Start-Up@Singapore

Registration for the 6th Start-Up@Singapore Business Plan Competition & Enterprise Launcher has closed and a total of 330 entries were received, a new record and an increase of 34% over previous year.

A new record total of S$110,000 prizes in cash and in-kind will be awarded this year amongst winning entries with the introduction of new categories and awards, an increase of over 20% over previous year. The new categories and awards introduced in 6th Start-Up@Singapore include Nokia “Run Your Own Shop” Category, as well as the Social Entrepreneurship Award, IPOS Spark Award and INTRO Technology Award.

In addition, the Make Your Mark! 2005–3rd National Trade Marks Competition is a new feature of 6th Start-Up@Singapore. Sponsored by the Intellectual Property Office of Singapore (IPOS), the competition comes under the youth category and is open to secondary school and junior college students.

For the second year running, Nescafe is also sponsoring the youth category called “Kick-start with Nescafe”. Open to youths aged 14 to 24 years, more than 80 teams took part in this category.

This year’s Start-Up@Singapore attracted close to 300 individual volunteers including more than 70 students from NUS Entrepreneurship Society and NUS Overseas College Alumni, more than 180 judges and more than 40 mentors from the general venturing community to support Start-Up@Singapore as it evolves as a national volunteer network and social venture.

The competition is now into its semi-final stage. Teams short listed for the semi-finals attended a boot camp on Apr 1 and 2. The boot camp helped prepare the teams for the final leg of the competition – submission of the full business plan and presentation to a panel of judges. At the boot camp, teams worked with mentors to go through their business plan and also attend interactive workshops on value proposition, marketing, finance and IP. Those shortlisted for the Nokia category attended separate workshops on creative marketing and retail management.

Past participants and contestants are not forgotten. The Start-Up@Singapore Enterprise Launcher inaugurated last year saw the formation of a 3000-member strong Start-Up@Singapore alumnus of past participants, contestants, judges, mentors, speakers and organizers, and also the participation of close to 20 mentee teams and mentors in the follow-up mentoring programs. This year, Start-Up@Singapore aims to bring together more than 200 alumni with 10 fundable companies, 25 mentors and mentee teams and introduce specific industry networking and investment sessions across IT & Telecommunications, Life Sciences, and Engineering during the Enterprise Launcher 2005 in the second half of 2005.

An annual survey is also being carried out since last year to obtain updated information on alumni members. The survey is one of the ways the organisers hope to keep in touch with those who have been a part of Start-Up@Singapore. The survey hopes to identify new start-up companies spun off from Start-Up@Singapore business plan competition and also identify new developments and achievements of these companies. The survey is also an avenue to gather feedback from alumni members so that better programmes can be conducted in future.

This year’s survey is currently being carried out. Start-Up@Singapore alumni members are invited to take part in the survey by logging on to https://aserv.nus.edu.sg/esu In April TVF series, we have Mr. Yen Sen Wu, President of Ladder International Corporation. The Ladder's story towards globalization is legendary and insightful. Mr. Yen had shared with us Ladder's growth strategy and its winning principles behind its success. With a humble beginning, Mr. Yen used only NT$8,000 and invested in the education market. Today, Ladder has grown into an international corporation with 8,500 employees worldwide and is taking effort to build up the biggest educational content provider for global Chinese society that enables life-long education. survey.htm. Closing date for the survey is 15 Apr 2005. We appreciate your valuable feedback as this will help us to plan better programmes.

More information on Start-Up@Singapore can be found at: www.startup.org.sg