My thoughts on software in Singapore

How is the software industry like in Singapore? Having worked solely in startups, this is my perception of the landscape.

Singapore is no Silicon Valley. Startups that are based in Singapore are either mega apps like Grab and Food Panda, or small companies trying to survive. Unlike Silicon Valley, starting a business in Singapore has no organic growth, even though businesses like to set up here because of various government grants. In order to scale from Singapore, the regional approach is often taken, which has many challenges such as differences in language, culture, and business practice. In the US, you could grow state by state, and while each state has it's own unique laws and sub cultures to pay attention to, it is more homogenous than going regional from Singapore.

This means that if you had a somewhat useful solution, you probably can't bring it to profitable margins just based on the local market, and since regional markets require a lot of effort to break into, you either try to stay in the local market and survive, or for the unicorns, push for massive growth into the regional markets.

Many businesses are just not made to go to that scale. While larger startups have interesting problems to solve, some people would be more satisfied solving a problem that matters to them. However business and aspirations seldom meet, so for those who would like to do something more meaningful to them, they may face the challenge of having less satisfactory balance/salary/teammates than behemoth companies because many businesses are just not viable as a solution for local market, but lack the ability to scale regionally or globally.

For most software developers, it is probably better to work in a larger company that has already gone regional as the risk of a local market startup failing is probably much higher due to the difficulty in market penetration.

Cheers,

Jerome