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Crucial Conversations
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Crucial Conversations
Unveiling Singapore's Success: A Deep Dive into Entrepreneurship, Social Contracts and Corporate Innovation with Kaijie NG
Ever wondered how Singapore, a small yet mighty nation, has become a beacon of progress and functionality? Buckle up as we take you on a journey through this impressive success story, guided by our guest Kaijie NG, a former leader in Singapore with an intriguing career path that spans both public sector and startup scenes. We discuss the country's thriving world of entrepreneurship, the unique social contract between its people and government, and how one's personal experience of social mobility plays a pivotal role in a nation's success.
As our conversation unfolds, we shift our focus to the intricacies of corporate innovation. Our guest shares valuable insights about their work at IMDA and the crucial role this organization plays in fostering a symbiotic relationship between corporates and startups. Through the Open Innovation Platform, they've been able to facilitate numerous problem statements and exponentially grow the ecosystem. Get ready to delve into the nitty-gritty of aligning different business cultures, navigating growth challenges in startups, and the role of trust in successful mergers and acquisitions.
As we wrap up, we'll explore how the IMDA's innovation division is driving forward corporate innovation strategies. Hear about the efforts to bring together corporates and startups, the importance of diverse solution providers, and the vision to help corporates become self-sufficient in innovation. We'll also discuss the success of the Open Innovation Platform, it's impact on the Singapore market, and how it bridges the gap between corporates and startups. By the end of this episode, you'll walk away with a newfound appreciation for Singapore's entrepreneurial culture, the value of social contracts, and the ongoing efforts to propel corporate innovation.
Well, thank you, I've really been looking forward to this discussion and I'm glad that you've called some time to do this. We were always bumping into each other in passages or at events and I'm so impressed with the work that you do and the IMDA Pixel facility and Enterprise Singapore the entire ecosystem.
Speaker 1:I've made so many startups that have, in one way or another, been impacted by the ecosystem, and there's a blueprint that just is second to none. I've never been to Silicon Valley or anything, but if I look strategically at how Singapore is driving entrepreneurship, which, in my humble opinion, is the oxygen of any economy, singapore is getting it right, I feel like from a top-down narrative perspective, from a support perspective, from an ecosystem perspective, and I'm really excited about just unpacking all of that with you today.
Speaker 2:Yeah, sure, I'm happy to be here. Finally, we've got some time to kind of share about this. I think entrepreneurship is something startups especially something. That's quite a bit of a passion and close to my heart ever since I got seconded to Carousel about 2019 in that sense and really get my hands dirty understanding there's no better way to do it understanding the startup from the inside out and really seeing the kind of energy that founders actually put in and the kind of problems that they can solve and the kind of user behaviors that they can actually precipitate and accelerate.
Speaker 1:I want to zone in on Carousel, but before I do I want to go a little bit further back because I took a look at your career and it's a very interesting roadmap that's brought you to this point, which has given you a good taste of different worlds that are fundamentally different. Maybe let's baseline and introduce you and start where did you study and what was that path? If I can just ask questions along the way, Sure, no problem.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, life is true wise. Yeah, I kind of got my own 30 second speech. So I graduated from NTU, nanyang Technological University. So back then I thought that because I like to write, when I was in junior college I should be in mass comms, mass communication, right? So I thought, hey, I wanted to be a journalist.
Speaker 2:In year two of my mass comm degree I realized that the media industry was not quite for me, journalism was not quite for me. So I switched a little bit on my specialization. I specialized more in comms research, which was more statistics, so it's a little bit more like social science. And then I graduated then right, and then the. It's very interesting because I applied for like a 10 over jobs. No one really wanted me, especially the private sector. So in the end I decided, okay, why not, let's just get into the public service. So I guess I was one of those are unwitting public servants that went in.
Speaker 2:I spent about seven and a half years doing what I call the public policy grand slam, which is actually policy postings across a higher education, transport, mrt regulation, so metro regulation and foreign workforce policy. So what I call it the public policy grand slam was that these are things that Singaporeans all have an opinion about. So I'm never shot off like Chinese new year conversations, because everyone will come to me and say I think that this policy needs to change in that way, right. So after that I got myself seconded to Carol cell as the first corporate strategy director. So it was very. I think why I wanted to do it was also because I felt that within public service we shouldn't be just naval gazing. We're actually really interacting with Singaporeans, with businesses, with the entire world out there. So it's useful for everyone to actually pick up a lot of external perspectives, which back then the public service was already encouraging, such the conments. So I brokered my own with Carol cell.
Speaker 2:Again, I had no business being in business right, because I was actually mass constrained. I didn't even have a bachelor of business administration, much less an MBA. I think I was very fortunate that the co-founder of the CEO, surya, gave, and his team gave me a lot of opportunities to really be involved in a corporate strategy back then. So corporate strategy all the way from your very sexy M&A's right that we did the fund raisings that make Carol cell a unicorn, from the hundred million round with STIC right all the way to some of the acquisitions that they made, including like refash, la coup six and all street to drive the recommers 4.0 kind of vision. I also did quite a fair bit of the traditional business strategy with the long term strategy refresh following the acquisitions of some of the Carol cell group entities and also some of the more hands get my hands dirty kind of a business ops with some of the business lines, such as like in Singapore home services, which is a huge thing putting making like a few million of revenue.
Speaker 2:Yeah, true, no very specific product changes at all, right, so that was really that switch towards a startup. So I was there for two years, seconded there. So of course, then I have to come back. So right now. Then when I came back, I asked for something that was a little bit closer to the startup ecosystem as well. So they put me in IMDA, the innovation division, which basically really is the open innovation platform as well as the pixel innovation hub. So our mission is really to inspire and support corporates to innovate digitally, and the other part of that, corporate innovation, is really the startup ecosystem, right, because that's where most of the innovation comes in from.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, such a difficult thing to also try and marry together, and you do definitely need a designated space and model to help bring those two worlds together. Before I go into that, though, what made you realize you didn't want to go into journalism?
Speaker 2:I guess in Singapore the media industry is a little bit small. I think that's one of the challenges. I think back in those days were the ones that you grew up thinking that you could foolishly be writing in the New York Times, be winning a Pulitzer, and then you realize that, hey, that that's going to take like 10 or 20 years. It's going to be one in a million shot that they are going to hire you and much less and potentially like not really as a full time correspondent, as some just Asian or Southeast Asian correspondent that they wanted to get a Southeast Asian view of the world in that sense.
Speaker 2:So then I guess I decided, hey, that's really not the direction that I wanted to pursue so much. So just wanted to, kind of being the pragmatic Singaporean, do some study, something that I was relatively confident in, and maximize my option, my optionalities.
Speaker 1:Yeah, sorry I had to ask because you know I think journalists play such a pivotal role in our society and I just feel in this day and age it's it's an industry that's threatened on so many fronts and, yeah, I was quite interested so diving into into the public service side of things so wasn't planned, went into it. I think you were very successful at it by the looks of it, and you know I hold some very positive views about Singapore and its policy and when I first arrived in Singapore, you kind of, when you in a foreign country, singapore comes through for very specific reasons from a PR perspective, so the PR engine works very well. But the things that really jumped out at me once I started immersing myself into the society is just the functionality and progressiveness of the policy, that just everything works the safety, the security, the ecosystems that that drive not only entrepreneurship but business. And I think that you see more and more a lot of foreign countries are looking at Singapore and trying to adopt blueprints from from the country. You know I think I stand to be corrected there's one African country I want to say it's Kenya or Tanzania. There's an African country that's trying to adopt some of the public policy to fix their own country.
Speaker 1:So you know, I'm keen to go into that world with you and understand how did Singapore go from a country that was, in my opinion, a very rich history, a very tumultuous history. It was a country that has gone through many hardships and, I would almost say, abuse from foreign powers, but then you have this amazing leader that emerges and you build this new, resilient nation that is very proud, and I think of when I went through the museum with Lee Kwan saying that you know no one will ever take advantage of Singapore again. And you look at the rapid rise of this country to become a beacon in the world when it comes to how people should live and can live and how society can operate. Can you share some light around that and and how, in your humble opinion, we become so advanced from a country perspective? Is it all stitched to policy?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think there's probably a few success factors, but first of all, thanks, thanks for that high praise. Actually, I think we don't claim to have everything figured out. In fact, yeah, I think what we do is also quite unique to our own context, right, and I think what we do have in that sense, at the start, during the Independence days, I guess, is really that the citizenry was very, very much hungry. In that sense, we're actually a nation of immigrants. Right, that came over because most of our ancestors couldn't have a good life elsewhere in their home country. Right, they wanted to come here because this was the so-called mythical land of riches, they could get rich or they could have a better living for themselves as well as their next generation, and therefore they came here and there was a lot of the hunger and that drive to make it good.
