Singapore Entrepreneurs

A recent conversation with a starting out entrepreneur recently illustrates some prevailing attitudes of young entrepreneurs in Singapore. If you have found a start-up and it has a product which others might want, what’s the likely scenario for you? The first option is to maintain your position to move on with the product and company. The second option is to license the product to another company or other interested parties. Finally, the last option is to sell the company. So, what is the implication as to why most people don’t succeed with their first startup? [ Read More ]

Lately I have spent some time to continue my learning by listening to podcast from the ITunes Stanford University. The series “Stanford Technology Ventures Program” and “Business Leaders and Entrepreneurs” will be of interest to those who want to know more about the trials and tribulations of both investors and entrepreneurs. I found some interesting lessons on customer service and what it means to be an entrepreneur from Tina Seelig (Executive Director for the Stanford Technology Ventures Program) and Greg Ballard (Glu Mobile). [ Read More ]

Sometime back, I was in Shanghai on a conference. During that trip, I asked a Singaporean friend (who has been working there for at least two years) to tell me more about the business culture and what are the rising industries there. He told me that the Singaporeans are better in the education sector as compared to the other sectors in Shanghai. In his opinion, Singaporean business men did not do so well against businesses from Hong Kong and Taiwan, particularly in the food and beverages industry. [ Read More ]

Continue resident contributor, Cobalt Paladin’s story of his take of the Art Of The Start: Part 1 with Part 2. He shares his personal experiences in trying to get customers near the beginning of his entrepreneurial venture. [ Read More ]

Every entrepreneur has his or her own spark when an idea turned up on their doorstep. A lot of people usually get the idea phase, but stop short of going into the implementation or make it happen phase. Our resident contributor, Cobalt Paladin shares his perspective on how he got hold of his initial idea and decided to take the plunge as an entrepreneur. [ Read More ]

Yesterday (7.7.7), I attended the National Youth Entrepreneurship Conference in NUS Business School organized by the Exoro team. Other than giving a talk on “Meeting Strangers 101″, I also sat on a panel with Ron Sim (CEO and Founder of OSIM), Douglas Abrams (Venture Capitalist), Aileen Sim (Founder, First Meta) and Min Xuan (the incoming NUS Entrepreneurship Society President), moderated by Darius Cheung (CEO of TenCube). While listening to the other panelists and consolidating my own thoughts, I summarize a few interesting points on the challenges faced by the next generation of entrepreneurs in Singapore. [ Read More ]

Our resident contributor, Brian Ling offers his thoughts on entrepreneurship as a mindset. In his article, he discusses why even as an employee, you can still be resourceful and entrepreneurial. He breaks it down into three simple lessons here for you. [ Read More ]

An interesting comment from one of our readers Encik Wan prompted me to write this post. In particular, my personal view resonates with his point to the author of this post, where I quote this important point about people talking about entrepreneurship: (his advice to the author) after bashing Asian entrepreneurs for a few more months, may be the person should consider to create/gather materials for Asian entrepreneurs to succeed in Asia markets. So, I offer five perspectives on how one can map ideas free of charge (without joining any dumb MLM process) from the west to the east and hopefully convince you that entrepreneurship is a positive endeavour. [ Read More ]

There is perhaps still a prevalent white superiority complex in the world: more prominent in developing nations, less perhaps in Singapore, but arguably still very much in existent in a developed country like ours - even if Singaporeans/Chinese/Japanese/Asians have proven themselves to be comparable if not better than the West in certain technological areas which are usually considered to be the benchmark of superiority. Why then, do we still retain a certain feeling of being inferior to the West? Resident contributor, whysgentrepreneurssuck speaks about (our) the tendency to look up to the West, perhaps much more than we should. [ Read More ]

What should come first, a good venture capital scene ready to fund risky new ventures or an entrepreneur who can do a million dollar venture by bootstrapping rather than raising funds? Our resident contributor, whysgentrepreneurssuck, offers some perspective on how entrepreneurs need to break free of the naysayers and cynics in order to be ready for the start of a great enterprise.

[ Read More ]