EP 159 An Insider’s View into the Thriving Singapore Startup Ecosystem

Singapore is home to fewer than six million people, yet it leads the ASEAN region in venture capital investment and has been home to 10 unicorns.

Our guest,Prantik Mazumdar, is a Singapore-based entrepreneur, investor and mentor, and he’s sharing his startup stories along with an insider’s view of the Singapore startup ecosystem.

After pursuing a major in Computer Engineering and a minor in Technopreneurship from the National University of Singapore, Prantik kick-started his career with the Singapore government (Enterprise Singapore) to drive international trade promotion for the island state.

He began his entrepreneurial journey with Happy Marketer in 2011, where he spent a decade building and scaling one of the top independent digital marketing services firms in the region that served brands like Standard Chartered Bank, Great Eastern Life, Royal Brunei Airlines, Starbucks, Ping An, Grab, Shopee, GoJek, Kimberly Clark, PropertyGuru, and PegiPegi.

In February 2019, Prantik had a successful exit when Happy Marketer was sold to an American digital enterprise called Merkle, which is part of Dentsu International, the largest Japanese advertising conglomerate. He is currently serving as the Managing Director of the CXM Group at Dentsu Singapore.

Apart from his corporate role, Prantik is an active angel and venture investor, mentor, advisor, and speaker through organizations like Quest Ventures, Tie Singapore, HealthXCapital, NUS Angel Ventures, and he is an Entrepreneur-In-Resident at INSEAD.

Please connect with Prantik here:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/prantikmazumdar/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/pranmaz

Learn more about the Happy Marketer here:

https://www.happymarketer.com/

00:00 - meet Prantik

07:00 - how entrepreneurship found Prantik

14:00 - co-founder happiness is found in having complementary skills sets and aligned values - hooray Rachit!

24:00 - bootstrapping their way to success

26:00 - the best exit story and advice for founders

35:00 - the most essential elements a startup must have for success

- how impactful is the problem

- founder problem and market fit

- product market fit

39:00 - celebrate the team member's exit - their contribution and the gratitude for their time with you and your startup

43:25 - why Prantik is passionate about provide equitable capital opportunities to startups

44:40 - Prantik's investor criteria

52:30 - design the ideal cap table before you start raising capital

54:20 - why the Singapore startup ecosystem in thriving

01:02:00 - Prantik's outstanding founder advice for staying strong, tenacious and resilient

To learn how to calculate the LTV/CAC ratio, watch my video here: http://bit.ly/LTVCACRatio

Thank you for carving out time to improve your Founder Game - when you do better, your business will do better - cheers!

Ande ♥

Ande Lyons

http://andelyons.com

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