Speaker 2:I think that was the first thing, and that story still persisted, right, which is the whole idea of that the next generation will actually have a better life than this current generation, and the whole belief that there was a social mobility at play, which I resonated very deeply with, and therefore then that social contract was formed between the citizens as well as, like, the government in that way right To be able to do that and therefore then people could look in a little bit more long term to say that, okay, this is actually working out for the country. I'm willing to put my faith in it and I will actually work hard as well, because I could actually look forward to a better life for myself and then for my, the next generation after me in that sense, I'll just give you maybe a little bit personally, right, my own example.
Speaker 2:In that sense I lived in a true housing development board flat. My parents actually shared just what we call a primary school living examination certificate. Only my father actually graduated from primary school. My mom had no formal education. Both of them did not learn any English at all, they just knew Chinese.
Speaker 2:My dad was a cab driver, my mom was a technician with general electric before they pulled out and then she was retrenched in the early 90s in that sense, and the very fact that they could actually raise three kids in a three room housing development board flat sort of like the projects in New York in that way and then being able to go to a university in Singapore, an autonomous university and now one of my sisters an accountant. She graduated an accountant, right. She's now a housewife. And then the other one graduated from business and now she's with a bank, and another one who kind of graduated from journalism on mass communications and could make it well right. I felt that was really the whole idea of that. That was mobility, because no matter what your station in life, you actually could aspire to something else, and I think that's really the most important part of like keeping that Singapore story true, that you could actually continue moving up and therefore then the people were actually very inspired to be able to do so. I think that's very important in that way Agreed.
Speaker 1:I love that statement you made, that social contract between the people and government and that long-term vision. You know, I've had so many different discussions with amazing Singaporeans from different walks of life. I remember being next to there at Clark Key, next to the river, and I was talking to someone and she was saying that her grandmother used to bathe in that river. You know, which is like one generation ago right.
Speaker 1:And you look at the progress that has been made so quickly. I went on a trip recently where they had the bathroom doesn't have a shower. It didn't have a shower. This was actually in Indonesia, but it had like a big basin with water. That the tap fills and then to shower you, scoop in and then you wash yourself like that and it's cold.
Speaker 1:And it was like a shock to my system, but after two days I got into it, you know, and one of the Singaporeans that was on the trip with me was that's how I grew up, you know, that's how I used to shower, and it's difficult for me to comprehend that because the progress that has been made in such a short amount of time is testament to that social contract right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I agree, and that's something that we need to keep, such that then this existing generation can also imagine that there's a future that's better for the next generation as well. So I think it has to keep going on such that, then, that it continues to have that kind of Singapore story and social mobility to be inside, yeah. But of course, yes, you are right in the sense also that we move so fast that sometimes some detractors will say right, we're actually experiencing a lot of first world problems that our parents will probably not imagine having.
Speaker 1:In that sense, yeah, there's a saying I like to always use hard times create strong men, strong men create good times. Good times create weak men, weak men create hard times. And I think that is the challenge. Right, you look at the world today and the societies that when we grew up, that were dominant or superpowers or advanced beyond our understanding of first world versus second or third world, because I come from South Africa where it's a blend of first and third and we've got our own rich history and I'm a very proud and patriotic South African. But we have a challenge where we go in from, there's parts of our country that's going from first world backwards and disintegrating because of bad policy or because of bad leadership. And then you look at countries like Singapore or Dubai, where within one generation you don't even recognize the landscape, and then you look at other first world countries that are degrading at a town level and it's just such an interesting time to be alive to see how things can flip so quickly, right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think the usual one that we always will think about is like, for instance I mean to take you back in history as well right, the states of Venice, in that sense, where it's huge trading port, super powerful back then in Europe, and you can actually see that within the span of 100, 200 years they've also degraded in that sense. I mean in Chinese that's also this saying, which is a Fukuoka, which is that your riches will not last beyond the third generation. So I think that is a challenge of every successful nation or society on how you can continue to remain relevant, you can continue to really remain successful and you can continue to make sure that the social contract between government and the citizen continues to hold in that sense, yeah, and I think one thing that definitely plays into your favor to help maintain that that I'm a big fan of is that all of your men have to do conscription and military service.
Speaker 1:I think that that's essential for grounding and maintaining some sort of discipline, and that definitely resonates with me, whereas when I was finishing school they had just removed it from being mandatory, and I question that. I almost regret that I didn't get to develop that life experience. One of the guys on our team, Chichi, who you've met he just came back from conscription and he had to manage a team of 30 people running through the jungle and he was sharing some of the stories with me, and I can see what an amazing character he is, and I think it's so good for that to still be entrenched within your society.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I agree. I think I guess when we were in that experience, of course we weren't really totally enjoying it. Usually it's like when you're out of it then you say, oh yeah, I built some character in us. I think beyond the leadership kind of experience was the whole idea that within the national service itself, within the armed forces itself, when you were conscripted like you're actually serving on national service, is the ultimate social level.
Speaker 2:You meet people from all walks of life that's what he said no matter what station in that sense, and they wouldn't naturally just follow you because of a rank or because you're richer than him or you're smarter than him. You had to really build up that relationship to common respect and I think that's really the part where you really interact with all segments of Singaporeans and you really had to say, hey, you know what? Actually I may have been very isolated in my own bubble world because of my entire education history or my socioeconomic strata, but now I understand that there is a huge new world out there and I really have to try to engage.
Speaker 1:Yeah, he said the exact same thing. I mean he was managing a team of 30. He said one guy is the director of Prasward hours, cooper's, another guy's a grab driver. That's the level playing field, that you come in there and you all set with a mission, and I think that definitely bodes well. Ok, so just going back to the policy side, if I may how difficult is it to create policy and what does that mechanism look like? Can you share any light around that or learnings? Because I find that everyone has this life path and I'd love to see how that potentially shaped you and prepared you for the role that you're in now, which is a massive role with a lot of responsibility. So just talk to me a little bit about your days of shaping policy and managing people's expectations around it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think I would say probably I would take a business lens, now that I'm back in the IMD as well and after I've been in a startup. When you think about government in that sense, government is almost a monopoly of services. Citizens can't say, hey, you know what my government services suck. Let's change a passport and change your nationality and go elsewhere and be a customer of country X or Y. In state that's not going to happen. So the typical frame, I guess, of policymaking that policymakers used to have potentially is almost like the style of a building and they will come. There may be a problem or there may be an objective. Ok, so let's skew a policy that way, We'll build that policy this way and then citizens will just have to adapt to it.
Speaker 1:I like that. But you're making it sound easy, right? Because you have to create a policy which can fundamentally shape your society, and it has to be future proof, future thinking right.
Speaker 2:So I think the evolution then came, which was the whole idea of that. A policy is not so useful If number one it cannot be communicated effectively. You need to get citizens by in. They need to understand what a policy is supposed to achieve. They need to know how to access that policy as well, right, so that's the first one, which is COMS you need to know how to actually communicate it effectively to your citizens.
Speaker 2:I think the second one is then the whole idea of operations. How do you operationalize your policy? How do you go to market, literally, with the policy, right, and how would you operationalize it, for instance, all the way from your counter staff to when the potentially when the application is processed, when it's successful, how do you then inform the citizen? The entire customer journey that needs to be taught out right, and it's not just the external citizen customer journey, it's also the internal processes, like which team is supposed to do what? At which point in time are they processing? What are the rules for which the policy needs to look at right Before then they actually send it out?
Speaker 2:And what's the SLA? Is it seven days? Is it three days? Citizens going to be irritated because it's not reaching them within the stipulated timeframe, et cetera. So over time I think the whole idea of policy making has evolved a lot and it has also become, in that sense, users and trick, which is also what startups and companies are looking at Exactly what does the user want and then how am I going to develop my product to be able to actually cater to the user? In that sense, I guess the difference in that sense of policy is that we are not exactly out to maximize the so-called P&L in that way. We're not exactly out to just maximize revenue, increase market share, but we are really out to do what's right for Singapore and Singaporeans.
Speaker 1:Such a great response and I love how you drew the parallels between business and startups there. I think that there's a lot of relevance in that and I suppose the principles apply whether you're creating a policy at government level or at a startup level or within a corporate. Even to make sure you follow those principles that you mentioned, to ensure that everyone's aboveboard, on board and as clear on it as possible, to ensure that you have cohesion and everyone's going in the same direction.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think directionally aligned. I think that's one. The other one is actually a very clear go-to market as to how you roll out the policy right, because otherwise there's a lot of policies that you could see that could potentially then be there on arrival. It generates so much bad press, such as some of the potential ones that actually came out during President Obama's reign. In that sense, medicare the whole go-to market as an IT project was actually scripted because of a lot of poor launch issues. So the whole idea of that policy is operations and policy is also about ease of user adoption. That changes the perspective of how we I mean the classical policymaker actually thinks of policy.
