will consist of a coworking space and events both large and small.

Minh, as a prominent community organizer in the Vietnamese startup scene, finds himself in familiar territory – albeit in the new country he now calls home.

But, given the glut of content, activities, gatherings, and coworking spaces in Singapore, how does Vertex separate itself from the pack?

“We have the government connection, the financial connection. If you look at our chairman Teo Ming Kian, you’ll realize that. We may have an easier time bringing in different people that are big in the ecosystem to come out and speak and do maybe even smaller workshops,” says Minh.

It’s no empty boast. Ming Kian is a prominent civil servant who is the chairman of MediaCorp, Singapore’s largest television and radio broadcaster. He was the permanent secretary (the highest position attainable by a civil servant, short of public office) for the National Research Foundation.

No horsing around

Old logo (left) versus new.

While Vertex has ambitions to be a global powerhouse, Tech Circle will remain a Singapore-first program for now, with the country serving as a test bed.

The venture capital firm’s ultimate goal is for Tech Circle to draw innovators into the region, so if the experiment works out, an expansion could follow rapidly.

Yet it seems pretty committed to this project, having dedicated to it a team and a substantial annual budget, though it doesn’t want to publicly disclose the amount.