In leadership, it can be said that experience is the best teacher. In the startup world, in particular, I realised that there is no other way to learn how to be a startup founder than to actually have a startup.

As some in my network already know, I have had the pleasure to build a career at the intersection of startups and large corporates for most of my career, either as a venture capitalist, accelerator manager, corporate innovation lead or digital transformation executive.

All have the mandates to either invest or partner with disruptive startup companies. In late 2019, 10 years post-graduation, I reconnected with my classmate at Stanford, Kevin Gabayan, who was doing his machine learning PhD as I was completing my MBA. We realised that we both had the same vision of disrupting financial services in emerging markets.

After this, we decided to leave our jobs and start Plentina, our vision of the future that data and strategic partnership can unlock credit for billions in emerging markets. Of course, we did not know a pandemic will set in a few months after.

Leadership as a startup founder means a roller coaster ride with weekly highs and lows and many “near-death” experiences as a company. One week, it might be amazing since you close a critical partnership, and the next week, rejected by 10 venture capitalist investors. It is hard, and even when I always have supportive co-founders, there is no substitute in learning about startups other than actually being a founder.

Two weeks before we closed Plentina’s US$2.2 million seed round, I found out that Plentina got accepted to the Nasdaq Milestone Makers programme, a prestigious programme that selects 12 global startups between seed and Series A that have the potential to impact inclusive growth. We were the only one that focused on Southeast Asia.

Also Read: Emotional leadership in a post-COVID-19 business world

Three months later, before our graduation highlighted by the feature in the Nasdaq Tower, Times Square, New York City, the programme manager asked us to reflect: What were the major lessons I learned after closing the seed round?

How was the transition from being a co-founder of a company of eight? What happens after you raised your seed round? I outlined my top learnings on the transition from a pre-seed founder into a venture-funded startup at the seed stage.

And I want to share them with you.

Startup hiring is HARD

It is definitely way harder than when I was in the corporate world.  Even if you “raised” money and can give away equity, we realised that this is not enough to really attract top talent. We had many rejections from folks that went through the entire process but ended up not accepting our offer for reasons of stability or corporate brand. Some even said that our equity is not guaranteed.

The way to attract amazing talent is to focus on the vision of the company and hiring for people that have a mission alignment. It is hard to convince people that are not bought into your vision to join you and will negotiate more on the money rather than the role.

Hire people that are “general athletes” and can bring their “whole self” into the company

We want to focus on people who can do major functions such as HR, finance, and data science, but we also want to be sure we hire people who could contribute to Plentina in other ways. For example, we got a business development person who used to head marketing at a fintech company. We also got someone who was a customer service associate who had helped out grant writing and impact investing in a previous role. We realise that startups want good people that bring their previous experiences to the company while looking at how they could contribute to our own company.

You realise that you have to continue to adapt your plan based on the learning in the market

We saw that when we spoke to our investors and showed them our hiring plan. He said, “You are a B2C company, where is your growth marketer?” Instantly, we created a job requisition for a growth marketer and posted it on LinkedIn the same day.

A lot of the discussion with the executive coach is about how to grow as a founder and build a growth mindset

I realised that even with many years of experience in leadership, building a company is a unique and completely different experience from anything that you have had before. So, it is important to always be curious, ask questions, and understand if you have self-limiting behaviours that will limit the growth of the company.

Sometimes, timing on hiring is more important than plans

We were able to partner with an amazing team in Vietnam. We were still planning to go to Vietnam in Q4 or Q1 2022, but we were introduced to our now Country GM last month. We ended up pulling the trigger on the collaboration and it has been an amazing ride ever since.

Also Read: 3 leadership lessons for women in tech

What got you here will not get you to the next stage

At each stage of the business, your own leadership capacity has to evolve and how you prioritise your time has to evolve. For the seed stage, a lot of the time is spent figuring it out by yourself and focusing on getting some form of MVP and traction. Speed is important in this stage.

For the next phase of growing the company from eight to 30 people over the next quarter, we have to evolve. Hiring, coaching and creating systems are equally important as figuring things out.

Being a startup founder is a constant evolution. As fast as a startup has to grow and scale to attract venture funding, you too have to evolve as a leader in order to achieve your own vision and build a company that will last for generations.

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My current role as Head of Talent at Monk’s Hill Ventures means further immersion in the increasingly vibrant local tech startup scene. If you want to understand the current Singapore tech landscape —including the stages and specific companies hiring and growing here— read on.

