Comments on: Entrepreneurship: Stockholm vs Singapore

By: Ramkumar

Ramkumar — Thu, 31 May 2007 22:51:14 +0000

Creative Technology as a mentor was pretty hilarious. No, you don’t want *them* as a mentor.

By: sriram

sriram — Fri, 01 Jun 2007 07:38:49 +0000

Couldn’t really think of any other Singaporean ‘tech’ company that took off apart from these two…..Sad.

By: tzz

tzz — Fri, 01 Jun 2007 11:24:52 +0000

The capital partners you’ve listed are all huge players and would probably not mind an investment in the right company, whether that company was based in Singapore or Europe.

What is more important for startups is the presence of seed funding where you, in Sweden, have players like Chalmers Innovation, iqube, RP Ventures etc who invest in very early stages. You then move on to companies like Creandum, KTH Seed and finally to eg. NorthZone, Innovationskapital who are still smaller players than the ones you’ve listed.

By: sriram

sriram — Fri, 01 Jun 2007 12:29:31 +0000

That’s actually a very good point Tomasz. I think the availability of early venture funding is more important. Thanks for bringing it up. I will be adding this.

By: ruiwen

ruiwen — Fri, 01 Jun 2007 20:25:49 +0000

On the other hand, the culture to want to create is also very important.. which I find a little lacking in Singapore..but the situation seems to be improving lately..

By: Agagooga

Agagooga — Sun, 03 Jun 2007 03:57:21 +0000

Most entrepreneurial ventures and startups fail, so if you’re not willing to risk your asset values disappearing, your apartment being worth a fraction of what it is, your jobs being in peril, your security at risk and your women becoming maids in other people’s countries, foreign workers you’re not going to become an entrepreneur. Ditto for a people as a whole.

By: bjorn

bjorn — Sun, 03 Jun 2007 14:51:56 +0000

so what malaysian entrepreneurial organization do you know that focus on web2? =)

to add on to the tech mentors part, i will arguable include hardwarezone.com which was the most high profile sole survivor from the web 1.0 bust and commands users in the multi-million range across Southeast Asia. Sadly, its pitiful exit valuation certainly is no inspiring story.

By: Soqcrates

Soqcrates — Sun, 03 Jun 2007 17:12:00 +0000

I thought Singapore was pretty good with early stage financing support? There is the SEEDS programme run by EDB, and NUS Venture support. Both provide start-up funding. Is it a case of insufficient outreach I wonder.

By: sriram

sriram — Mon, 04 Jun 2007 08:55:57 +0000

@bjorn: I am not aware of any yet! But the options are:

1) Contact a local university. Get a group of students to co-organise the event with you.

2) Contact malaysian tech bloggers and ask them how the scene is and they could help you organise it as well.

@Soqcrates: I havn’t heard of the seeds programme…is this new?

@bjorn: hardwarezone.com? Havn’t heard of them. Their site looks, crap! what do they do and how much were they valued for? what happened to the founders?

By: Soqcrates

Soqcrates — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 11:15:28 +0000

The Seeds Programme has been around since 2001, so I can’t say its that new. By far, around 150+ start-ups have been invested into, although the EDB only does a one-for-one fund matching (you still need to find other investors to put money into your venture)

http://www.edb.gov.sg/edb/sg/en_uk/index/our_services/startups/financing/startup_enterprise.html

Just last year, a few Business Angel Funds were created, co-funded by government. Mustard SEED BAF, BAF Spectrum and Sirius BAF.

I think probably publicity is the issue here

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By: Remi

Remi — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 18:03:11 +0000

Greatings from Belgium.