Speaker 1:That's such a good example. I want to pull that thread because that Obamacare was such a political hot potato and it was one of his key deliverables that he wanted to deliver to his voter base, and I suppose he did. I personally think that it was universal health care for all is something that's lacking. I mean, it's just crazy to think that the US doesn't have that, and I think they've got their own challenges when it comes to the private sector and the medical fraternity. But it raises the point right. You mentioned that developing a policy, you need to get everyone on board, align everyone, implement it correctly, and maybe the implementation part is where you failed. But how do you create policy that if everyone isn't on board Because I think he was working against alternative forces? And if we think about it through a business lens, how do you sometimes weigh? What's the weighting, what's good for the people?
Speaker 1:and push it through. How do you balance that, and that's a bit of a loaded question, but I'm keen to see your thoughts.
Speaker 2:I think again very similar to how I look at businesses, or so the whole idea of it is actually to be able to generate alignment. I think that's one right, which is that alignment as to what the mission and vision of a startup, for instance, like Carol Zell, is through all your stakeholders. But I guess we know that we're all individual humans with our own thoughts and our own perspectives, so you also wouldn't expect that there's 100% alignment. In that sense it will be. I think you have to accept that sometimes you can't please everybody, but hopefully you can please actually a majority who is willing to actually go along with it.
Speaker 2:Classical policies usually the challenges will be ideological, there's no perfect answer, but I believe X or I believe Y and there's a ton of research in favor of X or Y, so you just have to make a call.
Speaker 2:I think that's one. The other ones are potentially near term versus long term, because every individual is going to optimize for the near term, because I can see the gains now, versus a long term, because in the long run we're all dead, so I don't really care in that way. But I think a lot of them policies also about communicating what their true intent is and getting that buy-in and getting that understanding that, okay, perhaps it's sub-optimizing sometimes for the near term, but it's actually out to build a better society or a better country in the longer term. So some parts of it is actually also communication. I think that's one part that a lot of policies will need to actually work on. It's also not just sometimes like communications when the policy lands, but also pre-engagement of the citizenry, of your stakeholders, co-creation sometimes of the policies, because sometimes you do also realize I think as well as like in businesses right that sometimes people don't necessarily always want their way.
Speaker 2:Actually, what they wanted was just say they just wanted to say they just wanted to feel that they are hurt. In that sense, they may not necessarily say that, hey, you know what. You must follow what I say, but once they are hurt, they are actually saying that, okay, you've engaged me, you've consulted with me. I can see the reason why you're not going with me, but the whole process was something that I trusted in.
Speaker 1:Sure, such wise words. I still have some questions, though, because I think that at some level, you have to have strong leadership, and that's one of the differentiators based on what I've studied from Singapore that you had. That provided all of those elements that you're mentioning, but there was also a sense of very strong leadership that was looking at that long-term vision, whereas I look at a lot of countries, including my own, where the system's being corrupted, where you have lobbyists and you have too many political parties that are in the mix driving different agendas linked to lobbyists, and you start getting some really weird policies that just don't align to the longer-term vision. That's better for the people and that's where you sometimes need that strong leader that comes in and pushes something through right, and how does I mean? That could apply to business as well, I suppose.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think the, I think some of the evergreen things that is really there, going back to like the social compact, right that's related to that, is actually trust, trusts in the leadership, and that's something that we can't take for granted, in that sense, that there is a trust of that, okay, actually we believe in the leadership to be able to lead the country and, in return, potentially, like the Singapore story continues to hold, the next generation will have a better life than me and therefore, actually I trust the leadership to be able to do the right things right and we've seen some of this during, for instance, like COVID.
Speaker 2:In that sense, which are the countries that generally potentially, like, perform better at at COVID in terms of, you know, the lockdowns, the social distancing, the vaccinations have a correlation with, actually, which other countries that have better trust in their, in their leaders as well, because the leaders were the ones who Kind of like, step up and say, okay, you know what, I'm going to take the vaccination now to prove that it's okay, we will do so. I'm going to respect also the social distancing Guidelines as well as the regulations that's out there, even though it could be a very tough one for entire society to end deal for the Next one or two years yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I feel you on that one for sure. Lead by example. How much did Singapore in your tenure within that space? Look at the rest of the world and go outward and look at each of the different countries and cherry pick concepts or thinking or policies that they internalized and shaped to to. You know, learn from the best or learn from, you know, the the outside versus internalizing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think there's a lot of that actually, because the core belief was also Singapore's history as a place of entrepreneur, trade, a nation of immigrants. A lot of the ideas actually came to Singapore, a lot of immigrants came to Singapore, a lot of trade came Into Singapore. So the whole belief that we are actually a very open society and we shouldn't be inward looking Continues to hold even today. Right in terms of like Globalization, you've seen so many global multinational companies actually been in Singapore Because they know that we're actually very much more open to business and we we are open to foreign professionals actually coming in here. And to just give you a few examples of that, which was like back, a lot of the startup founders were always credit the NUS NOC, the NUS overseas college, as starting their journey of entrepreneurship, and those were the days where NUS will get some of their best and brightest students to spend one or two Semesters out in the Silicon Valley because they truly believe that actually that was the place where there was a lot more energy, there was a lot more invention back in like 2000s to 2010, and then be able to then have these founders, then have these students and come back.
Speaker 2:A lot of them Came back for ever change. You've got the lights in the various chain. You've got the lights of a sure way where she came back and say okay, you know what? I'm not going to pursue the traditional fresh graduate route of finding a job. I'm going to start my own startup. Yeah, and and that has shifted a lot over the years Right back in those days, if you wanted to be a startup founder, people who have your parents will have been massively Disappointed in you. They were a shoe to reconsider your decisions. But today it's. It's almost like it's invoked and parents are actually saying okay, why don't you take one or two years to go and do it, figure yourself out, if you aren't? Actually the skill sets that you learned From being a founder will actually help you in your career.
Speaker 1:I'm smiling as you're saying that now sitting with Excuse me if I get the name wrong knee young polytechnique. I was sitting with the team there on agile and that's got their own, you know, set up and they Were explaining to me this exchange program that they have for the startups, immersing them into a Thailand startup or Vietnamese startup, and they said the exact same thing is that they have these students that go for six months to a year and Immersed themselves in a startup and they're quiet, they're reserved. The student comes back, they don't even recognize the individual, you know, and there's so much to be said about that.
Speaker 1:Yeah and I think that's something at Singapore Just seems to have understood, and it must have been at a policy level, because you not only are Getting your, your youth, out there to get that global experience, you've also created this hub when all the best of the best from around the world in different disciplines are trying to get into Singapore to to do a Stint and to to spend time Trading their craft, whatever it may be, which means that the people in Singapore also get the benefit of working with those best of Breed from around the world.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think one of the Realizations we had was also that Singapore is a very small market.
Speaker 2:Six million people in this region of like six hundred and sixty million were just one percent right. And that's the challenge that sometimes we have, which is that All the risk that we have right, which is that Singaporeans or Singapore companies think that the world revolves around Singapore. Actually, that can not be further away from the truth itself. If you go and you know, take a stint in Indonesia or Thailand or Vietnam, you will see that all the all the markets function very differently from Singapore, and that's that's a big challenge and that's why it's very important for us to be able to Push right Singaporeans out there to experience different markets, to get them to see that you know the world doesn't revolve around Singapore, to not take on a Singapore's entry lens. I think that's one, and the other one is, as you say, right, to welcome a foreign Professionals also into Singapore, so that then we continue to be able to learn from the best and to learn to how to work with different cultures.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's the one thing that reminds me of home, beanie, is the, the diverse cultures. South Africa has also got such a nice diverse cultural mix, so it does remind me of home. Okay, so you go through your, your public service and you cut your teeth at policy and then somehow you end up a carousel. For those that don't know what carousel is, maybe just a quick overview, and then I want to drill into that story of it.
Speaker 2:Okay, yeah, so carousel. It's actually one of Singapore's unicorns, freshly minted in 2021, started off in the early 2010s thereabouts by three founders, which was a quacky rail. Marcus Tan, as well as Lucas, knew the whole idea of it was actually is a classified platform that's at base for catered for the Southeast Asian region. He first started out because the founders were obsessed with the whole idea of Decluttering the our story, so literally it was called storeroomme when it first started out, right, and right now it's actually a present across about I would say about maybe six to eight markets across Southeast Asia. He has different entities, such as a Muda in Malaysia and Chotot in Vietnam as well. The mission is really to enable the world to sell and buy, use products to make more possible for each other.
Speaker 1:It's one of the first things people introduced to me. We're not gotcha. Yes, it's.
Speaker 2:I guess most of Everyone will kind of like reference it to. Oh, this is actually the eBay of Southeast Asia, yeah.
