There’s a negativity problem in Southeast Asia’s startup ecosystem right now. And look — there are reasons for it. Markdowns, down rounds, slower exits, tighter liquidity. I’m not going to pretend the data doesn’t say what it says.
But here’s the thing: negativity is self-fulfilling in innovation ecosystems.
Innovation requires the suspension of disbelief. Someone has to look at a two-person team with a half-built product and say “I think this could be something.” That’s the spark. Without it, the cycle doesn’t start.
And in a risk-averse environment like Singapore and Southeast Asia — where the cultural default is already caution — the cost of collective negativity is even higher. When the prevailing narrative is “it’s a bad time to start,” people don’t start. Talented engineers stay at Google. Ambitious MBAs go into banking. Second-time founders sit on the sidelines and wait. The pipeline doesn’t shrink — it never fills.
That’s the real doom loop. It’s not that companies build smaller. It’s that the companies never get built at all. The best founders, the ones who would have taken the leap, read the room and decide it’s not worth the risk. And then five years later we wonder why there aren’t enough breakout companies.
This is a talent problem disguised as a sentiment problem. Singapore has spent decades building itself into a global hub — attracting the best engineers, operators, and entrepreneurs from across Asia. That’s working. But the moment the narrative shifts to “this ecosystem doesn’t produce winners,” the calculus changes. Why would a top AI researcher leave San Francisco for Singapore if the story she hears is that the ecosystem is broken? Why would a second-time founder from Jakarta choose to build here instead of closer to US capital? Every cycle of pessimism sets the timeline back — not by quarters, but by years. Because talent pipelines take years to build and months to lose.
Silicon Valley’s magic was never the weather or the capital or Stanford. It’s the pervasive, almost irrational belief that surrounds you. It’s an ambition factory. You show up and everyone around you is trying to build something enormous — and that makes you believe you can too. The belief is the infrastructure. It’s what makes a first-time founder look at an impossible problem and think “why not me?”
That’s not an accident. It was built over decades by people who chose optimism even when the data was mixed. The early days of the Valley had plenty of failures and false starts. What it had that we sometimes lack was the collective refusal to let the failures define the narrative.
Singapore and Southeast Asia don’t need to copy Silicon Valley. We have our own strengths and our own path. But we need to learn that lesson: the story you tell about your ecosystem becomes the ecosystem you get.
I’m not arguing for delusion. I’m not arguing for fake-it-till-you-make-it accounting fraud. I’m arguing for actual belief in human endeavor — the kind that looks at real strengths and says “we can build on this.”
And there’s plenty to believe in:
- Human capital — Singapore’s technical training pipeline is world-class. The region is producing better engineers, product people, and operators than it ever has.
- Capital availability — There is more capital available in SEA than at any point in history. Yes, it’s more selective now. That’s not a bad thing.
- Ecosystem maturity — We have experienced founders on their second and third companies. We have operators who’ve scaled to $100M+ revenue. That didn’t exist ten years ago.
- The talent magnet is working — Singapore is attracting global talent in AI, fintech, and deep tech. That’s not a given — it’s the result of deliberate policy and real quality of life. Don’t take it for granted by telling those people they’ve come to a dead-end market.
- Regional tailwinds — 700 million people, fastest-growing digital economies in the world, young populations going online-first. The structural opportunity hasn’t changed because some portfolio companies got marked down.
The question isn’t whether the ecosystem has problems. It does. The question is whether we talk about those problems in a way that attracts the people who will solve them — or in a way that sends them somewhere else.
Belief is contagious. So is cynicism. We get to choose which one we spread.