I've been living in SG for a year and the startup scene here is asthmatic at best. Really, it would be generous to call it a "scene". It isn't. If you can document all the startups in a country on a single infographic then... yeah.

The government claim to support startups but actually they barely do anything. There is a Entrepreneur Visa but you need a serious amount of funding, proof of intellectual property (even patents), backing of a VC or incubator, and credibility in the industry to get it. And even then the visa granted is dependent on your startup making hires of local citizens at a certain rate per year, in line with revenues. The actual visa itself is also relatively short term, it is basically issued on 12 month periods which isn't really enough to provide assurance and stability to a startup director.

The culture here is all wrong. The culture here is to go to Uni, attaining 2 degrees is not uncommon, then get a boring job in a mega corporate. And then spend the rest of your life twiddling your thumbs, stabbing and getting stabbed in the back, etc etc, where the gossip often revolves around bullshit job title acronyms like VP, ED etc. That is just the life here. If you ain't working in a mega corp then you are a nobody. And that's not my opinion, I have many many friends here that tell me straight that that is how life is here.

There is also an issue that working in "I.T." in Asia is stereotyped also. It is perceived as a somewhat low skilled office job. Even if you are a top level super senior software developer, try explaining that and most people will still just file you under "I.T." in their minds and maintain a superiority complex over you if they work in a dead-end mega corp job dealing in Excel Spreadsheets all day every day.

If you work in an actual startup in SG you are "different". You are seen as abnormal, risky and even stereotyped as "not being good enough" to work in a mega corp.

When I first came here I was introducing myself as "working on my startup". Most people assumed, seriously, I was just being shy about explaining I was unemployed at that moment, and they wanted to quickly change the subject. Even after clarifying that it is indeed profit making and growing well. So yes, saying your working on a startup here is actually almost as bad as saying you are unemployed. I learnt a better way of doing self introductions very quickly here.

> Most people assumed, seriously, I was just being shy about explaining I was unemployed at that moment

That's not limited to Singapore. My mom basically decided I was 'unemployed' roughly up until the point that I employed her (after running a middling successful company for about 2 decades...). People will think whatever they want, just ignore it and concentrate on the work rather than on whatever social recognition you derive from running your own company.

And besides, for some part of my career being 'unemployed' and 'running my own company' might as well have been synonymous so maybe she was on to something after all ;).

>And even then the visa granted is dependent on your startup making hires of local citizens at a certain rate per year, in line with revenues.

So they don't just let you come in their country, use its resources and whatever advantages it offers to make you pick it, and not give anything back in jobs?

Been working here as a software developer for a year and my experience is pretty similar. Part of the problem might be that the moment you introduce yourself as working on anything software related it just turns into IT and images of tech repair.

Source: been here three years and counting...

You forget that the EntrePass (the entrepreneur visa you speak of) requires investors/VCs from an approved list, all of which are Singaporean; and that even SEEDS funding requires a local investor. So if you're foreign, or even local but with foreign investors (like, say, a US VC), no funding. I talked to these investors and they either aren't investing or want to see 30k/month in revenue. I suspect people were buying themselves residencies with the EntrePass at a fraction of the investor visa amount so they made it ineffective as a visa.

On the visa side, I've seen a lot of people play some kind of musical chairs. The key is the local director, so you pay a few hundred dollars to a firm to hold that directorship whilst incorporating, apply for an EP (standard work visa) for yourself which comes through in 7 working days, and then get the local directorship assigned to your EP. This does involve plugging in 50k or so of capital and paying yourself 8k/month (SGD) out of it (income tax being quite low it's not too onerous).

I don't like playing games with immigration (I don't know if the EP local directorship game is officious or a hack soon to be eliminated) so my startup is incorporated in the UK and Hong Kong until I get PR (I did Hong Kong first, but the paperwork and agent fees just killed me - I'd rather pay an accountant and 20% corp tax). That local directorship rule is a real pain in Singapore and I hope a government official is reading this.

That being said, if you are a local (citizen/PR), it is cheap and very fast to incorporate a Private Limited, the rule of law is exemplary, taxes are low, and it's probably the most visa-friendly first world country in the world.

Status-wise I think a lot of bankers and MBAs are getting into "startups", unfortunately, and just as in the US it's become an acceptable career path. I don't think the feeling towards startups is any different from say, most European countries, amongst the older folk.

