Glad to be invited by East Ventures and Temasek to mentor at @my1st1000sg last Saturday. Thanks Ong Ju Boon for the invitation.

What I like about this challenge is its focus on earning revenue, instead of building a pitch deck or a prototype.

Building a product is the easy part of entrepreneurship. Making money is the hard part.

Most startup programs get this backwards.

After 19 years building tech companies, the pattern I see repeating - the founders who fail can usually build. They just can’t sell.

I have seen founders spend 6 months perfecting a product no one asked for. I have also seen founders make their first sale with a WhatsApp message and a PayPal link. The second group almost always survives longer.

The students and young entrepreneurs at my1st1000sg are forced to confront this reality early - before the product, before the pitch, before the funding. The whole point is to prove you can earn revenue first.

If you are starting something, I think the right first question is not “can I build it?” but “will someone pay for it before I build it?”

Also, the two questions I always ask new startup founders to think about:

• Why now? If you can’t answer it, quite likely your idea has been tried by many and they either already made it big or failed.

• Why you? If you can’t answer it, quite likely you are going into a space where you don’t have a competitive edge.

#Entrepreneurship #Startups #Mentorship