Singapore Entrepreneurs

Here is the 2nd part on my recent experience as a judge in a business plan competition. Of course, it is a good learning experience for me to see why some business plans fail. In fact, here is a known secret from investors. There is a very simple way to know which start-ups we do not want to invest. We decide by whether the entrepreneurs can provide us a realistic cashflow forecast on their start-ups. [ Read More ]

Last Friday, I was invited to be a judge for the finals of the NTU Business Plan Competition: Creative Lab. The competition was very well-organized and professional, reminiscent of the Peking University and MIT business plan competitions that are held strictly for students, staff and alumni within the university. Of course, every time when I turned up as a judge for the local business plan competitions in NUS, NTU and Insead, I learned something new. Here are the three interesting lessions (plus some of my counter-intuitive thoughts about what could have been done): (i) You should focus on what the position of your company product is the strongest, (ii) There is a distinction between “must have” and “will be good to have” and (iii) Please don’t take the investors as fools by showing us you can break even within a year. In a three part series, I will focus on the first point about core competency using a hypothetical idea. [ Read More ]

While startups struggle to gain some big of recognition, big companies get into trouble because of too much recognition sometimes. Resident contributor, wannapreneur, looks at such a conundrum. But such a problem is better than not having any marketing success, ain’t it? [ Read More ]

Did you know that Singapore has approximately 130,000 SMEs? Resident contributor, whysgentrepreneurssuck looks at the significance of the small-medium enterprises in Singapore to her economy. [ Read More ]

Here are some recommended entrepreneur reads for the day:

Why Valley VCs Are Like the Mob by Business 2.0 beta, gives you another perspective about how VCs can be counter-productive to your startups. The real question is to ask, why do you need money to fund your startup?

How to present to investors by Paul Graham, summarizes pretty well the principles behind presenting your ideas to investors.

Here are some recommended entrepreneur reads for the day:

“Founders at Work” by Guy Kawasaki: the article discusses about the new book “Founders at Work” by Jessica Livingston. The quotes by some founders in the post tell you that passion is more important than money.

STARTUP DREAMS? When should they end? by John Nesheim: There are some harsh realities about being a founder. The article also explores when the entrepreneur should start thinking about their exit.

Yesterday, an article “Govt agencies need to change” (Gracia Chang, 10 Feb 2007, Today Online) talks about the fall in the startup rate last year. Actually, the report came from the press release of the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) 2007. The actual report and data will be out in two weeks time. Hence, we write a short preliminary commentary to what has been announced last Friday in NUS by the GEM team, from NUS Entrepreneurship Centre. [ Read More ]

Recently, we have been receiving a lot of applications for the funding commissioned by MDA. There are good and bad ideas. Of course, some of them will be getting “No, I am sorry to inform you that….” from us. it should not mean to you that it is the end of the road if we don’t fund you. If you believe in your idea so much, you should continue the search for funding. Even better, try to do a startup without funding, like some of our resident contributors, Cobalt Paladin, Design Sojourn, Weichang, Der Shing and myself have done. Through a few correspondences and meeting some self-proclaimed and crappy “entrepreneurs”, I have set up a list of reasons why they don’t make the mark. I have also placed some notes in this post to tell people what kind of entries will end up in our rubbish bin. Here are three reasons why we are ready to reject them. (updated 5 Feb 2007) [ Read More ]

While working on a business, an entrepreneur may have to create partnerships with other people or companies for different purposes. Our resident contributor, Der Shing, one of our resident contributors and a local entrepreneur, presents a basic guide to provide some advice on how to pick, manage and leverage partnerships. [ Read More ]

Intrapreneurship refers to the creation of an innovative enterprise within an organization. Is it really possible in Asia, given the cultural factors such as hierarchy and adhering to the viewpoint of the collective community? Our resident contributor, Brian Ling aka Design Translator examines what the Asian viewpoint of intrapreneurship and offers some tips on how to become one in our fast paced changing Asian economy. [ Read More ]