Singapore's startup scene suffers from the same problem every non-Valley startup scene suffers: the best valuations and deal speed that we hear of in the Valley doesn't really exist anywhere else. For example, I remember calculating that the Bay Area received around 20x as much venture funding as the entire of the United Kingdom, despite the latter's status as an old startup hub containing the world's largest non-US financial centre. The causes have been debated to death in many places, I personally favor the "lack of big exits locally" explanation, which makes it hard for local investors to want to touch the asset class and in turn disincentivizes talent from getting into startups (mostly, they go to the US). When it takes you 6 months instead of 2 weeks to close a round, and you give up 20% instead of 7% for the seed round, it's much harder to grow that into a global business.

edit - just noticed who the author was. Strongly recommend London based folks go meet him! Zach is a fantastic guy and the kind of investor I would LOVE to have in my startup (if I had investors).

Nice rundown - you've clearly done the foreign-startup runabout, and "lack of big exits locally" is also my thesis for why startups & their valuations aren't so positive. The fact is that Asian investors haven't seen big paydays from new ventures, so they're all demanding traction or recurring revenue instead of risking funds on unproven businesses. I've also been struggling with this.

We startup HN people in Singapore should have a beer sometime, would be great to trade stories/news. Send me an email (check my profile) if you/anyone is interested.

I try to go to Hackerspace and the JFDI friday beers, I think that's where you find the mass. But yeah, not much participation, nowhere near US levels. The Big Data group has more people. These days I don't really get out of the house much, too much work!

I've found it easy to find investors but when you can make the funding in consulting revenue in 6 months, without giving up equity, it's hard to accept the idea of funding. Provided one has permission to work in SG (the client can sponsor an EP, remember!) it's just much better to bootstrap, I think. Oh, how I envy the Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, who can toil 100% of the time on their startup, without worrying about paying the rent. Still not worth moving.

I don't think it's so easy to make that sort of money from consulting revenue so quickly, unless you have serious skills, a good portfolio, and access to good potential clients (which I guess you have, especially as a foreigner). But I haven't done consulting, so what do I know. I hope to cross over to the US or a bigger market to raise the next round of funding! At least the valuations will be a good bit nicer.

Catch you at a JFDI Friday event maybe; I don't go to Hackerspace often.

so true!

Singapore is an interesting place for sure. I've been a half dozen times for work and fun. The biggest hindrance to Singapore startups is the Singapore government. Their iron-fisted approach to things from chewing gum, drugs, and even dancing on tables (for example) is antithetical to the dual veins of libertarian and liberal US political thought which is so firmly entrenched in Silicon Valley. Many believe that these competing, but sometimes sympathetically overlapping political schools are what made (and currently make) Silicon Valley so great.

Hard to convince a programmer to move from SF to SG if they're going to be hanged for smoking a spliff. While the drug use is just an example, it just illustrates the difference of Laissez Faire in the US vs What's Best for the Country in SG.

Seriously, you guys are getting tiring. If it's so important, Thailand's a 1 hour flight away, Malaysia a short bus ride, Indonesia a short ferry. By the way, when's the last time someone was hung for smoking a spliff? It's like tourists in Sydney being scared of being bitten by a funnel web...

Singapore has high quality of life, very low living costs compared to large US cities, efficient government (but not overbearing), and is a hub for one of the most exciting and growing regions of the world. It's an international city where a large proportion of residents come from all over the world and dozens of languages are spoken. The air is clean, there are no traffic jams, the metro is extremely cheap and spotless. And there's giant toucans living in the mango tree of my garden, right next to the centre of town - beat that SF.

Most importantly, government is not corrupt and has over the last 40 years gotten a pretty good track record of doing what is right. Both Lees have been exceptional leaders under any measure; amongst other things, the father influenced the direction of the world by directly influencing DXP towards the Chinese "glasnost" that is responsible for how the world looks today. I used to be pretty libertarian (think Swiss "don't have a Federal government"), but realized living here that a clean, non-corrupt government can also work incredibly well.

Another thing that flies under the radar of most critics is that Singapore has successfully set up a system to allow migrant manual labour legally; it is one of the very few places in the world where your Bengali construction worker on $500/month can go to the police, complain he hasn't been paid on time, and see his employer fined within two weeks. Try that in Qatar. Try that as an illegal in the US (over 80% of minimum wage labourers!).