I have specialised in leadership and technical recruiting for VC-backed startups and founders (Uber, Houzz, Github, Instacart, Strava, Clever, Groupon, etc.) over the last ten years. Relocating from San Francisco to Singapore in 2019 meant researching and interviewing for jobs remotely, and landing at regional super-app Grab to step back into Southeast Asia.

I break down the main categories of tech companies into:

1) Early-stage startups

2) Homegrown Asian unicorns, and

3) Well-known tech brands beyond the FAANG group

The list is meant as a starting point, and by no means comprehensive or exhaustive. I will update it over time and hope it can serve as a useful guide to anyone interested in tech roles in the little red dot.

Also Read: impress.ai raises US$3M to make hiring less tiring for recruiters

Option 1: Early-stage startups

There are now an estimated 4,000 tech-enabled startups in Singapore alone (source: PwC), and an estimated 18,000 jobs created by them in 2019 (source: Worldbank). Over US$4 billion of funding flowed into Singapore startups in 2020 despite COVID-19 challenges — three times that of 2015.

This is the higher risk and (potentially) higher reward set of companies: Seed stage (ideation to first steps), Series A (clear business plan/minimum viable product built), or Series B+ (clear product-market fit, expansion mode).

This can be a tough segment to navigate as there is no single source of truth that centralises these job opportunities. So it does require more research and thought to figure out which ones to look at.

There are job boards on AngelList, Glints, and Tech in Asia and many lists on Google to get you started, highlighting interesting companies.

At Monk’s Hill Ventures, we have a centralised jobs board that allows you to easily search for open roles at our portfolio companies, spanning edutech/healthtech/fintech/logistics/AI — with many open to hiring remotely.

A few general tips:

• What resonates with you: Research and narrow down the domains you are personally most interested in: what problems do you want to help solve? (fintech and logistics are currently the most active verticals) > overlay this with the stage of company > deep dive to identify 10–20 relevant companies and see which ones resonate. There are many useful reports out there on specific sectors, eg: Fintech News Singapore and Oliver Wyman on the Singapore Fintech landscape, Nic Milanovic’s fintech newsletter. (I’ll write a longer piece on the art of applying to startup jobs).
• Follow the money: Look up the investors funding your target companies, reach out to the Talent folks at the relevant VC firms, and pitch them your skillset, as they know what their portfolio companies are looking for.
• Network: Get out of your comfort zone to request intros and referrals to companies and individuals. Talking to people in the industries and companies that intrigue you is an excellent way to figure out what you really want. For introverts, a very effective way of networking and branding yourself is to put pen to paper and write some thought pieces you can share with the community.

If you’re also interested in learning more about the latest trends and data on compensation for early-stage tech startups, do take a look also at our latest tech talent report, The Southeast Asia Tech Talent Compensation Report.

Also Read: From our community: Hiring tips from Glints’ CTO, 4-day work week, the rise of slow fashion and more….

Home-grown unicorns (and unicorns-in-waiting)

Of the companies in Southeast Asia that have reached more than US$1 billion valuations, Monk’s Hill Ventures noted that four are currently Singapore-based and headquartered (Grab, Sea, Razer, Lazada).

According to a report by Temasek, Google and Bain, there are nearly 70 companies valued between US$100 million and US$1 billion in SEA. Many more will join their ranks in the coming years. The vast majority are still private, so plenty of upside in an exit event.

• Grab: All over the news recently with its upcoming US$40 billion SPAC deal. The time I spent at Grab was great exposure to a wide range of leadership styles, products, and countries given its super-app reach. Still hiring, though not at the levels seen in 2018.
• Sea: Currently the most valuable tech company in the region, a public company with a market valuation of US$130 billion, and lately the best performing stock in the world. The group has three core outfits: Video games (Garena), e-commerce (Shopee), and fintech (SeaMoney). Aggressively hiring.
• Lazada: E-commerce platform acquired by Alibaba in 2016, and the company has since gone through a number of leadership changes and acquired a more Chinese character.
• Razer: a public company with a significant market share of the global gaming business. Razer was founded way back in 1998 and now has dual HQs in Singapore and the US.
• Trax: Founded and incorporated in Singapore, this retail analytics and execution company recently raised US$640 million in Series E funding, but most of its R&D is done out of Israel.
• Patsnap: short for “patents in a snap”. A newly minted unicorn providing data and analytics on IP. Though founded in Singapore, their expansion is now focused entirely on China and the US, so remote work is the only option if you are in Singapore.
• Ninja Van — leading logistics and courier service provider that’s been a beneficiary of the regional e-commerce boom. The company has raised US$400 million to date (full disclosure: the company I work at, Monk’s Hill Ventures, is an early investor in Ninjavan).
• PropertyGuru: A leading property classified business in Southeast Asia that has raised US$740 million to date.
• Carousell — a consumer marketplace for buying and selling secondhand goods. Raised US$263 million in total to date.
• Biofourmis — Singapore-born AI-powered health analytics. Raised US$144 million to date.
• Zilingo — more than just an online shopping site, it positions itself as an end-to-end cloud platform that connects everyone along the supply chain. Raised US$308 million to date.
• Stashaway: Series C digital wealth manager that recently crossed having over US$1 billion in assets under management.
• Indonesian unicorns: limited presence and open roles in Singapore for the likes of Gojek, Tokopedia (these two are now merged), Bukalapak, and Traveloka.

