TH E N U S EN T R E P R E NE U RI A L S PI RI T
RAZER SHARP
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government’s pursuit of a nation of entrepreneurs. NUS’ ROLE IN ENTREPRENEURSHIP The NUS of yore had certainly seen its fair share of entrepreneurs, from Banyan Tree founders Mr Ho Kwon Ping (Arts and Social Sciences ’78) and Ms Claire Chiang (Arts and Social Sciences ’74 ) to Hyflux founder Ms Olivia Lum (Science ’86) and export doyenne Ms Jocelyn Chng (Arts and Social Sciences ’89) of Sin Hwa Dee. But the University then had little direct input in the entrepreneurial journeys taken by these business luminaries. It was in 1988 that NUS foresaw the importance of tech enterprise and the then-Centre for Management of Innovation and Technopreneurship was set up. In 2001, it became a division of NUS Enterprise (also established that year) and was renamed NUS Entrepreneurship Centre (NEC). NEC’s goal is to nurture entrepreneurial learning and venture creation among the NUS community. In 1999, the NUS Entrepreneurship Society, with NEC and the NUS Business School Alumni Association launched Start-Up@Singapore, an annual national business plan competition in Singapore, in a bid to draw ideas from entrepreneurs and help them actualise those ideas. Within NUS, there was also a Technology Entrepreneurship Minor programme for all undergraduates which ran from 1999 to 2007. Started by NEC, this was the University’s pioneering move in entrepreneurship education. In 2000, NEC was appointed the country-representative in the GEM research project — the same one that ranked Singapore 20 out of 21 countries in 2000. However, Singapore progressed to 15 out of 37 countries within two years. From 2000 to 2007, GEM was the
WITH THE AMOUNT OF SUPPORT THE GOVERNMENT PUTS BEHIND START-UPS, IT IS A GREAT TIME FOR ENTREPRENEURS IN SINGAPORE .
When we first started, we were just passionate gamers who thought, ‘Hey, wouldn’t it be great if there was a mouse that was built specifically for gaming?’ Things grew from there. I’ve either been insanely lucky or have just never seen things as being a challenge. Whenever issues came up we just got together and solved them. Today, we are our own biggest challenge. Razer is the world’s largest gaming peripherals company, and we manage that by focusing very strongly on product quality. Everything we produce gets rigorously tested and each new product we release is a way of us outdoing ourselves.
It has been said that Singapore is a country that doesn’t breed entrepreneurship. You are a clear contradiction of that argument. What does it take to make an entrepreneur like you?
Mr Min-Liang Tan only global effort to benchmark entrepreneurial propensity across nations. Momentum grew when NUS Enterprise was formed in 2001. What it provides is an umbrella to various enterprise-related initiatives such that there is comprehensive, coordinated and dedicated support for innovation and entrepreneurship at the University level. This way, NUS Enterprise has broader oversight of potential opportunities for collaboration across NUS departments and is able to identify challenges and gaps that need plugging. As a central body, it not only helps develop entrepreneurial mindsets among students and staff, but provides the environment and resources any resulting technologies or start-ups need to get to that next level. One key initiative that has turned out to be very fruitful for NUS and Singapore’s start-up community is the NUS Overseas Colleges (NOC) programme. Then-NUS President Professor Shih Choon Fong launched NOC with a partnership between NUS and Stanford University in July 2001, and by January 2002 the first batch of 14 NOC students arrived in Silicon Valley. The Continued on page 15
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What drove or inspired you to start Razer? What challenges did you face at the start?
Mr Min-Liang Tan (Law ‘02) is to gamers what Steve Jobs still is to tech nerds: a veritable god. The cofounder, CEO, Creative Director and Chief Gamer of Razer Inc, the world’s largest gaming peripherals company, was a lawyer with his own firm before he left for Silicon Valley and designed the world’s first gaming mouse, the Razer Boomslang, in 1998 with fellow gamer Mr Robert Krakoff. The pair acquired Razer in 2005 and the company is now valued at over US$1 billion. Mr Tan, who turns 39 this year, has won a plethora of awards, among them, the recent NUS Outstanding Young Alumni Award 2015.
