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A close look at Singapore’s thriving startup ecosystem
Singapore is home to fewer than six million people, making it one of the smallest ASEAN countries, in terms of population. It is a young country as well — having gained independence in 1963 — and resides in a neighborhood with far larger economies, including China, Indonesia, and Vietnam. When the country first became independent, its mandate was to simply survive rather than thrive.
So how does a country evolve from a position of relative uncertainty, with comparatively few resources, to one that leads the ASEAN region in venture capital investment and has been home to 10 unicorns?
Countries around the world examine Singapore’s ecosystem from a distance, hoping to learn from, and emulate, its story. The World Bank Group recently published a report, The Evolution and State of Singapore’s Start-up Ecosystem, documenting the country’s experience in building its startup ecosystem and the challenges facing it.
This article presents an overview of the report’s key findings and offers a few key recommendations on what other countries can learn from Singapore’s experience, as well as what Singapore itself can do to maintain progress.
A glimpse into Singapore’s current startup ecosystem
As of 2019, Singapore had over $19 billion in PE and VC assets under management, more than twice that of neighboring Indonesia, Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, and Thailand combined. In that same year, the country was home to an estimated 3,600 tech startups and nearly 200 different intermediary and supporting organizations (accelerators, co-working spaces, coding academies, etc.) – some which have a multinational presence, such as Blk71, whose Singapore headquarters has been referred to as “the world’s most tightly packed entrepreneurial ecosystem.”
While assessing the size and strength of startup ecosystems is an evolving method, Start-up Genome priced Singapore’s ecosystem at over $25 billion, five times the global median.
Arguably, the most eye-catching hallmark of this ecosystem is its population of current and former unicorns. Collectively, Singapore has been home to ten unicorns, three of which have offered an IPO (Nanofilm, Razer and Sea) and two of which have been acquired – one by giant Alibaba (Lazada) and one by Chinese streaming powerhouse YY (Bigo Live). The remaining five are Trax, Acronis, JustCo, PatSnap, and Grab – the ASEAN region’s largest unicorn to date.
The education sector is also prominent in Singapore’s ecosystem. Universities like the National University of Singapore (NUS) and Nanyang Technological University (NTU) are deeply embedded into this ecosystem, helping with R&D commercialization linkages, incubation, talent/knowledge transfer, and other areas.
So, how did Singapore’s startup ecosystem come to be?
Numerous factors have contributed to building Singapore’s startup ecosystem, with government intervention and leadership being the dominant driving forces. The government has spent more than USD60 billion over the past several decades to enhance the country’s R&D infrastructure, create VC funds, and launch accelerators and other support organizations.
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WeWork and SoftBank unveil the first 14 startups in their Emerge accelerator for underrepresented founders
SoftBank Investment Advisers and WeWork Labs say they’ve officially kicked off the first session of Emerge, an accelerator program designed for underrepresented founders.
In their press release, the companies describe Emerge as “launched by SoftBank with support from WeWork Labs” (that’s the co-working company’s global accelerator program), with a goal of bringing more equality to tech and venture capital.
It’s an equity-free, eight-week program that includes workshops, access to mentors from SoftBank and the WeWork community and sessions with SoftBank executives. It all culminates in a showcase event for investors and SoftBank partners.
The Emerge website describes the program as based in San Mateo, Calif. — but given COVID-19, the sessions and programming are all virtual.
“Supporting underrepresented founders is a top priority for us, ensuring we see more diverse startups across the tech ecosystem,” said Catherine Lenson, managing partner and chief human resources officer at SoftBank Investment Advisers, in a statement. “There is a lack of diversity in the sector as a whole, and we need to do more to address it. That is why we’re excited to launch this program and to see the positive impact that these inspiring founders will have.”
This is also a reminder that while the larger corporate entities are currently embroiled in a legal and financial dispute, WeWork and its largest investor remain closely intertwined.
Here are the 14 startups in the initial program:
- Aquagenuity, which allows users to take any smart device and track water quality and monitor their environment in real time
- Bridge to College, which helps students choose colleges wisely by matching and providing data
- Caldo uses flexible automation and mobile designs to power satellite eateries for restaurants
- GameJolt, a platform for gamers to follow more than 100,000 games while they’re still in development
- Koniku, which is diagnosing disease using breath
- Mogul, which helps employers find diverse talent
- Moment AI, which uses AI to understand the driver and improve safety
- Node, which builds houses through a proprietary assembly kit
- OjaExpress, a marketplace connecting immigrants and foodies to local ethnic mom-and-pop grocery stores
- Proven, which offers personalized skin care products powered by The Skin Genome Project, winner of MIT’s 2018 Artificial Intelligence Award
- Rebellyous Foods, a production stack for plant-based meat
- ScriptHealth, which provides easy access to prescription medications
- Shyft, which builds IoT hardware and integrated software to connect and intelligently manage distributed energy resources
- SPS, a cross-border payments provider operating across all major U.S. states and Canada
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Report: SoftBank is taking control of WeWork at an ~$8B valuation
WeWork, once valued at $47 billion, will be worth as little as $7.5 billion on paper as SoftBank takes control of the struggling co-working business, CNBC reports.
