Every year in January, it seems I always get asked for advice by a number of corporate friends that share their aspirations to “leave the nine to five” and “be their own boss.”  Many have told me that they want to be the next Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg and that they feel that this is the right time for them to go all in and leave the comforts of a steady paycheck. 

As much as an investor and a fellow founder myself, I lace many mentorship sessions like these with much optimism and encouragement, I also balance it out with doses of reality that entrepreneurship is not going to get you more time to hang out on the beach drinking fruity beverages, but it will demand much more of yourself than any job that you’ll have in your life.  This is especially true since most venture capital firms, even at the pre-seed stage, require a full-time commitment from founders.

Some context here, I myself am a late bloomer.  I decided to start a startup at the tender age of 37.  This feels late for many, but in actuality, many founders start companies in their 20s but also in their 30s and 40s. 

What is different this time, though, is that I have a wife and kids, and I was well into my corporate life. If leaving an executive role in a financial services company wasn’t enough, it is the responsibility of being the sole breadwinner in the family that created a lot more stakes in this decision as it is not just my life that will be affected but four other individuals that I am responsible for their well-being.

Here are the five questions you must ask yourself before leaving your job:

Do you have a business or just an idea? Is there external validation that people need this?

Fundamentally, are you quitting your job for a hobby or a real business opportunity?  When I was in Cisco, we called this the “anyone but your mother rule.”  A true test of a business is that someone is paying for your product or your service besides your mother, uncle or friends.

Also Read: What startup founders don’t know about exit strategies

Again, payment is key, as it seems many people start businesses without any commercial validation, often relying on gut instinct or market surveys. The best validation is to have paying customers or, for B2B, commercial agreements to know that you have a real business opportunity worth pursuing.

Are you financially prepared to take on the business? Can your income go to close to zero for six-12 months minimum?

This is probably the toughest to hear.  Many of us have dreams of starting a company, but we can’t afford to do so.  Not all of us have rich aunties or uncles, so the option of just quitting is predicated on financial savings, particularly asking if you have four-12 months of household expenses that you have saved up.

When we were starting Plentina, I had about four months of household expenses saved up before tossing in the towel, but note that it took me five years to save up that money consciously every month.  I called it my personal startup bank account. 

Why is this important? Since as much as we see movies or articles that people get funded in a day or a week, the reality typically happens that you should never assume that external funding will come, especially at the earliest stages of a company’s pre-product stage.

Will you have any regret if this business does not become successful?

According to an article in Fast Company, “as many as 75 per cent of venture-backed companies never return cash to investors.”  This doesn’t even account for the millions of businesses that do not get past the standards of venture capital. Despite these odds, most founders-to-be start companies not to solve a personal mission or a problem but the dream to build a unicorn and maybe retire early. 

The past five years have given a false sense of hope for this generation that founding a company is sexy and is the path towards millions. A critical question you must ask yourself is if you can be happy in the fact that you have a rare chance in your lifetime to try to solve something important to you and perhaps the world.

Can you imagine that in four or five years, the company might not exist, or your startup gets sold for zero dollars, but the mission still continues?

Do you and your family all know the sacrifices needed to give this a shot?

A few years ago, INC Magazine published an article entitled The Start of a Company, the End of a Marriage.  Launching a business can shatter the founder’s marriage.

Also Read: From hobby to startup: Here’s my story as IKIGUIDE’s Co-Founder

This is because the founder’s life is no easy path, mired in stressful situations, near-death experiences and personal income instability that is almost impossible to shield your family from, unlike a normal nine to five where you can leave your work worries at the door.

Can you have an honest discussion with your loved ones on what this decision to quit means for them and how this will affect them individually? 

I had a sit-down with my wife and kids indicating that we might have to cut down a lot from our lifestyle and that dad will be busier but have less time for the first few years.  I also had to ask my parents and my in-laws for support as they might need to help my family during this time.  Are you having these conversations?

Do you have an unfair advantage in building this business?

The last question is putting the investor’s mind into your business.  Will you trust your own money and invest in the business because you and your founders are the right people to pull this business off? Do you have unfair insights, expertise or advantage to make this happen for the world?

Final thoughts

If I had to sum up my advice to many, the simple answer if people should go full-time all comes down to timing.  Timing of your readiness as an individual to mentally, emotionally and financially go towards this path, and timing of the market to accept the idea that you have. 

Even if this seems gloomy, starting a company and seeing how much impact it has given to hundreds of thousands of individuals has been one of the most rewarding feelings I have had in my lifetime, and I will never regret the day I decided to pack up my suit, and traded it for my startup hoodie.

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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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We all may have different opinions on whether kids should be on social media (or not), but the fact is that two-thirds of children aged seven to nine in Singapore use smartphones every day and are active on social media. More than 40 per cent of them have their own Facebook accounts, while a quarter is on Instagram, according to a poll by online market research firm Milieu Insight that was conducted in 2021.

The question that remains is how to create a safe environment for children to interact through social media, which contains a multitude of risks, including exposure to inappropriate content and ill-intentioned strangers.

This is why Singapore-based startup myFirst introduced myFirst Circle, which it dubbed the first social community app for children. Announced at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2023 on January 6, the platform includes features that provide children with a safe environment to experience the benefits of social connectivity.

Using the app, children can create posts and share photos with their circle of friends without the need for parents to approve every post. At the same time, parents can monitor and make changes to their child’s activities instantly if found inappropriate, creating a balance between safety and freedom to socialise with friends.

“We created myFirst Circle because there is no platform currently that allows children to have authentic social engagements in a safe and controlled environment. Children can stay in touch with genuine friends even after they leave for other schools, keeping their childhood friendships alive. With myFirst Circle, we want to let children explore the world of social media, while ensuring we are there to guide them along the way,” says G-Jay Yong, Founder and CEO of myFirst, in a press statement.

