SGInnovate focuses on 5 areas to help startups, entrepreneurs

Singapore

GOVERNMENT-OWNED company SGInnovate has nailed down the areas it will focus on in its mission to help startups and entrepreneurs at each stage of their development.

The five areas are to:

Its chief executive Steve Leonard said the Singapore market is just too small for the company to do all that it wants, but he is unfazed by this.

This is because he believes that if the ideas and technology - particularly those in artificial intelligence, robotics and blockchain - and talent are good enough, they can flourish anywhere in the world.

"No, we're not big enough to do all that," he told The Business Times in an interview, his first since SGInnovate formalised its broad areas of focus in mid-March.

"But we have to be honest about the quality of the idea, the quality of the technology, the quality of the team. And if we're pushing on those things ... then we see no reason why we cannot prosper anywhere in the world."

The idea for SGInnovate was first announced in Budget 2016; the government-funded company was launched last November.

Mr Leonard said: "We seek to try and do things that are helpful to an entrepreneur, at that point in time ... We try to stay very much engaged throughout.

"We seek to go where there's less traction or less momentum."

SGInnovate's finalisation of its focus comes amid an increasingly sophisticated startup landscape populated by venture-capital (VC) funds, accelerators, incubators and co-working spaces.

An unofficial online database called Map of the Money pegged the number of active VC funds in Singapore at 65 as at last September.

The website noted that there have been shifts in the ecosystem in the past couple of years.

For instance, more American VCs such as Sequoia Capital have entered Singapore. New ones have sprung up. Seed VC funds have progressed into Series-A stages. Corporate funds such as YCH Group and Wilmar International have entered the fray.

Mr Leonard said that, in focusing on deep technology and giving assistance to the go-getters, SGInnovate can play a critical role in Singapore's economic drive towards innovation.

First, in the area of ideas, there is a clear preference for deep technology in areas such as artificial intelligence, robotics and blockchain.

The reason behind the focus on these areas, he said, is that they hold out the promise of solving some of the world's most pressing problems such as health care, transportation and energy.

However, technology used to solve such problems still does not attract as high a valuation as those used in consumer applications.

Mr Leonard said: "I'm not against Airbnb or Uber. My point is: What can change humanity, now that you can go sleep in someone else's spare bedroom?

"My argument would be: Are we helping people live longer, are we tackling big issues about the destruction of the planet?"

This, in turn, can yield investment returns to SGInnovate, since the solutions produced can easily find a global market.

This is where Mr Leonard thinks that that startups should not limit themselves by conceiving Singapore's small market as the be-all and end-all.

"Big problems that everybody in the world shares automatically mean big markets and big potential," he said.

He also stressed that SGInnovate is selective about who it wants to help: he or she will have to be referred by any of SGInnovate's multiple partners.

One of these is a London-based company builder, Entrepreneur First, which launched its Singapore programme last September. The 12 teams that graduated from the programme last Tuesday will get seed investment of S$50,000 from SGInnovate.

Another of SGInnovate's partners is SMART, the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology, which sends researchers from Singapore's universities over to SGInnovate.

Promising entrepreneurs referred by either of these partners get help in beefing up their business proposals.

"That's different from sort of just being a website where people can send in applications and apply; there are plenty of accelerators in town that can do that," Mr Leonard said.

And even so, SGInnovate will only assist those who are fully committed to making things work.

If someone reaches out to it and says he or she wants to do it only on certain days of the week, Mr Leonard has this to say: "Forget it, honestly.

"Because if you're not willing to put all the chips on the table, then you're likely to not succeed and that's not good for anyone."