Wanted: S’poreans to develop the next YouTube or Skype. Can it be done?

So, the fifty million dollar question above will start to get most of us thinking. Oftentimes, we lament about our situation. Is it really true that we are not ready to make a company like YouTube or Skype in Singapore? How far are we from seeing the first successful company in the web 2.0 era? Our resident contributor and co-founder of Entrepreneur27, Justin Lee talks about the pros and cons on jumpstarting a success web 2.0 (not 3.0) story in Singapore and compares the infrastructure between Singapore and Silicon Valley.

Yesterday, Second Minister for Information, Communication and the Arts, Dr Vivian Balakrishnan said at the World Econmic Forum (WEF) in Davos that, “Singapore needs to attract individuals with bright ideas who can develop the next YouTube or the next Skype.”

Very interesting article to be plastered on the front page of our national newspaper of record, the Straits Times. Sounds like a call for participation?

The article then goes on to quote Dr Balakrishnan, acknowledging that, “The key thing is that the biggies are all coming from small groups of individuals with a bright idea. For us to get our share, we need to be able to attract some people with ideas and give them a launch pad to develop these ideas and plug into a global market… Singapore’s EDB prescription has been to attract MNCs and the refinement now is that we are also working as individuals.”

He then goes on to cite the case of Sim Wong Hoo’s Creative (ahem, again!) saying that, “The fact that Singapore created a sound standard shows that an invididual hiding in some corner, given half a chance, can make a global difference.”

Mind you, that was a case study from 20 years ago — before I even started to use computers. Mr Sim never went to University. He was what we would consider a ‘poly’ (polytechnic) guy. He stuck it out and has since made big money. But my point is that we seem to lack new heroes post-Mr Sim.

I respect Dr Balakrishnan for acknowledging that our country’s legislative and public policy framework would also have to evolve and keep up with the rapidly changing world of interactive and digital media. It is great to know that our Government acknowledges that more needs to be done. And recently, they seem to be quite “on the ball” too. Which is very interesting to see.

For a start, the Government is making the right moves in acknowledging that change has to begin from our schools. The Media Development Authority (MDA) has some interesting initiatives coming up under their i.Rock initiative which addresses that.

As of now, I don’t know enough specifics about their initiatives to make a comment. But I’d like to share with you what I think about this call for participation: to get Singaporeans to develop the next YouTube or Skype.

What I’d like to do is to consider the pros and the cons of doing something in Singapore. I’ll begin with the pros then the cons. Of course this is my very own opinion so please feel free to differ.

As an entrepreneur, it’s quite important to look beyond the hype and try to understand it at a more pragmatic level since you’re probably gambling with your own career. I’m not sure if I’m that qualified to give advice but I’ll share my thoughts:

The Bad:

a. Creative Technology is a nice entrepreneurial story but it doesn’t really connect with the young generation anymore. We didn’t get anywhere with Web 1.0 (probably only Interwoven, but it’s based in Sunnyvale) and we are nowhere on the radar with Web 2.0. It’s quite a tough to bring up new heroes when there haven’t been any right?