Programmers and Startup scene in Singapore!
I attended the inaugural #geekcampsg about a week back and was completely blown away and also a little bit humbled by the different technologies, platforms and applications that were discussed there. It was an eye-opener, in terms of the various range of talks, from Ruby applications to controlling robots to natural language processing: it had it all. The answer to whether we need more #geekcampsg is a resounding yes! For more, read Bernard Leong’s analysis.
Being from a computing background and having close associations with hard-core programmers, I see a lot of developers doing their own side projects, but never really venturing on their own. Mind you, I’m talking about passionate developers here and not the ones who have either been brainwashed to take up programming, or the ones who don’t really care about what they are studying. Let’s face it, most successful startups are started by geeks. Hence, this large conglomerate of programmers gave me a unique opportunity to actually ask developers on what they think about startup scene in Singapore.
Before I discuss my findings, I probably need to make a disclosure that this is not very scientific and the sample-set was probably quite small, nevertheless it was interesting that I got a variety of opinions. There were probably five different vibes that I got from developers (none of them mutually exclusive), and they’re listed below:
* I don’t care
As the title suggests, devs/geeks in this category don’t give two hoots about working for a startup or a corporate company or freelancing as long as you let them program in peace. They find the term ‘entrepreneurship’ overused and cliched, which probably leads to the don’t-care-attitude. Whatever the reasons are, these developers are really passionate about different frameworks, technologies and platforms, and would rather code and develop a product by themselves rather than schmoozing with non-technical people to do Business Development for their product. Some of them also have a disdain generally towards self-styled entrepreneurs considering them as nothing but a smooth-talking salesperson.(Not surprising, considering every Tom, Dick, Harry and his brother self style themselves as entrepreneurs nowadays).
* Is there a startup scene in Singapore?
Now this was surprising, being part of the entrepreneurship bubble, one just always assumes that people know about the different startups here. Well, the bubble burst, and shows us how much needs to be done in terms of spreading awareness. The other possible reason as to why they are not aware is also because of the lack of coverage provided to the Asian startups in widely read entrepreneurship blogs like TechCrunch and ReadWriteWeb. Well, e27 and other Singapore entrepreneurship blogs like SGentrepreneurs, Youngupstarts are some of the blogs that try to address this pain.
One another reason for this might also be that there is no Singapore version of youth idols like Mark Zuckerberg/Larry Page/ Sergey Brin to look up to, thereby reducing the glamour quotient of startups here.
* The Government is not doing enough
Now this was definitely not surprising! There seems to be two possible explanations for this attitude. Either there is not enough awareness of the different funding schemes provided by government institutions, or it’s just the frustration that emanates from going through various gove rnment channels and incubators to attain funding. As some people rightly remarked, there is no dearth of funding schemes here in Singapore, its the quality of projects which is lacking sometimes. For an overview of funding landscapes in singapore, here is a great map by Meng Wong.
* Not as good as Silicon Valley or other countries
These are the widely travelled people, developers who’ve worked or studied there for some time and are still hungover from the excitement of their experiences in Silicon Valley. Well, no comparisons to the Valley culture, but the world is becoming increasingly border-less and slowly innovation is not something that the government can control, it’s up to every individual. Additionally, the glamour associated with startups and the bunch of rockstar programmers whom coders usually idolise is definitely lacking here.
* It’s awesome
Generally people who think the startup scene is awesome in Singapore are the one’s who attend e27 events :P Seriously speaking, these are developers who have already gotten some funding here to start on their own, or are working for awesome startups. They are given the full freedom to code, improve, do their own stuff, free flow of caffiene and sometime treated like royalty! I am not going to say that they live in a deluded world, but to reach awesomeness I still feel, there are some barriers to surpass.
Having said that, ultimately, however many initiatives or encouragement we get, however awesome or bad we think the startup scene is, we still need developers busting their guts to develop kickass products!
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