It was a warning call when a businessperson saw the potential of what I do and offered a price to acquire the business. The offer was low, which made me rethink the company I'm building and where I shall be heading next.
- What kind of business am I building?
I recall a friend shared the word "hawker stall," and I disagreed and argued, "I am at least building a food court". I disagreed with the size/scalability of the business. But regardless of the analogy, the company I have been building is indeed a small-scale business.
- What kind of business customers have I built?
- I'm getting a few top-branded asset management companies, government agencies, and consumer brands to work with my company on our digital e-commerce solution, which is definitely a big plus. This is a result of years of portfolio development, brand development efforts, and enhanced customer service.
- A few enterprise and government agent customers on POC and enterprise solutions. This is still a bit weak compared to other development agencies in Singapore. Some later-established firms have better customer connections in this sector.
- I'm getting organic leads from Gemini on enterprise AI solution development, which is a recent highlight. We managed to get a few deals closed from these organic leads. I will invest further in this and hopefully get more organic businesses from here.
- Regarding the cloud solution partners and the AI company partners, I think I'm still on the weak side. We'll need to further develop the relationship to work with the partners in depth.
- What kind of company do I aspire to be building?
I like to use the analogy of a specialist clinic vs. a GP. I'm building a specialist clinic, not a GP. Due to the fact that most business relationships need to be maintained by me personally, there are limited customers I could serve. I'm not just the owner of the clinic, but also the sitting-in doctor in the clinic. If running as a GP model, I could not possibly feed the staff in the clinic and my own family with the pricing model and the number of customers I could serve in one day. The cost of living in Singapore is high. To maintain the model and function well while still having time with my family, I could only take the specialist path, instead of the GP path. However, due to my various interests in different topics, I could be a specialist in 2-3 topics, say both an ENT doctor and a gastroenterologist.
- How to survive in a highly capitalised market and maintain an artisan and engineering spirit in the business?
I started to think about this question because I observed the struggles of certain cafe businesses in my neighborhood. I was also shocked by the power of capital while working on a potential brand app development for a customer.
There are cafe chain shops(Starbucks, Luckin, Fore Coffee, etc.) in my neighborhood that regularly give membership promotions on holidays. For those honest and small neighborhood artisan cafes, they are unable to offer this. Naturally, their businesses will be diluted during the holidays when people could have bought coffee from them but bought coffee from these chain shops. I love the cafes that hire baristas who make good coffee. However, their businesses are usually a bit quiet. I enjoy the quietness of these businesses, which means I could have more "me time" while enjoying coffee there. However, I also worry about their survival, because not enough customers means they might be shut down due to the fact that it's not making good business. A good example of the neighborhood cafe I like is named "A slow cup", which I first encountered when I was walking around Robertson Quay. The nicely designed, simple, and small shop, including its beautiful logo and dark orange color palette, made me feel a sense of beauty and elegance.
Figure 1: "A slow cup" cafe when I first encountered it in 2025 at Robertson Quay.
Later, I got to know that the cafe is indeed owned by the nail bar, which is profitable. It's a good concept to combine a nail bar with a cafe, where the cafe may not be making good money, but the nail bar is.
The other shock that shaped my cognition of the influence of capital on businesses was when a tea brand approached me for mobile app development(it's called Chagee), when it was still not very big in Singapore. I gave a "practical" proposal at a humble quotation, assuming that they may not have a high budget to build a large-scale mobile app. That "humbleness" failed the deal. The Chinese brands are indeed getting very rich and backed by capital that aims for ambitious goals. Today, Chagee "operates 46 outlets launched within two years across Singapore as of August 2026". How can you compete with ventures&capitals?
- Build a venture-investable business?
After realising the power of capital, I feel like it's not the right strategy to stay a humble neighbourhood cafe that may naturally die by itself. I should really design the company in a way that is investable and more scalable.
It's possible to build a legacy F&B brand as a heritage brand in 30 years, but it's very hard to build a tech company that's always up to date at a small scale that's not backed by any venture. You can easily be left behind with the rapid evolution of technologies.
- How?
Let me prototype that and see if I can make it work. It may be difficult, but I think it's possibly workable and the only way to make my company survive without me overworking myself.
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