There's not much new here for anyone who's already read an article or two on Singapore's startup scene. My view as a local startup founder is, it's not as rosy

There's not much new here for anyone who's already read an article or two on Singapore's startup scene. My view as a local startup founder is, it's not as rosy as one would expect for a city of burgeoning startups: - Singapore startups face the big difficult of a tiny domestic market (5m people) and a fragmented regional market (10+ different countries). To expand, you have to localise to multiple different languages and market environments. Entrepreneurs don't have exposure to the problems & conditions of these foreign markets, making it harder to find scalable opportunities. - Therefore, the ideas that stand a good chance of success are mass-market, possibly copycat ones, not technologically innovative ones like one would find in SF or Boston. We don't have too many high-value niches here. - The winning exceptions are startups that target a globally integrated market, e.g. gaming products (Razer) or web services (Zopim). If you can sell to the world (or very large markets) instead of struggling to penetrate many small markets, you're golden. Israel has been a leader in this regard. - There's a lack of exits because most startups struggle to gain huge reach in such a fragmented region. Plus, monetisation can be a problem in the poorer countries. - Angel investors are therefore more cautious and mostly take small or less risky bets. Which encourages entrepreneurs to focus on more mass-market, less innovative ideas. It's hard to build a Google without a wide-ranging and risk-taking investor network as exists in Silicon Valley. - The government's general support for startups is a bright spot, but a startup's success general depends on whether they manage to expand overseas and build their partner/investor network. Those are high barriers for most startups. A small market can't support that many competing ideas anyway, so as Dr Theseira says in the article, “Entrepreneurs should make sure that they are valuing their own time appropriately when making the decision to become an entrepreneur or when they are considering whether to remain or exit from an industry.”