Singapore's startup scene
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The government claim to support startups but actually they barely do anything. There is a Entrepreneur Visa but you need a serious amount of funding, proof of intellectual property (even patents), backing of a VC or incubator, and credibility in the industry to get it. And even then the visa granted is dependent on your startup making hires of local citizens at a certain rate per year, in line with revenues. The actual visa itself is also relatively short term, it is basically issued on 12 month periods which isn't really enough to provide assurance and stability to a startup director.
The culture here is all wrong. The culture here is to go to Uni, attaining 2 degrees is not uncommon, then get a boring job in a mega corporate. And then spend the rest of your life twiddling your thumbs, stabbing and getting stabbed in the back, etc etc, where the gossip often revolves around bullshit job title acronyms like VP, ED etc. That is just the life here. If you ain't working in a mega corp then you are a nobody. And that's not my opinion, I have many many friends here that tell me straight that that is how life is here.
There is also an issue that working in "I.T." in Asia is stereotyped also. It is perceived as a somewhat low skilled office job. Even if you are a top level super senior software developer, try explaining that and most people will still just file you under "I.T." in their minds and maintain a superiority complex over you if they work in a dead-end mega corp job dealing in Excel Spreadsheets all day every day.
If you work in an actual startup in SG you are "different". You are seen as abnormal, risky and even stereotyped as "not being good enough" to work in a mega corp.
When I first came here I was introducing myself as "working on my startup". Most people assumed, seriously, I was just being shy about explaining I was unemployed at that moment, and they wanted to quickly change the subject. Even after clarifying that it is indeed profit making and growing well. So yes, saying your working on a startup here is actually almost as bad as saying you are unemployed. I learnt a better way of doing self introductions very quickly here.
You forget that the EntrePass (the entrepreneur visa you speak of) requires investors/VCs from an approved list, all of which are Singaporean; and that even SEEDS funding requires a local investor. So if you're foreign, or even local but with foreign investors (like, say, a US VC), no funding. I talked to these investors and they either aren't investing or want to see 30k/month in revenue. I suspect people were buying themselves residencies with the EntrePass at a fraction of the investor visa amount so they made it ineffective as a visa.
On the visa side, I've seen a lot of people play some kind of musical chairs. The key is the local director, so you pay a few hundred dollars to a firm to hold that directorship whilst incorporating, apply for an EP (standard work visa) for yourself which comes through in 7 working days, and then get the local directorship assigned to your EP. This does involve plugging in 50k or so of capital and paying yourself 8k/month (SGD) out of it (income tax being quite low it's not too onerous).
I don't like playing games with immigration (I don't know if the EP local directorship game is officious or a hack soon to be eliminated) so my startup is incorporated in the UK and Hong Kong until I get PR (I did Hong Kong first, but the paperwork and agent fees just killed me - I'd rather pay an accountant and 20% corp tax). That local directorship rule is a real pain in Singapore and I hope a government official is reading this.
That being said, if you are a local (citizen/PR), it is cheap and very fast to incorporate a Private Limited, the rule of law is exemplary, taxes are low, and it's probably the most visa-friendly first world country in the world.
Status-wise I think a lot of bankers and MBAs are getting into "startups", unfortunately, and just as in the US it's become an acceptable career path. I don't think the feeling towards startups is any different from say, most European countries, amongst the older folk.
Singapore's startup scene suffers from the same problem every non-Valley startup scene suffers: the best valuations and deal speed that we hear of in the Valley doesn't really exist anywhere else. For example, I remember calculating that the Bay Area received around 20x as much venture funding as the entire of the United Kingdom, despite the latter's status as an old startup hub containing the world's largest non-US financial centre. The causes have been debated to death in many places, I personally favor the "lack of big exits locally" explanation, which makes it hard for local investors to want to touch the asset class and in turn disincentivizes talent from getting into startups (mostly, they go to the US). When it takes you 6 months instead of 2 weeks to close a round, and you give up 20% instead of 7% for the seed round, it's much harder to grow that into a global business.
edit - just noticed who the author was. Strongly recommend London based folks go meet him! Zach is a fantastic guy and the kind of investor I would LOVE to have in my startup (if I had investors).
