2018 Female Founders Singapore Ecosystem Overview

1. FEMALE F OUNDERS 2017 3
F E M A L E F O U N D E R S
Singapore’s Female Tech Entrepreneur Ecosystem Overview
FEMALE FOUNDERS 2018 1

2. To the launch of our organisation
From no women at
tech conferences
Female Founders:
Our Story
FEMALE FOUNDERS 2018 2

3. Goals of this overview
The Female Founder’s ecosystem overview offers insights into the entrepreneurs,
investors, networks, and co-working spaces of the entrepreneurship and
intrapreneurship decision-makers in Singapore.
This market research-driven document aims at:
❖ Understanding the changing ecosystem of the female entrepreneurship
and intrapreneurship in Singapore.
❖ Identify and improve visibility of female entrepreneurs and the supporting
ecosystem in Singapore with media, VCs in order to increase gender
equality.
❖ Plan effective policy and advocacy programs to engage the ecosystem
against unconscious gender bias.
DISCLAIMER: We have conducted a through search, still some amazing women might not
be included. Help us and contact us info@femalefounders.com to include more women
entrepreneurs that we might have omitted.
FEMALE FOUNDERS 2018 3

4. Contents
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Introducing the
Landscape
Our Female
Tech Founders
Venture Capital
Firms
Programmes Media Ecosystem
Enablers
Methodology

5. FEMALE F OUNDERS 2017 19
METHODOLOGY
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6. FEMALE FOUNDERS 2018 6
New Female Founders:
Female founders in companies that are
created in the past 3 years (2015-2017)
with valuation or funding >S$1M
Female Founders with high growth
startups:
Female founders in companies that are
valued or funded >S$1M in the last 3
years
Female Founders with successful
startup exits:
Female founders in companies that
exited in the last 3 years
Female-led VCs:
VCs which have an active female
investor
VCs that invested in the most female-
led companies:
VCs which are publicly and proactively
investing in female-led startups
VCs actively open to investing in
female-led companies:
VCs which are publicly and proactively
aiming to invest in female-led startups
Accelerators:
Accelerators which proactively support
female entrepreneurs
Incubators:
Incubators which proactively support
female entrepreneurs
Media & Events:
Media companies and largest events that
have hosted a “female
entrepreneurship” theme in the past 1
year
Non-Profit Organisations:
Non-profit organizations committed to
improve and support the startup
ecosystem in Singapore for women
Notable Women of Impact in Startup
Ecosystem:
Individuals supporting the startup
ecosystem in Singapore for women
Founder Spotlight:
Interviewed female leaders who are
active with Female Founders
Organization
Methodology

7. FEMALE F OUNDERS 2017 19
I N T R O D U C I NG T H E LA N D S C A P E
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8. 1st Funding Round
Last Funding Round
Companies with a female
founder performed
better than companies with
all-male founding teams5.
Businesses with a female
executive team are more
likely to have higher
valuations
than those led by men4.
Why this overview?
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19% of all
reported tech
start-ups in
Singapore are
female-founded2
5%
3% of venture SGD is estimated
to go to female-led start-ups in
Singapore (25+ Million SGD of
993 Million SGD of VC value in
Singapore in 2015)6
5th Out of 16 countries, Singapore is ranked 5th
for having the most optimum local conditions
and environment for female entrepreneurs to
thrive in1
63%
Businesses with a female
executive team are more
likely to have higher
valuations
than those led by men3.
>64%
>49%
3%
19%
20162014
Overall

9. FEMALE F OUNDERS 2017 19
O U R F E M A L E T E C H F O U N D E R S
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10. New Female Founders1
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AMANDA ERNST
Caterspot
DIANA SALEM
900 Online
GILLIAN TEE
Homage
LATIKA KUNDU
SDiX
MAYETH CONDICION
Snapcart
NICOLE YEE
Spiking
ROSLINA CHAI
Gnowbe
REKHA HARI
soCash
SO-YOUNG KANG
Gnowbe
VENUS WONG
Saleswhale
1 This is new since our latest overview published in December 2015

11. Female Founders with high growth startups1
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Grace Sai Charlene Koh Deborah Wee Emily Hamilton Grace Park Guan Dian Jeeta Bandopadhyay
Joya ZHAO HONG Kersie Koh Lynette Seah Roshni Mahtani Norma Sit Pranoti Nagarkar-Israni Rosaline Chow Koo Sashim Parmanand
Shagufta Anurag Anna Haotanto Stephanie Chai Tan Hooi Ling Teo Jia En Veronica Chew Josephine K Chow Violet Lim
Range of Valuation:
USD$ 100M
Range of Valuation:
ABOVE S$ 100M
Range of Valuation:
ABOVE S$ 10M
Range of Valuation:
S$18-50M
Range of Valuation:
ABOVE S$ 100M
1 Data above based on information provided by startups
that have participated and responded to Female Founders
email survey.