We at Monk’s Hill Ventures see that Chinese companies are in a league of their own, as they have been hiring aggressively in Singapore and often paying over the market in exchange for more intense work culture. These include Bytedance/Tik Tok, Tencent, and Alibaba.

Also Read: Eliminating hiring on gut feeling: How Pulsifi bridges data and hiring

Option 3: The international names

FAANG — The big five: Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, Google

The tech behemoths continue to hire in sizeable numbers in Singapore. At the time of writing, open positions in Singapore at the top five performing American public tech companies were: Facebook (180 open roles), Amazon (348), Apple (150), Netflix (28), Google (192).

Great brand names though there are fewer senior leadership positions relative to headquarters, and more limited options for technical roles (engineering and product).

Netflix for example currently has 700 employees in Asia, representing 10 per cent of its global workforce, the majority of which is based in Los Gatos, US. It currently has no engineering or product teams in Singapore, apart from a few systems engineers.

Other global tech companies in Singapore

Microsoft: yes, it is a huge company. It also remains a major and innovative software player and has invested strategically in the likes of Grab and Bukalapak.

Stripe: Currently the most valuable private startup in the US. Stripe has steadily built out a presence in Singapore, with about 10 per cent of their global staff based in Asia— there are more technical opportunities here, as they do have an Asia head of engineering and sizeable tech team. Fourty-seven open roles as of press time. Big on remote work.

Shopify: Canadian-headquartered, Asia is a major area of growth for them, with an office in Singapore since 2018. They’ve announced plans to double their engineering team in 2021 by hiring 2,021 new roles, and they are fully remote. Started off as a platform for independent merchants to start and manage their online business, now expanding into financing as well.

TransferWise: Following its rebranding in March (formerly known as Wise), this UK-based cross-border payments network announced it will hire over 70 people in Singapore in 2021 for roles including expansion, engineering, product, and operations.

Coinbase: Took the public listing route in April, current market cap: US$58 billion. Coinbase is a major crypto player by providing an easy way to exchange Bitcoins and other digital currencies. Recently hiring for a country manager in Singapore to expand the team.

Twilio: San Francisco-based cloud communications platform is hiring for a number of technical (largely support and network engineers) and GTM roles in Singapore.

Zoom: Announced its intention to build an R&D centre in Singapore to hire hundreds of engineering staff, and double the capacity of its data centre (here since 2019). At the time of writing, 14 open roles in Singapore, mostly technical.

Twitter: Fifteen open roles in Singapore over different functions. It announced last year setting up an Asia-Pacific engineering centre in Singapore.

Spotify: Stockholm-based Spotify recently announced an expansion in international footprint across 85 new markets (though it is already present in most of the Southeast Asian countries).

Also Read: Monk’s Hill Ventures’s Peng T. Ong on how to get your startup ready for the new normal

A smattering of sales and marketing roles in Singapore for now — but they appear to be big proponents of remote work so it is worth checking out jobs in other locations.

We live in an increasingly borderless world, remote work is common now, and even small startups are hiring distributed teams. At Monk’s Hill Ventures, we believe that this trend will continue, so there’s no need to limit yourself to companies with an on-the-ground presence.

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The popularity of social media platforms has skyrocketed over the past decade and it has a rising significance in our daily lives. This significance includes the rise of digital influencers as the trendsetters and tastemakers of today.

They are everyday people who love sharing about their passion and daily lives on social media – whether that be cooking, fashion, comedy or gaming, the possibilities are endless.

Also known as key opinion leaders (KOL), influencers are seen to be experts in one subject that can exert impact on their audience through blog posts, pictures, videos, tweets and more.

Twitter users are reported to have increased their purchase intent by 5.2 times when exposed to promotional content from influencers, while 49 per cent of people say they rely on recommendations from influencers to guide their purchasing decisions.