We startup HN people in Singapore should have a beer sometime, would be great to trade stories/news. Send me an email (check my profile) if you/anyone is interested.
I've found it easy to find investors but when you can make the funding in consulting revenue in 6 months, without giving up equity, it's hard to accept the idea of funding. Provided one has permission to work in SG (the client can sponsor an EP, remember!) it's just much better to bootstrap, I think. Oh, how I envy the Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, who can toil 100% of the time on their startup, without worrying about paying the rent. Still not worth moving.
Catch you at a JFDI Friday event maybe; I don't go to Hackerspace often.
That's not limited to Singapore. My mom basically decided I was 'unemployed' roughly up until the point that I employed her (after running a middling successful company for about 2 decades...). People will think whatever they want, just ignore it and concentrate on the work rather than on whatever social recognition you derive from running your own company.
And besides, for some part of my career being 'unemployed' and 'running my own company' might as well have been synonymous so maybe she was on to something after all ;).
So they don't just let you come in their country, use its resources and whatever advantages it offers to make you pick it, and not give anything back in jobs?
Hard to convince a programmer to move from SF to SG if they're going to be hanged for smoking a spliff. While the drug use is just an example, it just illustrates the difference of Laissez Faire in the US vs What's Best for the Country in SG.
People from SF moving to SG to work would be double tax no? That would also be a big hindrance imo.
Plus there are more than enough decent tech job in USA than risk working in another country with laws you don't know or understand. SG seems like a country with very harsh laws, not entirely sure I want to risk accidentally break something law (like chewing gum?).
Singapore is an amazing country that is really geared towards making things easy for expats. The chewing gum thing is a bit of a red-herring. Ending up in jail for a minor offence is not something you generally have to worry about.
[1] http://www.irs.gov/Individuals/International-Taxpayers/Forei... [2] http://www.irs.gov/Individuals/International-Taxpayers/Forei...
Singapore has high quality of life, very low living costs compared to large US cities, efficient government (but not overbearing), and is a hub for one of the most exciting and growing regions of the world. It's an international city where a large proportion of residents come from all over the world and dozens of languages are spoken. The air is clean, there are no traffic jams, the metro is extremely cheap and spotless. And there's giant toucans living in the mango tree of my garden, right next to the centre of town - beat that SF.
Most importantly, government is not corrupt and has over the last 40 years gotten a pretty good track record of doing what is right. Both Lees have been exceptional leaders under any measure; amongst other things, the father influenced the direction of the world by directly influencing DXP towards the Chinese "glasnost" that is responsible for how the world looks today. I used to be pretty libertarian (think Swiss "don't have a Federal government"), but realized living here that a clean, non-corrupt government can also work incredibly well.
Another thing that flies under the radar of most critics is that Singapore has successfully set up a system to allow migrant manual labour legally; it is one of the very few places in the world where your Bengali construction worker on $500/month can go to the police, complain he hasn't been paid on time, and see his employer fined within two weeks. Try that in Qatar. Try that as an illegal in the US (over 80% of minimum wage labourers!).
I think he points out a very real issue. There is a massive cultural difference between SF and Singapore. Most of the developers I know in the Bay Area would never even consider moving to a red state.
The chewing gum ban was an attempt at restricting the supply after kids got into a fashion of blocking the subway's doors using it, particularly painful in a country where millions use it every day. The solution was the least obtrusive way round the problem (you can't go arrest kids systematically...); it's perfectly legal to chew it, you just have to import your own stock. Then you realize that you don't care enough to bother, and you stop chewing, and you wonder why every bloody article ever written about Singapore on any unrelated topic has to include the "factoid". Sometimes I think it was a very clever press troll by LKY.
Or take the caning of that American kid: caning for damaging a few cars? Sure, but a car in the US costs a few grand; in Singapore, it can cost more than a house and take half a lifetime to pay for (this, incidentally, is about passing on the cost of thrashing the commons to those who do the thrashing - a "liberal" policy never even discussed in the US). If somebody went and torched 10 houses in a street, what magnitude punishment would the US justice system reserve him?
