Singapore is long time being considered as a perfect place for living and investing given its beautiful environment, warmly climate, well-polished legal system and well-known richness. Its government is relatively young and open-minded. They like to take new challenges and embrace new technologies. It's the first country to open its government data to the world online. Many of you may consider that Singapore would be a perfect place for you to start your next startup.
But the truth may disappoint you. Singapore is not the ideal place for startups, especially for Internet startups. In this post, we will try to cover different aspects for a startup to emerge and survive and grow to prove that Singapore needs to do more to attract startups.
Market
For a product or service to succeed, you have to have the market which needs your product and service. Especially if you are starting a business online, you need to get the visitors. Singapore is a rich country and its people have strong buying power, It's easy for you to sell your product and service. But its population base is quite small, it has only 5.5 million people as of 2015. This number is quite small for a startup to plot its growth graph and it will severely reduces the capability to secure big investment.
Although Singapore is surrounded by a few other countries which may be potential extended markets if the business succeeds in Singapore, for example, Indonesia is in the south of Singapore and it has a population of 259.6 million as of now which may be a huge market. The problem is that these neighboring countries have different backgrounds. The infrastructure construction in these countries is quite poor as compared to Singapore and their people are not that rich as well. So if a startup wants to expand in these countries, the cost of expansion will roar as it needs to help build the necessary infrastructure such as network. In some places in Indonesia, Vietnam, people are still using handphones from pre-iPhone era and they have very low network speed. It's very difficult for them to access your product or service.
One advantage is that you may face little or no competition here if you are really starting to run a startup.
People
Singapore is a country with high living standard and high living cost. You need to pay much higher salaries to your developers compared to those in China or India. But the truth is the companies here are not willing to pay that high salary to their developers. Hence more and more students go to study business and go to banks after graduation. This results in an rather embarrassing phenomenon that it's difficult for companies to hunt the qualified developers for them.
Talented people in this region who are interested in IT are rather willing to go to Silicon Valley or some other places even though Singapore is nearer to their hometown. Due to the above, the tech community in Singapore is not as active as other places such as Silicon Valley and Beijing. Without these people to build your expected-to-be-great products or service, then you will not catch people's eyes in the first place.
Investment
Given the shortcomings above, investors are cautious when they decide whether to invest a startup in Singapore. Although these angels may invest you, you need not expect too much. At the beginning of the startup, money is the key to keep the startup moving.
Yes, the government is advocating for innovation and has programs to assist the startups. For example, the SPRING scheme aims for helping Singapore enterprises grow and building trust in Singapore products and services. But the fund you can get is limited, for SPRING, you can get maximum S$50,000. This is quite small as compared to millions needed for a startup.
In addition, the government doesn't provide much help on other issues startups concern such as legal issue consultation, startup advice etc. It seems you need to take your own fate after you receive the money and the government doesn't care whether you live or die.
Conclusion
The culture of startup is not existing in Singapore yet. It takes time to build the whole ecosystem, including market, people, policy etc. If you are serious about your startups, please be cautious with the place you start it.