Also Read: How Globish helps children and working professionals in Thailand and Vietnam master English

The myFirst Circle app is now available for Apple and Android devices and is also accessible through the myFirst Fone device.

To use the platform, children under the age of 13 will need their parents to have an account. Parents will also need to whitelist and approve the friend requests received by their children before they are added to the children’s social circle. Once the friend request is accepted, parents can assign the connections into four categories: Family, Besties, Friends, and Acquaintances. These groups create an expanding circle that defines the types of posts a person can see.

Each child will also be attached to a nuclear family, which is also known as a family bubble in myFirst Circle app. This bubble typically consists of parents and their immediate children.

Also Read: How e-sports is evolving with blockchain gaming

Research has also shown that receiving less validation on social media, as reflected by the number of “likes”, can affect users’ self-worth negatively, particularly in teenagers.

In addition to providing safety by limiting the people who can access their posts, myFirst also aims to prevent this from happening by replacing the “likes” system with a “ShoutOut”. So, instead of receiving a simple “like” on posts, users are encouraged to send 16-character text messages, an eight-second voice blurb or emoji reactions, building a more meaningful connection.

Building for the children

In an email interview with e27, myFirst details the process they had to go through to develop the products. First, it begins with identifying the underlying problem based on the team member’s own personal experience as parents of young children.

“We all live in a digital social world, but all the social platforms are designed for teenagers and grown-ups. So what about younger ones? Our kids? Unfortunately, they’re exposed to a lot of inappropriate content and dangers on regular social platforms.
So as a team of parents, we’re working towards the digital social world we want our young ones to grow up in,” they explain.

“With the broad problem statement of regular social media not being safe or suitable for kids, we sat down and discussed with kids and parents what functions they needed to stay connected. We built 25 versions of the app, and it is always a continuous process of iteration and improvement. We kept re-designing it to accommodate all their needs, as well as features both kids and parents would like to have.”

The company sees the need to balance the needs and wants of its two sets of customers, which is the kids and the parents. Parents want to keep an eye on their children and ensure their safety and well-being; kids want to have fun.

“We can’t please either side 100 per cent cause if we do, the other side won’t use it. We can please either side 70 to 80 per cent and that’s enough of a balance. Kids will still be able to have fun, and parents can still keep an eye on their kids. The app is cloud-based so that myFirst Circle works for any user across multiple devices. That means a kid can use myFirst Circle on their myFirst Fone (wearable kids smartphone) or their iOS or Android smartphone or tablet,” the company continues.

Also Read: 3 gadgets that will help you enjoy traveling with your children

According to the company, myFirst’s ecosystem users are mostly between three to 12 years old, and the myFirst Circle app is between 5 to 12 years old. When a kid becomes a user of the platform, an average of three other people are onboarded as users as well –as it still requires parents or other family members to help with the setup.

“When building a network, the usual challenge is the cold start problem. Our kids tech ecosystem overcomes this problem because the atomic network that endures as other atomic networks form is the nuclear family for immediate communication needs (mommy, daddy, siblings and grandparents of the kid) of messaging, voice, video calling and geo-location. Practical usage from the need to stay connected,” it explains.

“Eventually, these atomic networks will intersect. Kids with the smartwatch will pair with other kids, and as more and more kids connect, so will these families. It could also be the grown-ups connecting their family network with other grown-ups and their respective family network, so cousins or family friends and all the kids can stay connected. This will form larger and larger networks and eventually spread into one big socially connected mesh. The use case and problems our kids tech ecosystem and myFirst Circle solve are very clear to parents, so our focus is on education that this ecosystem and solution exists.”

Founded in 2017 by Yong, myFirst has been busy with the launch of its products in the recent month. At CES 2023, the company launched its latest kids’ wearable smartphones, the world’s first kid-safe earbuds (myFirst Carebuds), and myFirst Circle.

“Our big goal for 2023 is to grow the myFirst Circle community in Singapore, and enable kids in other markets where myFirst is present such as the US and the rest of Asia to experience all the benefits that come from staying connected, with no ads, no strangers, only real connections,” the company highlights.

“There is a worldwide underserved market where there just simply isn’t a good solution that exists today. We want to define the digital world our own young ones grow up in.”

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Fundraising or preparing your startup for fundraising? Build your investor network, search from 400+ SEA investors on e27, and get connected or get insights regarding fundraising. Try e27 Pro for free today.

Images Credit: myFirst

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Singapore robotics firm LionsBot scores US$17M Series A
The investors are TransLink Capital, Superteam APAC, and Freny Firoze Irani; LionsBot develops cleaning robots for commercial applications; Its main offering LeoBot can vacuum, scrub and interact.

Jack Ma to give up control of Ant Group
Ma controls Ant through his investment arm Hangzhou Yunbo; On Jan 7, he agreed to restructure Hangzhou Yunbo into two separate entities and transferred some of his ownership to other executives of Ant Group and Alibaba.

IDX mulls new rules to facilitate listing of overseas tech giants
Only a company with a legal entity in Indonesia can list on the exchange; Foreign firms can currently list on the IDX either by forming a listed subsidiary or acquiring a locally listed company.

SG healthcare firm Qritive raises US$7.5M funding
The investors include MassMutual Ventures, Seeds Capital, and Exfinity; Qritive uses AI to provide interpretations of whole-slide images used in pathology within seconds, reducing treatment time and increasing cancer care accuracy.

Crypto lender Genesis lays off over 60 employees amid liquidity issues
The US-based firm currently has 145 employees following the layoffs; Genesis is facing “hundreds of millions in losses” from its exposure to Three Arrows Capital and Babel Finance; Genesis’s parent firm is backed by GIC.