SoftBank, a long-time WeWork investor, plans to invest between $4 billion and $5 billion in exchange for new and existing shares, according to CNBC . The deal, expected to be announced as soon as tomorrow, represents a lifeline for WeWork, which is said to be mere weeks from running out of cash and has been shopping several of its assets as it attempts to lessen its cash burn.
WeWork declined to comment.
To be clear, it is reportedly the Vision Fund’s parent company, SoftBank Group Corp. that is taking control, with SoftBank International chief executive officer Marcelo Claure stepping in to support company management, per reports.
The Japanese telecom giant’s move comes precisely four weeks after co-founder and former CEO Adam Neumann relinquished control of the company and transitioned into a non-executive chairman role, and about three weeks after WeWork decided to delay its highly anticipated initial public offering. WeWork’s vice chairman Sebastian Gunningham and the company’s president and chief operating officer Artie Minson are currently serving as WeWork’s co-CEOs.
In addition to those personnel shake-ups, WeWork has lost its communications chief, Jimmy Asci, its chief marketing officer, Robin Daniels and several others. Meanwhile, the company has slashed hundreds of jobs, and opted to shut down its school, WeGrow, in 2020.
Now expected to go public in 2020, WeWork was also said to be in negotiations with JPMorgan for a last-minute cash infusion. The company, now a cautionary tale, will surely continue to reduce the sky-high costs of its money-losing operation in the upcoming months.
WeWork revealed an unusual IPO prospectus in August after raising more than $8 billion in equity and debt funding. Despite financials that showed losses of nearly $1 billion in the six months ending June 30, the company still managed to accumulate a valuation as high as $47 billion, largely as a result of Neumann’s fundraising abilities.
“As co-founder of WeWork, I am so proud of this team and the incredible company that we have built over the last decade,” Neumann said in a statement confirming his resignation last month. “Our global platform now spans 111 cities in 29 countries, serving more than 527,000 members each day. While our business has never been stronger, in recent weeks, the scrutiny directed toward me has become a significant distraction, and I have decided that it is in the best interest of the company to step down as chief executive. Thank you to my colleagues, our members, our landlord partners, and our investors for continuing to believe in this great business.”
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WeWork pulls thousands of phone booths out of service over formaldehyde scare
WeWork, the co-working empire once valued at $47 billion before reality struck, plunging the business and its investors into crisis, has another problem to add to its growing pile — one which doesn’t exactly reflect well on its core business of kitting out and maintaining modern working environments.
The problem is a safety concern affecting users of WeWork co-working spaces in the U.S. and Canada. Today the company emailed members in the regions to warn that around 1,600 phone booths installed at WeWork locations have been found to have elevated levels of formaldehyde — which it warns could cause health issues for people exposed to the gas.
WeWork blames the issue on a manufacturer of the booths.
The booths are provided in its co-working spaces for WeWork members to be able to take calls in private — given other common areas are shared by all users.
“After a member informed us of odor and eye irritation, WeWork performed an analysis, including having an outside consultant conduct a series of tests on a sampling of phone booths. Upon receiving results late last week, we began to take all potentially impacted phone booths out of service,” it writes in an email to members.
Affected phone booths “are being taken out of service immediately, and will be removed from your location as soon as possible,” it adds.
In addition to ~1,600 booths it has confirmed are affected, a further 700 booths are being taken out of service in what WeWork describes as “an abundance of caution” — i.e. while it carries out more checks — with the promise of a further update once it has concluded its tests.
Members wanting to know which booths are safe to use in the meanwhile are told to contact the community team at their WeWork location.
WeWork also says alternative quiet spaces will be provided, such as in conference rooms and unused offices.
Discussing the health risks of formaldehyde gas — a chemical which is used in various building materials –WeWork’s email warns: “Short-term exposure to formaldehyde at elevated levels may cause acute temporary irritation of the nose, throat, and respiratory system, including coughing or wheezing. These effects are typically transient and usually subside after removal of the formaldehyde source.
“Long-term exposure to formaldehyde, such as that experienced by workers in jobs who experience high concentrations over many years, has been associated with certain types of cancers. You can find additional information in this FAQ from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.”
The email encourages any WeWork members with health concerns to contact a doctor.
A tipster who sent us the email reported experiencing a sensation of “burning eyes” after using the booths.
They also said several people in their team had experienced the same issue.
“Some complained that they felt nauseous after spending time inside the booths,” the tipster wrote. “I never felt that, but the burning eyes was 100% there for me several times. Scary stuff.”
