sgentrepreneurs.com article published June 8, 2012

1. sgentrepreneurs.com ORIGINAL PAGE
What we can learn from PropertyGuru: An investor shares his
thoughts
JUNE 8, 2 0 1 2
Chris Evdemon is an entrepreneur and angel investor based in Beijing. He is a Partner at Innovation Works, China’s leading early stage
technology venture capital fund. Chris is also a Director of Finn Evdemon Capital Partners, an angel investments firm based in Singapore
and an investor in Property Guru.

2. In the past four years, Singapore has been quietly-but-steadily brewing one of South-East Asia’s first, dominant, cash-generating online
verticals, certainly one of the very first to successfully make the jump from a domestic Singapore to a truly regional play.
PropertyGuru still has some way to go before it realizes its full potential and before the team cashes in on its hard work, but its progress
should serve as a beacon to all aspiring entrepreneurs in Singapore and the region.
For the lucky few that have been involved with PropertyGuru from the beginning to date, the course has offered a number of invaluable
lessons in entrepreneurship and in angel investing. It is impossible to fit them all in a single blog post and in any case, some learnings are
always company or situation-specific. At the very least however, the following should serve as straightforward advice for simple issues that
are nevertheless often overlooked by founders and investors alike.
Start early , create a product that is superior to y our com petition, a product that y our custom ers are w illing to pay for,
and stay ahead of the curv e all the w ay .
PropertyGuru was not the first online real estate portal in Singapore (or in any of the other markets that it has since entered) but it started
early enough, and right from the onset it had the best product in the market, both in terms of design and user experience as well as quality
of data.
It provided a new medium and additional transparency in a market previously monopolized by SPH and a tool that has since been —
almost religiously — helping real estate agents in their daily work, marketed at a price that they are willing to pay. We are in the services
business and quality of service should be the foremost preoccupation of every entrepreneur in this sector.
As a result of PropertyGuru’s efforts, conversion to paying customers and subscription renewals have been amongst the highest in the
world, by comparison to its peers.
Choose the right early stage inv estors and m ake them w ork for y ou. Align ev ery one’s interest around y our v ision. Be fair
and transparent in all y our dealings.
Jani and Steve, the PropertyGuru Founders, had several financing options early on, as well as in the course of the last few years, including

3. individuals, angel funds, government-backed programmes, corporates and VCs.
They chose a small group of trusted individuals with very diverse backgrounds, from hedge fund management, to angel investing, to
people with an academic profile or hands-on VC/PE experience. They did not linger in their selection process and did not make the 2-to-1
or 3-to-1 matching or other similar schemes a priority.
Selecting your early stage investors is a lot more than just about the money. Each one of the investors could and did contribute in specific
areas: continuous brainstorming around the business model and in terms of the international expansion in due course, sourcing of talent
and senior executives, various industry leads and relevant introductions, advice on further financing or potential exit options and
preparation for the ensuing negotiations, as well as installing the discipline and accountability that is so important (and yet so easily
forgotten by most founders) by putting in place a proper corporate governance from the beginning, and so on.
The list is long. Good early stage investors bring additional confidence to entrepreneurs, at a time when they need it most.
Com m unicate, com m unicate, and com m unicate again the good new s but, ev en m ore im portantly , the bad new s.
Com m unicate externally but, ev en m ore im portantly , internally .
How else can you align everyone’s interest around your vision, be fair and transparent in all your dealings? Jani and Steve have adopted
this policy from the first day and have created a company culture that encourages and rewards this behaviour. It started with themselves,
with the communication between the founders, which has been nothing less than 100 percent honest, direct and always with mutual
respect.
Good leaders are showing the way and setting the tempo for the entire company. With investors, they are always sharing all industry
news, recent PropertyGuru developments, company data, their concerns, their thoughts, their challenges, their plans, everything around
the business.
Quarterly Board and shareholders’ meetings are prepared well in advance and the materials distributed are truly informative, allowing
Directors and shareholders alike to effectively contribute. How else can the entrepreneurs get what they want out of their investors, over

4. the years, other than the initial capital?
Consider y our com petition carefully but stay focused on y our ow n v ision and course. Let y our ethos shine.
Over the years and until recently, PropertyGuru had to deal with a variety of, at times unprofessional and even malicious, competitors.
They are state or privately-owned incumbents which, for the most part, do not have a true passion to provide a good service to their
customers.
Despite the occasional competitors’ guerrilla tactics or PropertyGuru’s incredible lack of media coverage within Singapore (as if the
country is full of stories of homegrown start-ups that successfully scale and expand regionally), Jani and Steve have remained focused on
their own vision and their own plan of execution. They have dealt with everything thrown at them ethically, never crossing to the other
side, a true testament of their characters. The market is smart and will eventually reward this stance.
The Singaporean m arket is sm all but good entrepreneurs can still set a great foundation in the dom estic m arket, to build
upon in the future. The big plan though, from the first day , m ust be for regional expansion at the right tim e.
Because of its concise nature, Singapore is often referred to as a great test market for the South-East Asia region. Nonsense. Singapore is as
different a market, in terms of consumer and usage habits, from its neighbours as it gets. In fact, South-East Asia must be one of the most
diverse regional markets in the world.
Every country must be considered individually, every country needs product and business model localization and above all, trusted, local
management that deeply understands its own market and has been already operating in it. No one can manage a business in the region
merely sitting out of their comfort zone in Singapore, without physical presence in each of the local markets – even for purely online
plays.
PropertGuru first secured a clear leadership position in its home market, achieved stable positive cash flow, and then successfully
expanded from Singapore to Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand. Jani and Steve achieved “regionalization” in the space of six months by
teaming up with talented entrepreneurs that were already active in these markets. The economics of the deals were, once again, dictated

5. by fairness and alignment of interest. Today everyone involved in PropertyGuru is driven to succeed, for what is now a regional group,
rather than a domestic company.
The no. 1 ingredient in ev ery com pany is people. There is no substitute for com m itted, top class entrepreneurs, w ho
execute w ell.
The founders are the A to Z in every start-up, especially in the crucial first few years. They make mistakes but correct them fast and
(hopefully) never make them again. They listen carefully, they consult, they observe, then apply their own judgment and decide
accordingly every step of the way.
They spend the biggest part of their time in the building and taking good care of their team. They adapt to a changing environment but
they have a clear long-term vision and patience to execute. And here is the magic word: Execute. Proven execution ability is the one
quality that savvy early stage investors are always looking for, over and above everything else. Jani and Steve are two shining examples of
all the above entrepreneurial qualities. Thank you both.
And the story is not over yet. PropertyGuru has a tremendous upside to fulfill in the coming years, for all its stakeholders. It is now
“armed” with a great, experienced and like-minded new partner, with cash at hand and a team with an appetite that’s bigger than ever
before.
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