Standing on the Shoulders of Giants

This is my new favourite photo of all time. Of all time. 

I feel a flutter of happiness every time I look at this photo. Nothing in this world, and I do mean nothing, will ever be able to convince me otherwise that this isn’t the picture of 2019. When I first saw this photo, it truly struck me for the first time that everything we do and everything we can achieve as people is because we stand on the shoulders of the giants that come before us. And what more, the truth rings ever more clearly as a woman and as a female. 

Now, I’m not one to milk my gender. Growing up in Singapore has its advantages - not least of which comes the equal systemic investment in both males and females (thank you, lack of natural resources) - so I have been lucky enough to avoid most of the systemic discrimination that many of my counterparts face in other countries. And yet, there still come many asterisks with my gender. We take the bad with the good many times, but it’s all that I’d ever want in this life to be the shoulders upon which other females can stand upon to achieve greater things than I ever did. 

To that matter, when Patrick Wong from SEAS generously invited me to lend some female representation to the panel of “Navigating the Funding Climate”, I was happy to accept. Alongside Ryan Chew (TRIVE) and Gang Chern Sun (NUS Enterprise) from the VC/incubator space of the ecosystem, we spoke for about half an hour on funding and the state of the current and future startup ecosystem. 

Patrick brought up the topic of ‘capital winter’, and asked us to weigh in on whether the funding climate had changed, with all the talk in the industry revolving around the big cheques that companies like Grab and Go-Jek are able to command. While Chern Sun and I spoke about the difference in expectations with regards to what startups needed to achieve before getting funding as opposed to perhaps 5-8 years ago, Ryan weighed in with a more macro perspective on the state of liquidity in SEA investments in general. He touched upon the point that liquidity providers are generally working on shorter time frames than before. 

While the previous expectations of returns on investment could run a time period of up to 10 years, generally venture capitalists in the current climates are trying to get returns on their investments within 3 years, maximum. To this point, liquidity thus moves towards late-stage startups and pre-IPO startups because these are the stages in which these timeframes can be achieved. The bullish mood in China (and the subsequent capital flows into investments), amongst other factors, means that there’s a larger pool of money, affording VCs a second look at late-stage and pre-IPOs and the ticket sizes these startups demand. The ecosystem at the early stages naturally becomes a little bit more illiquid. The dearth of funding in the early stages - up to Series B and C - contributes to a more illiquid ecosystem at seed and A levels because VCs that traditionally invest in these stages in SEA can’t see a way to get their returns on investments within the set timeframe. 

Alongside the talk of Grab and Go-Jek, the conversation then moved towards the latest buzzword, ‘super-apps’. We shared our thoughts on super-apps. Chern Sun talked about how the mindset from an investment perspective has changed over time. Previously, when a start-up showed interest in diversifying, this was taken as a sign that the founding team wasn’t able to focus on what was important. In the current climate, any start-up that refuses to diversify leaves itself open and vulnerable to super-apps. For example, any start-up that focuses exclusively on payments won’t be able to withstand the pressure that comes with bigger, more well-funded names like Grab and Go-Jek entering the payment market. 

When asked to weigh in, I shared my thoughts that the horizon looked extremely similar from a business’ point of view. Speedoc has always tried to be consumer-centric, minimising superfluity by only creating what we think adds value to our patients. As we grow and map out the future of Speedoc, all the signs point towards us building the different parts of the urgent care ecosystem. While most of these plans are still under wraps, the end-goal is clear - within the same app, someone sick will be able to access all the different services through taps on a screen, much like what consumers are already seeing in the industries of ride-hailing, food delivery, and social media. 

Expectations are changing across the board, whether it’s from the VC’s perspective, or when you consider what consumers are starting to demand and expect, even those not from the digital native generation! Even within Speedoc’s patient pool, you’d be surprised at how much more comfortable Baby Boomers seem to be with regards to online service booking and online payments, as compared to just 2-3 years ago. The ecosystem of app-driven businesses is starting to slowly mature from the extremely nascent stages of 2010-2015 and the B2C pie has become extremely competitive. The digital scape is moving and changing before our eyes. The land is moving beneath our feet, even as we’re running to keep up. There will be winners and there will be losers, but only those who add tangible value and stay ahead of the curve (and those with deep pockets) will be able to stick around in the next 5-10 years.