Speaker 1:I've used it. It works for normally Well. I bought my catch of it, all right, yeah. So I was looking for a catch and it worked for normally well. I was even able to negotiate arrived Seamless from an app perspective. I have One of the go to is also from x-ray to that's that's in the startup ecosystem is into watches. He's always looking for watches on carousel and tells me how disappointed is if you missed out on a deal. So definitely a very strong brand and very well used and and relevant, because we all do have too much clutter. So it's a great way, I think, for people to, to you know, get some value back for the stuff they don't want anymore. So at what stage did you come into the business? Just where were they in there?
Speaker 2:They start up, jane you mentioned 100 million. Yeah, I came in in 2019. That was on the back of their series C round, which made it just a little bit shy of the Magical billion dollar valuation mark right back then. They've already made a deal with a 701 search to acquire the entities, like Muda in Malaysia, as well as a Chotok in Vietnam. All right, so that was the period when I came in. The head count really grew overnight because of the acquisition of these entities and then what was the head count when you arrived?
Speaker 2:About, I would say about maybe two to two hundred to three hundred. Okay, yeah so it really, really Balloon overnight because of the entities that we acquired and the whole idea of it was okay, um were that entities acquired when you had arrived already? Yes, okay, so quiet really. So there was a lot of project management, project management on the integration.
Speaker 1:I've got questions around that as well, right.
Speaker 2:So the whole idea of how do you build I think you talked about a little bit of that, right how do you build mission vision Alignment? I think that's one, the whole, the whole idea of also that. How do you then create Coherent strategy for the entire, not just Carol's hour already, but already a carousel group, mm-hmm, right for the next five years? Yeah.
Speaker 1:Such a difficult thing to get right and so risky for any organization. I've been part of a startup that went from 50 when I joined her, as I was like number 34 as a consultant and I had a built a team of like Consultants into their business for through my SI business, eventually I joined them. So it go from 30 to 100, from 100 to 350 across multiple regions and and that brought a whole lot of challenges. All of a sudden, our Secret source, the culture that made us famous, got completely diluted. We had a thinning out of of leadership Within the organization. We had people floating around.
Speaker 1:Onboarding wasn't sufficient. We had people landing in the business. They did not know the vision, the mission, the purpose For the first six months. They didn't know what they were doing there. There was real horror stories coming out from from some of the people that came on board and very quickly I was tasked to help set up a training and enablement division to sort out not only the internal onboarding but how we replicate the secret source externally. I'm keen to you know your challenge was probably the same internally, but it was maybe a bit more complicated because you brought on two other entities that have their own cultures. How did you navigate that and and what was your role within it, and what advice could you, you know, give to any startups that that start hitting that stage of growth?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think the first, I think the first realization needs to be that what got you here ain't gonna get you there right, because, um, some, I think some, some of us are better at the zero to hundred Hit count kind of a face. We are excellent at being really hacky, very resourceful, great at market launching, community building. Um, then Sometimes we may find ourselves not so relevant at the hundred to a thousand Employee, a thousand face right, because then that's a lot about how do you scale what you do, how do you amplify it in that sense. So I think that's the first realization that sometimes we have to have. And the second one is actually continue to take care of the culture.
Speaker 2:Um, if you have a very strong culture, you could potentially be able to write it out is then, but that also takes a lot of work to be able to actually Build trust and then trade that culture. I think the the the one part about it is that the culture is not a single um defined document, that's the N or B or the culture from when your employee 100 to employee 1000 can be radically different and you have to also get that how idea of that. It needs to be a very organic kind of culture that will continue to build and continue to evolve. There may be certain things that doesn't really change so much. That's timeless in terms of, like, the values, who you hire for, what you seek to change in the world. But there may be certain things that are great from other, um, other entities that you can just you, you should on board because it needs to be something that's quite inclusive as well.
Speaker 2:Um, it can't be just a all consuming kind of monolithic culture that you take others in, because then that Doesn't engender trust, that doesn't really get the buy-in of the entities that you've kind of like acquired as well. And you need them and you've kind of a Partner them for a reason. Right, you're not just partnering them so that you could just acquire them and just go to their markets immediately, in that sense. So, um, a lot of what we did back then was so compounded by kovat Was a lot of trust building, which was spending a lot of face time over zoom, trying to understand the couch, trying to understand how they work, asking a lot of uh, I would say.
Speaker 1:So that was during kovat that that was yes, yes, jesus, it was tough.
Speaker 2:It was quite crazy, right, because, uh, you couldn't even fly there and you're supposed to. Just, I guess, in the back of everyone's mind, am I, uh, do I feel like I can trust this person that's on the screen, in a zoom screen, in a rectangle box, saying certain things like that, right, so there was a lot of uh um, face time that's needed to really be able to uh Create that sense of trust and to able to overcome, right, the lack of a physical kind of a meetings in itself. Yeah, so, so that that was really dear to me. That was really very important that you have to invest a lot of time to Initially build that trust, because that will pay back later on, and to be able to also then Build trust as well as build value to show that you're not. You know some guy from hq that Pretends to know everything, pretends to know what they do, but you have a healthy curiosity about what they are doing and you want to learn A healthy curiosity love it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think what we, we, what we had to do is we had to stop the bus, um, in that company, because we also realized that the executives were all singing from different hymn sheets. So I remember we we brought in an external person who we had a meeting with the executives and he started asking questions and he said okay, how do you pitch Uh, this business to you know the market? And this executive would say this way, this one would say it this way. And we realized very quickly that there was no alignment, even at an executive level.
Speaker 1:So we very quickly to put together a I don't want to say a brand identity, but, like a um brand, a brand guard because, we had a brand guard from a design perspective, but the language that we use, and and and um, what we say to encompass the brand and how we pitch the story and what is the story. Um, and then we incorporated that into our internal training onboarding. We made sure that the people that came in had a very good experience coming in, because you got to recruit the best talent from around the world. And if they come into your organization and they have a terrible landing experience, it's just a terrible, it's just a very negative way to start the journey with a new brand. Um, what was your role within carousel when you landed In in in that business?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so um. So I was the first corporate strategy director, right.
Speaker 2:Oh, so you were, like the guard, responsible for stitching this all together um, so, yeah, so, the corporate strategy from all the way, from your mna, the sexy stuff to the uh, really, the uh um company strategy and plans like what's your five-year horizon? Looking at, um, what are some of the main trust that you actually want to do? Some of the trade-offs Down to, uh, some of the business lines as well, business ops. So, supporting some of the business lines, uh, understanding, like what they are doing, whether it's working or not working, using data analytics, and telling them Maybe you should try this go-to market instead.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's a very, very hard pressure role, because I can only imagine coming in as uh outside into a new business that's at that stage of its growth. It's a lot of responsibility. What, what it? How did you? How did you? How did you contextualize, get up to speed and then start directing strategy? What did that look like? Uh, can you go back and just share? It must have been a little bit overwhelming at some level. Yeah.
Speaker 2:I think, uh, the the first year. I always like to say the first year was painful and the second year I kind of extended, because If I went through the pain, I I want to see the impact. Um, the first year itself, I think what got me true was the whole idea of that. I really was very curious about how the business worked. I asked a ton of questions. Being an outsider was also, uh, positive in that sense, because I had the license to ask these questions. In that sense, I didn't know the, I didn't know the business that well. I think that's one.
Speaker 2:I think the second thing was that I had no vested interests because I was an outsider. Um, and I guess that's how other people saw me I was not out to, you know, get promoted. I was not out to have a long career within carousel, right, but basically I was just here to help in that sense and then, building that value from there, to be able to say, okay, actually, uh, I can do some analysis for you. Uh, I think that your next step should be a and b in that sense, or how can I actually help you, um, advance this, uh your interest, because I also believe in it in that way. So a lot of that actually helped in terms of the positioning, I think.
Speaker 2:The second, the Other thing that I always did in that sense was always asked for help and never be shy about asking for help. So, um, potentially like some assignments were actually laying on my lap and I was just say, okay, um, who are the people that I can actually work with to do this? Who are the people that I can, uh, um, speak to to learn more about certain markets or certain businesses?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm sure you must have had to deal with conflict and I'm interested to hear if there without naming names but uh, there must have been scenarios, did you? Did you encounter scenarios where you realized that, um, the existing strategy versus the Strategy that you were going to potentially recommend Were worlds apart, or that there was a founder or person that a legacy person in the business that, um, was kind of not in alignment with how you saw the business should go and had to go? Did you have examples of that and any stories around that and learnings, and how did you manage that? Yeah, I think very similarly.
Speaker 2:I wouldn't say for like uh Carol's help or say, but across my entire career, is that, um, the realization that actually strategy is important? The strategy is easy. Strategy is the easy part. People are the difficult part. Right, strategy? I mean most people can kind of like analyze the thing, get together the data and then put together a nice deck of slides, but that's not strategy. Strategy cannot exist just as a very nice, clear deck of slides and saying that you should do one, two and three, but that's just more of a presentation of Visual 8.