As for dancing on tables, my first week in Singapore, not only did the bar I visited for what I thought would be a quiet beer - in Somerset, not Geylang - have paid models to dance on tables, they invited customers to take shots off their body. Not my thing but it's there if you want it.
I guess I'm not yet used to the constant stereotyping, so feel the need to speak for the other side. People don't go around generalizing Texans as Christian extremists who eat 5 big macs a meal whilst hunting deer with a machine gun from the back of their Ford pickup (FWIW I know Texans who are/did all of these things); somehow the same level of stereotyping with Singapore is acceptable, and people think a few hours stopover once in a while is enough to qualify their opinion.
Yes they do. All the time. Like I said most of my friends from the Bay Area would never work in Texas.
Imagine you're an entrepreneur in Austin, TX. Every time you write a press release, post on HN or otherwise mention Austin, someone immediately comes up and talks about how Texas has such strange politicians, that Rick Perry is corrupt and hates the environment, that the Church of X or Y has done something bad, that rednecks this or that, that there's no state tax, welfare is bad, regulation too lax, gun laws scary, Texans too fat etc. and the original topic never gets discussed because the conversation ALWAYS, systematically, diverts upon criticism of Texas and its defenders' attempts at correcting it.
Maybe it's selection bias, maybe I'm more sensitive to Singapore threads because I live there and have to endure these stereotypes all the time from family, friends and foreign communities, but it really feels that way sometimes. Singapore brings up a lot of really interesting discussion points, as an experiment in a lot of dimensions from the COE which limits car ownership to put a price on damaging the commons, from their Worker Pass to legalize no-minimum-wage work from anyone in the world, from their "city as a garden" policy, their extraordinary racial integration, their water policy, or more meta, the way LKY pulled a third world country with strong communist undercurrents into the first world in a generation, or how he fought Mao's agents... or this thread, which was originally about the developing startup hub, written by one of the government's own VCs (an interesting question to ask them is what % of their portfolio by value is in Singapore).
SG government is second to none. But it is too young to say whether or not SG has found a political model that will last for centuries. I doubt it. They are just lucky that so far, the Lee family, have been incredibly upstanding honest people. So long as the Lee family stays as strong and decent as it has then hopefully that will not change.
SG has big fines for most things, especially apparent on their MRT metro. But look at the fine signage in any world metro system and you'll realise SG is barely any different. Yes, you cannot take ghastly smelling Durian fruit on the metro here or you face a steep fine. That's because it smells awful. If you actually tried to do it I doubt you'd even get past the MRT ticket barriers before an attendant stopped you and told you if you continued you'd be breaking the law. The actual fine is just a shock tactic more than anything. Chewing gum... well good luck trying to buy any in SG since the import is banned. So that just leaves tourists who bring a stockpile with them and deliberately don't surrender it at customs. I wish the UK banned chewing gum too as within the 5 years the street pavements would probably be all clean. Yes, so what, Singapore has cleanliness OCD which resulted in a chewing gum ban. So what? Why is that bad!?
I'm scared of the first outcome, which is overwhelmingly the case historically. But the Singaporeans I know - particularly those in government, who are extremely idealistic about probity - make me think that the second is a possibility. We'll know in 40 years...
As for drugs, I think there is no true rule of law in any other country in the region. At a previous company, we annoyed one of the ruling families of one of the countries mentioned in this thread, and found ourselves fined several hundred thousand dollars because the students we paid to hand out leaflets in the street - technically "manual labour" - were not wearing hard hats and work boots. Let's not mention a certain airport whose construction siphooned several billions into the pockets of a similar family. But by and large it's known that you can head off to Bali or Bangkok and get your fix. Personally, I don't really care as a non-user (although am pro-legalization as a matter of principle), there are more important things to worry about... like the rule of law.
It has some alcohol curfew laws yes. No public space drinking after 10pm. But in a bar which has tables/seats on the street; that's fine.
