r/singaporestartups

Finding leads/users in Singapore isn't that simple — most lead finders out there aren't really local or SG-focused.

I tried leadverse, which worked decently for my first startup (a SaaS education product) and helped me pull in a few leads. But when I tried it on my new local project, it just didn't get the context right.

Anyone else running into this? Would love to hear what other tools you've tried that actually work for the Singapore market 🙏

For context, I work at a startup in Singapore. My boss is one of those “guru” supposed legends and is meant to be a expert in UX, design, sales and marketing.

When I joined, I was told that we were weeks away from launching. They had already raised funding so it all sounded pretty solid.

It has now been over 9 months and we still have not launched.

The product is just an appointment scheduling SaaS. It is meant to be simple. Create a booking page, let customers pick a service, choose a time and confirm etc.

But my boss keeps adding features. Every time we get close, something new gets thrown in. Now it has turned into this strange mix of HR tool, appointment system and bookkeeping platform. It is getting harder and harder to even understand what the product is meant to be and who we are meant to sell to.

At some point I just got fed up and demotivated. I would leave, but the job market is not great right now, so instead of quitting I decided to just build what we should have launched months ago.

I mocked up some flows in Figma, used Claude AI to help generate most of the code, Supabase for the backend, and Resend for emails. In total, it costs me roughly $50 monthy to run the entire platform.

I then went ahead and started to get AI to generated blog posts, spent nothing on marketing, and left it alone.

To my surprise, people started signing up and now I actually have paying monthly subscribers.

Which is mad, because this started as petty revenge and now it is slowly turning into something real.

Anyway, that is my ramble and any advice on what I should do next would be appriciated

ive built over hundreds of website but only these two succeed and stuck with me for a long time as a one man dev.

initially i decided to go with cloudflare workers. free. website, database everything is free. only paid the domain for less than $11. my issue? sometimes there are alot of limited and leeway of doing stuff as cloudflare worker is serverless and im stuck with only cloudflare services.

hence i decided to rent a vps $7 a month cheap price 8gb ram, 100gb ssd, 4vcpu. but i kinda regret it as the server is in france hence the latency isnt that good.

i decided to build a new website but in the same niche. adult entertainment.
i met a good person here on reddit. he gave me advice on seo and how can i upload more videos on my website without me manually upload video one by one.
previously i would use chrome extension to download video for local sg videos.

no more manually add video title, tags, etc. now i build a pipeline to scrape video title, thumbnail and videos automatically.

i learned a lot along the way, stuff like security, optimizing my website as it takes a long time to load and i can see cpu spiking here and there. sometimes it would always reach 100% of cpu usage that i start to askin in reddit what is happening to my server.

not to mention, i cant just plug in stripe or other payment gateway provider as my business involve in handling 18+ stuffs. i found another provider that allow me to setup payment but the issue is i need to setup LLC in wyoming to get the business registration id. and that thing cost alot of money. im just a moped out dev. hence this is not the best way. i decided to not setup any payment gateway.

hence i decided to search on reddit about the best ads providers. honestly tough road. i was happy making like 20 bucks thru ads but then, the ad provider decided to close my website without any proper reason. frustrated about it as ive already generated my first money online.

what i learned along the way about building website for adult entertainment

1. never ignore seo fundamentals as it drives the highest organic traffic
2. never rely on just any ad network
3. always check any service that you are on if it allow adult content
4. never do manual work that can be automated
5. never overlook compliance requirement

i made around $47 thru ads. it is honestly not alot and i made more thru my full time job. but if any of you guys wanna setup an adult website or need consultation. feel free to reach me out. from here i have found my niche market and would like to expand more. thanks for reading

TL:DR; solo dev built adult sites using free stack then VPS, automated content pipeline, learned SEO and performance the hard way, struggled with payments and unstable ad networks, made ~$47, now doubling down on the niche and offering help to others.

had an idea of collecting and compiling polymarket and kalshi data and selling it to financial institutions like banks, hedge funds and quant firms as a subscription. In return they get clean high resolution dataset.

anyone working in the data space? ie, data scientists. what is the best way to collect data instead of recording them tick by tick? anyone with some experience can advice? thanks!