12. Female Founders with high growth startups1
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Anna Gong Su-Lyn Tan Pocket Sun Rachel Lim Viola Tan Soo Boon Koh Peggy Choi
Cynthia Siantar Judy Tan Blanca Menchaca Soraya Kefs Sandra Cheim Olive Tai Zanetta Lee Durreen Shahnaz
Angelina Seow Anna Vanessa Haotanto Saki Kobayashi Nejla Matam-Finn Nicole Seah Fion Chua Talenia Phua Gajardo Debbie Lee
Range of Valuation:
S$ 3-15 M
Range of Valuation:
UNDER S$ 10M
Range of Valuation:
USD$ 15M
Range of Valuation:
ABOVE S$10M
Confidential
information
1 Data above based on information provided by
startups that have participated and responded to
Female Founders email survey.

13. Female Founders with successful exits1
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Amanda Ernst - Duriana
Kinerat Karin -
Watchme88
Tan Li Li - 3reeIsabel Cheong - 3ree
Tammie Tham - Accel
Systems and Technologies
Ngeow Jiawen -
MegaFash
Rosemary Tan - Veredus
Laboratories
1 This is new since our latest overview published in
December 2015

14. FEMALE FOUNDERS 2018
14
Female Founders that we support
Jacqueline Ye Tracy Wong Melissa Lou Rinita Vanjre Amanda Sabri
Monica M. Maestre Ginny Eckblad Stephanie Dickson Isabel Gonzalez Susanna Hasenoehrl
Cindy Nguyen Anna Chew
Karachach
Sadybakasova
Bidushi
Bhattacharya
Elena Ionenko
Shi Ling Tai Nicole Hu

15. FOUNDER SPOTLIGHT
What has been your biggest insight or
lesson learned about running a business?
When you spend 17 years in an industry
that’s probably as old, there is no dearth of
excitement, tensions and challenges –
raising capital, driving revenues, finding
customers, doing taxes, building reputation,
and finding enough time to do all that you
want to do. But the biggest challenge for
me has been finding the right talent to grow
the business. You can’t do everything by
yourself. So finding the right team who will
build the business for you is always
challenging in a country where people’s
appetite to risk is low and startups
traditionally were not seen as attractive
places to work. Things have changed now
with more people looking to work for small
hip companies but it wasn’t the case
always.
What is the best piece of advice you want
to give to aspiring women entrepreneurs?
> Set goals and be clear about what you
want: I strongly evangelize goal setting,
within my organization and as a mentor to
startups, as the single most important thing
you will do for your personal and
professional happiness. Ask yourself
questions. Who are you? How would you
define success in your life? What makes your
life really worth living? You might think oh I
have a broad idea what I want to do but
unless you clearly articulate it, you will get
swept away by everyday life.
> Enjoy what you are doing: Don’t go after
a business idea because it will pay your
bills. Being an entrepreneur is a huge
amount of hard work, you will be spending a
good part of your day with it, so you had
better enjoy it immensely. > Be resilient:
The ultimate entrepreneurial test - the
ability to weather the ups and downs of any
business, ability to tolerate ambiguity, the
ability to keep going even when the outlook
looks bleak.
Wedding Sutra
FEMALE FOUNDERS 2018
“The ultimate entrepreneurial test - the ability to weather the ups and
downs of any business, ability to tolerate ambiguity, the ability to keep
going even when the outlook looks bleak.”
Madhulika Mathur
15

16. FOUNDER SPOTLIGHT
Homage
What has been your biggest insight or
lesson learned about running a business?
The biggest insight is that it all comes back to
the fundamentals of knowing your numbers
and having resilience.
The media does not focus on all the
underlying economics, hardship, real risks
and the amount of time it takes to build and
scale a company. Nowadays whenever people
ask me for advice to give to aspiring
technology entrepreneurs, I always urge them
to, before they take the leap, learn more
about what it involves and figure out if the
problem they’re looking to solve with their
company is really worthwhile to them,
because they will have to devote a good part
of their life to the business.
What is the one piece of advice to give to
aspiring women entrepreneurs?
Look, I’d be frank. The numbers don’t look
good, 7% of partners at top 100 venture firms
are women, and women hold just under 12%
of the partner roles at both accelerator and
venture-backed firms. 12% of venture rounds
and 10% of venture dollars globally between
2010 and 2015 went to startups with at least
one woman founder. It’s important to know
and face the numbers and the odds head on
and know that you can be a part of change.
The good thing is that problem solving is the
ultimate equalizer. Finding the right solution
to the right and big enough problem is
genderless. When you find something to build
that people want and build it well, you’ll be
set.
FEMALE FOUNDERS 2018
“The good thing is that problem solving is the ultimate equalizer.
Finding the right solution to the right and big enough problem is
genderless.”
Gillian Tee
16