If William Gibson is the only person you get your opinions from, sure.
http://www.straitstimes.com/sites/straitstimes.com/files/ST_...
source: me, true blue singaporean born and raised
Yes, you can live a very high quality of life as an expat with a family in SG. My brother does it and isn't going to be leaving anytime soon. However, he's merely stationed there at a large multinational corporation's request. The thought of starting his own company or joining a startup would probably kill him. He's not the startup type and most people who live in SG are not startup people. They like what SG offers them and in return they give up a lot of freedoms.
Re day laborers not getting paid. Don't mistake freedoms with efficiency of law.
To be more specific, I define individual rights as encompassing the right to conduct any activity you wish so long as you do not infringe on other's rights (including the commons, which are occasionally left out of Western definitions and particularly well managed in Singapore). Rights require enforcement, so that the man with the biggest stick does not get to violate the rights of others. Every man equal before the law, a concept pioneered by the Magna Carta, refined by John Locke, and implemented most famously by the Founding Fathers of the United States (for the first time in the history of mankind, without compromise or exception). Most people, except for some libertarian anarchists, agree that this is the proper role of government, that it should have a monopoly on force for that reason.
A people gets together and defines a set of rules to create a state and government that will enforce these individual rights at the exclusion of all other entities, with every man equal before the law. The government's purpose becomes the enforcement of individual rights, and its "freedom index" can be measured by both its efficiency in enforcing rights for all, and its degree of infringing rights. This is implemented via justice, which arbitrages disputes, the police, which enforces the decisions, and the army which protects citizen against external threats to rights infringment. The casus belli makes it necessary to infringe rights to a certain extent by confiscating property in order to finance enforcement, the extent of infringement depending on the expense required, with conscription being the most extreme and desperate measure.
The early United States were pretty extremist about it, with no (national) Navy for almost a decade (and Jefferson being opposed to one permanently) until the Barbary pirates forced the government to raise what were initially one-off taxes to create what became a standing Navy in 1794. Even during WWII, the government preferred issuing war bonds than increasing taxes to finance the war effort.
How does Singapore fit into this? The degree of rights infringement to which the government lends itself is always justified. Conscription? Well, both neighbours are or were hostile states and the region is not exactly a mainstay of political stability, but Singapore's enormous and well funded armed forces are a very powerful deterrent. Is it necessary today? That's a long debate which the Singaporeans are continuously having, with the conclusion so far being yes. The chewing gum ban? A pragmatic decision implemented as the lowest cost solution to damage being done to the private property of SMRT corporation and the annoyance of its millions of customers (who happen to be citizen).
The tough penalties for drug trade? They stem from a long history of drug use in Asia creating significant costs for the commons be it in increased crime or in broken populations, we're not talking about Valley developers enjoying a spliff in their basement whilst watching the latest Silicon Valley, we're talking opium addicts in Clarke Quay overlooking the brackish waters of the Singapore River then famous for its stink.
The freedom of speech restrictions? They fit in basically two categories: national safety (such as those making racist speech illegal, preserving the country from flashpoints such as the 1964 riots), and libel. On the latter, the world is a big place and Singapore is small; if there was value in the libel suits (such as the recent CPF debate), why wasn't the information released abroad? The foreign media loves a Singapore-critical story and would have a field day giving PR to any valid criticism.
Libel exists for a reason, which is that real damage is caused by unfounded rumors (see aforementioned Herman Cain campaign last primary), and citizen and entities ought to legally be able to protect themselves against such damage, which they aren't in many Western countries where well placed campaigns can rapidly destroy someone without much consequence for the rumor spreader.
Citizen being exiled? All the ones I had a look at were openly communist or had ties to communists; in the 1960s, those were effectively enemy agents in a state of war, Mao's teams set off thousands of bombs in neighbouring Hong Kong and Suharto's way of dealing with the "problem" in Indonesia was to slaughter over half a million people with suspected ties to the PKI; let's not even talk about Latin America and things like Condor. I think exile is a comparatively much more acceptable way to deal with such opposition than systematic murder, and this is a credit to LKY's management of such crises.