I didn't get the drug angle either. Most countries of the world are harsh on drugs. Even in Thailand or Indonesia, I do believe, if the corrupt police desire to, they can throw the book at you for smoking something they deem on that occasion to be illegal. If you are living somewhere not as a citizen then you really ought to steer clear of drugs as there will not be a legal catch-net for you like you might be used to in your homeland.

SG government is second to none. But it is too young to say whether or not SG has found a political model that will last for centuries. I doubt it. They are just lucky that so far, the Lee family, have been incredibly upstanding honest people. So long as the Lee family stays as strong and decent as it has then hopefully that will not change.

SG has big fines for most things, especially apparent on their MRT metro. But look at the fine signage in any world metro system and you'll realise SG is barely any different. Yes, you cannot take ghastly smelling Durian fruit on the metro here or you face a steep fine. That's because it smells awful. If you actually tried to do it I doubt you'd even get past the MRT ticket barriers before an attendant stopped you and told you if you continued you'd be breaking the law. The actual fine is just a shock tactic more than anything. Chewing gum... well good luck trying to buy any in SG since the import is banned. So that just leaves tourists who bring a stockpile with them and deliberately don't surrender it at customs. I wish the UK banned chewing gum too as within the 5 years the street pavements would probably be all clean. Yes, so what, Singapore has cleanliness OCD which resulted in a chewing gum ban. So what? Why is that bad!?

Yeah, it can go two ways. Either it goes the way of the Venetian Republic, where the wealthy in power start regulating away the possibility of moving up and begin the process of corrupting the state; or LKY has succeeded in changing the fundamental culture of the country (e.g. everybody speaks English today thanks to him) to promote the rule of law and lack of corruption regardless of who runs the country.

I'm scared of the first outcome, which is overwhelmingly the case historically. But the Singaporeans I know - particularly those in government, who are extremely idealistic about probity - make me think that the second is a possibility. We'll know in 40 years...

As for drugs, I think there is no true rule of law in any other country in the region. At a previous company, we annoyed one of the ruling families of one of the countries mentioned in this thread, and found ourselves fined several hundred thousand dollars because the students we paid to hand out leaflets in the street - technically "manual labour" - were not wearing hard hats and work boots. Let's not mention a certain airport whose construction siphooned several billions into the pockets of a similar family. But by and large it's known that you can head off to Bali or Bangkok and get your fix. Personally, I don't really care as a non-user (although am pro-legalization as a matter of principle), there are more important things to worry about... like the rule of law.

you know, the points you made are fair and valid. however, i think what many people miss, or perhaps don't care about, is the philosophical differences between societal attitudes in the west, compared to singapore. singaporeans have a fear of authority deeply instilled into them, which has cascading effects like hindering creativity, i.e innovation. singaporeans have been trained to respect and obey authority through harsh deterrent punishments for non-compliance, and while i think it's actually a good thing because most people are idiots and would destroy the world accidentally if given the chance, it's not a good environment for startups.

source: me, true blue singaporean born and raised

"Seriously, you guys are getting tiring."

I think he points out a very real issue. There is a massive cultural difference between SF and Singapore. Most of the developers I know in the Bay Area would never even consider moving to a red state.

Upon further thought, this is the issue I have with similar posts as the OP's comment:

Imagine you're an entrepreneur in Austin, TX. Every time you write a press release, post on HN or otherwise mention Austin, someone immediately comes up and talks about how Texas has such strange politicians, that Rick Perry is corrupt and hates the environment, that the Church of X or Y has done something bad, that rednecks this or that, that there's no state tax, welfare is bad, regulation too lax, gun laws scary, Texans too fat etc. and the original topic never gets discussed because the conversation ALWAYS, systematically, diverts upon criticism of Texas and its defenders' attempts at correcting it.

Maybe it's selection bias, maybe I'm more sensitive to Singapore threads because I live there and have to endure these stereotypes all the time from family, friends and foreign communities, but it really feels that way sometimes. Singapore brings up a lot of really interesting discussion points, as an experiment in a lot of dimensions from the COE which limits car ownership to put a price on damaging the commons, from their Worker Pass to legalize no-minimum-wage work from anyone in the world, from their "city as a garden" policy, their extraordinary racial integration, their water policy, or more meta, the way LKY pulled a third world country with strong communist undercurrents into the first world in a generation, or how he fought Mao's agents... or this thread, which was originally about the developing startup hub, written by one of the government's own VCs (an interesting question to ask them is what % of their portfolio by value is in Singapore).

