(L-R) SMU Academy Associate Professor and former CEO of Sistema Asia Capital Edward Tay and Executive Director Jack Lim
In November last year, SMU Academy (SMUA) and Enterprise Singapore came together to offer a 12-day Advanced Certificate in Venture Capital programme.
The programme targets entrepreneurs, startup founders, business leaders, family office representatives and investors. The first intake of learners has already enrolled in the course.
e27 spoke to SMUA Executive Director Jack Lim (JL) and Associate Professor and former CEO of Sistema Asia Capital Edward Tay (ET) to learn more about the programme.
Below are the edited excerpts:
Hello Jack, can you share more details about this programme?
JL: Sure, it is a comprehensive VC training programme that covers portfolio management, investment & valuation, and operations & exit strategies. This course, funded by SkillsFuture Singapore, encompasses Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG), sustainable finance, and impact investment.
The SMUA programme is designed and directed by Edward Tay, a VC investor who has nurtured four tech unicorns. His diverse, talented team will share their experience and knowledge to equip business leaders, entrepreneurs and finance professionals with the relevant skills and competencies to remain resilient and be positioned to capture sustainable growth.
This will be done through a structured learning approach on how ESG, sustainability/green/decarbonisation initiatives and technology impact businesses and investments.
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The SMUA course aims to enable mid-career individuals, including those in employment, to make career switches to joint family offices and venture capital firms.
In short, it is to get a comprehensive appreciation of the VC industry and for entrepreneurs and business professionals to equip themselves with the core skills to better prepare the companies or investments by VCs.
The real mission is to support the nation in upskilling and reskilling exercises. As adult learners, it is important to keep learning and deepening our skills throughout our lives. We want to ensure that the skills acquired throughout the course will be useful and applicable.
The first cohort started in November 2022.
Can you share more details about the course? What kind of people does the programme target? Is it online or offline?
JL: There is a massive rise in the growth of VC as an asset class globally across all jurisdictions. Due to the lack of unlimited choices in comprehensive VC training programmes in Singapore, we cover the whole VC spectrum, such as portfolio management, investment evaluation, operation and exit strategies, encompassing environment, social governance, ESG, sustainable finance and impact investment.
And our course is funded by the government, SkillsFuture Singapore, which is part of the Ministry of Education. With the partnership with Edward, we want to develop a strong pipeline of talent for the VC sector.
We are doing a face-to-face mode for this time. But again, depending on the situation, we can quickly pivot online or do a hybrid version.
The course comprises six modules. Each module is for two days. So, a total of 12 days.
- Module I covers the market overview and global perspectives scale.
- Module II covers investment strategies, framework and techniques.
- Module III is about common valuation techniques and methodologies.
- Module IV covers due diligence techniques and methodologies.
- Module V includes portfolio management and plan and framework.
- Module VI covers exit strategies.
ET: With this SMUA programme, we target two groups: 1) startup founders, and 2) people who are already in the field of VCs/impact investments but want to upgrade themselves.
The programme also targets finance and law professionals, and those in accounting or management consultancy who want to join family offices here in Singapore. Over the last two to three years, there has been a huge growth in the number of family offices here in Singapore. And today, we have about 100 of them just in Singapore itself.
And there are huge opportunities for these professionals to equip themselves with the right skills. And number two is ensuring they are networking with the right people.
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We structured this course by starting with a clean slate because we want it to be, first and foremost, experiential. These are all adults, visual learners, who have an X number of years of working experience; the oldest participant in our modules is 60 years old. Our youngest participant is about 29
Many of them come from good schools. We even have somebody graduating with a PhD in Artificial Intelligence in a few months. Many of them are in the business of picking up courses that are useful for them in areas of technologies such as data analytics and cloud, human capital development, human resources, or even venture capital, with very specialised courses.
What do you mean by experiential learning?
ET: It has been an exciting journey so far. When we started this, the participants had no idea what to expect from this programme.
We developed this course with a lot of interactive engagements. We have angel investors, senior corporate VC practitioners, and VC firm bosses among our participants. So, there’s a lot of peer learning and sharing, and learning from experts.
Besides Singapore, our participants come from different parts of the world, including Thailand, Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia, the US, and Mainland China.
And we have participants not only in the private sector but also in the government sector. For example, the Port of Singapore Authority (PSA), which has a corporate venture arm Unbox, is among our learners. The head and the whole team are also here with us.
We also have senior participants from Enterprise Singapore, SEEDS capital, NGOs, companies and startup founders from Singapore. We also have top family offices from different nationalities coming on board.
So, participants learnt from the hands-on experience and burning questions from other participants, especially about how to do valuations.
One of the hottest topics that Modules I and II covers is the FTX scam. A few months ago, FTX, the second largest crypto exchange, acquired a loss of US$300 million, and within 24 hours, it released a statement that it would write off the entire investment.
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We had two group discussions with our guest speakers on what went wrong at FTX. Was it a valuation issue or a due diligence issue?
We will continue investigating high-profile cases as they develop in our different modules, especially at the portfolio management levels, because this is the world’s second-largest exchange after Binance. About five per cent of its users are from Singapore. This is the second-largest global platform. A lot of money is on the table. FTX’s infamous founder is currently under investigation.
We also have a Family Office that deals with Web3 and bitcoins. It is one of the earliest investors in cryptocurrency. So, there are many insights and many skeletons in the closet.
And everybody finds this very interesting because compared to news reports, which only scratched the surface, we are discussing it in detail behind closed doors. There is no recording, and everyone knows someone who has lost a lot of money. So, the pain is real. This typically energises everybody to want to learn more.
Do you plan to take this course to other geographies by partnering with foreign universities?
JL: We want to kick-start this journey in Singapore, and hopefully, it will propagate itself, and then we can expand to other regional markets.
We want to market this SMUA programme independently; we can work within ourselves, and we have a network to work with to bring this course to the market.
SMU is very strong in Singapore and has also strengthened in the region. We have advisory boards in many countries in the area, and we can work through our alums to promote this. We can also use our usual social media platforms like LinkedIn and Facebook to push us out.
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