Hi there, I'm a freelance graphic designer based in Singapore, and would like want to give back to the community by offering some free advice and feedback on your website.

Leave a comment with a link to your website and I'll try to help as best as I can design-wise. Looking forward to hearing from you!

hey everyone!

I’ve been spending more time learning ai tools and trying to build small things, and realised i don’t really have a circle in singapore to talk about this stuff with?

So I know there are hackathons and meetups around, but sometimes it still feels a bit surface level or hard to really connect with people properly, maybe just my experience

Wanted to take some initiative and network more, was thinking it might be nice to have something smaller and more consistent, just a few people who want to hang, chat, share what they’re working on, exchange ideas, maybe build things over time

Maybe this resonates if you:

•	have been dabbling with ai or ideas but don’t really have people to talk to about it

•	feel like people around you aren’t that into building or experimenting

•	want to meet more like minded people but don’t really have the platform

•	just want a small group to connect, share, and learn together

doesn’t have to be hardcore tech or purely ai, could be anyone exploring ideas, building small products, or even running a business and looking to use ai

no pressure, not selling anything, just want to meet more like minded people

also if anyone knows good smaller communities in sg, would love to check them out

if not, happy to connect a few people here and see if something forms naturally, if you’re keen just comment or dm!

thanks guys! ✌️

I was comparing PSG solutions and got curious — how good are the vendor websites themselves? So I ran all 278 of them through Google PageSpeed Insights (Google’s free website speed test) on mobile.

What I found:

	PSG Vendors (278 sites)
Median score	47 / 100
Scored below 50 (“poor”)	54%
Scored above 90 (“good”)	3%
Couldn’t even load	4 sites

What’s making them slow:

1. Heavy website builders stacking up code the site doesn’t actually need
2. Images that aren’t compressed or sized properly
3. Pages loading too many scripts at once before showing any content
4. Some sites took over 10 seconds just to show the main content on mobile

Why this should matter to SMEs:

Google uses website speed as one of its ranking factors. Slower site = lower in search results = fewer customers finding you. If your vendor’s own website can’t score well on Google’s own test, it’s fair to ask what your website will look like after they build it.

You can test any website yourself for free — just go to pagespeed.web.dev and paste the URL. Takes 30 seconds.

For details, this is our comprehensive analysis: https://knoyi.com/guides/sg-b2b-performance-benchmark-2026/

Long post. Real situation. All details changed enough to protect everyone involved, but the patterns are 100% real.

I do SME advisory work in Singapore. A friend referred a business owner to me a few weeks ago. "She needs help with a loan for her business."

Fine. I do that. Set up a meeting.

But I don't start with the loan. I never do. I start with the business. Because if the business has a structural problem, a loan doesn't fix anything — it just delays the crash.

So I sat her down and started asking questions.

Twenty minutes in, I looked at my notes and thought: "This woman doesn't need a loan. She needs a rescue."

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Her story

She's the founder. Built a services business from nothing. Developed the offering, got the clients, built a real customer base. People were paying upfront for packages. Revenue was coming in. The business model worked.

She needed capital to scale. So she brought in an investor. The investor put in a significant amount — call it 300K. In return, the investor got majority shares. About 55%.

No shareholders' agreement was signed. "We trusted each other." You know how this goes.

For the first few months, things seemed okay. The investor was "involved." Had ideas. Knew people. Brought energy.

Then "involved" became "in charge."

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What the investor did

The investor started directing marketing spend. Big spend. Influencer partnerships — specifically with someone the investor knew personally. Exhibition appearances. Agency fees. The founder pushed back on some of it but kept getting overruled.

The investor appointed herself as the company secretary on ACRA. That meant she had practical access to and control over the compliance process — statutory records, ACRA filings, board minutes. Directors remain legally responsible for these records, but when the person preparing them has their own interests at stake, the integrity of those records is compromised.