17. FEMALE FOUNDERS 2018 17
FOUNDER SPOTLIGHT
What has been your biggest insight or
lesson learned about running a business?
Know yourself, know your baseline and act
fast. It makes decision making a lot easier
and a lot more intuitive. When we were
starting up, the scene was very different -
there were no mentors nor former founders
to give advice. Very different from now. So I
had to really make business calls based on
what I felt was right, and act fast on the
decisions - if the decision was wrong, act
fastER to minimize downside (thank
goodness very little wrong decisions in my
JobsCentral journey, and even for
2MinutesToday, the loss was kept to just
financial) Applying this in the current days -
where there are many and could be
conflicting advice one could receive - all
the more you need your personal compass
to know which advice to take and what
actions to follow through with.
What is the best piece of advice you want
to give to aspiring women entrepreneurs?
Have a clear understanding that the buck
stops with you. Meaning, whatever the
problem (sales, product, staff, legal
whatever), as the founder you have to solve
it. You can't pass it to anyone, even the
worst problems there ever existed. Your
team looks to you, and chances are your
team can't solve it and that's why it's on
you. It's very different from when you have
someone to pass the problem too, or you
have someone to push the blame to. And a
good founder leader should not be looking
for people to blame =) We focus on the
solution and how to improve. So bluntly
speaking, if you are the type who hides and
finds excuses whenever you encounter a
problem, this is not a path you should take.
Shao-Ning Huang
“A good founder leader should not be looking for people to blame. We
focus on the solution and how to improve.”
Hub Venture Fund

18. FEMALE FOUNDERS 2018 18
FOUNDER SPOTLIGHT
What has been your biggest insight or
lesson learned about running a business?
Over the last 30 years, I’ve run start-ups
and corporate turnarounds in Asia and the
US. We’re simultaneously doing both with
CXA -- our B2B tech start-up is challenging
the global industry giants head-on, while
we’re transforming a 23-year-old SME
brokerage acquisition. We’re winning
Fortune/Global 500 clients away from these
global competitors by building a platform
that’s 10 times better and hiring 75 of their
best employees. Success for me comprises
1% business model innovation and 99%
execution. So it comes down to hiring the
best talent, aligning them towards a shared
vision of a different future, out-thinking
and out-maneuvering the competition, and
navigating the business through years of
turmoil building something that’s never
been built before to get to the future first.
What is the best piece of advice you want
to give to aspiring women entrepreneurs?
I liken running a start-up to sprinting a
marathon where you have to gain traction
before running out of cash. Being an
entrepreneur may look glamorous from the
outside, but in reality, it’s not easy nor for
the faint of heart. To give yourself a higher
probability of success, I recommend gaining
as many skills as possible before building
your own company. So it’s important to
move out of your comfort zone to put
yourself into roles and situations that forces
you to stretch and grow. Personally, I spent
years leading start-ups & turnarounds to
learn how to get better and better at
implementing radical change.
Rosaline Chow Koo CXA Group
“To give yourself a higher probability of success, I recommend gaining as
many skills as possible before building your own company. So it’s important
to move out of your comfort zone to put yourself into roles and situations
that forces you to stretch and grow.”

19. FEMALE F OUNDERS 2017 19
V E N T U R E C A P I T A L F I R M S
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20. Female-led VCs
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3i Group Adams Street Partners Citi Ventures
Cocoon Capital Partners DMP VC East Owl Ventures
East Ventures Everstone Golden Equator Capital
Golden Gate Ventures GreenMeadows Accelerator Hub Ventures Fund
iGlobe Partners IncuVest Jungle Ventures

21. Tembusu Partners TNF Ventures Vertex Ventures
Vickers Venture Partners Walden International Wavemaker
Female-led VCs
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Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. Marvelsto-ne Group Nielsen
Quest Ventures Ruvento Ventures Saban Capital Group
Singtel Innov8 SoGal Ventures