Speaker 2:The most important part is the change management and it's the people who are going to execute the strategy. So I think the most important part is really to spend time with people and to build trust, rather than spend time developing the strategy, because my core belief is that, as long as it's directionally correct, it doesn't need to be 100% cooked. If it's directionally correct, we can move and start out right. We build the aeroplane as we fly. We fly by the seat of our pants. I think that's more important, which is that we don't need to go down to the nth degree to debate whether this number is exactly correct, but rather what we should be doing perhaps is actually trying to convert the next influential person who could be the blocker right now in that sense, to be able to execute the strategy well.
Speaker 1:That resonates quite a lot with me because I've seen it in my own experience the Avery Tower syndrome, where there's this big gap between the leadership and the people that are delivering, and there's this air gap and decisions and strategies are happening but it's not communicated, there's no direction, it's just kind of slammed down and people don't like change. Even I haven't enjoyed change, but I've always looked back and the change is, 99% of the time, being for the better. I really like that philosophy of yours, which is getting people on board and helping to get everyone in the same direction. That does make a lot of sense.
Speaker 2:I think, just to add a little bit to that, you mentioned a little bit about top down.
Speaker 2:Right, I think one part of it is to have a healthy balance between top down and bottom up as well, because I think at one point also, sometimes people do look at the leaders for direction, like exactly what do you want for the team, for the organization, for the company? Just let me know a little bit of that first. I think that that's where the top down actually comes, but there's also a healthy kind of a bottom up, so that then you can get your team to actually grow into owning parts of the strategy or parts of the plan and then developing it and seeing that true ownership and executing and also growing, because I think the worst thing to have is really everything is top down. People do buy in, but they are just like kind of like mindless drones just executing your wins right. So that's really also a key blind spot, because the leaders may not always be the ones who are closest to the business or the customers, and actually the team that's actually closest to the customers should have some say in developing the strategy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's so well put because I've seen both. Right now I'm speaking to many different executives across different large organizations and there's one that's jumping out that manages over a trillion in assets, and right now they have a leader that is so disconnected from the business and is driving a top down strategy that no one understands, and executives are literally jumping off the bus, and that's always a big red flag. You know, if you've got really quality executives, if they start jumping the bus, then you know that there's problems coming down. The bottom up strategy that just blows my mind is how China does its five year plan. You know the consultation that happens at a regional gross roots level to roll up to the final meeting that they have before they crystallize the plan at the highest level and then measure everyone against that, because it's come from the bottom up and they hold you accountable for the next five years. This is the plan. It's actually come from the bottom up. Yes, it's been agreed and probably some stuff wedged in at the top, but the Chinese people own that plan right and you can see how fast that's catapulting China from a development and strategic perspective. So, yeah, there's a lot of merit to what you're saying there for sure.
Speaker 1:Okay, so the culture, the integrating of the cultures at Carousel was obviously a success. How many years? How long were you with Carousel? For Two years, two years, okay. And what other major learnings or takeaways did you experience there before we moved forward?
Speaker 2:I think the one that really stuck with me was the user obsession, the whole idea that we need to be very curious about our users. And therefore then there was a lot of work that we did ourselves to go down to the users. So, for instance, like in Singapore, we saw that home services, out of doing very limited effort at all, was making us quite a lot of revenue. So we went down to the users, like the merchants who were advertising on home services, asked them okay, why are you exactly doing this? And then we also went down to the users who actually accessed some of these home services, like air condition repair, handyman right to ask them okay, why are you coming to a Carousel to use this? So it was very interesting to really dive into the business of home services itself there are other home services marketplace in Singapore and then to realize why certain ones fail and why certain ones continue to succeed. So I think that's really something that was very fulfilling for me to be able to actually do that, because usually corporate strategy exists only on the high level, right, you're not really down to that customer. So that's one. I think.
Speaker 2:The second one which was very inspiring was the whole idea that all carouselers actually dog food their own product. So we had on Slack like this channel called Dog Food. They will teach you on day one of your onboarding how do you dog food properly, and then everyone would then have a user account. When the beta launchers actually come out, you will use Carousel. You would then see okay, certain things are actually have bugs, the screen doesn't load well. That screen doesn't load well. You will then just do a screenshot and do a video of it and then just upload it onto the dog food and engineer will go and investigate it.
Speaker 1:So just want to make sure I'm understanding what you're saying. You're saying that within the Carousel employee circle you had access to the latest releases and from that you were testing the releases and the functionality and rapidly solving that before you released it to the market. That's very clever.
Speaker 2:That's very interesting, right, because usually in a lot of companies you will leave it to the QAQC guys, the testers. You just do it yourselves, right. But I think what that really built in Carousel was the whole sense of pride in the product. We are actual users. If you look at my user account, I've got like 200 reviews and probably a lot more transactions, because not everyone leaves reviews right. But that actually created a huge sense of product that when we felt that, hey, you know there's a bug or when things go wrong, we feel personally very invested in it.
Speaker 1:I just, as I mentioned before I got you, I was sitting on a discussion with NUS and it was a panel discussion around intrapreneurship versus entrepreneurship and a fascinating discussion. And how much intrapreneurship? Because often people think they just want to be entrepreneurs or they start as an entrepreneur, find success and then there's no more innovation within that business, which obviously puts you at risk of being disrupted or becoming irrelevant, not customer centric. How much intrapreneurship? It sounds like, just based on what you said, that everyone was already at some level an entrepreneur because they get to give feedback on those beta releases. How much were there other intrapreneurship kind of models that were baked into Carousel?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean there are some ideas as well on how we can actually reinvent the classified 3.0 product. Right, because when you think about Carousel, the first classified 1.0 was actually the newspapers. Those were the traditional classifieds, where you ring up the newspaper and say I want to place an ad, they'll ask you how many roles and they'll charge you accordingly. It'll be published tomorrow in that sense. And then 2.0 was probably the likes of eBay or some of your forums, where you buy and sell of a desktop or a laptop. 3.0 was then the ad version, where you could just take a photo with your phone listed and then you'll sell easily. You could do chat in real time as well.
Speaker 2:The idea that we always thought about that kept us awake at night was what was 4.0, how could we make it even better for people to buy and sell secondhand? And I think the answer to that was that there were two real blockers. The first one was inconvenience right, maybe. Sometimes I just don't want to meet the next guy just for five bucks, you know, a shirt or something that's five dollars off. I just don't want to go from one end of the, from Singapore, to the other, even though it's like maybe 30 minutes an hour. It's first of the problems, right? I just don't want to do that. That's inconvenience.
Speaker 2:I think the second one was trust the whole idea that when I buy a secondhand, for instance, iphone, from you, how do I know for sure that all the modules are working, your camera is working, your Wi-Fi module is working? I'm not so sure. So maybe these are the key blockers to buying and selling secondhand and in Carousel. Then we really did scratch our heads to think about okay, what's the best way to be able to enable some of this? And some of the best ideas actually came from that right. So, for instance, then we recently acquired Refash, which actually helped people declutter their wardrobe and then sell all the used clothes online as well as in the stores itself, and that was actually something that we tried to mitigate the inconvenience of buying and selling secondhand. We also acquired the Laku 6 as well. So that was actually the analysis of used phones, doing a hundred point check, for instance, to make sure that all the modules are working fine, your battery life is okay, decent, etc. Right before we slap on the warranty.
Speaker 1:And is that at a user? Because you're dealing with people which is complicated. So are you saying that the user would have to follow that hundred point check before they could sell it on the platform?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so for instance, it could be some businesses actually do it this way, which is that you can install a SDK so that then they could run the hundred point check, they could send the information back to say this iPhone's battery life, battery health, is about 99%, so it's good as new in that sense.
Speaker 2:So there were some parts of that, for instance, even in luxury. How can we authenticate some of the luxury items to make sure that the Chanel bag that you're buying is a real one, or the watch the luxury watch that you're buying is a real one, with all real parts in that sense?
Speaker 1:I mean it must have been quite daunting, because I can only imagine the noise that would enter the system if you didn't have that right and you probably dealt with some of that initial noise and had to rapidly innovate as more people started loading products that you hadn't thought of or try to introduce fraud. I mean, there was a there's a platform in South Africa called Gumtree and it started in a very similar fashion. It was acquired, but no one uses Gumtree now, like I will not touch it because I know there's so much fraud and scams on Gumtree that unfortunately and maybe it's changed since I've left but just it was the go to place and then very quickly you realized that you had risk of being defrauded on there, which was a pity. So you must have faced the same challenges and it sounds like you introduced innovations to solve that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's right. So the first innovation, the first few innovations we had, were actually more reviews, so that you kind of pretty much knew that this guy was a legit buyer and dealer for.
