Vawch Blog

Are you sure you want to start this business in Singapore ?

August 4th, 2008 in Random musings

This morning we had a chance the pick the brain of a dot-com veteran who had helped to build one of the leading job boards out there on our business (thanks!). He confirmed some of our initial hypotheses on the business but also provided some fresh insights.

The bottom line is he felt that we may have picked one of the hardest markets to start our business given the size of the Singapore market, the consolidated nature of advertising market (everybody reads the straits times recruit section), the strength of the agencies/headhunters here as well as the resistance of HR departments to trying anything new. He recommended entering other more fragmented and opaque markets in the region, which we agree wholeheartedly and have put that in our original business plan. Unfortunately, we have limited resources to do that at the moment until we get Singapore on firm footing. (Anyone who wants to partner with us in the other markets do drop us a note ) We are self-funded and have chosen to forgo any outside investment, at least for the time-being.

Based on our experiences these past few weeks, we think he is right. We picked Singapore to start the business not by choice but more of necessity. We are both based here and have our immediate families here.

We also surprised sometimes by the resistance of candidates/referrers to try our system. One would think that with the incentives in place and a relatively simple system to navigate, people would find it simple to do so and a lot of our referrers have done so. I guess this is a learning process for all and something that we hope will change over time.