First MIT Visit and Takeaways

I recently went to MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts for the first time to attend a 3 days executive education program at MIT Sloan School of Management called MIT REAP, more here. More about the program in my next few posts but in short it has something to do with developing our startup ecosystem in Singapore.

Almost 26,000 companies are founded by MIT alumni that still existed in 2006. If they were a country, it would have the 11th highest GDP in the world. My first impression was that MIT churn out great technology companies from their licensed technologies, but that is not the case. Most of the 26,000 companies founded by MIT alumni, very few (about 10%) are from MIT-licensed technology. But don't get me wrong, there are still about 20-30 companies spun out yearly from MIT. It finally hit home after speaking to Dharmesh Shah from Hubspot that most software startups started by MIT alumni are not MIT-licensed.

After an informative and definitely transformative 3-4 days at MIT, here are my three takeaways with regards to startups that are associated with MIT and why they interest me:

1. People

A predominantly engineering university with a cluster of engineering disciplines creates tremendous network effects. World class in research, both in reality and in perception. I can feel my IQ rise as I wander around the campus, eavesdropping on conversations. No doubt, they have skills, some probably harbor world class skills of varying depths. Over the years, the history and performance of startups from MIT faculty and alumni further shaped those who enrolled, those who researched, and those who taught.

2. Culture

I ran into at least 4 professors who are entrepreneurs many times over or "have helped to start 12 companies". That is a pretty rare occurrence as compared to where I am from. The culture of collaboration, experimentation, and the courage to change the world seems to be within the culture of Cambridge and MIT. The desire to learn, improve and do forces everyone in the system to be better. It fosters "creative confidence" and the courage to explore paths to bring a product to market.

3. Collision 

The most unique thing that caught me that were constantly being emphasized, was the way the campus is constructed to encourage "collision" amongst students, professors, post docs, and alumni. The famous MIT Media Lab is designed and located specifically to create "creative collisions". They even conduct entrepreneurship classes at the Media Lab, see https://www.media.mit.edu/about/ventures.

To add on to the 3 takeaways above, the talent pool in Boston/Cambridge is one of the best in the US, the availability of early stage capital is second only to Silicon Valley and co-working/collision spaces like CIC it only helps to support more creativity and courage to start companies.

My conclusion is, with enough density of people with the right entrepreneurial DNA and skills colliding together in a supportive ecosystem, amazing things will happen. What does this mean for me or Singapore? Stay tuned to my upcoming posts.


Other references:
MIT technologies are readily available online http://web.mit.edu/tlo/www/industry/inquiries.html#SelectedTechnologies.
An inventor’s guide to startups for faculty and students http://web.mit.edu/tlo/www/downloads/pdf/Startup_Guide.pdf

Southeast Asia Series A Crystal Ball Report

I don't know about you, but if you are an early stage technology entrepreneur in Southeast Asia raising venture capital to fund the growth of your business, you will likely have no idea what the cross section of institutional Series A investors in the region are looking for. 

We are not talking seed or angel rounds, but professional fund managers managing other people's money.

What I found in the last 2 years of investing in Southeast Asia is there is a gap of knowledge of what metrics or criteria these fund managers are looking for before even perking their interest. 

Many founders will be looking at raising their first institutional round this year. In order not to get caught in a tail spin and getting sucked into doing bridge and/or down rounds, we at Golden Gate Ventures wanted to do a survey amongst most if not all of the Series A investors that we can hustle our way into.

If you wish to help refer investors please drop us an email at info@goldengate.vc.

If you wish to read our findings in a report, please leave us your email address below.

Thank you.

Leave your email here

Your startup life in 2014

A few words about Lunar New Year Resolutions (if there is such a thing) that I will lay down for myself and I hope you will like them too.

Back in 2009, there was a huge gap of qualified startup mentors that are able to help first time founders (especially) or serial entrepreneurs building product companies for the first time. The FTM (fuck this moment) came when I see too many sub-par quality companies funded and fail (a total waste of money) and hence sparked the creation of Founder Institute Singapore in 2010 with huge support from the IDA and Spring Singapore. Since then, we are crushing it, thanks for asking.

Four years later in 2014, the mentorship gap has narrowed considerably although never completely, we now have a new, and flourishing startup ecosystem that I am proud of. However, the evolution of founders has brought them to meet different challenges especially people management, setting a vision and direction, work life balance and defining the culture of their companies.

What is missing is the next step of founder coaching. Whether they come from the board, advisors, or fellow founders or even full-time executive coaches focused on startup leadership. Our fraternity should come together to help like-minded folks to plough through the good and mostly tough times.