Speaker 1:The first thing I checked on Karasau.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's the first thing, right. I think the second one was those, the idea of like paying on escrow, which we started so that then if you receive the item, then you release the funds, right, karasau will hold the funds for you for the time being, in that sense, right. And then, increasingly, we wanted to go deeper into each vertical, like mobile phones. The key challenge was the warranty Like it could be fine today, it could be fine tomorrow. It may not be fine one month down the road, right, so that was actually the user insight that we had.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so interesting, yeah, okay. So you get to your two years and what's the trigger for you that this journey's over and you stepping? I think the next step was into a startup of.
Speaker 2:No, I was to IMDA actually. Was it IMDA Okay?
Speaker 1:So the startup was Karasau.
Speaker 2:Yes, it was Karasau Okay.
Speaker 1:So, imda, let's go there, because I mean there's so much amazing work that you're doing here. Tell me about the just take me back. So you in Karasau I mean it must have been a difficult decision. I'm sure Karasau's booming, it's flying, it's going international. What happened?
Speaker 2:No, I think that. So the whole idea of it was actually I was a condit to Karasau. It was a two year kind of attachment from the government to a private sector entity, right. So the whole idea of it was that I was always supposed to go back to government, because the whole intent of this movement was to learn from the private sector or the people's sector, get the best practices and perspectives, go back to government so that hopefully I could be a better civil servant with doing policies or doing industry engagement work or doing operations.
Speaker 1:By being on the other side of the fence. Yes, that's right. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:So that's why I moved back. Then I chose to go into IMDA, because I was just telling my colleagues that I wanted some place that was closer to the startups, because that was something that I learned right. So this perspective will probably be useful here.
Speaker 1:And does it serve you well today.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think I start to think of it as a business as well. In in, I am the innovation division. Right, when you think about it, it's very similar to Carousel as a double-sided marketplace. In Carousel, you are matching buyers with sellers or secondhand goods. In the innovation division, I'm matching the corporates looking for innovative solutions With the solution providers. You sometimes start-ups that actually provide them. So the whole idea of that. I'm also running almost like a double-sided marketplace, except that while Carousel is a little bit more C2C, I'm a lot more B2B.
Speaker 1:Sorry, Gotcha For for those listening, just so we can baseline everyone. I'm DA. What does it stand for and how does it strategically tie into the government?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm this statutory board of the government. It stands for Infocom Development Authority of Singapore. So we have three roles here. We are a regulator of the sectors such as, like the telcos and the newspapers, as well as the TV broadcasters. That's one. Number two is that we also work as a social inclusion, so we help ensure that, you know, certain parts of our society are not affected by the digital divide. So, for instance, like we up their digital literacy, we kind of bring devices to them, we ensure that they can actually access some of these digital services, which do. They are very important. The last, one of which the innovation division belongs to, is actually we also look at developing the economy of Singapore. Yeah, nice.
Speaker 1:Strategically so important right and so interesting that government is normally goes corporate to government not government to corporates when it comes to digitalization at least. So yeah, phenomenal kind of focus and task at hand. So you arrive in IMDA and take me through those first few months. I mean again, you've probably had to follow very some of the suit to watch it at a carousel which is just get to grips with everything, ask a lot of questions, take me through that journey.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think a lot of what I did was informed a lot by what I did at carousel, which was customer emotion first, which was a lot of questions that sometimes I guess my team may have been a bit shocked by, which was can I talk to all my users? Can I talk to corporates? Can I talk to startups? Can I talk to solution providers? I want to know a lot about why they are using our services. I want to know about who the competition is out there. I want to know about what kind of feedback they have, how we can do better, and also, sitting in a lot of the different kinds of services that we provide, for instance, like consulting for the corporates or evaluating some of the innovative solutions so that gives me a lot more sense of what the users were looking for and how the internal processes were like. I think that's very important because you want to speak not just from a position of authority, but a position of empathy and credibility, that you've at least gone through some of it. You kind of understand what's happening and you kind of hear from the right stakeholders as well.
Speaker 1:You're reminding me of a program that I used to enjoy. I didn't watch too much of it, but I caught a few episodes where the program was centered around these CEOs of big multinational corporations that would go down at a grassroots level and immerse themselves into the business as a worker, but they would have a film crew and no one would realize that it's actually the CEO.
Speaker 1:And then he would immerse himself in the business. It sounds like you have the same philosophy, which I truly respect, because a lot of times there's a very the leadership for me, generally speaking, in the world at the moment lacks, but our sense from you is very strong leadership which I respect, and I think that comes from not only my experience of being immersed in IMDA and working with your team and seeing what an amazing organization you've got and team that you've got. There's a very strong positive feeling in the building and it needs that for this type of environment. So respect to you for that. And talk to me a bit about building a team and managing a team and how do you manage that and what is your philosophies around it.
Speaker 2:I think building a team is actually quite a tough one. It's the same thing, right, going back to strategy, which is the slides are nice, but people are hardest. And I think the important part of it is to really, from the bottom up, like, immerse yourself in the culture, know actually what the processes are, understand the people in the first six or nine months right, religious, invest time in knowing the people, sitting down with them, understanding what they are doing, what their challenges are, what their hopes and fears could be in that sense, and then start making decisions only then, in that sense. And that, from a team perspective, is to align them to a certain kind of mission and vision, which cannot be something that's just top down, but really what you hear from them as well. I think that's very important because the team needs to see themselves in your vision. Otherwise there's a lot of fear of okay, am I not relevant in that vision itself? I think that's one. I think the other part of it is also the whole idea of understanding the aspirations.
Speaker 2:People go to work, admittedly, for very different reasons. Some people, what we like to call in Singapore, using Hokkien, like to chiong. They are hustlers. They are real hustlers. They just want to get things done, they just want to achieve and everything. That's fine, right. But not everyone is built like that. Some people have legitimate expectations, like I will do a good job, but after six, all my time is for my family, which is fine. Then you just have to put. You just have to kind of right size your expectations and right side their expectations as well. Put them in the right role that will help them flourish. I think that's important.
Speaker 2:The other part of it which I truly do believe in is actually people development and people progression in that sense. So a lot of times, that's the usual thing that I will also focus a lot more on, which is, wow, my team's career plans. And I do subscribe to this thing which is increasingly true, right which is that there is no real career, like you don't spend entire career with an entire organization, but you look at it as almost like a tool of duty. In these two years, what are you going to do? And then after that, how are you going to progress after that? So for me, it's always a batch of honor when my team actually gets promoted or moves on to better opportunities, because that means that my team is creating real value, right? The worst thing that I would fear for is that my team couldn't go anywhere. That is what I believe in in terms of team management.
Speaker 2:I think the second part of it is that, of course, when your team does move on to better opportunities, then you have to always then continuously refresh the team, right?
Speaker 2:So how do you look at inflow of talent, which is something that I picked up quite a lot in Carousel as well, which is really to be very, very hands-on on talent, which basically means that when the resumes come in, I'm the first one to look at it and no one screens the resume. I'm the screener. I'll just look over 200 resumes, kind of look at who I think is good, I'll just give them a call right away and then we have a telephone screening straight, right? Because I do believe that actually, if you're a talent, we need to be fast, we need to be keen to get new as well. You can't go the traditional HR route where HR would screen you for a week or two weeks. We now some guys do their initial phone call and then send it to you and then after that you're okay, and then they discuss the package and the time to first offer is like three, six months and by the time you've got another offer on the table already.
Speaker 1:Again, it's your first touch with the new brand. The war on talent is real. I think that often, if we look through the startup lens, founders try and divorce themselves from that role the hiring process, the pipeline process, the project management on product development and I saw very interesting statements that I read from one of the blogs, or something that I read which someone was like adamant that as long as you're in startup mode, you can never divorce yourself from that. And I really respect that you hands on with that hiring process, because that's where it goes wrong. You start bringing on the wrong talent. Your HR nightmares are beginning If you don't handle that onboarding process or engagement, because it's the first engagement for talent with your brand.
Speaker 1:Notoriously, most of those HR processes are lengthy. It just can leave a bad taste in your mouth before you even start and if you want to get true talent, they will very quickly move away. So I like that you so hands on with that and that you screen it, and I'm a firm believer that you cannot divorce yourself from that as a startup founder. Sounds like you closely aligned to that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think in Carousel that was one of the learnings I had, which was that the co-founders, no matter how busy they were, they will make it a point to interview the candidates for cultural feat. In that sense they may not have the adequate skills to be able to see whether the guy can do the job functionally. I think culturally that's something that they felt was very important and I resonate quite a fair bit with that, which was that the attitude is actually quite important as well. We live in an age where not everyone is probably 100% plot and play and with the kind of disruption, you have to be prepared that you may be 100% today but tomorrow you may be 70% because the role has changed, the expectations of the role has changed so much and really the attitude is actually much more important that way.
Speaker 1:How do you you touched on culture and culture for such a critical thing. How do you? Because CVs and that first interview is a lot of posturing, right?
Speaker 2:So you need to cut through the fluff and try and figure out what you're actually dealing with.