AC Ventures, Indies Capital, Penjana ink deal for cross-border investments
The partnership will also facilitate tech transfer in sectors such as data centres, education, hospitality, mobility, and waste management involving Indonesian and Malaysian startups.

Indonesian checkout solution startup Flik bags US$1.1M
The investors are East Ventures, Init 6, GMO Venture Partners, and Saison Capital; Flik helps brands strengthen their direct-to-consumer transactions by unifying the checkout experience across different sales channels.

Tencent-backed WeDoctor may file for IPO by April
The firm tried to list its shares in Hong Kong in 2021; However, the application lapsed due to China’s strict regulatory crackdown on private companies, including those that handle sensitive data such as medical information.

Malaysia-based enterprise solution bags US$1M in seed money
WorqApp helps teams and businesses implement enterprise execution; It uses tools to assist in communicating, collaborating and boosting engagement for high-impact initiatives.

ProfilePrint invests in Brazilian image recognition firm Csmart
Csmart’s image recognition tech will complement the Singaporean startup ProfilePrint, which predicts the quality and profile of a food sample “within seconds” using AI technology.

Indonesian manufacturing hub platform Imajin raises funding
The investors are Init-6, East Ventures, and 500 SEA; Imajin connects local manufacturers with potential customers; As of July 2022, the startup had 400+ local factory partners and 80 customers.

Grab inks partnership with ZaloPay in Vietnam
The digital wallet will be available for Grab’s services, including transportation, food, grocery, and parcel delivery; Grab also supports cash and other cashless solutions through its e-wallet Moca and payments through linked cards.

SEA’s IPO market fares relatively well amid global downturn: EY report
There were 137 IPOs that raised US$6.5B in the region in 2022, compared to 134 at US$13.2B in 2021; Indonesia led with 60 listings that raked in US$2.2B, followed by Thailand, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Singapore.

Audi-backed startup Holoride is bringing VR to the car
Holoride, launching in the US at CES 2023, uses AI to analyse the car’s motion in real time, combining that with the head movements of the wearer to smooth out the experience and ensure any barf bags stay in the seat-back pocket.

What are generative art NFTs & are they worth collecting?
Generative art is a term used to refer to art created using software; The programme randomly creates shapes, patterns, and colours arranged into an artistically enjoyable piece of digital art.

What can local companies do in 2023 for workplace mental fitness?
Companies should create an inclusive work environment that nurtures happy and healthy employees through the three core pillars: energy, calm and focus.

Maximising resilience: CIOs leading the way in economic downturns
CIOs must maintain IT strategy alignment and assist the company in cost-cutting objectives throughout the current economic downturn.

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It has not been a good year for the technology sector. At the time of writing, we’re experiencing what we call the tech winter.

Trillions of dollars of value have been erased from publicly listed tech giants such as Google, Meta and Amazon.

Globally, 1003 technology companies laid off over 152,000 employees this year, per data from layoff.fyi, a platform collating data on firings by tech companies. This has surpassed the tech layoffs during the 2008-2009 recession.

I don’t think we are at the bottom of this yet. I expect more startups to lay off and close down due to cash reserves running out. 

I have been following this closely since February. It matters to me as I am a tech worker who works in the SaaS sector. I also work with many startups and venture capital firms in my day job. Tech winter impacts both myself and my customers.

In times of crisis, I always think about two things “How can I turn this into an opportunity?” and “How can I set myself up for long-term success?”

This is my game plan.

Have 12-18 months of emergency funds

Many startups have been advised to keep at least 24 months of runway to stay afloat during this period of time. The same applies to employees. We should be thinking, “If I lose my job tomorrow, how many months can I survive?”

During these times, it is important to have emergency funds. Here is how to calculate your emergency funds: Monthly expenses, including income tax, mortgage, insurance, etc. x 12 -18 months.

Emergency funds can be cash or short-term fixed deposits (six months) if the total sum is 12-18 months within a year.

While some have chosen only to have a six-month buffer, I have personally chosen to keep a buffer of 12-18 months.

Firstly, we tend to underestimate how much we might spend. Unpredictable life situations could happen after we get laid off. We want to ensure we have ‘dry powder’ ready for circumstances like these.

Also, it is not wise to rush to get a new job. When you are desperately looking, you are in a worse position to negotiate and may even take a job that does not pay you as well. That may impact your future earnings.

Also Read: How to never waste a good a crisis and survive the recession

Having 12-18 months of emergency funds has given me a lot of psychological safety. If I were so unfortunate to be laid off, I know I would have a huge buffer to cushion the impact.

雪中送炭: Focus on impact

I pay attention to key trends, anticipate them and constantly ask myself, “How can I 借东风? (Borrow the easterly winds)”.

This mindset is influenced by my Taoist beliefs 無為(wu wei). This means riding the wave of change, moving with it and not against it, and using its tremendous power.

In February 2022, I chanced upon a deck by a growth stage founder. He shared that there has been >50 per cent compression in public SaaS multiples since Nov 2021. This will persist so long as inflation and interest rates remain high. He shared with his leadership team that having a longer horizon for using funds will be key.

I knew a storm was coming and gave a lot of thought about the implications on the industry and how I wanted to position myself.

There is this saying in mandarin 锦上添花易 , 雪中送炭难 which means it is easy to add flowers to a brocade but hard to deliver charcoal in the snow.

I wanted not to be a fair-weathered friend who was only there during good times but rather to be the person who helps others in crisis. So, I started thinking about how to adjust myself to add value and contribute to others during this time.

One of the key risks I took was to leave my previous company after only 10 months and join a new one which will empower me to bring more immediate value during the tech winter.

For the past few months, I’ve been able to deliver a huge impact to many of our customers via my job at Spot.io.

