You touched on a number of points, and while I'm not an expert in Singapore, I have been operating my startup outside the USA for the past 4 years.
Entrepreneur vs High Tech Entrepreneur: This is a reasonable distinction, so I'm going to only talk about high tech. High tech, to me, means, the internet plays a key part in the product, and in my case, it is where the entirety of the product lives. So, software and virtual goods or information or services, rather than a factory and manufacturing, etc.
Labor Pool: The labor pool for a high tech company is global. I don't care where an employee is working, and the companies I admire are very globally diverse. This is becoming increasingly common it seems- for instance one engineer I know of is living on a beach in Thailand working for a US company ostensibly based in Boston (but with employees in at least a dozen countries and states.)
So, the labor pool is global, for high tech businesses (not so much when you need a factory.)
Funding Climate-
Yes, if your business is selling stock in your business, then you want to be located within an easy board meeting commute of Sand Hill Road. But one of the aspects of high tech business these days is that the funding needed is vastly smaller than before... you can self fund if you're a highly paid employee who lives frugally and puts away $40k a year for 5 years, for instance.
There does seem to be a segment of the population that thinks "high tech startup" is only that segment of companies that are trying to be the next facebook-- that is, bets on really long odds that require large amounts of outside capital. I think that's kinda silly when you can self fund and pursue businesses with much better odds, and thus have risk adjusted returns vastly higher. (would you rather have a %1 chance at being a billionaire, or a %75 chance at being deci-millionaire?)
The large, homogeneous, wealthy market of the USA: Can be addressed by businesses anywhere. There's no need to locate in the USA to address the US market. Further, in many business areas, the US market is less than half. For instance, I'm currently earning around %35 of revenue from the USA, with the majority coming from overseas, non-english speaking countries, because I simply took the time to translate the product into those languages. I don't even know the cultures, and haven't advertised to them, etc. But they are the majority of my income.
I think the USA wins on venture capital, sure, but loses in just about every other regard.
Plus, if your company has X amount in capital, would it be better to be located in the Bay Area where your burn rate will be 6-10 times as much as it might be in, say, Thailand?
I know americans think that America is number one in a large number of areas... but once I left america, I started to see that the american perspective on the world is pretty distorted.
Yes, all good points. As I think we both seem to be aware of, it really depends on the type of business you're doing. It could be high growth, or slow growth day 1 revenue generating machine, or something in between. It could be primarily virtual, or an older business model with a tech twist.
So, depending on your business model and your background, whether you're based in the U.S. or outside of it, both come with their own sets of challenges. I just think more business models have a higher probability of success if the company is based in the U.S. than they would if they were based in SE Asia.
From what I've heard by talking to other tech startups in the area, if you're looking to do a high growth type of startup, that can be difficult in this region and the reason is primarily due to funding. There's a cultural difference in the investors here that boils down to risk aversion. Asian cultures are typically risk averse and this no doubt applies to Asian investors as well. They expect you to already be making money or if you're not making money, then they'll want a sizable stake of equity - sizable enough to make the founders feel like employees rather than owners. One could get investment from firms in the U.S., but I've not heard of many who have gone that route, and I suspect many investment firms unfamiliarity with Asia could make that a little difficult.
Now if you want to talk about bootstrapping, then anything is possible within the limits of your abilities and tolerance.
If you're based in Asia but targeting the U.S. market, that's again not an insurmountable obstacle, but you'll need to be able to talk to your customers, and when your customers are based in the U.S., the time difference, distance, and being culturally disconnected can make this difficult at times. Possible yes, but at an extra cost.
So again, it really depends on what your business is doing. I think being in the U.S. gives you more options though.
Entrepreneur vs High Tech Entrepreneur: This is a reasonable distinction, so I'm going to only talk about high tech. High tech, to me, means, the internet plays a key part in the product, and in my case, it is where the entirety of the product lives. So, software and virtual goods or information or services, rather than a factory and manufacturing, etc.
Labor Pool: The labor pool for a high tech company is global. I don't care where an employee is working, and the companies I admire are very globally diverse. This is becoming increasingly common it seems- for instance one engineer I know of is living on a beach in Thailand working for a US company ostensibly based in Boston (but with employees in at least a dozen countries and states.)
So, the labor pool is global, for high tech businesses (not so much when you need a factory.)
Funding Climate- Yes, if your business is selling stock in your business, then you want to be located within an easy board meeting commute of Sand Hill Road. But one of the aspects of high tech business these days is that the funding needed is vastly smaller than before... you can self fund if you're a highly paid employee who lives frugally and puts away $40k a year for 5 years, for instance.
There does seem to be a segment of the population that thinks "high tech startup" is only that segment of companies that are trying to be the next facebook-- that is, bets on really long odds that require large amounts of outside capital. I think that's kinda silly when you can self fund and pursue businesses with much better odds, and thus have risk adjusted returns vastly higher. (would you rather have a %1 chance at being a billionaire, or a %75 chance at being deci-millionaire?)
The large, homogeneous, wealthy market of the USA: Can be addressed by businesses anywhere. There's no need to locate in the USA to address the US market. Further, in many business areas, the US market is less than half. For instance, I'm currently earning around %35 of revenue from the USA, with the majority coming from overseas, non-english speaking countries, because I simply took the time to translate the product into those languages. I don't even know the cultures, and haven't advertised to them, etc. But they are the majority of my income.
I think the USA wins on venture capital, sure, but loses in just about every other regard.
Plus, if your company has X amount in capital, would it be better to be located in the Bay Area where your burn rate will be 6-10 times as much as it might be in, say, Thailand?
I know americans think that America is number one in a large number of areas... but once I left america, I started to see that the american perspective on the world is pretty distorted.