Where Singapore shines, in an almost unique way globally (Switzerland might fit to an extent) is in the degree to which it does not impede the freedom to trade. I think the most important part of that today is the freedom of movement and doing business with foreigners, via the visa policy and lack of minimum wage. Friedman thought minimum wage would increase unemployment, but its real effect in the United States was to push around 11 million workers into illegality (80% of unskilled workers), and thus severe curtailment of their rights (when you are scared of La Migra, you do not go to the police). Singapore considers foreign citizen as guests, with rights granted on an increasing basis depending on salary. It's a visionary policy which is rarely commented upon because immigration is a loaded subject, because the real topic of immigration is one of cultural and racial replacement as immigrants settle down and change the makeup of your population (imagine if say, Sweden opened its door to a million new immigrants a year today). It takes enormous courage to formulate policies that effectively allow for large changes in the cultural makeup of your electorate and I can't think of any other country that does it to the same extent (perhaps Australia, where about a quarter of the population is first or second gen foreign if I recall well; and of course the United States right up to the mid-20th century). So most countries restrict the right of citizen to trade labour with foreign citizen, and freedom of movement across their borders. Singapore doesn't, or not much.
Then you look at restrictions on consumption. Guns are not banned, they are merely very expensive to own - a permit for a non NS-man involves a $3k/year membership to a gun club. In the United States, real estate is plenty and the police cannot expect to be the first line of defence everywhere, so, particularly in states like Alaska (where a bear might be waiting on your driveway) and the rural states (to the bewilderment of city dwellers in California) guns become an important right to citizen. In Singapore, which is almost 100% high density housing and has an exceptionally efficient police force, this is not an issue. Cars are also expensive to own, to curtail the damage to the commons (roads, and air quality) that comes with high car ownership. A quick trip to Hong Kong (or, for that matter, London) and you rapidly understand why this was implemented.
A last, and very important point if we're comparing to the United States is the government's approach to business competition. Temasek and GIC are big investors in Singtel, yet they allowed and encouraged many competitors to develop; I am most familiar with the team from MyRepublic whose growth has been spectacular and whose founding was determined by the extremely low CAC for telecom in the country. In France, Xavier Niel fought tooth and nail to have the permission to run a telephone network against the existing oligopoly which had many powerful friends in government. In the UK, Virgin was the first company to successfully fight the BA-led legacy airline oligopoly; BA went as far as offering free flights "as a national service" to MPs and it was only Virgin's diversification which gave it the reserves and time to beat BA's long price war. In the United States, in contrast, lobbying is a huge ticket on most companies' P&L, and anti-competitive legislation being introduced is almost a standard and accepted way of doing business (e.g. Rick Santorum trying to stop the National Weather Service from making its data public, on behalf of the people who funded his campaign - a textbook anticompetitive move which should be highly illegal and is definitely anti-constitutional).
There are a few laws (such as 377A) which (oddly) nobody brought up yet that are a holdover from the British colonial legislature and haven't been voted out yet, for cultural reasons. I think it's a matter of time, as the nation evolves these things will too.
So, under that framework, where is Singapore's rights infringement? Which of my arguments do you disagree with?
The mere fact that (at least some of) those Founding Fathers had slaves acts against the "without compromise or exception" argument. As for Magna Charta, it was not "pioneering" anything, because comparable arrangements, even in a formal written form, existed long before. So you may say that it was "pioneered" only in the north-western Europe in order to be accurate (and I can't be sure about that either)!
I do agree with you regarding the Founding Fathers; it was worse than this, as despite willingness from several of the Fathers to end slavery there and then (one could argue that Washington's manumission of all his slaves at the end of his life indicated his vision for an equal future), those who were slave owners pushed hard to keep the practice going and consider slaves as property to be protected, and the Fathers compromised. As we know, it took over half a century until the matter was settled militarily.