The investor brought in her own accounting firm. Now the investor also controlled the financial records. The founder was relying on the investor's people to tell her the truth about her own company.

The investor started talking to staff directly. Giving them instructions. Sometimes instructions that contradicted what the founder had told them. Staff didn't know who to listen to.

The investor argued with the founder about operational decisions. Not as a shareholder exercising voting rights — as someone who behaved as if she were the managing director.

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What the numbers showed

When I finally got hold of the management accounts, this is what I saw (rough numbers, changed slightly):

• Revenue over 15 months: ~360K
• Total expenses over the same period: ~950K
• Net loss: ~600K
• Total share capital: ~545K
• Net assets: negative ~55K

The company spent nearly three times what it earned. It burned through more than its entire share capital in 15 months.

But here's the kicker — where did the money go?

Marketing and exhibition expenses: ~200K. On a revenue base of 360K. That's 55% of revenue on marketing.

For a single-location services business, the benchmark is 10–15%. She was spending 4–5x the norm. And a chunk of that went to the investor's personal contact — an "influencer" — with no campaign reports, no analytics, no content deliverables, no measurable outcomes. Just invoices and payments.

The accounting fee was ~28K over 15 months. For a small exempt private company, the going rate is 3–8K per year. The investor's own firm was charging roughly 3x the market rate.

There were another ~40K in consulting and professional fees paid to vendors nobody could identify yet.

Staff costs were ~445K — actually more than the total revenue.

The company had 19K in the bank. Against 171K in services it was obligated to deliver to customers who'd already paid. Both the founder and the investor had loaned money to the company to keep it alive.

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What I did

I'm not a lawyer. I was very clear about that with her. But I know how to read a P&L, and I know what governance failure looks like.

My corporate secretary and I sat with her and walked through everything:

The financial picture. We showed her that the company's problem wasn't a lack of revenue or clients — it was a cost structure that someone else had imposed on the business. Strip out the excess marketing spend, normalise the accounting fees, and the business could potentially be viable. The investor's spending decisions, not the market, caused the financial distress.

The governance picture. We explained what it means when your majority shareholder is also your company secretary and controls your accountant. She has practical control over the compliance process and the financial records. That's not governance. That's a conflict of interest wrapped in a corporate structure. The director retains legal responsibility for these records, but when the person preparing them has competing interests, the reliability of those records is in question.

The legal landscape. We walked through the basics — not as legal advice, but as awareness. In Singapore, directors manage the company, not shareholders acting merely as shareholders (s.157A Companies Act). If a shareholder is in substance directing the board or company operations, there may be an argument that she is acting as a de facto or shadow director, with potential duties and liabilities depending on the facts (s.4(1)). Oppressive or unfairly prejudicial conduct by a majority shareholder may be challenged under s.216. And where the wrong is really a wrong done to the company, a shareholder may need to seek leave to bring a derivative action in the company's name under s.216A — the underlying claim might be breach of director duties, conflict of interest, or similar.

The negotiation scenarios. We talked through what might happen when the investor eventually calls a meeting. What the investor might push for. What the founder can push back with. What leverage each side actually holds.

And then I told her the thing that changed how she saw the whole situation:

"You built this business once. You can close it and build it again. She can't."

The founder has the skills. The client relationships. The operational knowledge. The industry expertise. If the company winds up, the founder starts fresh. It's painful, but it's possible — and she's done it before.

The investor? She has money in a company that's worth nothing. If it winds up, she loses her capital, her loan, and her leverage. She can't rebuild the business because she never built it in the first place. She just funded it — and then spent the funding on marketing that went to her friend.

That asymmetry is the founder's strongest card. But nobody had ever framed it that way for her. She'd spent months feeling trapped by the investor's 55% when in reality, the investor should be the one worried about what happens next.

