News Stop: 10 Jan 2005

“A Board to consolidate help for SMEs?” is written by Lee U-Wen and published in Today Online dated 10 Jan 2006.

From the first look of the article, I felt that the move is a timely one. I support the recommendation of building a board to consolidate help for SMEs. Let me put a supporting argument to this article with a specific reference towards technology startups. Taking politics aside, the government has placed a lot of resources in building infrastructure to spur the creation of small-medium enterprises. However, the issue is whether other of these enterprises can survive. In the case of a technology startup, where it requires initial investment from investors, the startup also requires other services around.

I see that there are three important things for the infrastructure in a technology cluster. They are namely, banking, accounting and legal services. Actually, there are such services around but not all entrepreneurs know about them. For example, going to the clinics organized by the Intellectual Property Office, Singapore. Actually, the big law firms should try to harnass the niche market of SMEs rather than moving for just the MNCs. Let me give an example, the technology cluster in MIT has strong support from a big legal firm named Taylor Wessing. Perhaps, one of the big local law firms should think about enter into this market. Accounting services are not expensive, but most entrepreneurs forgot about that until the first year when they need to submit an annual report to the authorities. Financial services remain to be one of those which is difficult to consolidate.

What are your thoughts in this issue? Please feel free to drop them here.

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