Back in 2010, I gave away some internal secrets on how to build relationships in business (probably not much of a secret). I spoke about it only once publicly in a SMU lecture. Here are the highlights:

The way to build relationships with anyone in business is to know how to (in that order) take care of their:

  • Love/Family Life (especially Kids - their health, education and/or love life)
  • Physical, Mental Health (especially physical health - a thought, an action will change perceptions deeply) 
  • Money matters/Career (especially making them look good and proud of their achievements)

So taking a page above, in 2014, founders please:

1. Take care of yourself this year. Do not let your startup and milestones consume you whole. Slow down and look up at the blue sky once in a while and take a deep breath. Look at your love ones and be clear on why you are doing what you are doing.

2. Seek out a small fraternity (less than 5) of like minded founders that you can chat, update and share your journey with. Grab dinner with them once a month, create a Whatsapp/FB Group Chat, connect and share. Startup life is hard, period. You need an outlet and a sounding board.

3. Focus on your job at hand (money matters/career), have a personal life (love/family life), and have a side interest/hobby (physical, mental health). And lastly, workout (preferably in the late morning or early afternoon, a few times a week).

No matter what your situation is, founders are a different breed of people whom I have the good fortune to meet, train, (occasionally scold), and invest in. Stick together to help one another. Be blunt. Remember, there are people around you who is there to help, support and lend a helping hand. 

They do care about you no matter what you may think. Sometimes a text, a message, a nod will trigger a catch up that is long awaited. 

Sometimes just knowing that they are around is all you need.

Blogs I found that you might like to start with:

http://scott.a16z.com/2014/01/17/success-at-work-failure-at-home/

http://www.themonsterinyourhead.com/

Books:

Startup Life

(of course there are plenty more...)

Happy Lunar New Year to one and all. (This post was inspired by this song below, hope you enjoy it).


Comments on Singapore's Wishlist to Elevate Singapore's Startups


Techinasia recently covered the outcome of ACE's 6 month discovery process of the state of Singapore's startups and came back with 10 recommendations. The full post is here to help with the context of what I am commenting on below.  I have been known to chime in on such matters from time to time.

So let's do this.

1. Let private sector partners play a greater role in developing the entrepreneurial community.

Easy to delegate but this needs a clearer strategy with stretched goals as resources and commitment from the private sector are limited. Work backwards from what we want to achieve and figure a way that both public and private sectors can work together in a realistic form and attacking small goals within a reasonable amount of time.

2. Double the number of youths in overseas immersion programs to 400 annually.

Agree with this fully as I have seen and have funded great talent coming out as a result of these programs. However, not all programs are designed well, do regular 360 reviews of such programs, and keep improving them.

3. Encourage schools to introduce tinker labs.

To create interest in science and technology is an excellent goal. Tinker labs should be one of the many items on the list to try to hit that goal. 3D printing and the like is the flavor of the year, try not to be too caught up on it. I do support any creative ideas to interest students. We have some programming workshops and road shows (educating students on the startup culture and job scopes) planned at polytechnics and universities at Startup Academy in 2014, it is one of our small tried and tested way we know how.

4. Unlock corporate venture capital and other private financing options.

Totally in support of this move to unlock more financing structures for startups, be it venture debt or tax incentives for large GLCs or private corporations when they invest. Government should also engage large corporations to invest and support Singapore based venture funds. This could be an indirect way to help serious corporates who are looking to set up their internal corporate venture arms.

5. More collaboration between large corporations and startups.

Agree. However, online platforms will not work in the short term. Do it the old fashion way. Curate the startups and qualify the large corporations with their interest/objectives/problem statements and make sure the decision maker sits in during the pitch meeting. Figure out what his or her agenda is within the large corporation (dig it out) to make sure no one is wasting the entrepreneurs' time.

6. Make Singapore a crowdfunding hub.

Agree. Why not? Whether its crowdfunding of projects like Kickstarter (not very likely to scale due to our market size) or equity crowd funding (if MAS allows). Singapore should be the epi centre for such model innovation. We would love to have Angellist base themselves in Singapore addressing Asia.

7. Help startups get better access to talent.

Agree with the intention and several suggestions. However, we do need more resources on the ground to train our next generation of innovators (like coding, ui/ux and growth hacking schools). That is more important than relaxing foreign employment regulations (although that needs a re-look right now).

8. Grow the physical spaces for startup activity.

Agree as well, this looks to be better suited as a Public/Private Partnership. The government subsidizes, the private sector design, build and manage. Just take note of the eventual location. The top locales so far are still: Blk 71. Chinatown/Tanjong Pagar/Raffles Place. Arab Street/Bugis/Middle Road. I think other hubs in other locations will be hard to achieve stickiness. Focusing on 1-3 hubs will suffice.

9. More government funding in nascent tech sectors.

Agree as well if there are deserved entrepreneurs with great ideas, they should be able to receive the same incentives. However, reality is harsh at times, it will take a while to move the needle.

10. Enhance programs that help startups expand abroad.

Well, I raise both my hands and feet. We are planning something big for IntroduceStartups.com tour soon. We have always advocated to startup founders to travel more and meet like minded people. 

"Amazing shit happens when like-minded people meet". ;)

There you have it. Pretty mild thoughts from me this weekend.

Have a great weekend.

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