www.whysgentrepreneurssuck.com

Finally, after several hours of setup, I’ve completed the migration to the new domain.

Pop on over and have a look! This will be the last post on my wordpress.com instance of the blog. I kindly ask all blogs which have linked to my entries, to edit the linkages to point to my new site instead.

Blog Migration

I decided to take the plunge last night, registered www.whysgentrepreneurssuck.com and signed up with SeaStarNet. I thought I was going to keep whysgentrepreneurssuck on wordpress.com and keep it indie, but your words of encouragement (and criticisms) have motivated me to bring this to the next level.

The package I took out is actually really impressive – 3GB with unmetered bandwidth and free domain for life, at only S$8.95 a month! Go check it out guys~

I gotta head out soon, but man, I can’t wait to come home and set up WordPress 2.1 on my new domain.

Stay tuned!

Innovation that’s hot and cool, all at once

Every now and then, our little island throws us a curveball – this time round, the curveball came in the form of a simple innovation that completely bowled me over.

You might have heard about Mr. Philip Lee, founder of local start-up Omega Thermal, who recently won the Singapore Environment Council-Senoko Power Green Innovations Award at the Green Summit Awards. If you have not, pop by Channelnewsasia for the full article.

Mr. Philip Lee began his business installing solar panels for residential and industrial clients. Three years on, the company releases the S$2,500 Heating Ventilation and Aircon (HVAC) system, a product that uses waste heat from any chiller system (air-conditioning, ice chiller) to make hot water. How very simple but effective.

For the purpose of evaluating Omega Thermal and HVAC for my HOT or NOT category of posts, here are my comments and observations:

• 8/10 for realising that his previous market (landed houses and industrial buildings) would have presented serious growth challenges to his sales – countless other ‘entrepreneurs’ would be perfectly happy to own a business and pocket the steady cashflow that it brings in.
• 8/10 for having the foresight to change strategy and target the air-conditioning in high-rise apartments instead.
• 10/10 for coming up with such a simple but elegant innovation that recycles waste heat, and actually pulling off the engineering.
• 9/10 for winning the award – the award can be a multiplier to his marketing efforts, and help Omega Thermal build mindshare among their potential clients and channel partners.
• 1/10 for taking 3 years to refine the product. I don’t know if HVAC has competing products elsewhere in the world, but heck, a lot can happen in 3 years!
• 3/10 for the existing high cost of the unit. With most high-rise apartments being public HDB flats, and S$2,500 per HVAC versus S$400 for a conventional heater, Mr. Lee will probably need to undertake more R&D to lower costs, while at the same time work out a flexible financing or leasing scheme for apartment owners.
• 2/10 for what I think is a not-too-high barrier to entry. Unless Omega Thermal can file a patent for HVAC while continuing to improve upon its cost and efficiency, as well as diversify its product line AND expand into the regional, if not global market, equivalent competitors can easily emerge and grab market share (globally or regionally, not so much in Singapore).

The verdict? Omega Thermal and HVAC shows promise in capturing the local market, but will need to work a lot harder to gain a foothold overseas. Averaging the above scores gives us…

HOT or NOT
Official rating: 5.85/10

Because our men and women get hitched too young, and more!

I read with much chagrin an article in today’s Today *plays canned laughter*, titled “Cupid just a click away”. Loh Chee Kong reports on the spurt of startups that are trying to bear the mantle of SDU’s match-making efforts. Some 30 new services have sprouted up in the last 5 months alone:

• iFoundaries “Who works around you?” – an online dating portal for white-collared singles. Think “Who lives near you?“. Secured S$141,000 in seed funding from SDU’s Partner Connection Fund. To be unveiled this July.
• Singles Mingle – taking care of a couple’s needs from the first date till they say “I do” *another PORTAL – what a bore!*.
• GoMovieDate.com – online match-making for blind dates at the movies! Mr. Matthew Tan (director) says, “Our website helps them to do sweet little things like send chocolates or flowers after the movie date.” *erm…how very thoughtful of GoMovieDate.com*
• Lunch Actually – match-making through lunch dates. *interesting…maybe I should sign up myself*

I say chagrin, because I believe the success of entrepreneurship in S’pore can be partially attributed to the number of singles we have. Don’t get me wrong! I’m perfectly cool with entrepreneurs having boyfriends and girlfriends. It’s just that most Singaporean girls (or their parents) start getting fidgety if you don’t marry them before 30. You’re then expected to take up a housing loan and buy public housing, or if you happen to marry a rich one, move into a condo at the very least. After a pompous wedding attended by all your pals and relatives, you’ll find yourself happily married to the love of your life, and saddled with housing and car loans. You stare glumly at your seriously-depleted bank balance, silently curse the S’pore government for getting their CPF and public housing schemes right, and kiss your personal seed capital and startup dreams goodbye for the next 1 or 2 decades. Five years on, your house is filled with the joyful sound of children, and you decide to upgrade to a larger apartment and give your family a better life, chucking your startup dreams and aspirations out of the window for good.

