SINGAPORE, March 21 — Singapore has the best start-up ecosystem for talents in the world, even beating Silicon Valley, according to a survey of 10,000 start-up founders across more than 100 cities.
Singapore came up tops in the talent category in the 2017 Global Startup Ecosystem Report and Ranking by Startup Genome, breaking “a quasi-monopoly” by Silicon Valley at the very top.
Although Silicon Valley had the best access to quality talents, it fared poorly in terms of talents’ cost. Singapore, on the other hand, had the 10th best start-up talents in the world. The island-state also had third best access to talents and had the fourth lowest cost for talents.
Overall however, the San Francisco tech hub continued to reign supreme in every other measure, besides talent, on the Global Startup Ecosystem Report.
The remaining measures were start-up performance, start-up funding, market reach, and start-up experience. Singapore came in 16th in the first two categories, and 11th and 20th for market reach and start-up experience respectively.
After factoring in all five measures, Singapore placed 12th in the world for its start-up ecosystem. The report noted that the Republic is “poised for a continued start-up revolution” as more funds and government subsidies are directed to start-ups and the performance numbers “will probably continue to rise”.
“Singapore is evolving at a pace like no other ecosystem. Within three years, we’ve a sustainable ecosystem of accelerators and corporate co-innovation, resulting in a six-fold increase of start-ups raising series A,” said Mr Alex Lin, head of Infocomm Investments.
“As we continue to grow Singapore start-ups, it reduces early-stage exits (by acquisitions) and increases the number of sizable start-ups in the ecosystem,” he added.
The report noted that the experience levels of Singaporean talent is comparably strong, given that 80 per cent and 74 per cent of engineering and growth teams respectively have gained at least two years of prior start-up experience already.
Founders based in Singapore are also the youngest in the world, with a median age of 28, according to the report.
The start-up ecosystems that scored better than Singapore overall were Silicon Valley, New York, London, Beijing, Boston, Tel Aviv, Berlin, Shanghai, Los Angeles, Seattle and Paris. — TODAY