Reached for comment, a WeWork spokesperson confirmed the formaldehyde issue, saying it’s taking “a number” of booths out of service at “some” locations in the U.S. and Canada — due to “potentially elevated levels of formaldehyde caused by the manufacturer.”
“The safety and well-being of our members is our top priority, and we are working to remedy this situation as quickly as possible,” it adds in a statement.
It is not clear exactly how many WeWork locations contain affected booths at this point.
Nor has WeWork provided more detailed information about how long members might have been exposed to elevated levels of formaldehyde — with its email merely suggesting some of the booths have been in place for “months.”
“The potentially impacted phone booths have been installed over the past few months, exact timing varies based on location,” it writes.
Although clearly the level of exposure will vary from person to person depending on their use of the booths.
The company did not respond to a question asking whether any of its international WeWork locations are affected by the issue.
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Report: WeWork expected to cut 500 tech roles
The WeWork saga continues this week with new reports the company may slash as many as 500 tech roles.
The co-working business, whose eccentric co-founder and chief executive officer Adam Neumann stepped down two weeks ago, is expected to let go of 350 employees within its corporate division, The Information reports. Initial cuts will be within the software engineering, product management and data science teams.
Another 150 roles may be dissolved as the company looks to sell several assets, including Managed by Q, Teem, SpaceIQ, Conductor and Meetup . New York-based WeWork has roughly 15,000 employees and expects to make as many as 2,000 layoffs, per reports, as the business attempts to cut costs and rewrite its narrative ahead of an eventual debut on the public markets.
WeWork unveiled its S-1 — littered with errors and sloppy work, per The Wall Street Journal — but decided to delay its initial public offering after Neumann stepped down and the company’s former vice chairman Sebastian Gunningham and former president and chief operating officer Artie Minson stepped in to serve as co-CEOs.
Now expected to go public in 2020 at a valuation as low as $10 billion, WeWork is also in negotiations with JPMorgan for a last-minute cash infusion to replace the capital expected from the postponed IPO, per reports. The company, now a cautionary tale, has been working with bankers in recent weeks to reduce the sky-high costs of its money-losing operation. The reported layoffs are said to be a part of the bankers’ strategy.
WeWork was previously valued at $47 billion despite losses of nearly $1 billion in the six months ending June 30.
WeWork did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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Is Knotel poised to turn WeWork from a Unicorn into an Icarus?
The day of reckoning for the “flexible office space as a startup” is coming, and it’s coming up fast. WeWork’s IPO filing has fired the starting gun on the race to become the game-changer both in the future of property and real estate but also the future of how we live and work. As Churchill once said, “we shape our buildings and afterwards our buildings shape us.”
Until recently, WeWork was the ruler by which other flexible-space startups were measured, but questions are now being asked if it deserves its valuation. The profitable IWG plc, formerly Regus, has been a business providing serviced offices, virtual offices, meeting rooms and the rest, for years, and yet WeWork is valued by 10 times more.
That’s not to mention how it exposes landlords to $40 billion in rent commitments, something which a few of them are starting to feel rather nervous about.
Some analysts even say WeWork’s IPO is a “masterpiece of obfuscation.”
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How startups can make the open office work, for employers and employees
Alejandra Albarrán is ROOM’s Director of Design and Innovation, responsible for shaping the company’s iconic approach to creating products that make the open office open to more.
The open office plan was intended to help collaboration and productivity across employees and teams while better utilizing less square feet per person. But the results haven’t always proven to be very successful, based on years of analysis.
Yet it is still the norm for tech companies of all sizes, and will likely stay that way.
Based on my years of experience working with hundreds of companies, I’ll lay out a basic framework below to help you think through how to adapt an open-office situation to best meet your needs.
I’ll also walk you through the example of a growing venture-backed startup that’s staffing up in one of the tougher office markets in the world: Manhattan.
But first, take a look at the data. Studies have shown that open floor plans can inhibit productivity and health. Open office workers take 62% more sick days than those in private offices, and a mere three hours of steady noise can cause measurable distress and a decrease in motivation. Face-to-face communication has been observed to actually decrease in open plan environments, with a measurable negative impact on productivity.
Considering that 70% of Americans today work in an open office, the issue of constant noise and distraction is ubiquitous across the country. The result is a bad rap—one doesn’t need to look very far to find one of the many articles online criticizing the design.
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WeWork CEO Adam Neumann has reportedly cashed out of over $700 million ahead of its IPO
Adam Neumann, the co-founder and chief executive of the international real estate co-working startup WeWork has reportedly cashed out of more than $700 million from his company ahead of its initial public offering.
The size and timing of the payouts, made through a mix of stock sales and loans secured by his equity in the company, is unusual, considering that founders typically wait until after a company holds its public offering to liquidate their holdings.
