Youths are holding back Singapore’s startup scene

By Looi Qin En, voluntary intern at The HUB Singapore. This is an edited version of the original letter. The opinions expressed in this article belong to him and do not represent The HUB Singapore.

Statement from The Hub Singapore (2 July):

As a startup that believes in innovation, The HUB Singapore has side projects in the prototype stage – projects that need innovating, maturity and traction before they become endorsed programs of The HUB. As a strong proponent of innovation through collaboration, we encourage youth who show leadership and entrepreneurial qualities to take lead in trying the many projects incubating in our community.

Qin En is one of these interns who are looking at developing an internship matching program as a value add service for our members and his pet project (we don’t charge for this as it is still a fledgling product). While many of his personal viewpoints and observations have some sound truth to them, we as the HUB team take a different position in our outlook in our role in helping to shape the startup ecosystem in Singapore. More specifically, we are optimistic about the role of youth in changing the face of business and impact. In fact, young people are our biggest bet on who future system changers would be.

Hence, this is to clarify that while the author is a bright young man, he is new to the business world himself and is learning as he goes along. While we may not see eye to eye with Qin En on his opinions, we support his right to voice his observations and initiate dialogue. We apologize on his behalf for his less than ideal language, but do want to encourage feedback and inputs on innovating how we look at internship from both sides, and having the comfort to hold the ambiguous space in between, as we continue to shape Singapore’s startup ecosystem.

Qin En’s article:

Singapore’s youths. Image: YOG Singapore

Over the past three months, I have been matching youths to startups as the founder and director of the HUB Internship Program (an initiative under The HUB Singapore). Now that the university summer vacations are ending, I finally have the chance to reflect.

And it hit me: Singaporean youths are not accelerating nor strengthening our startup ecosystem. Instead, they are inhibiting our growth.

Our youths do not have market-relevant skills and experiences to do their job.

As I statistically reviewed the 60-odd applications for internships at The HUB’s startups (primarily from local university undergraduates) , I was taken aback by the mismatch between what youths think they are capable of and what they really are.

23 interns indicated they were interested in business development internships, focusing on growth strategies, forming partnerships, developing spin-off ideas, and so on. Yet in our interactions through CVs and interviews, less than ten of them actually had prior experiences or relevant skills to help startups grow.

A handful of them even had no idea what business development was, and chose it because it sounded the most lucrative amongst other categories of internships such as design or tech. And these were no average-grade-students. They were top scorers in their JCs or Polytechnics and had GPAs of 4.0+ (on a scale of 5.0).

This candid opinion is echoed by 30 startups who requested for interns through us. At the HUB Internship Program, we focus on headhunting, reviewing and shortlisting intern-wannabes but our filter is the applicant’s motivation for a startup internship.