Summer Programme in Entrepreneurship
Singapore – July 2022

My first real look at entrepreneurship

This programme came through the Temasek Foundation, NUS STEP Entrepreneurship Initiative. It gave me my first real exposure to entrepreneurship as a discipline, rather than something you pick up by accident.

Coming from a computer science background, I had built things before. However, I had not been taught how to think systematically about whether something was worth building in the first place.

• Grade: Completed Satisfactory
• Award: Temasek Foundation – NUS STEP Entrepreneurship Initiative 2022 Recipient
• Courses: Pitching and Fundraising, Corporate Intrapreneurship, Lean Startup Methodology, Value Proposition, Intellectual Property in ASEAN, Technology & Social Entrepreneurship, Business Model Design & Innovation, ASEAN Relationship & Culture, New Venture Creation

Learning entrepreneurship in Singapore, alongside all of ASEAN

Students from across ASEAN made up the cohort. As a result, every group project doubled as a crash course in how different markets in the region actually work. Learning entrepreneurship in Singapore meant learning fast: what counts as a viable business model in Jakarta does not always translate to Manila or Ho Chi Minh City, and the coursework on ASEAN relationships and culture made that concrete rather than abstract.

Sessions on pitching and fundraising were the most immediately useful. Being forced to defend a business idea in front of people with no context, and limited patience, is a good way to find out which parts of your thinking hold up.

The question that stuck with me

What stuck with me longest was not any single framework. Instead, it was the discipline of separating a good idea from a fundable one. Value proposition design, lean startup methodology, and the IP module all came back to the same underlying question: does this actually solve a problem someone will pay for, and can you prove it before spending six months building it?

That question has shown up in every product and business role I have taken since, from portfolio work back home to community projects built the same way this Singapore programme taught me to think.