22. VCs that invested in most female-led startups1
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Investors No. of Portfolio
Companies
No. of Female
Founded Portfolios
Female Founder CEO Capital Injected
ID Capital Pte no info
Protégé Ventures no info
Mountain Pine Capital 30 2 2 $2M
True Global Ventures no info
LionRock Capital 6 4 2 $3M-$4M
Vertex Ventures 6 4 1 Above $10M
Tigris Capital 10 3 3 Under $1M
Golden Gate Ventures 13 3 2 $3M-$4M
Wavemaker Partners 28 6 1 $2.5M
Jungle Ventures 24 4 1 Unknown
500 Startups 20 3 1 Under $1M
muru-D no info
Entrepreneur First (ef) no info
Cocoon Capital no info
1 Data above based on information provided by VCs that have
participated and responded to Female Founders email survey.

23. VCs actively open to investing in female-led
companies
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SPHMediaFund
SPRING(StartupSG
Tech)
NationalResearch
Foundation
SingaporeAngel
Network(SGAN)
BusinessAngel
NetworkSoutheast
Asia
FenoxVenture
Capital
SpiralVenturesAsia
NavisCapitalPartners
CrystalHorse

24. FEMALE F OUNDERS 2017 19
P R O G R A M M E S
FEMALE FOUNDERS 2018 24

25. ACCELERATORS
FEMALE FOUNDERS 2018 25
ImpacTech Growth Hacking Bootcamps Tech Ladies Bootcamp muru-D Accelerator Enchantvc Accelerator Entrepreneur First
AIA-Konica Minolta Digital Health
Accelerator
InspirAsia Accelerator
Female Foundry Accelarator
Programme
AIRmaker Accelerator
Programme
TAG.Pass Elevate Impact

26. ACCELERATORS
FEMALE FOUNDERS 2018 26
Start Path Global OCBC Corporate Accelerator Fintech Singapore The FinLab Startup Accelerator

27. INCUBATORS
FEMALE FOUNDERS 2018 27
Mediapreneur
The AGA Incubation
Program
Clearbridge Accelerator Fintech Consortium Fatfish Medialab Incubation Support
Paypal Incubator 123 Jump Start Red Dot Ventures Startup Spaze TechCube8 JFDI

28. NUS Enterprise SpaceMob TReHaus TheCo Working Central The Great Room
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CO-WORKING SPACES
Impact Hub Working Capitol JustCo Collective Works Collision8 Hive
Unknown Unknown Unknown 15% 25% Unknown
15% Unknown 57% 37% Unknown 20%
% of female-led startups within co-working spaces1
1 Data above based on information provided by startups that have participated and
responded to Female Founders email survey.

29. FEMALE F OUNDERS 2017 19
M E D I A A N D E V E N T S
FEMALE FOUNDERS 2018 29

30. FEMALE FOUNDERS 2017 30
Media &
Events

31. FEMALE F OUNDERS 2017 19
E C O S Y S T E M E N A B L E R S
FEMALE FOUNDERS
2017
31

32. Non-Profit
Organisations
FEMALE FOUNDERS 2018 32

33. T H A N K Y O U
FEMALE FOUNDERS
2017
33

34. Contact:
info@femalefounders.com
Follow us:
facebook.com/groups/femalefounders
linkedin.com/company/female-founders
F E M A L E F O U N D E R S
O U R T I M E I S N O W
Partner:
femalefounders.sg/sponsor
Join as a member:
femalefounders.sg/memberships
FEMALE FOUNDERS 2018 34

35. REFERENCES
FEMALE FOUNDERS 2018 35
❖ 1 http://www.masterintelligence.com/content/intelligence/en/research/reports/2016/womens-entreprenurial-
index-2016.html
❖ 2 http://www.humanresourcesonline.net/infographic-need-know-women-tech/
❖ 3 http://www.babson.edu/news-events/babson-news/Pages/140930-venture-capital-funding-women-
entrepreneurs-study.aspx
❖ 4 http://www.babson.edu/news-events/babson-news/Pages/140930-venture-capital-funding-women-
entrepreneurs-study.aspx
❖ 5 http://10years.firstround.com/
❖ 6 www.femalefounders.sg

36. Thank you
FEMALE FOUNDERS 2018 36
This overview wouldn’t be possible without a fantastic team of volunteers
that worked with Female Founders in the course of 2017 and 2018:
Kashmira Chawak
Zhixin Teo
Michelle Arambulo
Antara Sethumadhavan
Clara Che Wei Peh
Special thank you for Yiping Goh, Shao-Ning Huang and Grace Sai for constructive comments.
The future is optimistically female!
Katarina Uherova Hasbani, Head of FF Team