I would say that statement is categorically untrue; there could not be a better place for entrepreneurs today than Singapore. With the amount of support the government puts behind start-ups and entrepreneurs, it is a great time for entrepreneurs in Singapore. It’s definitely better than when I started. When Razer first began, start-ups were not the sexy endeavour they are today. It was more like, “Why would you do that?” What makes an entrepreneur successful is perseverance. You have to keep pushing forward, no matter what. If an idea does not work, refine it, refresh it, and then have another go at it.
NUS Enterprise, which awarded you the 2011 Outstanding NUS Innovator Award, exists to create enterprise opportunities for startups in NUS. What suggestions might you have to encourage more start-ups coming out of NUS? I think this is a great initiative and we should be giving more opportunities to start-ups. This is how we encourage innovation and ingenuity. Entrepreneurs are people who have an ideal and then strive towards it relentlessly. Being an entrepreneur used to be harder — there was less support if you wanted to start your own business. But these days, the government recognises the importance of start-ups, which is great!
Photo courtesy of Mr Min-Liang Tan
including property search website 99.co — which simplifies home buying and renting in Singapore — co-founded by NUS alumnus Mr Darius Cheung (Engineering ’04), who also founded mobile security company tenCube which was acquired by McAfee in 2010. The main criticism from global media is that not many of the Singapore-based start-ups acquired by giant companies are founded by Singaporeans. The most notable acquisition in the last five years was of Viki, a video streaming site picked up in 2013 by Japanese e-commerce giant Rakuten for US$200 million. Viki was founded by Egyptian-American Mr Razmig Hovaghimian, “who never received any [Singapore] government funding”, claimed The Economist in a January 2014 article. But what is perhaps more significant is that Viki was part of an ecosystem called Block 71, which houses a teeming, thriving community of start-ups, many of them founded by Singaporeans. And it all began with NUS taking on a role to support the
for gaming. It is basically the next step in giving gamers a more immersive experience. This poses huge benefits but also huge challenges to the gaming community. Our OSVR Platform brings game developers, gamers and hardware manufacturers together to solve those challenges and make VR gaming a reality for the masses. Working with partners like NUS is very important for the development of VR because by creating an open platform to exchange knowledge and learning of both commercial and academic partners, we can drive the entire industry forward with an open knowledge base. We are still in somewhat unchartered territory with VR, and it is through collaboration that we can solve problems and push the envelope of VR technology to make it a mass-market success.
You’re a founding member of the Open Source Virtual Reality (OSVR) platform and among its partners are universities and colleges. Is NUS one of these? What is the significance of this platform and how it will disrupt technology in the near future?
NUS is one of our academia partners. We are working with NUS’s Keio-NUS Connective Ubiquitous Technology for Embodiments (CUTE) centre, providing hardware development kits and related support for use in their research lab. I believe that Virtual Reality (VR) is the way forward
Do you support and invest in other startups? If you do, what are they, and what are the qualities of a start-up that you would be interested to invest in?
Yes, we do. Who we are investing in, I can’t really talk about but we are always interested in supporting ventures that we have a synergy with. We are even in the process of putting together a fund specifically for investing in start-ups. Razer is a company that has scaled to produce and ship millions of products worldwide, so we have the expertise, understanding and reach that could massively assist young and up-and-coming companies. Right now, the plan is to find strategic companies that we can help and who can leverage off our profile. As we are globally-covered, this can be of great help even before they move into new geographies or jurisdictions, because they can benefit from what we’ve learnt in those jurisdictions. We’ve got people on the ground around the world who have been doing the same work for years, and we can tap on their expertise. Personally, I’m excited about giving back to NUS and its budding entrepreneurs. I would love to meet up with more NUS start-ups so ping me anytime!
JAN– MAR 2016
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