A summary of what our startups have achieved for 08 ~ How to earn money online

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Friday 20 March 2009

A summary of what our startups have achieved for 08

19:57

aaronchua

Through the i.JAM programme (a 50k pre-seed grant), we have already funded 120 projects in a 1.25 year period. I thought that this is a good time to share the progress programme and how the startups doing.

The entire objective of our programme was to create an easy (minimal transaction costs) way for entrepreneurs to experiment with ideas. I think we have achieved quite successfully. Over the period, we have received more than 800 applications, which is quite remarkable given that Singapore only has a population of 4 million.

One common complaint however from some startups is that 50k is not enough to build a business. To this, I reply that it was never intend to do so. This was a grant for you to experiment, to see if your idea actually works. For scaling into a real business, you will still need to raise further funding.

During this period, about 25 projects have been completed. Out of these, we are encourage to see 9 of them managing to raise some form of angel funding. This 36% rate is a bit higher than what we expect, which implies either our incubators have an exceptional talent-spotting ability or we are too risk-averse, picking ideas that have obivous market potential. The problem with the latter is that very little breakthroughs will emerge since disruptions are always unrecognisable in the initial phase.

One of my personal disappointments with this current batch of startups is that very few are attempting to renew some of our broken industries. Quite a number in fact are too focus on money making right from the start without the corresponding need to create real value. I hope I can see more radical startups as we begin our second wave of funding.