Many startups are doing great work by solving key problems in our society and improving the lives of their customers. If they fail during this winter, it will be a huge loss to the founders and everyone else.

By optimising and automating their cloud infrastructure, saving up to 60 per cent on compute costs, we’ve been able to help them free up budget and manpower, which they can dedicate to their strategic priorities.

Through this experience, I hope to add as much value as possible, save some peoples’ jobs, collect good karma and build lasting relationships.

Please connect with me if you are keen to reduce your SaaS and cloud infrastructure spending.

Deepen and build work relationships

Since February, I have focused on building up existing industry relationships and new ones. This was advice from one of my previous bosses and also a Bazi master, and it has worked out pretty well.

I started being super active in attending conferences, events and dinners. As I tend to do better in small groups, I have also reached out to interesting people on LinkedIn to ask them to meet and organise my events.

I have also made it a point to talk to every recruiter who calls my mobile, even though I am not looking for a new job now. I would try to point them in the right direction by matching them with a friend who is looking. The idea is to build two relationships – with the recruiter and the person I am helping.

Meeting new people and building relationships in the industry is still quite an intimidating process for me. This is especially so in an industry that is so male-dominated.

I still face self-doubt, feel shy at times and wonder if people might sometimes take advantage of my generosity and trusting nature.

However, I gradually learned there is a lot I cannot control, so I can only focus on my attitude. These are the principles I will abide by:

• 诚信赢天下: There is no direct translation for 诚信, and the idea is to treat others with sincerity, honesty, gratitude and in good faith. A relationship has value only if it is genuine. I try to be vulnerable, show up authentically, give first and open my heart. I hope that others can be real and sincere to me in return.
• Think win-win and long term: Try to add value to others by sharing knowledge and budget and making introductions and resources. Sometimes, people may not be kind to us or able to help us at all because of various factors such as level of maturity or that they are going through a bad time in their own lives. Have empathy, extend your hand to help first and think long-term.
• Increase your surface area of luck: Each new person you meet expands your luck surface area. Several new connections I made were made through cold emails, and taking the first step to connect at parties and conferences. Like attracts like. If you have similar values as others, they will connect you with other like-minded folks. That is how you build your tribe.

Upskill, upskill, upskill

I listened to a podcast during the COVID-19 period, and one of Zenyum’s Co-Founder shared a quote I still remember today: “When Fishermen cannot go out to sea, they repair their nets”.

Also Read: How NFTs are surviving and prospering in the bear market

The idea here is to double down and focus on your growth and learning.

Here is what I did in 2022:

• In my new role, I had to work with many VCs and growth equity companies. I took a venture capital course to learn how they think, speak their language, and add value to the partners I work with.

• I also doubled down on my core skill set by learning from one of Salesforce’s top-performing individual contributors.

• To prepare for my next step, I also spoke with several SaaS leaders to learn about leadership principles, to hire, running a team, building a GTM strategy, etc.

• When I encounter exciting books, concepts and ideas, I share them on my Instagram, LinkedIn and newsletter.

I have yet to define a learning agenda for the first half of 2023. This will involve reflecting on my 2023 priorities and identifying potential gaps.

Invest consistently

Topics like fixed deposits and savings bonds are increasingly popular in personal finance. I see them covered extensively by many creators and publications.

However, if one neglects equities now, it could be a missed opportunity. After all, recessions do not last forever. I’ve been through a bear market in 2018, March 2020 and again in 2022.

Each time when I look back, I wish I had invested more. Thus, I know that the best time to invest is now.

I keep the advice from Warren Buffet and Charlies Munger close to my heart: “Be greedy when other people are fearful” and “The first rule of compounding: Never interrupt it unnecessarily”.

As tech stock values plunged throughout the year, private equity firms such as Thoma Bravo began hunting to acquire smaller ones. They saw companies with lots of upsides being vastly undervalued in the brutal market conditions of 2022.

I did not reduce my position during this period and continued to invest consistently in companies in my portfolio, S&P 500, funds and unit trusts.

I also started learning about alternative investments and private markets in late 2022. This is an area I wish to continue learning more about in 2023.

We cannot change a lot of things which happen. However, we can take steps to prepare ourselves for it. What I feel is important is not just taking steps to prepare ourselves for the crisis but also maintaining conviction in the path we’ve chosen for ourselves.

Despite the winter, I am bullish on the tech sector and Southeast Asia. I believe in the long-term growth of this industry and this market and will continue to build my career on it.

This is not the first bear market or tech winter that the industry can see. Neither will it be our last. There could be worse ones in the future even after we recover from this.

This is an opportunity to build resilience and adaptability and maximise what gains we can get.

–

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.

Join our e27 Telegram group, FB community, or like the e27 Facebook page

Image credit: Jeraldine Phneah

The post A tech worker’s 2023 recession game plan appeared first on e27.

During her travels, Karen Cheah witnessed people choking under the weight of food waste and litter from plastic containers. She sniffed a multi-million opportunity there.

“I sensed that we could create eco-friendly food containers that could replace plastic disposables. This way, we can contain this throw-away culture that has become ubiquitous with plastics,” Cheah tells e27.

This was the genesis of Alterpacks.

Established in 2019, Singapore-based Alterpacks was created to combat the problem of single-use plastics.

The team has over 20 years of complementary skillsets in marketing, finance, manufacturing and R&D with global experience. The founding team members Cheah (CEO) and Herbin Chia (CFO) were classmates at Singapore Management University, and Steven Tan (COO) joined them after a distinguished career in the Singapore Navy.

Also Read: Bio-degradable food container startup Alterpacks raises US$1M funding

The greentech startup converts food grains into containers that can be moulded into any shape. Thus, it upcycles food loss in manufacturing to create a biodegradable and home-compostable material. Cheah claims that Alterpacks containers are 100 per cent organic.

