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*