Stumble it! 
Based on my observations and experience. I am sure most of you have other opinions. I would love to hear it.
Smart students
- Stockholm -> Entrepreneurship, Banking, Consulting, Engineering, Research. .
- Singapore -> Banking, Consulting, Research. .
Environment
- Stockholm - Plenty of startups, so little entrepreneurship events
- Singapore - Plenty of entrepreneurship events, so little startups
Peers or mentors
- Stockholm: Kazaa, Skype, Pirate Bay, Spotify . . . .
- Singapore: Singapore Airlines, Creative Technology . . .
Neighbours
Access to €€€€€€
- Europe: Index Ventures, Nordic Venture Partners, Advent Venture Partners, Investor AB . . .
- Singapore: ??
[Update]
Early stage (seed) funding
- Stockholm - STING, iQube, SSE Business Labs . . .
- Singapore - NUS Venture Support, SEEDS?
I want to believe things are slowly changing. I think Malaysian, Singaporean, Indonesian entrepreneurial organisations should work hand in hand to create more awareness at a regional level. Individually, they’re too small to have a significant impact but together, they can form a closely knit entrepreneurship community to propel further innovation and growth.
For example, local Singaporean entrepreneuship organisations can rope in students to help organise a web 2.0 conference in either Jakarta or Kuala Lumpur. It’s a win win situation I think. For one, Jakarta/KL gets introduced to a growing phenomena and the Singaporean organisations expand their networks.
Creative Technology as a mentor was pretty hilarious. No, you don’t want *them* as a mentor.
Comment by Ramkumar — June 1, 2007 @ 12:51 am
Couldn’t really think of any other Singaporean ‘tech’ company that took off apart from these two…..Sad.
Comment by sriram — June 1, 2007 @ 9:38 am
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.
Comment by tzz — June 1, 2007 @ 1:24 pm
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.
Comment by sriram — June 1, 2007 @ 2:29 pm
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..
Comment by ruiwen — June 1, 2007 @ 10:25 pm
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.
Comment by Agagooga — June 3, 2007 @ 5:57 am
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.
Comment by bjorn — June 3, 2007 @ 4:51 pm
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.
Comment by Soqcrates — June 3, 2007 @ 7:12 pm
@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?
Comment by sriram — June 4, 2007 @ 10:55 am
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
Comment by Soqcrates — June 5, 2007 @ 1:15 pm
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Greatings from Belgium.
Comment by Remi — January 17, 2008 @ 8:03 pm