Speaker 1:Do you have any recommendations, tips, tricks you use to? How do you test it and validate it before you go through the hiring of someone which is difficult to unwind?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that's a lot of things, perhaps. I think the first one is really word of mouth. I think word of mouth is really important, which is you could ask people that you potentially that may know this person, like what are the strengths and areas of development? But of course you sometimes have to then calibrate accordingly, right? They could give a glowing one, which may not be realistic because they were just trying to be very polite. I think that's very important, because if someone is able to actually stick their neck out, usually you will think that hey, actually this guy should be pretty good in that way. Right, I think that's one.
Speaker 2:The second one is actually sometimes get a panel to interview, because sometimes you may have blind spots. But of course when you do a panel, it must be very clear and that the panel needs to be brief. You're supposed to look out for this thing like the job function. You're supposed to look out for how well they can speak to stakeholders. Someone is supposed to look out for something else, so that then you don't duplicate and ask duplicative questions in that sense. So I think that's the second one.
Speaker 2:The third one in that sense is that actually the core thing is that even if you get all of these things right, I think I read somewhere that the hiring you rarely get like more than 50% of your hiring decisions right. Most people actually still tend to regret their hires, and I think then the right thing to do is that if you hire to really hire fast and also transit fast, which essentially means that if it's not a good feat, you've tried your best right and you probably believe that you hire a talent and the talent probably also believes so. But to get into an honest conversation with the talent to say that I don't think it's working out, let's give it a few months to try. But if it's not working out, I think then we should just go out separate ways.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, fair point. That's some quality pools of wisdom there. Okay, so we look at the strategy for IMDA. It's a big ask and it's not an easy ask. How is it going? How successfully? I mean, I have a view on this, but I'm keen to hear your view. How successfully are you catalyzing an ecosystem? What's working? I mean, you're dealing with all the big corporates that Singapore has to offer. How successful are you in your engagement with corporates and you marrying that to the startup network? Talk to me a little bit about that and what you're experiencing and what's your vision and how's that going?
Speaker 2:Yeah, sure, I think I can only speak more of the IMDA innovation division and also in the area of corporate innovation itself. I think we have been relatively successful since Pixel and Open Innovation Platform was set up like 2018. Actually, that was before my time and really the good work of my predecessors to do that. Today, corporate innovation is no longer an alien word to a lot of corporates. Design thinking as a methodology to conduct corporate innovation is also no longer an alien thing in itself. In fact, a lot more corporates are actually coming to us to say that we are interested in corporate innovation because that's the only way to grow, especially post-COVID, when they've realized that traditional revenues is something that they took for granted and they need to actually future-proof their business itself. Usually, then, the problem is always how do we get started? I think we've kind of crossed a bit of that awareness chasm already. Some people are interested. I think that that's where we are.
Speaker 2:The challenge that sometimes we do have in that way. It's really. It's really how can we do this at scale for corporates? Because it's a very intensive process. You can imagine it like an innovation consultancy. I can only do as many as the innovative consultants that I actually have to be able to service the corporates. How do we do this at scale? Because the mission is or rather the vision of it is, to be so done good at this that we work ourselves out of a job which is that there's no market failure. Corporates will actually instinctively innovate by themselves, rather than come to intermediary ourselves to be able to do that. So how can we actually do this at scale such that then they can just start that innovation journey, go out, find a few startups to pilot or prototype some innovation with to be able to do this?
Speaker 2:I think that's really the key challenge that we have. I think the other part of it is really the insight that I've gotten from this entire business itself, which is that, from the corporate's point of view, what they are looking for is very similar to a double-sided marketplace. The first thing they ask is how many solution providers do you have? Because? And then are they all Singapore startups?
Speaker 2:Why they ask for these things is very similar to a double-sided marketplace is because they want the most diverse range of supply, and it may not be always just Singapore startups in itself. They want the best and brightest from a crowdsourcing angle to be able to do this and, from a startup point of view, the value for them in the open innovation platform of Pixel is that we can actually, rather than teach them how to, rather than give them a fish every day, we teach them how to fish, which is that they can get their first business. On the open innovation platform or through Pixel. We can actually link them up with the right corporate so that they can start their first. They can win their first reference customer or their key logo, and generally it's always very difficult for startups to be able to do that, because they can knock on corporate's doors all day, but the corporate will always ask do you have a track record? No, ok, I'm going with an established solution provider.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, you're hitting some key notes that I just discussed with all the students and one of the key pieces of advice I left them with was to leverage programs like this to engage with corporates, because I think there's two problems right. So on the one side, you've got corporates that are in a perfect storm of an onslaught of technology, trying to deal with their frank and stack. How do they manage all of their legacy assets at all of these new assets? Ok, get their assets to serve their strategy versus their strategy being how do we manage all of our assets? Ok, you've got an onslaught of all these new technologies. They have to make big decisions on which technologies they're adopting, how to upskill their workforce, how to not be disrupted, how to stay relevant and customer centric All the you know it's like a perfect storm of things that are keeping CEOs and CTOs awake at night. So that's on the one side of the fence, and I think it really helps to have the structure that IMDA can bring to work through that noise and focus on establishing compelling problem statements or use cases that can be solved.
Speaker 1:On the other side of the fence, you've got startups that are being created every day and often and I've tried this. I've tried this as a startup. Go to a corporate and a year later you get the contract, you know, and a year in a startup life is like half your runway, you know, and you can get messed around by the corporate number one, number two it takes too long, it's very slow. There's no middleware or blueprints that just make sure that the system is lubricated to maximize the rates at which you can deploy a POC or POV. As a startup, you're at risk of trying to bend over backwards to satisfy the corporate, probably trying to do it for free, or there's no reward or scope creep, or you don't establish the right KPRs and you get to the end of the POC, pov and there's no outcome because you haven't solved anything tangible that the corporate actually needed and you end up like potentially almost eliminating your business before it even gets started. So I think you've created this ecosystem that kills or solves two problems with one platform and one ecosystem.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, respect. Ok, so how many corporates? Do you talk to me a bit about the corporates. How many corporates are currently engaging with IMDA and what does the model look like? And how can startups engage with those corporates? What is, if you can just outline?
Speaker 2:that. So top line stats. Since 2018, we've facilitated over 300 problem statements. That's quite a fair number worth more than $30 million of price money. On this, we've grown the ecosystem to more than 12,000 solution providers. Fair double digit percentage of them are actually international solution providers. So that's really a main draw from the corporate's point of view, because they get it from the global best.
Speaker 1:That's interesting that you've got such a big international base.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think we work with a lot of partners as well, so more than 40 international partners that look at startups and look at like bringing their startups over to Singapore to access the business opportunities here as well. So I think that's a very important draw that we are going to increasingly build a lot more on as well.
Speaker 1:So, for those listening, if you're a startup in another country and you want to break into the Singapore markets, you've got the perfect platform for that, because they can come and look at the problem statements and, if they can solve it, it gives them a landing zone.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think we've got quite a fair number of success stories. German startups actually came in. They won two of the Open Innovation Platform Challenges. They set up their APEC shop here in Singapore. A Hong Kong startup also did the same thing. So it's really a good way for you to do a market sensing come market demand kind of initiative here, so to walk you through a little bit of that process itself.
Speaker 2:Most of the time the corporate actually comes in, as you said, there's a lot of things that they is keeping them up at night. There's a lot of noise. Our job really is to help them cut through the noise, diagnose their problem, their business process itself through design thinking, the user process, and then really identify a clear problem statement that they want to work on. Usually a lot of corporates they do something that's known as what we call tech for tech sick. So, for instance, they are saying oh you know, the metaverse is hot right now, or generative AI is hot right now, sustainability is hot right now.
Speaker 2:What can we do with generative AI with our business? Actually, that's not the best way to actually create the problem statement. The problem statement could be something how might we create a smart financial accounting system so that I can free my finance team up for more higher value added work in that sense, and it could be an AI kind of solution. It could be anything under the sun. So I think that helps open up the tech areas to something that's a little bit more outcome based. I'm agnostic to your tech, but as long as you achieve the outcomes that I'm looking to provide. Another benefit of the problem statement approach is that you could actually bring in your internal business unit to go through this, because it's very important for your internal users as a corporate.
Speaker 2:Yes, your internal users to actually buy in and really use the solution and prototype the solution for you. Because, as you say right, which is that there's no reason for change In fact, all of us hate change but how do you then bring in a business unit to be able to help them imagine a better process and to get that buy in? So I think that's also one key thing that we need to do. So, once we've got the problem statement that challenge brief out, the corporate, the entire service, is free. The corporate just needs to put up some cash money of about 20 to 50k for the prototype. Upon the completion of the prototype itself.
Speaker 1:So there's an incentive as well.
Speaker 2:Yes, it's an incentive for the startup Because from the startup point of view, it's like this keeps the lights on.
Speaker 1:For me.