Nevertheless, they did not need to change the philosophy of the country, merely to affirm the status of slaves as human beings covered by the protection of individual rights, unlike, say, the Ancients (such as Aristotle, one of the fathers of reason), who happily justified slavery as natural and a perfectly justifiable practice in a modern free society. To put it down in software terms, whilst the model was sound, the implementation was lacking. There was no previous, compromise-free, sound model. Washington could have called himself King, he chose President, setting such an example that the United States has yet to yield to a tyrant.
I would argue that the government is overbearing. The air is clean until Malaysia starts a few fires again. Were you there for F1 in 2014?
Certainly living in Singapore has its upsides. You trade away certain rights for what some would consider a high quality of life. It's basically ethics bargaining. I'm not saying it's terrible. I'm just saying it's not conducive to entrepreneurial ventures. Out of curiosity, do you work for a large, multinational company?
Also not to be pedantic, but it's hanged, not hung.
I see no reason why the proportion of programmers who are inclined toward drugs wouldn't be comparable to the proportion of programmers who are inclined to avoid drugs. The latter group may prefer a country like Singapore.
I don't think Silicon Valley culture is the only culture that can facilitate startups.
Yeah, because Silicon Valley is a hoot and all about dancing on tables...
I've stayed in both places, Singapore is by far livelier than SV.
SV had a wild counter-culture drug scene in the 70's and 80's. Things got tame in the 90's, but there's always SF nearby.
For example, take gambling in Singapore as a resident. You can only lose so much money per day, and it's tracked. While some might argue the merits of this, Americans would have a problem with not being able to risk it all or win their money back. Again, just an example of the SG thought process and not a certain dealbreaker.
Then, after a few years, most go bad home to settle down with a "proper" job.
To have a thriving industry you need tens of thousands of available workers.
So I'll put it this way. I earn ~10k/month after tax as a senior software developer. Could I earn that much in Singapore? Or is cost of living so much cheaper that I'm better off even with a lower pay? Better lifestyle? Better culture?
Your earning after tax is ~$6600 per month. After ~$1800 rent and ~$1700 living costs (transportation, food, utils, ...), you get ~3100 in capital savings.
In Singapore, your personal income tax is nearly zero. To match that savings target and quality of life, you only need to earn SGD 7000 per month (~US $5200/month, or $62k/year) and you gonna spend about $1100 for rent and $900 for everything else (without car).
P/S: I'm a non-US citizen, lived in Philly for 7 years, got 120k offer in SF but declined, now working in Singapore.
What can you earn with 8-12 years experience?
I think what salary you get can span anything from 2k to the sky (realistically, 20k and above will be very hard, and probably in finance or management). It's all about - here more than anywhere in the world - demonstrating value to the person signing the paycheck. If your value is much higher than what you want, then you can pretty much name your price. The tough part being convincing someone that you are worth that much. I think the rate for an American in a good corporate data science team should be at least 10-15k.
The marginal cost of foreigner vs local is, at least at these salaries, the flight. The EP costs $250/application and takes about 7 working days, with no quota. You turn up at the EP centre, pick up the card, scan your finger and you're gone within 5 minutes. Flying coach, you can get a return flight to the US for around 1k, less if you wait for a good sale. So, trivial. And it's easy to change employers - if you get a new offer, just get THEM to apply for EP and as soon as you have it, quit the first job.
Just be aware that flying to the US just plain sucks. London is a direct 12-16 hour (depending on direction). The US is one stopover, probably 20-24 hours. East coast worse than west, obviously. The other thing is expatriation has some invisible but very real downsides, the most painful one being away from family basically forever. On the upside, they get to visit an exotic country.
Some arrows are double-headed (point both ways), but some are not. So what do they mean? What flows only in one direction along the arrows that are single-headed?
Some of the arrows clearly point from one box to another (so what's that; is it influence? Is it money? Is it people), but other arrows just point to other arrows. So if arrows represent something flowing, what are these arrows that just point to other arrows representing?
It's not an intuitive infographic. I get nothing from the layout, colours and arrows that I wouldn't get from just a list, but I do lose the benefits of a simple list. Brightly coloured chartjunk.