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What her options actually are

Without getting into specifics:

Option 1: Negotiated exit. Present the investor with the financial reality — the company is in a net liability position, shares have no positive equity value on any standard methodology, the spending pattern is documented, and the governance conflicts are clear. Propose a clean exit: all shares transferred, resign as secretary, accounting firm replaced, full record handover. At a price that reflects what the shares are actually worth (which is very little).

Option 2: Legal action. If the investor refuses a reasonable exit, the facts may support a Section 216 oppression or unfair prejudice claim, subject to legal advice and evidence. The court has wide remedies including ordering a share buy-out, regulating the conduct of the company, or other relief. Valuation in these cases is discretionary and fact-sensitive — the court considers the actual accounts, the conduct of the parties, and the circumstances as a whole.

Option 3: Winding up. If the investor makes it impossible to resolve things cleanly, the founder may be able to apply for a just-and-equitable winding up order under the Insolvency, Restructuring and Dissolution Act 2018 (s.125(1)(i)). She cannot do this unilaterally as a 45% shareholder — it requires a court application. But the threat is powerful because, as I said, the founder can rebuild and the investor can't.

The investor's informal proposal to sell half her shares at her original investment price? The accounts show that's not supportable. The net assets are negative. The company is loss-making. There's no methodology — net asset, earnings, revenue multiple — that supports the price she's asking. She's trying to cash out at cost from a company she helped run into the ground.

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What every SG founder should take from this

If any of this resonates, here's the practical checklist:

Do today:

• Export all WhatsApp chats with your investor (full history, including media). Store somewhere they can't access
• Pull your ACRA BizFile profile (SGD 5.50 on BizFile+)
• Check if you're a signatory on the company bank account
• Start a diary of all interactions with the investor — date, time, what was said
• Do NOT confront the investor or tip them off

Do this week:

• Talk to a corporate litigation lawyer who handles shareholder disputes
• Request full bank statements directly from the bank (not through the accountant)
• Request monthly P&L from the accountant — if they delay, document it

Know your rights (but always verify with a lawyer for your specific situation):

• Directors manage the company, not shareholders acting as shareholders (s.157A)
• If you hold more than 25% of ordinary voting shares and there are no unusual constitution or class rights, the investor generally can't pass special resolutions without you
• A person found to be a de facto or shadow director may be subject to directors' duties and liabilities (s.4(1)) — but this is fact-specific, not automatic
• Oppressive or unfairly prejudicial conduct may be actionable (s.216)
• Where a wrong has been done to the company, a shareholder may seek leave to bring a derivative action in the company's name (s.216A)
• A just-and-equitable winding up is possible under the IRDA (s.125(1)(i)), but requires a court application

Before you ever take investment:

• Shareholders' agreement — non-negotiable
• Independent company secretary
• Independent accountant
• Spending limits requiring mutual consent
• Monthly management accounts to all directors
• Exit mechanisms in writing

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Why I'm posting this

I'm not posting to promote myself. I'm not naming anyone or any company.

I'm posting because I've now seen this pattern enough times to know it's not rare. Founder builds something real. Investor comes in with capital. Governance gets ignored. The investor slowly takes control of everything — the spending, the accounting, the compliance, the staff. The founder gets sidelined in their own company.

And the founder almost always thinks they're powerless because "the investor has majority shares."

You're not powerless. The law provides real protections for directors and minority shareholders. But you need to know what those protections are before you walk into the room — and you need proper legal advice for your specific circumstances.

If this hit close to home, feel free to DM. I'm not going to sell you anything. But I might be able to point you in the right direction.

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Not a lawyer. Not legal advice. All details anonymised. Always engage qualified legal counsel for your specific situation.

How hard would it be to secure a proper funding round for an already operating with 4-month traction start-up? The only reason it took us 4-months to collect the traction is because we're operating on a very informal industry and trying to make it focus.

My start-up will have nationwide impact on how people can afford vegetables (in the Philippines) which inturn can make vegetables 70% cheaper than standard market prices while giving farmers the buying power.

I've already applied for Antler and other known accelerators. Any other suggesitions?

