Entrepreneur First Singapore: Same Programme, Different Continent

When I told people I was doing Entrepreneur First again, the polite ones said “oh, interesting.” The less polite ones said “didn’t it work the first time?” Fair question. The answer is complicated, but the short version is: EF London gave me a network and a sharper sense of what I wanted to build. EF Singapore gave me a different lens entirely.

The Singapore cohort was smaller than London, maybe 50 people. The backgrounds were different too. London skewed European academic and ex-finance. Singapore had founders from across Southeast Asia, India, Australia, and a handful of expats. The energy was different. London has a particular brand of startup intensity that’s fuelled by self-deprecation and bad coffee. Singapore runs on ambition and really excellent hawker food.

Why Go Again

Honestly? Because the first time taught me that the hard part isn’t having ideas. It’s finding someone who complements your skills and shares your obsession with a specific problem. I hadn’t found that person in London, and EF’s model is the best mechanism I’ve seen for that particular search. The alternative is LinkedIn messaging strangers, which has roughly the same success rate as cold-calling someone to propose marriage.

Also, Singapore was paying for the flight. I’d never been to Southeast Asia. Sometimes the calculus is simple.

Singapore vs London

Singapore’s startup ecosystem is fascinating and quite different from London’s. The government is actively, almost aggressively, pro-startup. The Smart Nation initiative means there’s genuine political will behind technology adoption. In London, if you want to sell to the government, you navigate procurement processes designed during the Boer War. In Singapore, there are programmes specifically designed to connect startups with government agencies as early customers.

The cost structure is different too. Office space in Singapore was comparable to London (expensive), but the EF programme provided workspace so that was moot. Food was dramatically cheaper. I ate at hawker centres almost every day: $3-4 SGD for a plate of chicken rice that would cost you £12 in Zone 1 London. I gained about 4kg in three months, which I maintain was an investment in cultural understanding.

Here’s a tangent on hawker centres, because I think they’re genuinely one of Singapore’s best innovations: they’re government-subsidised food courts where independent vendors serve incredible food at accessible prices. They solve the “feeding a dense urban population well and cheaply” problem more effectively than anything I’ve seen in Europe. If you’re ever in Singapore, go to Maxwell Food Centre and get the Tian Tian chicken rice. You’re welcome.

Cultural Differences in Team Formation

The team formation dynamics at EF Singapore surprised me. In London, people were relatively direct about what they wanted and didn’t want in a co-founder. “I need someone technical.” “I need someone who can sell.” Conversations were efficient, sometimes brutally so.

In Singapore, the cultural mix meant that directness varied enormously. Some people from certain backgrounds found it uncomfortable to say “I don’t think we’re a good fit” directly. Others were more direct than anyone I’d met in London. Navigating this required a different kind of emotional intelligence than I’d developed in the UK, where indirectness is more common than people admit.

The ideas that emerged were also shaped by the region. Several teams were working on problems specific to Southeast Asian markets: financial inclusion in Indonesia, logistics optimisation across island nations, agricultural technology for tropical climates. These weren’t problems you’d naturally encounter sitting in Shoreditch.

What I Took Away

I didn’t form a company at EF Singapore either. Two for two on that front, which is not the hit rate anyone hopes for. But I’m genuinely not embarrassed by it. The programme is designed so that not forming a company is a valid and even responsible outcome. Forcing a bad partnership because of sunk cost pressure is worse than walking away.

What Singapore gave me was clarity. I came back to Dublin knowing three things. First, I wanted to work on something at the intersection of AI and the built environment. Second, I wanted to build in Ireland, where the planning system was crying out for technology and nobody was building it. Third, I was done looking for a co-founder through structured programmes. Sometimes you just have to start building and let the right people find you.

The flight home was 13 hours. I spent most of it sketching out what would eventually become AutoPlan on the back of a Singapore Airlines menu card. The chicken rice on that flight, for the record, was not as good as Tian Tian.