Alterpacks works with F&B businesses, converters, and manufacturers to create tailor-made, sustainable packaging solutions.

Last year, the company piloted its food containers at the Motor GP Event in Mandalika, Indonesia. It also collaborated with the UN Development Programme to combat plastic pollution in Indonesia.

In Vietnam, Alterpacks piloted its eco-friendly products with the popular F&B brand Pizza 4P’s.

In addition to bio-degradable containers, the startup also creates bio-pellets to replace petroleum-based resins used in standard manufacturing machines and changes the raw material with other forms of agricultural waste. It has also started the production of various cutlery, including coffee cups and cup covers.

Alterpacks products are priced competitively against other similar environmentally friendly solutions. “We target a price point on par with petroleum-based products.”

While there are rigid food containers, other eco-friendly alternatives, and bio-plastics, the mass usage of such products is yet to pick up the pace. Their mass pickup primarily depends on the price and performance of the products.

“Eco-containers compete with plastics that have had a head-start of over 100 years in production processes and economies of scale. Moreover, the current eco-containers in the market have been challenged with dents and leaks,” Cheah shares.

“What sets Alterpacks apart from competitors is the performance of our material made using side streams from food manufacturing. We create products that meet the performance specifications of business at a competitive price point,” she adds.

Also Read: How all-electric, self-driving Clearbot helps tackle ocean plastic pollution in Asia

In terms of performance, Alterpacks containers can go from freezer to microwave, hold wet and oily foods, and keep their shape and form. “Addressing the price points and performance expectations are the two areas for the mass take-up. Because our containers are also home-compostable, they have become the go-to alternative in countries that have already started looking at banning the use of virgin pulp and plastic coatings in paper products as well.”

In her view, government legislation and increasing consumer awareness about eco-alternatives could take bio-degradable products to the next level.

Last week, Alterpacks closed its US$1 million pre-seed funding round with lead investor Plug and Play APAC and co-investors SEEDS Capital and Earth Venture Capital. The company will use the money to ramp up production and supply across key markets in Asia, Australia, and Europe.

“Like all startups, this round is only the beginning. So we will move ahead with a seed Round as we scale up our manufacturing and R&D. This is already in the works,” she says.

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Fundraising or preparing your startup for fundraising? Build your investor network, search from 400+ SEA investors on e27, and get connected or get insights regarding fundraising. Try e27 Pro for free today.

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Singapore-based parenting network Supermom has closed its “oversubscribed” SG$8 (US$6) million Series A fundraising round, led by Qualgro, with participation from AC Ventures.

The startup will use the money to enhance its data and product capabilities and accelerate regional expansion.

Luke Lim, Founder and Chairman of Supermom, said: “The funding and support will allow us to serve more parents in Southeast Asia and connect them with the brands they love by building new AI and data-driven tools and hiring tech and engineering talent.”

Supermom was established by Joan Ong, Luke Lim, Lynn Yeoh, and Rebecca Koh. It aims to allow parents to discover valuable crowdsourced parenting tips, best practices, and reliable product reviews for their children.

This is facilitated by its communities, which help parents connect with each other. Supermom also collects opinions and insights from their parents and shares this information across their network.

Also Read: theAsianparent adds LINE Southeast Asia to its cap table

Parents join communities befitting their parenting needs and interests via Supermom’s website and app. The company also partners with other private social parent communities (across Facebook, WhatsApp, Telegram etc.).

Today, Supermom has a network of 20 million parents from over 1,000 social communities across Southeast Asian countries.

Supermom provides data and consumer insights for over 200 consumer brands across multiple industries, including mother & child, education, FMCG, fashion, and beauty. Its clients include Kimberly Clark, P&G, and Philips. With Supermom, brands can engage parents and, with their permission, acquire accurate, reliable first-party data and insights for marketing, lead generation, and user research.

“With a growing population of 250 million parents, Southeast Asia is starting to be noticed by global and national brands. Supermom’s growth and customer retention give us confidence that the platform is serving a long-term trend in the region,” said Adrian Li, Founder and Managing Partner of AC Ventures.

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Fundraising or preparing your startup for fundraising? Build your investor network, search from 400+ SEA investors on e27, and get connected or get insights regarding fundraising. Try e27 Pro for free today.

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According to a global survey of CEOs, 61 per cent believe a recession will start by the end of 2023, and 15 per cent think one has already begun. Although they are unavoidable, recessions can happen at any time.

A difficult balancing act is taking place. C-suite executives must take advantage of opportunities in the market. On the other hand, if they maintain current levels of investment and the economy crashes, they run the risk of spending more than they make.

CIOs will be responsible for reducing expenses and increasing productivity to support their companies’ operations at all phases of the cycle. Global firms and C-suite executives would do well to adapt operations to the needs of the time, even though the pandemic and the ensuing lockdowns in the recent past may have contributed to some of the reasons.

Let’s look at some concerning statistics:

• In a global study of 750 CEOs and senior C-suite executives, 50 per cent of CEOs said they believed their company’s operating region had already gone through a recession.
• The median GDP growth forecast for Q4 2021 through Q4 2022 is 1.7 per cent, much lower than the 2.8 per cent anticipated in March, according to the Federal Reserve’s most recent quarterly economic estimates.

It’s common knowledge to cut costs before a recession hits, and there are undoubtedly some areas where doing so would have little overall influence on the company. But better judgement is to seize the chances to accelerate expenditures to increase efficiency over the long run.

For instance, CIOs may choose to invest in system migration to the cloud if they want to have the flexibility to scale up or down during a downturn. IT leaders and CIOs may need to make investments now to survive and sustain a prolonged downturn.

