The startup scene in Singapore is booming, so much so that it recently secured its spot as the highest-ranked Asian country for startups. With the government’s continued investment in this growing ecosystem, Singapore has become a natural magnet for entrepreneurship.
However, startups in the little red dot now face strong headwinds. Hiring is becoming more challenging due to the ongoing global tech talent shortage, meaning startups face an uphill battle when competing with larger companies to attract and retain top talent.
Singapore’s startups require more than just tenacity to navigate these challenges. With limited resources, they need to be agile, flexible, and creative to deliver competitive and innovative products in an increasingly crowded environment.
While every successful business needs a clear vision, a killer product and a willing audience, open source software represents a golden opportunity to help significantly lower the barriers to entrepreneurship. That’s because it accelerates growth and innovation in almost every way, boosts collaboration, enhances security, optimises software reliability, and inevitably, improves the quality of services.
Open source has built the modern world, and much of that software lives on GitHub. Central to this is the incredible community of open-source developers.
In fact, GitHub is now home to over 83 million developers and growing. Entrepreneurs looking to go from idea to IPO can build their startup on GitHub and gain access to the world’s largest open source registry. In short, open source democratises technology and offers access to a global pool of developer talent.
If you’re not already convinced, here’s why Singapore’s startups should embrace open source as a route to innovation and a surefire way to develop extraordinary software and services.
Accelerate innovation
Open source gives startups access to technology at their fingertips, empowering companies to stand on the shoulders of giants and compete with established players in the market.
With open source, entrepreneurs could have an app created hours after imagining an idea. That’s because open source is rooted in the principle that software should be available for anyone to download and modify.
Also Read: SMEs and startups must make open source security a collective responsibility
Instead of creating products from scratch, development teams can leverage tried and tested code and build on existing ideas to ship quality software that enables companies to provide better services and products that meet the needs of their customers.
Scale securely
There’s another critical reason why startups should embrace an open source strategy, and that’s its ability to bolster software security. Red Hat’s 2022 State of Enterprise Open Source report revealed that 89 per cent of IT leaders see enterprise open source as more secure or as secure as proprietary software.
The collaborative way open source software is created means that security is a community responsibility. With more eyes inspecting code, vulnerabilities are discovered and fixed continuously throughout the entire development process.
While open source offers major security advantages, startups can take an even more progressive approach to integrate security into open source development and increase their speed of innovation in the process.
Implementing a “DevSecOps” strategy for software development bakes security into every process, essentially shifting security testing and reviews left by making all parties involved in the application lifecycle responsible for security.
The easiest place to start in your DevSecOps journey is choosing partners that offer advanced tools that your development and security teams actually trust. The knock-on impact is more reliable software that’s shipped more quickly.
Help startups access the talent they need
Unlike multinational companies with an established presence worldwide, hiring global talent can be a stumbling block for startups due to the complexity and need for additional investment.
Also Read: How open source fostered the community spirit in the tech world
Implementing an open source strategy helps level the playing field by giving startups access to developer talent from every corner of the globe. That’s because open-source developers can contribute from anywhere and everywhere, meaning restrictive boundaries are removed.
But the benefits on offer are so much more than simply geographic. Open source puts the developer experience front and centre and constantly evolves to help developers increase speed and productivity.
This means developers at the top of their game want to work with open source and will seek out roles that enable them to do so. In fact, Singapore’s Government Technology Agency (GovTech) recommends organisations adopt open source to make hiring easier.
Critically, developer experience is about much more than speed and productivity. It relies on collaboration and culture. The successful adoption of open source in an organisation indicates its progressive nature and willingness to support and inspire developers, which is what top developers will be looking for during their job search.
At the end of the day, an organisation that embraces open development is where open source thrives, and that progressive culture inspires and motivates developers to do their best work. Startups have a ripe opportunity to embed this culture into the fabric of their organisation from the onset. Doing so will attract up-and-coming developers who want to be part of a wider open source community focused on delivering technological change.
As any startup CEO will tell you, access to tech and the speed with which you can harness it to secure your competitive advantage is often the difference between success and failure. This could not be more true for Singapore’s startups that are trying to thrive against a backdrop of increasing competition and a tech talent shortage that shows no sign of abating.
Luckily, open source represents a golden opportunity, one that offers the ability to supercharge growth and innovation, allowing these companies to compete with even the most established players in the market.
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