Hanging Out With Danny Tan Of Foound

Not for the faint hearted: Before starting Foound, Danny Tan applied for credits cards from almost all the major banks in Singapore so that he could be ensured of an operating credit of a few tens of thousands if the need ever arose. Luckily for them, there has been no need to draw on this credit line just yet.

Heard much about Foound after their successful outing at Echelon 2010 but are still clueless as to who are the people drivers behind the company? This interview brings to you Danny’s personal narrative of the foound team and his personal entrepreneurial journey thus far.

At The Begining

How did you guys get the company started? It seems to be in part a collaboration between COMA (Aen) and yourself – perhaps you could explain the mechanics of your working relationship?

Foound contracted COMA to do design and branding work, but we had such a great time working together that we decided Aen should join foound full-time.

In starting up foound, did your team obtain seed funding/get angel investors? If so, how did foound approach potential investors?

Foound is funded by SPRING Singapore’s YES! Startups Grant when we first started. It is a S$50,000 one to four matching grant so I put up the requisite S$12,500 myself. I basically emptied my savings for this, and had to borrow money from friends just to get by. We are also immensely indebted to SMU’s Institute of Innovation and Entrepreneurship for supporting us during our grant application process, and for subsequently providing us with a great incubation space. SMU is a great partner to foound and everyone at the office is genuinely supportive of start-up activities.

Risk taking is a necessary part of entrepreneurship.. the faster you realize that as an entrepreneur, the better your chances of success

One other thing I did just before I started foound was also to apply for credit cards from almost all the major banks in Singapore, so that I knew that if the time ever comes, I had an operating credit of a few tens of thousands I could tap on. While we have been lucky enough not to have needed this credit, I think in general this is a great way to bootstrap, and also keep yourself on your toes when it comes to managing expenses. Some people might think this is crazy, and obviously I won’t recommend everyone to do the same, but then again I feel that risk taking is a necessary part of successful entrepreneurship, and the faster you realise that as an entrepreneur, the better your chances of success.

What are the individual strengths that Aen and yourself feel bring to the team and how do your skill sets complement each other?

Aen is extremely creative and pays lots of attention to details. He has an unmatched intuition as to what looks and feels good to the users, and can translate that into product. I drive the team in terms of product direction and strategy, and also run biz dev and marketing. Besides the 2 of us, there are other members of the team who each play a critical role. I think this is our main strength, that while we are both extremely opinionated, we are willing to trust each other to make decisions. Basically, we believe that if 2 people always agree, one of them is redundant. However as a team, once we make a collective decision, everyone sticks by it and there is no second guessing.