These endeavours aren’t always quick fixes. IT leaders should plan for a more flexible environment over time, but these are three to six months of activities. The objective is to consider how the technology organisations might adapt holistically and consistently, ensuring that the investments reduce the base and foster flexibility.

IT leaders should consider investing in the following areas to get a head start on the impending economic outlook, especially if such changes can yield long-term operational benefits or a recession.

Facilitating improved insights for costs and value

IT directors should be thoroughly aware of their cost structure and the value IT services and investments give the organisation.

Now is the moment to invest in establishing this transparency and clarity if you don’t already have it. Doing so will allow you to make wise decisions to cut costs or support new expenditures.

Also Read: How to never waste a good a crisis and survive the recession

It’s also crucial to understand how each component of the IT infrastructure serves the company. This information is tribal knowledge in most companies, making it difficult to access or use.

Avoiding new investments in IT

Global CIOs would be wise to hold off on making an IT investment or purchasing modern IT software during the recession, which would last for at least a few months or years. Instead, businesses should anticipate gaining scale and cost efficiencies by making the most of their current IT personnel, resources, and equipment. Additionally, all ongoing IT deals and IT outsourcing must be postponed for a long time.

Investment in FinOps

FinOps investments can help CIOs better control the costs of their IT assets and reduce their cloud bills. To help businesses better plan, budget, and forecast cloud consumption and spending, FinOps is a business management discipline with companion analytics tools. This offers the insight to better match your cloud budget with the business value being produced and minimise possible waste or misalignment.

Aggressively adopting agile

Let this slump encourage you to invest in agile approaches, capabilities, and processes if you haven’t already. Developing an agile toolset cannot be accomplished quickly, and now is the moment to start making that shift if your organisation intends to be resilient through a future recession.

By adopting agile, IT will be better able to align with business priorities and direction by increasing the frequency of business check-ins. It should be a prerequisite that an agile methodology is applied to assure effectiveness in a moving environment. Increasing the frequency and depth of agile methodology emphasises connecting and executing quickly evolving business challenges during difficult circumstances.

Leveraging SMAC and AI

Together, today’s five global technology trends — Social, Mobility, Analytics, Cloud, and Artificial Intelligence (AI) — are a thriving force in the industry. CIOs can encourage their staff members and IT teams to create a tech-savvy culture and environment within the company.

Investing in tech like no-code can turn out to be very useful. Such a strategy would assist the work-from-home (WFH) personnel and their work-from-office (WFO) counterparts in making the most of the current IT infrastructure, resources, and assets.

Reevaluating IT services contracts

Contracts may occasionally be automatically renewed without review or optimisation. A good moment to review the outsourcing portfolio is right now.

Those providers who can deliver demonstrated, quantifiable financial value can and should continue to be rewarded by their clients and customers. This is key to successful growth in a recessionary environment. That being said, purchasers must be certain that their value-added partners are financially stable and aren’t in danger of cutting down on their investments in their goods and services to the point where performance and quality could suffer.

To find potential for cost reduction, IT leaders might collaborate with partners.

Rather than ending a service entirely, it may be advantageous for both parties to restructure it to cut expenses. They might find ways to move more work to lower-cost regions and streamline their delivery processes.

Given the increasing labour expenses faced by IT service providers, asking for significant price reductions could not be successful. Clients have various choices for easing contract constraints to minimise costs, and they can agree to help the supplier more, take on greater risk, and decrease the supplier’s obligations.

Also Read: Why Southeast Asia’s locally owned adtech and martech industry will survive the recession

Shutting down obsolete systems

Give your hardware and software asset base some thought. There could be opportunities to minimise these costs, especially if some of these assets are close to retirement or are suitable candidates for retirement. Additionally, chances for rationalisation or consolidation can exist.

System redundancy is an intelligent place to minimise costs. It can be difficult to terminate an application, but CIOs that are risk-takers would shut down a system and see whether anyone complains.

However, CIOs should confirm that the discharge is justified financially. You will suffer a financial loss if you decommission an item that is still losing value. Intelligent cost management requires a team sport approach, working with finance and those who can conduct the analysis and offer decision support.

Scaling successful pilots

Pilots are always more expensive than adoption at scale, but experimentation and assessment are crucial. Accelerate those deployments, so you can escape pilot purgatory and clear the decks of the stuff that isn’t producing value.

Whatever cuts CIOs are considering, it’s essential to consider both the potential short- and long-term benefits. When doing this, you need to be wise and picky, and thoughtlessly cutting costs will cost you dearly.

Focusing more on volume adjustments than cost cutting

IT executives can seek quantity reductions by rationalising the units they use or lower their unit prices by requesting a discount from vendors. For instance, they might reduce the number of software licences they purchase.

From experience, cutting costs is not very successful. Vendors may take advantage of the chance to rescind agreements they didn’t like, including lowering SLAs in exchange for lower prices.

Final thoughts

We talked about how CIOs may keep IT spending in check during the economic downturn, and they should take preventive action rather than waiting until the recession actually starts.

As a result, all CIOs must maintain IT strategy alignment with their general business equivalent and assist the company in achieving its efficiency and cost-cutting objectives throughout the current economic downturn.

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Metaverse is a multi-trillion dollar industry and homegrown startup, BuzzAR, is leading the charge and waving the Singaporean flag high on the global stage. Since its debut at London Tech Week, the company has landed five large-scale multi-year contracts with government agencies, connectivity partners, and venues globally to make the metaverse accessible to all.

How this founder found a unique niche in the trillion-dollar industry

After producing Meta Oculus’ top Cooking Game VR, The Cooking Game VR, the dynamic duo, Bell Beh and Ken Lim, are onto the next big thing. Since 2018, BuzzAR has been building metaverse solutions in real life (IRL) and has been uniquely positioned for luxury brands — with its clientele including the regional Fortune 500 companies and government agencies.