Hello. Recently vibe coded something for myself - I enjoy playing TOTO and always seem to miss out on the big draws. So I created a notification system for myself. Wondering if I can find a way to monetize it? The website is totoalert.sg

Would appreciate any ideas on how I can improve the platform as well. Thank you in advance!

Hey all, I am trying to validate an idea and need some advice on it.

I noticed that businesses who uses OpenAI with their workflow may have some inefficiencies. For example:

• Using expensive models for simple tasks
• Inefficient prompts that cost way more than they should

The idea is to have a dashboard where it shows them their AI usage, and give suggestions on what they can do to reduce their cost.

Would this be something you will use or pay for? Would love to get some feedback and thanks for reading.

Hi fellow founders, I’m running a small startup, and budget is really tight, but we still need to get our product in front of potential users. Paid campaigns feel risky, and it’s hard to know what’s worth trying without spending too much.

I’m curious about what has worked for other startups in Singapore. Have you found any low-cost marketing strategies that actually brought traction? How about freelancers versus agencies did you get better results with one over the other? I’d also love to hear any creative approaches that helped small teams make a noticeable impact without a large budget. Any advice or lessons learned would be greatly appreciated.

Been meaning to do this for months and finally sat down last week to go through the Business Grants Portal. Took way longer than expected just to figure out if I even qualify. The PSG covering AI tools now is actually useful for my retail ops but even with the subsidy you still need to front the remaining cost.

The problem is with supply costs still creeping up every other month that remaining amount is not something I can just absorb easily. So I ended up bridging it with a short term working capital loan and honestly I am just hoping it makes the whole thing manageable in the long run.

Anyone else dealing with this? How are you handling the cash flow gap between the grant and the actual cost?

Honestly this question has been sitting with me for a while. With global price hikes, USD costs going up, and layoffs hitting even the bigger players are second guessing whether now is the right time to push for growth or just hold steady and protect what they have built. And I do not think there is one clean answer.

The thing is, scaling in SaaS is not like scaling a traditional business where you add headcount and capacity. Your marginal cost to serve one more customer is low but your burn to acquire them is not. In this environment where budgets are tighter and decision cycles are longer, you can easily find yourself spending more to grow slower. That is a dangerous place to be especially if your runway is not deep.

What I keep coming back to is that scaling still makes sense but only if your unit economics are solid and your churn is under control. Growing a leaky bucket right now will just drain you faster. If retention is strong and your customers are actually getting value then this period might actually be a good time to move while some competitors are pulling back. But if the fundamentals are shaky fixing that has to come first before you even think about stepping on the gas.

Hey everyone, going to be upfront about what this is and isn't.

I'm not building a new app. I'm not a startup raising funds. I'm just someone who noticed that a lot of SMEs here could benefit from automating their WhatsApp messaging. From appointment reminders, follow-ups, renewal nudges, candidate confirmations but never get around to it because setting it up feels too technical, and maintaining it feels like another job.

The tools to do this already exist. The gap isn't the technology, it's that most SME owners don't have the time or inclination to figure it out, and hiring someone to build it properly isn't always worth it at their scale.

So what I'm actually offering with RELAY is one of two things, depending on what works for you:

Option 1 — Managed for you I set it up, I maintain it, you just focus on running your business. No technical knowledge needed.

Option 2 — Set up once, yours to keep I help you get it running on existing platforms, show you how to manage it yourself, and you take it from there with little to no ongoing cost.

This isn't just for marketing. If you're in recruitment, insurance, education, healthcare, or any business where you're sending the same types of messages to a lot of people repeatedly, this is probably relevant to you.

I'm genuinely in this to understand whether this is a problem worth solving, not to make a quick buck. If you're willing to try it for free and tell me honestly what works and what doesn't, I'd really appreciate it.

Drop a comment or DM me. Happy to have a no-pressure chat.

*I have a day job in tech doing similar work but in a much much larger scale and I would like to explore this so that I can scale this long term and hopefully build something myself