Entrepreneur Hugo Angelmar shares his views on Singapore as a destination for new start-ups. Some particularly astute views given the relatively short amount of time he has spent here. No platitudes, sycophancy or motherhood statements here. I found this paragraph particularly good:
Singapore has made the news in the US and Europe as providing a large amount of startup capital to young upstarts. This has made available a flurry of grants of $50,000SGD to a number of fresh graduates (or still in school) students with no experience to build and launch a product to market. Empirically, Singapore hasn’t had any global tech startups (ignoring the surprising story of Creative). Social Wok and Home Camera might be considered exceptions (and where started by experienced individuals) given the overwhelming amount of individuals I’ve seen with their “Founders” or “Directors” business cards of companies. This easy access to funding has diluted the labor market for entrepreneurial people among small projects of 1-2 people.
And found this particularly telling:
A friend who did some recruitment while at Motorola a few years ago complained that 80% of the candidates they interviewed couldn’t code a program in C to determine if a number was odd or even.
Entrepreneurs, investors and government need to take note.
Though agreeing with almost everything he says, I do think there have been a few more Singapore-based successes than he realises (though definitely no world-beaters) and there are a few potential future successes waiting in the wings.
Link: Structural Market Deficiency or “How Do I Scale Our Team”
Comments