Leveraging on its skills to produce top VR games on Oculus and more, the duo is set to dive into this trillion-dollar industry, especially with all the opportunities sprouting post COVID. While some of their peers are figuring out ways to cope with the pandemic, the duo’s business has had an 8x revenue in FY 2021, transforming top-notch hotel resorts and integrated resorts and brands, enabling brick and mortars to stand out using various metaverse experiences. 

Despite the experience of building the top-selling VR game on Meta, the duo sees unique opportunities in the B2B space.

Game veterans turn metaverse experience in real life (IRL) into its niche

In 2018, childhood friends turned co-founders, Ken Lim and Bell Beh, came together to launch BuzzAR. Based in Singapore, BuzzAR is a location-based AR solution for retail and commerce. As a serial entrepreneur, Ken led 2 other companies to great successes since his days at university where he eventually dropped out in Germany to start his first business. Since then, he helped various businesses generate 8 figure revenues. Now, the mind and soul behind BuzzAR, Ken is building BuzzAR with Bell, a corporate lawyer turned entrepreneur to utilise its gaming expertise for different businesses. 

“Perception is reality. Any company that is serious about their brand will continue to shape their perception, regardless of whether there will be a recession in 2023 or not. I learned in my two earlier businesses, with the first one founded in my university’s dorm room, that the marketers who maintain or grow their budgets during recessions are more successful than those that cut budgets. That said, some budgets will shift to “Experiential Marketing” as it is more personalised, triggers consumer-permissioned data, and creates “WOW” moments. This is what BuzzAR is building: we elevate the businesses’ perception by building the Next Gen immersive advertising and marketing platform,” said Ken Lim, CTO and Co-Founder at BuzzAR.

To achieve the vision, BuzzAR has developed some of its enablers, such as augmented and virtual reality technologies, games, and avatar engines, leveraging on generative AI, enabling customers to get the full metaverse experience.

After the successful debut of its face-to-avatar “Pop-Up Metaverse” in real life (IRL) at the Queen Elizabeth II Centre in London, the company emboldens the public to gain easy access to the metaverse by setting up various Pop-Up Metaverse locations in Singapore for enthusiasts to explore in person. Thousands of companies can easily hop on the platform to advertise to consumers who are ready to embark on their Metaverse journey.

With the success of its early projects, the company plans to make “Marketing in the Metaverse” accessible to all businesses, turning traffic into money for businesses.

Brand relationships are being redefined

The metaverse has the potential to reach mass adoption, but companies do not know how. 

The pair was thrilled to see how the Pop Up Metaverse — which augments faces and places — help businesses at scale to “enter the metaverse” using the 1-hour setup. To businesses, solving the friction to introduce a complicated product, significantly increase their overall productivity and enhance their guest experience. The experience was delightful and exultant as users could enter the augmented world seamlessly. 

Gaining fulfillment from serving customers, bringing innovative ideas into life, and building a happy and inclusive community, Bell Beh reinforced her resolve to walk out on a six-figure job and a stable career in corporate law to nurture more ambitious dreams with technologies. 

BuzzAR’s future plans to further expand its metaverse world

Following a series of lucrative fundraising rounds, raising $3.8m in seed funding from F50 Elevate to grow and scale its business, BuzzAR escalated to global prominence with its debut at London Tech Week where thousands turned up, including Singapore’s Deputy Prime Minister, Heng Swee Keat, queuing up to play with their Pop Up Metaverse.

Most notably, adults and children laughed out loud from the pure joy of the surreal metaverse experience. 

Riding on this momentum, BuzzAR brought the product back to Asia to introduce it at the She Loves Tech event at Resort World Sentosa, Temasek’s Constellar The Tech Show, a Mediacorp private event, and more. With explosive demands from around the world, BuzzAR plans to further expand its business globally, especially in the Middle East region, where the Metaverse is the key strategy to transform the economy and diversify tourism products. 

“BuzzAR is disrupting and complementing the traditional out of home (OOH) media where, in the past 10 years, there was almost no big innovation. BuzzAR envisions a world where the OOH media is interactive, 3D, and immersive. Therefore, the company is inspired to roll out the Next Gen Immersive Advertising and Marketing, allowing any company to leverage the Pop Up Metaverse to advertise and run their marketing,” shared Bell Beh.

The company which had built Generative AI, and rolled out the StyleGAN application, HappyToon, is now onto incorporating ChatGPT, and Dalle-2 applications to its Pop Up Metaverse portal making immersive advertising not only immersive, but it is smart enough to handle all general enquiries while maximising the user experience.

After one visit, BuzzAR, is set to scale its businesses in Singapore and in the lucrative Saudi Arabia market, whose tourism industry is betting $1 Trillion. Being a graduate of the Singapore Tourism Board (STB), Cohort 3, BuzzAR has set great augmented reality (AR) use cases highlighted by STB to the tourism stakeholders. Being data-driven and disruptive and winning the trust of even the government agencies in the Middle East region, BuzzAR is betting big on its Next Gen immersive experience!

To explore more about this Metaverse Marketing experience, BuzzAR has launched Bae, the ChatGPT powered Bae can answer all your questions on WhatsApp!

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This article is produced by the e27 team, in partnership with BuzzAR.

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Singapore-based AI-powered food fingerprint platform ProfilePrint and Swiss farm-to-roaster coffee company Sucafina have announced a co-investment in Brazilian image recognition company Csmart.

Founded by Francisco Massucci Silveira, Csmart designs AI-powered image recognition technologies for coffee grading that aim to improve the coffee industry for producers, professionals, and roasters alike. It claims its technology can rapidly scan a sample of green coffee beans and accurately identify defect counts within minutes.

