Funding issues in Singapore

[Ruiwen Chua]

What are some of the issues faced when attempting to seek funding in
Singapore?

[David Chua]

Personally, I think there's a lack of pre-seed incubators to help first-time entrepreneurs get started.

Current government support channels like i.JAM, YES! have pretty strict requirements for what's supposed to be pre-seed incubation to build a prototype, but considering that the amount of money they are giving up are in the range of $50,000, they do have the right to scrutinize and nitpick applicants.

Perhaps there's a market for private incubators that provide micro-funding like $2-5k for entrepreneurs who want to try out a new idea but don't have the capital or money to support themselves for a few months as they work and hack on their prototype. A Y-combinator style incubator in Singapore?

[Luther Goh Lu Feng]

Is Mengcubator trying to achieve that?

[Ruiwen Chua]

Indeed.. I have heard that the Mengcubator is trying to launch something similar to Y-Combinator here.. not very sure of details though.

Then again, i have also heard that 50k is really just enough for initial R&D and isn't really much in the grand scheme of things.. how true is that? How far, realistically, will 50k last a startup?

(I'm asking because I haven't been through this before, so please consider me a complete n00b here =)