mollymeek: Send this to the ST Forum 5: S’poreans Complacent and Greedy

Singaporeans are becoming more and more complacent. They think that the government will take care of them. They are unable to go through hardship and are unwilling to work 18 hours a day. They are so greedy that they think they are entitled to overtime pay when workers are supposed to do work and not suck money from employers who are kind enough to give them work to do.

Peter Christensen toyed around with a few concepts to expand the YC philosophy to other niches. What struck me was how Singapore was one of the countries off the top of his head for a YC clone to be set up. And Singapore is the only Asian country that he mentioned in the list. Not China. Not Hong Kong. Not Taiwan.

I know I might sound childish here. I should be asking him the questions directly as opposed to blogging it but I’m lazy to do so. Wow – Has Singapore made a name for herself in the web technology space? Has he met any Singaporeans? Does he know anyone from NUSEA, ruby-sg, Singapore PHP, garag3? What have he heard about Singapore so far? Or was it just a coincidental random call?

Can YCombinator Be Beaten At Its Own Game? » What’s In Peter’s Head

The other discussion was about selecting founders to fund. I summarize YCombinator’s selection criteria as: “Young, Smart, Cheap, Determined, Acquirable”. This fits in with Paul Graham’s philosophy and worldview, and by focusing on these kind of founders, they deliberately pass on many other ideas and founders. Are there any other investment niches in the space ignored by YCombinator? Of course, but it will take another creative individual to come up with that business model. Here are some ideas:

* A YC clone in (Toronto, Sydney, Singapore, Helsinki, Stockholm, Tel Aviv, etc) for founders that can’t get US visas. US immigration policy keeps lots of smart people out of the US, so that’s an unexploited opportunity

* A hardware-centric fund that funds quick, small solutions based on FPGAs instead of burned-in hardware

* Focus on revenue generating startups as opposed to acquirable startups and collect dividends instead of exit payouts. This would create completely different companies than the ones YC has funded

* Encourage teams mixed with technical and business/marketing people to promote faster adoption people. Test the hypothesis that business adds value to early-stage startups

* Target more experienced professionals that are farther along in life and wouldn’t live on such a small amount.

- To be a free agent nation . 80% of the people works as a contractor, temporary job, or micro-businesses (with 3-4 people). The goal is to make every industries either a blend of oligopoly and monopolistic competition. In essence, there’s a long tail of small businesses serving the niches that the market giants fail to serve.

- Office buildings to be set up at residential areas to relieve traffic congestion from the city centre. More online stores to reduce the reliance on our natural constraint of lack of space. More home businesses consultancies to be set up. Startup hubs with decent facilities and contacts could be set up to encourage collaboration between different companies.

Social Welfare

- Waiver of GST on medical facilities, school fees, and costs (with the exception of cosmetic surgeries such as LASIK). These are basic welfare necessities that citizens should be entitled to.

- Families whose income per family member under S$800-$1000 to have their utilities bills waived for a certain reasonable limit, such as $50/pax.

- Increase in minimum wage of blue-collar workers. Local (Singapore citizen or PR) workers to be increased to S$9/hr and foreign workers to increase to S$12 per hour.

Transportation

- Privatizing feeder-bus services in Singapore. It is a waste to have large single-deck buses with unused capacity going around during off-peak hours. It would be more beneficial to have private mini-buses (capacity of 8-16 pax) at 2-3 minutes interval going between towns. The extra feeder buses that are freed up could be used to serve the public more extensively during peak hours.

- Carpool lanes in expressways, and heavily congested roads. ERP to be waived for carpool lanes. Implementing bus-lanes on heavy traffic roads (such as Marymount Road)

- Taxi-bus door-to-door transportation service available. Consumer can book a cab online or through phone SMS (no booking charges) and receive a fixed quote and expected time and pickup location which will be charged to his online account automatically.

- Increase in COE prices by 70%, except for vehicles registered by businesses. This will reduce the number of cars on the roads.

Technology

- S$10-$20/month for unlimited mobile data plans usage. 100MB mobile data plans included in all mobile plans. Mobile companies are hurting their profits if they fail to even encourage their customers to try out their mobile service. Think about it. Would you have such a heavy volume of SMS without the extensive number of free messages that comes embedded in your service?

- The ability for us to receive our credit card and utilities bills or statements online. (And to give us the option to stop paper-delivery of our statements). The ability to receive free itemized billing if we take up the option of online-delivery of our bills.

- The ability for us to view up to 7 years of financial transactions with our bank accounts. Not the pathetic 2 months that we currently have now.

Median monthly starting pay for cleaners and labourers has in fact fallen by nearly one-third, from $860 to $600, between 1996 and last year. To save money, he has stopped eating out for all his meals. Dinner is a simple meal of bread and Milo. To save electricity, the bachelor does not switch on the lights in his one-room Telok Blangah flat. Even then, he finds himself running out of money before the month is up. ‘I’m already very thrifty but the money is still not enough,’ he said in Hokkien. Source: We can barely stay afloat. Straits Times

Increase in cost of living:

THE cost of meals at hawker centres and restaurants look certain to rise after food supply costs, particularly for imports, rocketed for the second month in a row.

The Singapore DSPI (Domestic supply price index) showed that prices of live animals were 24.5 per cent higher in Oct than a year ago, while those of dairy produce and eggs soared 41.6 per cent.

Vegetables and fruit prices rose 5 per cent. Fish, however, cost 0.5 per cent less than a year ago.

Source: Food retail prices set to rise as supplies get more costly. Straits Times

Increase in cost of doing business:

SINGAPORE companies are under pressure to raise their wages more than they had earlier expected, in view of higher inflation next year, said human resources services company Hewitt.

Source: Pressure on S’pore firms to raise wages by over 5%. Straits Times.

More negative commentaries on the poverty situation in Singapore. Enough said. No comments. Could be interesting to do a project estimating the cost of living in Singapore later on.