Where no Singapore startup has gone before

Boon Kgim (far left) and Wilson (left) posing with Alejandro Barrera, co-founder of Tetuan Valley (bottom).

Investors have complained that many Singapore startup founders lack ambition (read here and here). That certainly doesn’t apply to Wilson Toh (second from left) and Khur Boon Kgim (far left), co-founders of Connaxion, an online website building tool that aims to be simpler to use than Blogger, but with the same community-building emphasis of Meetup.

Currently, they have a working prototype, and are hard at work seeing their baby to delivery by August 2011.

Hard to imagine that just two months ago, they had almost nothing to show for their product. That changed after they set foot in Barcelona, Spain, for the Tetuan Valley Startup School — an intensive six-week programme where would-be entrepreneurs must conceive an idea at the beginning and develop a working prototype by the end.

Joining a local incubator was not ambitious enough for them — they sought many opportunities overseas and applied for as many of them as they could. Their interview for Tetuan Valley was done through Skype, and they impressed organizers enough get placed in the program. They were selected from more than 100 applicants.

“Our extra motivation for signing up was actually the Startupbootcamp in Madrid. We were hoping to build some relationships and find out more about the environment there, since both the boot camp and Tetuan Valley were handled by the same organization,” says Wilson.

Startupbootcamp is an accelerator programme that is affiliated to the famed Techstars, a mentorship-driven seed stage investment fund.

They were not selected in the end, however, but they plan to try again. The signs are encouraging — they made the top 20 before being eliminated.

“We received feedback that our product didn’t gain enough traction. Once we take care of that, I’d say our chances would be much better.”

Perhaps the Startup School might be a stepping stone to propel them towards being funded by Techstars.

Presentations during the Pitch Day.

After settling down in Barcelona, they soon found themselves buried deep in coding. Successful European entrepreneurs and investors would come in every week to mentor different groups on the various components of starting a business. There were also pitching sessions each week where teams had to demonstrate solid progress, as well as brainstorming sessions where ideas were bounced off each other.

“Most of the groups were from Spain or Germany, so they found us quite novel,” says Wilson.