Unless your significant other shares your dreams, it’s gonna be reaaaaaal hard to bite the bullet and bear the risks of starting your own business or work for a startup.

Don’t you think our Civil Service sends us conflicting signals? On one hand, we have the Ministry of Community Development and Sports dangling big fat carrots to encourage couples to have kids. On the other, countless nameless public servants in statutory boards such as EDB, Spring S’pore, IE S’pore, IDA and MDA work their asses off to promote entrepreneurship and our SMEs.

Wake up Singapore! You can’t always have your cake and eat it too!

p.s.: A simple solution would be for the government to import entrepreneurs from around the world, and stop trying to encourage entrepreneurship amongst Singaporeans. Singaporeans can continue in their 9-6 jobs and receive a comfortable paycheck from the government or MNCs while they have loads of fun making babies. Leave all that entrepreneurship bullsh*t to them foreign talents yeah?

But you and I know the likelihood of such a policy being adopted is as likely to happen as Chiam See Tong becoming Prime Minister of Singapore. Besides, I’ve yet to make my first million as an entrepreneur!

Bah.

Because our Y-chromosome-carrying CEOs aren’t as ‘desirable’

I love TODAY – I leave home with a copy tucked under my arms, and proceed to devour it, regardless of whether I get a seat or stand the entire 45 minutes of my daily bus journey to work. When I do get a seat, I’m always struggling between reading the articles carefully and scanning them so I get to catch up on my sleep.

Which is why, it’s always nice to turn a page and catch sight of some eye candy – simple things like these go a long way towards perking up an otherwise-mundane morning. My daily dose of poison came in between pages 38 through 45 in today’s Today.

Extracted from TODAY Online

On the left, we have pretty Ponz Goo – she may be 35, but she certainly doesn’t look a day past 25 (at least in photos)! On the right, we have sassy Yenn Wong, who at 27 looks…well, 27 (okay I ran out of my wits here).

In addition to looking just fine, Ponz and Yenn are both CEOs of their respective businesses – Ponz founded and owns the Haach Spa and Wellness Chain, while Yenn runs JIA (a boutique hotel in HK) on top of her HK online gaming and Bangkok-based interior construction and furniture businesses. I couldn’t find any official statistics, but my hunch is that S’pore’s female CEOs are a minority amidst our male-dominated club of SME CEOs.

Which only serves to put the majority of S’pore’s male CEOs to greater shame! I cannot even begin to fathom showcasing our lot of generally undesirable male SME CEOs in a similar spread in the newspapers. For this year’s Budget, we heard how the Singapore Government wants to attract and nurture our pool of world-class SMEs. I think we’re quite some ways from achieving that, especially when our SME CEOs are short on the areas that really matter – competencies, ambition and mindset.

When you’re an SME, there’s a need for the CEO to serve multiple roles. Yet a lot of them can’t really master basic stuff like business planning, human resource planning, marketing, or financial analysis planning, much less complex topics like Level 5 leadership, creative incentives and employee compensation, and other complex Organisational Behaviour issues.

Certainly, you can hire people or outsource a large chunk of these, but where then is your value-add as the CEO, beyond the money and/or the idea? On top of that, some of our CEOs also lack that ambition or drive to bring their businesses to the next level. I hear stories of conservative CEOs who are keen on maintaining a particular lifestyle, and prefer not to take even the most calculated of risks with their businesses. A chunk of these folks refuse to look beyond the shores of Singapore, and instead are contented to live off the fat of government tenders.

Little wonder then for new chairman of Spring Singapore, Mr. Philip Yeo’s comments.

We cannot do the same SMEs as we have today, which are manufacturing, services and retail. We need to train the new generation of SMEs…it will be a different Spring.

Today, “New Spring chief to groom future CEOs”, 29 Mar ’07

My guess is that he’s given up on changing the ambitions and mindsets of the existing lot of underperforming SME CEOs, and will instead focus his energies on grooming an elite cadre of well-rounded scientists-cross-trained-as-businessmen scholars. I know I know; elite, cadre and scholars go hand in hand, but my English teacher once said repetition can be a form of emphasis!

If there’s ever a miracle worker in Singapore, it’s got to be Mr. Philip Yeo. The man with the golden touch has given us the National Computerisation Programme, a robust MNC landscape, Jurong Island, Biopolis, Fusionopolis and a bustling Life Sciences industry. Will he once again leave behind a wondrous legacy?

Or will our ailing SMEs be a harder nut to crack? Only time can tell.

Until Philip’s poster-boy/girl SME CEOs return to our shores in their shiny steeds, the majority of our SME CEOs will continue to remain…well…plain ‘undesirable’.

*wink*

IconnectE: S’pore’s very own LinkedIn?

I am both happy and sad, for the existence of this weblog has been validated once again by the lacklustre performance of our entrepreneurs.