Also Read: Wake up and smell the coffee: Check your coffee beans’ quality using ProfilePrint’s AI tool

This technology could help QC professionals by reducing repetitive tasks, improving and accelerating communication between QC teams, and reducing the carbon emissions from shipping countless green coffee samples to buyers and sellers worldwide.

Currently, Csmart’s software can identify the total defect counts and confirm the screen size of a sample of green coffee. The upcoming iteration will be able to quantify each defect by type and take image scans of each identified bean.

Csmart’s technology cuts down on the time and resource inefficiencies caused by sending green samples back and forth across the globe. With this, green coffee can be scanned by the seller, and an objective report is delivered to the buyer for their review. This can speed up the time it takes to approve a sample and reduce the carbon footprint of coffee sales.

This new image recognition green grading technology will be complementary to ProfilePrint, which incorporates data from multiple sources to enable users to ascertain the suitability of ingredients without traditional sensory evaluation rapidly.

Alan Lai, Founder and CEO of ProfilePrint, said: “Csmart’s image recognition technology provides additional key data points for our global ProfilePrint solution, bringing us closer to our goal of a device-agnostic data platform. It also increases the range and accuracy of our prediction capability, empowering buyers and sellers across the supply chain to increase productivity and significantly reduce carbon footprint.”

A food ingredient search engine, ProfilePrint predicts the quality and profile of a food sample “within seconds”. With 5g of the sample, the analyser acquires the unique fingerprint without destroying the samples. Sellers and buyers can objectively ascertain the agreed quality of a food ingredient in an online transaction.

Also Read: ProfilePrint adds food supplies giant Cargill to its cap table

ProfilePrint’s solution has been deployed in over 26 cities across five continents (North America, Latin America, Africa, Europe and Asia).

In August last year, the Singaporean startup onboarded US-based global food supplier giant Cargill as a strategic investor. It earlier raised several rounds of investments, including a Series A round in February 2022 from Louis Dreyfus Company (Netherlands), Olam Food Ingredients (an operating group of Olam International Limited, Singapore), Sucafina (Switzerland), an unnamed agrifood conglomerate (Indonesia), Greenwillow Capital Management (Singapore), and Real Tech Global Fund (Japan). In 2021, it closed a pre-series A from Glocalink Singapore, Leave-a-Nest, and Seeds Capital.

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In today’s climate of uncertainty clouded with competition, compounded with the high cost of living, it is without a doubt that people are experiencing increasing levels of stress and anxiety.

According to Mercer’s latest 2022 Global Talent Trends Study, an overwhelming 85 per cent of Singapore-based employees admitted that they feel at risk of burnout this year, with one in five already reporting feeling de-energised at work.

Another worrying study by Employment Hero states that 62 per cent of Singaporean workers are already experiencing burnout. With these depressing statistics, is it really surprising that Singaporeans are the world’s unhappiest workers?

It goes without saying that employers and organisations have a crucial role in supporting employees’ needs. Yet, in another survey by Mercer, 56 per cent of employees in Singapore reported that they did not receive strong support from their employers, and Singapore fared below global benchmarks in lending support to employees.

To combat this workforce development, Mercer said that 36 per cent of Singapore HR leaders are planning to introduce strategies addressing burnout this year, such as mental health insurance coverage, offering virtual mental health counselling and providing training on how to identify and support those facing mental health challenges.

However, there is still a significant gap in the market, which urges direct action through innovative preventive care.

Having experienced the corporate world shrouded with stress and anxiety, I was determined to establish an employee network that could support their mental health, focusing on taking preventive action rather than recovery efforts.

This spurred me to set up Evexia Collective, Singapore’s first truly proactive and preventative analytical mental fitness app for employees. Backed by psychiatrist Dr Elisabetta Burchi and NHS’s Dr Caitie Imray, Evexia Collective promotes mental fitness through the proactive use of mental fitness tools and real-time aggregate analytics.

Also Read: How Noodle Factory addresses educator burnout with its AI-powered teaching assistants

It is reported that more than half the workers surveyed (56 per cent) lack access to mental health counselling services, and just 22 per cent of women had access to mental health counselling services through their employers, compared to 30 per cent of men. With our focus on preventive measures, we share an aggregate view of how employers can better support their employees.

According to research by LifeWorks, employees who are suffering from mental health or other well-being issues are unable to concentrate on their work for more than a third of the total scheduled work time, a symptom known as “presenteeism.” Evexia Collective plays a crucial role here by understanding and monitoring the user’s emotions while giving crucial insights regarding their well-being.

It is important that employees are able to manage stress while staying motivated and productive, both personally and professionally. To achieve that, companies should create an inclusive work environment that nurtures happy and healthy employees through the three core pillars: energy, calm and focus, which Evexia Collective advocates for.

Using a series of Standardised Mental Health Questionnaires used by medical practitioners all over the world, such as the Patient Health Questionnaire 9 (PHQ9), Evexia Collective aims to assess, inform and improve mental fitness amongst Singaporean employees. In pilot tests, users of Evexia Collective improved their mood scores by 11 per cent, stress management scores by 50 per cent and energy levels by 14 per cent on average over two weeks.

A survey conducted in the Asia-Pacific region in 2021 discovered that high workloads and long hours were among the top workplace mental health strains. Companies must invest in their employees’ health and wellness now more than ever.

Through employee-first initiatives and corporate mindset shifts, employers that are able to find that balance and align their policies to the wants and needs of their employees will not only boost the motivation and engagement of their existing workers but also will attract and retain the best talent in increasingly competitive talent markets.

By using tools to support employee mental health, such as Evexia Collective’s application, companies can cultivate a positive work environment for their employees to thrive while enjoying increased productivity and decreased health care and disability costs.

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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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