Young Founders Summit provides mentorship, resources to budding entrepreneurs
Throughout the programme, participants can learn about startup concepts and attend workshops
TEENAGERS who dream of becoming entrepreneurs and solving problems with innovative technology will get to do so by participating in the Young Founders Summit (YFS), where they can receive mentorship and gain access to resources and possibly funding.
The sixth edition of YFS Global kicked off on Monday (Dec 16) at Singapore Management University and ACE Ideation Centre. Founded in 2018 by Singapore entrepreneurs Lim Ee Ling and Liaw Yit Ming, YFS is a not-for-profit, annual six-month startup incubator programme for budding entrepreneurs between the ages of 15 and 20. It is supported by Singapore’s National Youth Council and aims to make entrepreneurship education accessible.
About 80 participants from 10 countries have been selected for the five-day in-person boot camp, which will be followed by up to six months of virtual mentorship.
At the boot camp, they will debate global and local issues, form teams, brainstorm solutions and ideate a product or service they want to develop. On the last day, each team will pitch its startup idea and be paired with two mentors for the rest of the programme.
During the mentorship, teams meet their mentors twice a month for guidance to build and launch their startup. In June next year, the teams will convene for Demo Day, where they will present and pitch their product or service to a panel of ecosystem funders and investors for S$5,000 or more in startup grants and funding.
Throughout the programme, participants can learn about startup concepts, make company visits, and attend masterclasses, workshops and fireside chats with chief executives.
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They also get the opportunity to speak and network at tech and startup events such as the Singapore Week of Innovation and Technology.
Lim, who is also head of market launch at Silicon Valley-based venture capital (VC) firm 500 Global, said: “We want to enable and empower youths to be able to see any opportunities as a chance to create something. If they have that desire to make a change to create something new, we can provide them with the resources to do so.”
Being people-centric
Lim said that when it comes to selecting participants, grades do not matter as much as their ability to identify addressable problems as well as resilience in the face of challenges.
“The world is changing. The youth are getting nervous about what the future looks like for them, and the key traits that would be needed are adaptability, the ability to take risks and not be afraid of failure,” she added.
Participants should first understand the pain points of their target groups and where the problems are before they come up with solutions using tech.
Lim said: “The curricular methodology that we use closely follows that of Silicon Valley (startups). We start with identifying the problem and who the potential customers are, validating that the problem exists, and that there’s a problem-solution fit. (We focus on) customer profile, problem validation, market validation, rapidly building the minimum viable prototype using artificial intelligence tools, and how to go to market.”
Thomas Jeng, venture partner at VC firm Headline who is a judge and mentor for YFS, said: “YFS participants are looking to grow in ways that traditional educational approaches do not support well. They want to have an impact, lead and break new ground.”
His workshops focus on customer and user-centricity. “Over the course of my career, I’ve seen way too many organisations stumble because they make decisions based on top-down market research that’s too general to be really useful. By giving YFS participants the toolkit to deeply understand their users, we help them focus on solving real problems for real people.”
Jochen Lorenz, head of team and culture development at Bosch Business Innovations and of Innovation Hub (South-east Asia), who is also a mentor, said that to build a business, one needs “extraordinary business growth and extraordinary people growth”.
Entrepreneurial skills and growth
Gan Kah Shuen, who participated in YFS in 2021 and has just been accepted into Harvard University, said: “Beyond helping to refine the business idea, the personalised mentorship prioritises growth of the entrepreneurs and fuels our passion for creating for impact.”
Her team pitched HandiShelf, a rotatable drawer system that brings the desired item to the user’s accessible range at the push of a button. She and her team realised that “there was a gap in accessibility for mobility-impaired individuals at home”, according to HandiShelf’s website.
Gan said: “We learned many new skills from user validation through voice-of-user surveys, developing business plans, leveraging storytelling to enhance our pitches, (and the like)… YFS refined our ability to pitch effectively and confidently, which has helped our team in securing funding and presenting afterwards.” She added that her team still applied these lessons to the development of their product four years later. Gan became a YFS Singapore country director in 2023.
Kazel Koh, another YFS country director who participated in the programme in 2020 and 2021, concurred, saying: “YFS has given me so many opportunities even after the conclusion of the programme, from enabling the building of my first startup specialising in healthcare AI, to a full scholarship which was (known only) due to the recommendation of a mentor.
“The opportunity to engage in meaningful discussions, share diverse ideas, and forge lasting connections has been invaluable.”
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