The Seven-Generation Problem & More Incredible Learnings From Singapore

This month’s blog comes from Singapore. As a TiE Women Global Pitch Competition finalist, I was sent to Singapore to represent Australia. Before arriving, I didn’t really know much about TiE Global, what to expect from the summit or the scale of the pitch competition.

By way of context, the TiE (The Indus Entrepreneurs) network, launched in the 1970s, links Indian and US entrepreneurs (hence the word Indus – India and US). The mission of TiE is to ‘foster entrepreneurship through mentoring, networking, education, funding and incubation’ while maintaining a focus on ‘giving back to the community’. Among the 1000+ attendees at the summit, I heard there were a few billionaires and many, many millionaires. But you wouldn’t know it, as they were all so humble and gracious.

This is what I observed and learned during my week in Singapore.

1. More than 1700 female founders from 62 different countries pitched – women from Saudi Arabia, India, Indonesia, Dubai, Ireland and, of course, Australia. Incredible!
2. Women are creating amazing innovation and technology worldwide – for instance, platforms to support patients and their families during the cancer diagnosis and treatment process, to provide more efficient healthcare, to track child trafficking and to reduce waste.
3. Entrepreneurs are harnessing their innovative and start-up mentality to solve community issues such as poverty and climate change. They are frustrated that governments are not solving these problems, so they are tackling them themselves, head-on. One of the entrepreneurs doing just this is…
4. Atul Satija of The Nudge, who is using his entrepreneurial skills to lift the ultra-poor from poverty. Since starting The Nudge eight years ago, he has raised hundreds of millions of dollars and is transforming lives through training, development and microlending.
5. I heard a term I had never heard before: ‘ultra-poor’. This term is used to refer to people such as families in India (and around the world) who have a household income of less than USD $300 per year. That is less than my grocery/food bill for a week for four people. And for some of these families, a household could consist of as many as ten people.
6. I met Manu Chopra, the CEO of Karya. Incredible! Manu is 26 years old and was born in the slums of India. This year, he was on the cover of Time magazine and recognised as a top 100 influencer in AI. Through his start-up, he is employing rural Indians – 35,000 of them and counting – to collect data for AI, with the aim of moving the ultra-poor out of poverty in one year. Here is a not-so-fun fact: in India, middle class is defined as having the ability to save USD $1500, and for the average rural family this can take seven generations.
7. It takes time to root out entrenched biases and prejudices. As I was connecting with people and discussing Peeplcoach and the opportunities in Singapore, India and beyond, there was a small (but still-present) voice inside my head saying, ‘Be careful, don’t say too much, protect your IP.’ I then realised how prejudiced we are, or at least I still am. I have been involved in many accelerators and start-up/scale-up groups in Australia and, inevitably, when you talk about outsourcing or partnering in India or China the issue of stolen IP comes up. Of course, of the billions of people in India and China, there are going to be some who are unethical, but there are also unethical people in the US, England, Germany, Indonesia and Australia. In fact, while away, I had two conversations with Australians who mentioned that their ideas or IP had been ‘borrowed’ by other Australians. Unethical behaviours are not unique to a gender, race, religion, age or eye colour!
8. There is never a good time. When I was asked to apply for the TiE Women Global Pitch Competition, it wasn’t a good time. I found out about the opportunity late on a Friday and the closing date was Sunday. But I thought, ‘why not?’. I did my best in the limited time I had. It wasn’t a perfect application, but it was good enough. It got me to the next stage. Then, when I was told I was a finalist and had to pitch, it wasn’t a good time. I was in Sydney travelling at the time. I was actually attending the HRD Magazine Awards and the Technology Scale-up Awards and I had to squeeze in the pitch between client meetings and getting ready for the awards nights. But I told them I only had limited time and I did my best. It wasn’t perfect, and I know I could have done better, but it was good enough and it got us to the next stage. When we were told that we were the Australian/Melbourne chapter winner and I had to go to Singapore to pitch, again, it wasn’t a good time. I had teenagers with exams, things were really busy at work as we sprinted towards the end of the year, there were some health issues with family members and, to be honest, I was exhausted. But, with the support of the team and family, I thought, ‘why not?’ And it has been an amazing experience.So, the next time you are about to say ‘no’ to something because it is not the right time, ask yourself, ‘why not?’. What you produce might not be perfect and chances are you could do better at a different time but maybe, just maybe, imperfection will still be good enough.
9. The Peeplcoach team is awesome. So, it has been a crazy week to be away. I am in Singapore, James Chisholm, our co-founder, was asked to fly to London to present to the global board of one of our Australian clients and we were finalists in three sets of awards. We had Peeplcoach 'peepl' everywhere, with Richard Tootill and Agnel D’Souza representing us at The CEO Magazine Awards, Zana Ballantyne and Jo Hart representing us and hosting a table at the Gender Equity Awards and Zana Ballantyne and Stephen Walter representing us at the Smart50 Awards. As they say, attract a great team and then let them do their thing!
10. Finally, I learned that I am still thinking too small. Over the three days at the summit, with more than 1000 entrepreneurs and innovators from around the world, I realised that Australia is small in comparison and there is so much out there for us to learn and experience. I have come back with ideas, so watch this space I guess!