After more than a year of ongoing lockdowns, the pandemic has intensified the impact influencers have on purchasing behaviours due to restrictions limiting shopping in stores.

The power of influencers can be seen through the success of China’s social media influencer Austin Lee (also known as “King of Lipstick”). He managed to generate over US$145 million in sales during his live streaming session on Taobao on 11.11 (also known as Single’s Day) in 2019.

The growing importance of digital influence has garnered interest from brands and organisations as customers tend to trust product recommendations from their favourite influencers. Increasingly, traditional methods such as banners and pop-up advertisements are lesser employed as customers see them as intrusive.

From a cost standpoint, it benefits brands as these types of traditional media requires heavy investing in printing, space, and may not be as effective in terms of engagement for the money spent on it.

Also Read: Is influencer marketing the future of marketing?

From mom-and-pop stores to conglomerates, countless brands have allocated expenditure towards influencer marketing activities to drive brand awareness and increase customer engagement. In an internet survey done by influencer marketing agency Takumi in 2020, it found that 73 per cent of marketers surveyed have allocated more resources to influencer marketing.

Perhaps one of the best examples of brands leveraging on influencer marketing is Swedish watch brand Daniel Wellington. They focused on reaching out to smaller micro-influencers rather than big celebrities.

Aside from providing a free watch, they provided each influencer with a unique promo code which gave 15 per cent off to their followers on social media platforms. This helped track the engagement rate and effective sales a KOL was bringing in.

Influencer marketing-focused platforms and agencies can be seen flooding into this space in efforts to simplify the process for both brands and influencers. These trends were further accelerated by COVID19 as people now spend substantially more time online than ever.

Influencer marketing has matured as an industry. Recently released figures have shown that the market size has more than doubled between 2019 and 2021, increasing from US$6.5 billion to US$13.8 billion in the three years alone.

Certainly, influencers have become vital intermediaries for brands to connect and engage with consumers on social media through the follower base the influencer has built.

Different types of influencers have flourished, with KOLs filling every plausible category of interest ranging from beauty, travel, and gaming to name a few. But how much do we know about the trustworthiness of these influencers when authenticity becomes a commodity?

The highly resonant and original content that influencers produce is what attracts the audience and thus grows their social influence. The best influencers create content that inspires, connects and engages with the audience in the context of the influencer’s life and lifestyle.

Key to influencer content includes being honest and personable, and most importantly understanding their audience and what engages them.

Also Read: Ex-Grabbers’ startup Evo raises seed funding to help influencers, live-streamers optimise back-office ops

However, content delivered by most influencers today is no longer about sharing honest reviews or promoting brands they like. Instead, it is filled with marketing campaigns driven by ROI and echoing the message the brands want to convey to their targeted audience. As influencers increasingly turn their profiles into advertising tools, people are exhausted by overly features-heavy and upfront product placements.

This distorts the concept behind influencer marketing that was built on credibility and trust as fans relied on influencers for truthful opinions. Often now, it is hard to tell when an endorsement is genuine or if a review is coming from an undisclosed partnership.

The perception of ‘easy income’ from monetising influencers’ efforts on social media has encouraged regular individuals to capitalise on this opportunity.

When producing authentic content appears to be a profession with standards and fierce competition, most are ready to pay for fame and followers in order to capture the attention of brands and big money. Brands can end up overspending on influencer marketing without achieving the desired results.

According to a recent report from an influencer marketing analytics company Instascreener, brands in the US and Canada have spent a total of US$1.9 billion in 2019, of which US$1.5 billion was spent on Instagram influencers alone.

What’s interesting is they have found that US$255 million was spent on influencers with fake engagement and followers. Among brands that were revealed to be spending too much for minimal results included Clarins, Crocs and Kroger.

With growing concerns revolved around the transparency of social media posts, Instagram rolled out branded content features that allows influencers to create branded partnerships with businesses and tag the brand in the content that they have been sponsored.

This was significant in helping maintain user trust in both the brand and influencer since the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) was cracking down on influencers and brands that were not properly disclosing sponsored content.

Also Read: How the influencer voice can be a powerful force for change

Finding the right balance to maintain honesty, integrity, and effective marketing strategies remains crucial to marketers, all while finding the right influencers to raise their brands.

It will be interesting to keep an eye out on how influencer marketing and consumer perception will evolve over time as digital marketing is here to stay.

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Editor’s note: e27 aims to foster thought leadership by publishing views from the community. Share your opinion by submitting an article, video, podcast or infographic

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