On first glance, IconnectE (create your possibilities) appears to be Singapore’s very own LinkedIn. Yet, the more I toyed with it, the sadder I felt. Here’s why:

1. Site usability sucks. Registration takes way too long. Unlike LinkedIn (which allows phases of information input by the user), IconnectE forces you to go through the entire 3-page process of filling in your details and establishing your profile. It’s also a pain to have to press ctrl while scrolling down the long list of countries whose markets I have an interest in. Oops, an errant mouse click and I lose my previous selection. Layout and design still feels kinda dingy. Last but not quite the least, the site feels extremely sluggish *wants to strangle the site*.
2. Revenue model is suspect. With most netizens having gained immunity to online advertising, ads will bring in next-to-nothing in terms of bling. When I saw the cost of premium membership, I almost fell off my chair – S$180/year in exchange for extra events listings and gawd knows what other useless stuff (I can’t find the gawd-damn pricing page post-registration!). Who are they trying to kid man?
3. It’s a portal, stupid. How very…Singaporean, to do anything and everything in the form of portals. Don’t we have enough of those already, in the form of government portals? Must even our entrepreneurs join the government in the Incredible Portal Race, and create 6.5 million portals, one for every future citizen of Singapore? Har-de-har-har. Maybe then, we’ll have more portals than New Zealand has cows – 1 more item to go into the Guiness Book of Records eh?
4. It could have been so much more. The brainchild behind IconnectE does not appear to be in tune with the possibilities that can be offered by Web 2.0 (and beyond). Let me take this one step further and postulate that founder Jesse Ting is probably past 35, even 40 years of age. Some say we were created in the image of God. Others say within each of us are imprints of our parents. I say, IconnectE = good idea, sub-par execution. And don’t anyone give me the ‘it’s a beta’ excuse~
5. IconnectE is a Frankenstein - the baby of Jesse Ting (brains), Muu Consulting (advisory) and yolk design (grunt work). HMMMMMM…some digging into what Muu Consulting does, and I have the following hypothesis:

Jesse: I want to do a website to connect people and businesses, but I don’t know how or what!
Muu Consulting: Build a portal!
yolk design: *slogs and slogs*

IconnectE might still resonate with the local community who have yet to use LinkedIn…but I seriously doubt it’ll go very far regionally, much less globally.

The verdict?

HOT or NOT
Official rating: 1.0/10 (for effort)

Because S’pore doesn’t have smart $$$

Singapore is home to 160+ VC firms managing a total of S$X billion. Fact.

Singapore has a successful venture capital industry. Myth.

The truth of the matter is, out of these 160+ VCs, only a handful are known to be open to the idea of investing in Singapore start-ups. The majority raise and park their capital here and invest in India and China, because as one venture capitalist once told me, “the deal flow quantity and quality is just so much better.”

Whoever mooted the idea of using US$1.3b to attract venture capitalists to set up shop in Singapore (in the form of EDB’s Technopreneurship Investment Fund) in the hopes of completing the Singapore entrepreneurship puzzle could have been somewhat misguided. Bring the VCs and you’ll get your start-ups? HMMMMMM…I salute your spirit and intent, but not your methods.

Our venerable business angels don’t fare much better on the scorecard either. Most of Singapore’s angels made their wealth from traditional businesses, such as real estate or banking and finance. To most entrepreneurs, these angels continue to maintain their relevance, and more often than not have a tremendous impact on their F&B-or-what-have-you enterprises. Yet anecdotal evidence suggests Singaporean angels, by virtue of their poorer risk appetite, lack of domain knowledge and insistence on positive cash flow, have missed out on one of the largest slices of the entrepreneurial pie – technology innovation.

And so our government resorts to market-distorting policies to plug the funding gap in the ecosystem, through a co-investment model (in the form of SEEDS funding and Growth Financing) for start-ups. I say these are market-distorting, because public funds are being used as a means to lower the risks borne by VCs and angels, to incentivise them to invest in 2nd-tier start-ups in Singapore. The really good start-ups will have no problems securing access to capital – VCs and angels would be falling over their feet to stake a claim on them before you can say return-on-investment. The question all of us should raise then, is: “Is this the best/most effective and impactful use of public monies?”

Ok ok ok…hold your horses. Not all SEEDS-invested start-ups were 2nd-tier. These funding certainly give entrepreneurs a shot at proving John Fischer (the F in DFJ) wrong about Singapore.

I don’t believe Singapore will ever produce a world-class start-up in the next 20 years.

- John H. N. Fischer at Stanford GSB, when asked after a class about why DFJ stopped investing in Singapore

I don’t need to extol too much on the mega-high returns that start-ups are garnering in the Information economy and increasingly so, in the Attention economy. Singapore has wasted a good 5 years chasing the shadows of the dotcom boom, and it’s about time our nation’s leaders start taking a serious look at this, with a different eye. Your MNC-courting ways won’t work when it comes to nurturing world-class SMEs.

At the end of the day, it’s all about the team behind the start-up. Court the talent, and all the capital and wealth of the world will flow into Singapore.

When that day comes, I will gladly close this blog down. Until then however, the rest of you will have to put up with my endless tirade.