Speaker 2:I've got some additional runway. This is not a free POC which a lot of corporate startups are prone to do it. So at least there's something on the table. And with that something on the table you can also feel that from the corporate point of view, that skin in the game, because if they pay something up they then make sure that it's worth their salt or worth their value in that sense.
Speaker 1:Can not stress how important that is.
Speaker 2:That's right. So once we have that, which is what we known as demand in a double-sided platform, we posted our platform, then we launched the challenge in itself and then we activate the supply side, which are the solution providers as well as some of our partners, to say, hey, there's this problem statement that we have launched already within this call and you want to submit your solutions in the next six to eight weeks, depending on where it closes. So once it comes in, we work with the corporate to also provide a second opinion in terms of the technical feasibility of some of these solutions, because we have already consulted for more than 300 problem statements already and the corporates actually do find quite a fair bit of value on that, because we have seen across different sectors. Once it's done, we set up a KPI setting session. That's also very important because of scope creep, so that everyone knows what's supposed to come out of the prototype or the POC, and then we leave them to actually develop a POC and if it's successful, they can also then discuss commercialization terms as well.
Speaker 2:So between the matching as well as commercialization, we do come in from time to time to see what we can actually help with to lubricate the process, for instance, like advising on IP issues, some technical issues such as the UI, ux, so some of these are also things that we do. So how I've tried to productise the process to move away from consultancy is that we are now launching our challenge calls every quarter, so there's predictability in the process itself. Every call has about 10 to 15 challenge statements, so that we create some critical mess and interest from the startups to continue to want to actually submit solutions.
Speaker 1:That's amazing. I cannot stress enough, as someone who has had the pain of trying to deal with the corporate directly, how important it is to have a platform and an ecosystem like this that removes those learning curves and creates an honest framework for both parties to benefit. So the KPRs and the rewards incentives it's just so essential to ensure that everyone's at least finding some value. Tell me, how do you manage RP? Does that vary from project to project?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it does. So usually. I mean it's really up for the corporates and as well as the startup, so actually discuss. But at the start we do advise the corporates as to, ok, this will be the potential outcomes if you skew IP rights certain ways. So, for instance, I mean usual corporates or usual companies, they would say I want all IP for myself, that if you want all IP to yourself, you're not going to get a submission, you're going to get poor submissions and you've seen that right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, sometimes that happens. So we have to advise against that. We have to say that maybe it's something that you need to keep your options open on. Once you've seen the proposals that come in, we can then discuss IP. But we may not want to just restrict it at the first instance and you don't get any proposals at all, because sometimes the corporates may actually experience that, hey, actually this is a really great proposal and in totality I'm willing to see a bit of ground on the IP because I want to co-develop this and I see that actually it can really meet my needs in that sense. So sometimes there are things like that that will have to really manage some of the corporates' expectations on Then our job as a middleman usually will have to really be very plain in terms of laying out the pros and cons, but it's really for the two parties to decide, right? Sometimes I like our role as a matchmaker. The spouses must actually get along. We are just trying very hard to make both happy Nice.
Speaker 1:So you have like, because you've got so many startups that are engaging now with your corporates. Do you have serial problem statement solvers? Are there people that are just waiting for the next problem statement and solving it? Do you see any of that?
Speaker 2:There is some of the startups who are kind of like what we call, like returning customers as well, corporates as well, returning customers. Sometimes they're a good thing and a bad thing. In that sense, I mean, in Carousel, returning users are the best right Because they are the ones who find real value in the open innovation platform. I would say that, by and large, returning users are great, especially on the corporate side, because when they return, that means that they really truly do find value in them, and when they do that, we also have a very steady, predictable pipeline of problem statements, and that's very important for us, because onboarding a corporate is also really tough right, developing a problem statement. But once they're onboarded and they understand this, the process it becomes so much faster.
Speaker 2:For my team, from a startup point of view, is that there are some, but of course, if you take it too far that you are a serial winner in that sense, then it can sometimes be a bit dangerous Because you're just trying to bring cash money and cash money doesn't really. It keeps the lights on, but it's not going to be a unicorn and it doesn't really make sense to keep winning it without productizing it. In that sense, you could use it for the purposes of validating your solution against different kinds of corporates in the same sector or across adjacent sector to really see what you want to build. But in the end, actually, the productizing your solution with one of these corporates is the key for you to really scale up, got you?
Speaker 1:In that way Makes a lot of sense. Sure, sure. Now. I think it's phenomenal that you've managed to create such a vibrant ecosystem, and we're very grateful to be part of that as Huawei. I think that we really hold the relationship in high regard and we're glad to be present in the building and having our incubator startups here. We just started the second cohort and I can say with confidence that the first year of being in this facility has really just provided us with a different way of thinking. It's exposed us to so many interesting startups, individuals. It's great for our startups because they get to mingle with the other startups that are in your ecosystem and we get the benefit of all the facilities that you have, and I do think, on behalf of Huawei, to thank you for that, and we just want to reinforce that that relationship is very important to us and we're glad to be part of this journey.
Speaker 2:Thanks very much for that. I praise I think in the Innovation Division, we also recognize that we can't do it ourselves and partners like you guys, huawei. It's extremely important, because we want to tap on your networks and your ecosystem as well, to build a much more enlarged amount of gametag ecosystem, because some of the startups from your incubator program could actually submit a lot of the could actually fill some of the needs of the corporates that we find as well, and that's actually very important for us to be able to get such a high quality startups to solve these corporate statements.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I also just love how agnostic it is. It's nice for me to walk across the passage and see a competitor and be like they're right there. This is good, good competitive nature, about the environment as well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think as government, that's one of the key value propositions we have is that we are a neutral ground for everyone in that sense to convene, and when you think about how corporates or startups like to think, it's that they are time scars, they are time staff. I don't have time to visit different partners. Why don't I go to one place and I can actually look at most of it? And I think that's what we're trying to build here as well in Pixel.
Speaker 1:What is your closing kind of vision and where is this going and what's I mean? Maybe you can't share it now, but I'm sure you've got grand plans. I'm so excited to see where this goes. But what is your vision in your tenure and what would you like to see happen within your time here?
Speaker 2:Yeah, sure, I think. Yeah, no real grand plans. In that sense, I think what the team really realizes is that that's why we actually choose to focus a lot more on corporate innovation compared to startup innovation is the whole idea that over 90% of the economy is actually more your classical corporates than your startups, and what we've seen a little bit from a tech winter is that there's some sobering realistic expectations about tech and startups as well. So if the corporate itself don't transform, the economy is not going to go well either. So the important thing is how do we help some of these corporates, which may have massive resources, cash, reach everything, but perhaps potentially outdated kind of attack, outdated kind of processes to transform so that then they can continue to grow and scale? It's extremely important.
Speaker 2:I think that is really that realization that this part of the equation needs to work as well.
Speaker 2:So being able to create it from a demand lab perspective and also, at the same time, help the startup scale, because that's the sustainable way to grow, you create demand for them.
Speaker 2:It's something that's really very meaningful for us, and I think what we really aspire towards is how we can help some of the big brands and also big local brands that's very established, like recently, we helped Mandai, which is a Singapore Zoo, but they are also looking for corporate transformation to really get access to some of the innovative solutions that they wanted to improve productivity. It's something that's I would say it's very inspiring and it's something that's close to heart to a lot of my teammates because it's a well-known brand that's still with us, for Since we were born, as children we used to go to the zoo, and to be able to see that happening to a brand that we love, I think that's really the most fulfilling thing that we have. So my hope is that we can continue to create such great stories so that then we can also tell a lot of our loved ones or kids, as well as colleagues, that we are really doing something very meaningful and something very tangible in IMDA.
Speaker 1:Purpose. All I hear is purpose and I do love that and I follow purpose, I follow leadership and it's good to be in a facility that is essentially shaping the future, because digitalization and going down that path is extremely difficult, and we've mentioned the challenges that corporates face but they tend to be very siloed and with all the noise. Whenever I've done a design thing in workshop with a corporate, it's so funny. I did one recently with another big telco and we just saw that the silos are real. You bring in the sales, the product, the data team and you do that workshop with them and you can see that they're not communicating.
Speaker 1:They've all got challenges within their own respect of a right that causes issues within their ability to innovate, to adopt, to stay relevant, and I think I would highly recommend that any corporate that's looking for a platform, a team, a methodology that can help them clear the noise and expose their problem statements to the world, this is the place for that. Yeah, thank you. Well, it's been an absolute pleasure and I just want to thank you again for making the time to sit and share your thoughts. I really, as I've said and I'll say it again, I respect you and your team a lot. We're grateful to be a part of it, and kudos to IMDA for shaping the future and making the future look bright through the adoption of technology. So thank you for that.
Speaker 2:Alright, thanks, lv. I enjoy our conversation.
Speaker 1:Thank you, looking forward to the next one, alright, thanks.