Despite the loans and sales of stock, first reported by The Wall Street Journal, Neumann remains the single largest shareholder in the company.
According to the Journal’s reporting, Neumann has already set up a family office to invest the proceeds and begun to hire financial professionals to run it.
He’s also made significant investments in real estate in New York and San Francisco, including four homes in the greater New York metropolitan area, and a $21 million, 13,000-square-foot house in the Bay Area, complete with a guitar-shaped room (I guess a fiddle would be too on the nose). In all, Neumann reportedly spent $80 million on real estate.
Neumann has also invested in commercial real estate (the kind that WeWork leases to provide work space with more flexible leases for companies and entrepreneurs), including properties in San Jose, Calif. and New York. Indeed, four of Neumann’s properties are leased to WeWork — to the tune of several million dollars in rent. According to the Journal, Neumann will transfer those property holdings to a WeWork-controlled fund.
The WeWork chief executive has also invested in startups in recent years. He’s got an equity stake in seven companies: Hometalk, Intercure, EquityBee, Selina, Tunity, Feature.fm and Pins, according to CrunchBase.
The rewards that Neumann is reaping from the loans and stock sales are among the highest recorded by a private company executive. In recent years, Evan Spiegel sold $8 million in stock and borrowed $20 million from Snap before its 2017 public offering, and Slack Technologies chief executive Stewart Butterfield sold $3.2 million of stock before Slack’s public offering in June.
The only liquidation of stock and other payouts that have been disclosed that come close to Neumann’s payouts are the $300 million that Groupn co-founder Eric Lefkofsky sold before his company’s IPO and the over $100 million that Mark Pincus took off the table ahead of Zynga’s offering.
WeWork declined to comment for this article.
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Should your company move into a co-working space, sublease space or traditional office?
Sam Einhorn
Contributor
Contributor
Sam Einhorn is a REBNY-award-nominated Director with the commercial real estate services firm Colliers International. He specializes in office leasing, renewals and expansion for high-growth technology companies. He can be reached at (212) 716-3679 or at sam.einhorn@colliers.com
It’s a cautionary tale we hear far too often: Company A, hiring staff and growing rapidly, finalized a 10-year lease for office space. One week after move-in they had filled their space to the brim, with engineers sitting on top of sales staff, interns working in the hallways and the CEO operating out of a small conference room.
Company A had backed themselves into a corner, in desperate need for more room with no easy solution to the problem, and looking to swiftly dispose of their inadequate space.
In the startup environment, everything moves at a breakneck pace. Raising venture capital, hiring staff, assembling a board, etc. – all while working day-in and day-out to refine a product or service meant to disrupt the world. With senior staff pulled in different directions, there is little time for a strategic analysis of office space needs.
My team at Colliers specializes in working with technology companies at all stages, from pre-seed to IPO and beyond. We have advised dozens of companies literally from their first day of operations, to others whose market caps are well into the multi-billion dollar range.
We have developed some metrics and strategies that help our clients to grow without having to worry about scheduling an hourly team huddle at the downstairs Starbucks .
We have extensive experience working with companies with offices around the U.S. and world, but a majority of our work is in the New York City area. The analytics and strategy formation for each company is different dependent on a multitude of factors: budget, concrete or tentative headcount projections, timing, etc. – but there are a few baseline rules that can help jumpstart the education process and conversation.
From working with hundreds of technology companies in various states of flux (capital infusion, rapid growth, headcount reduction), we’ve become experts on which office may be the best fit for a company, from a month-to-month WeWork licensing agreement to a long-term lease.
Rarely in the commercial real estate world are issues black-and-white; and strategies are unique to each company. But there are several basic questions that need to be answered when evaluating office space:
- When is co-working an effective solution? What are the pros and cons?
- What about a Sublease? When is that appropriate?
- When is it time to make a long-term commitment to traditional office space?
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Remote workers and nomads represent the next tech hub
Amid calls for a dozen different global cities to replace Silicon Valley — Austin, Beijing, London, New York — nobody has yet nominated “nowhere.” But it’s now a possibility.
There are two trends to unpack here. The first is startups that are fully, or almost fully, remote, with employees distributed around the world. There’s a growing list of significant companies in this category: Automattic, Buffer, GitLab, Invision, Toptal and Zapier all have from 100 to nearly 1,000 remote employees.
The second trend is nomadic founders with no fixed location. For a generation of founders, moving to Silicon Valley was de rigueur. Later, the emergence of accelerators and investors worldwide allowed a wider range of potential home bases. But now there’s a third wave: a culture of traveling with its own, growing support networks and best practices.
You don’t have to look far to find startup gurus and VCs who strongly advise against being remote, much less a nomad. The basic reasoning is simple: Not having a location doesn’t add anything, so why do it? Startups are fragile, so it’s best to avoid any work practice that could disrupt delicate growth cycles.
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