I take issue to his stereotypes, which are trotted out regularly upon the merest mention of the word Singapore. I mean, "hung for smoking a spliff", really?

The chewing gum ban was an attempt at restricting the supply after kids got into a fashion of blocking the subway's doors using it, particularly painful in a country where millions use it every day. The solution was the least obtrusive way round the problem (you can't go arrest kids systematically...); it's perfectly legal to chew it, you just have to import your own stock. Then you realize that you don't care enough to bother, and you stop chewing, and you wonder why every bloody article ever written about Singapore on any unrelated topic has to include the "factoid". Sometimes I think it was a very clever press troll by LKY.

Or take the caning of that American kid: caning for damaging a few cars? Sure, but a car in the US costs a few grand; in Singapore, it can cost more than a house and take half a lifetime to pay for (this, incidentally, is about passing on the cost of thrashing the commons to those who do the thrashing - a "liberal" policy never even discussed in the US). If somebody went and torched 10 houses in a street, what magnitude punishment would the US justice system reserve him?

As for dancing on tables, my first week in Singapore, not only did the bar I visited for what I thought would be a quiet beer - in Somerset, not Geylang - have paid models to dance on tables, they invited customers to take shots off their body. Not my thing but it's there if you want it.

I guess I'm not yet used to the constant stereotyping, so feel the need to speak for the other side. People don't go around generalizing Texans as Christian extremists who eat 5 big macs a meal whilst hunting deer with a machine gun from the back of their Ford pickup (FWIW I know Texans who are/did all of these things); somehow the same level of stereotyping with Singapore is acceptable, and people think a few hours stopover once in a while is enough to qualify their opinion.

"People don't go around generalizing Texans..."

Yes they do. All the time. Like I said most of my friends from the Bay Area would never work in Texas.

Forgive me if I would like my kids to learn about Cesar Chavez in history class.

Honestly it's because of the weather more than anything.

They've probably never been to Singapore, and are stereotyping to begin with. Singapore is nothing like a red state.

My point is that Singaporean culture is very different to Bay Area culture.

You're right, red states have less censorship. The Economist ranked Singapore as having more censorship than China. In another study it was 133rd out of all countries.

These were merely examples, not hard deal breakers. If I wrote in hypotheticals without examples, I would have been lampooned for not providing examples. My point was that freedoms in Singapore are dictated by the government and not inherent. If Temasek holdings, err I meant the SG gov, doesn't say that something is legal, you can bet that you'll get arrested for doing it. It's a much more controlling atmosphere than anything you'll find in Silicon Valley.

Yes, you can live a very high quality of life as an expat with a family in SG. My brother does it and isn't going to be leaving anytime soon. However, he's merely stationed there at a large multinational corporation's request. The thought of starting his own company or joining a startup would probably kill him. He's not the startup type and most people who live in SG are not startup people. They like what SG offers them and in return they give up a lot of freedoms.

Re day laborers not getting paid. Don't mistake freedoms with efficiency of law.

Freedoms are not "inherent". If you put humans in a desert, the strongest will eventually rule the weakest, and people will be unequal before the law. You certainly won't get "freedom" under any definition I know of the term.

To be more specific, I define individual rights as encompassing the right to conduct any activity you wish so long as you do not infringe on other's rights (including the commons, which are occasionally left out of Western definitions and particularly well managed in Singapore). Rights require enforcement, so that the man with the biggest stick does not get to violate the rights of others. Every man equal before the law, a concept pioneered by the Magna Carta, refined by John Locke, and implemented most famously by the Founding Fathers of the United States (for the first time in the history of mankind, without compromise or exception). Most people, except for some libertarian anarchists, agree that this is the proper role of government, that it should have a monopoly on force for that reason.

A people gets together and defines a set of rules to create a state and government that will enforce these individual rights at the exclusion of all other entities, with every man equal before the law. The government's purpose becomes the enforcement of individual rights, and its "freedom index" can be measured by both its efficiency in enforcing rights for all, and its degree of infringing rights. This is implemented via justice, which arbitrages disputes, the police, which enforces the decisions, and the army which protects citizen against external threats to rights infringment. The casus belli makes it necessary to infringe rights to a certain extent by confiscating property in order to finance enforcement, the extent of infringement depending on the expense required, with conscription being the most extreme and desperate measure.

The early United States were pretty extremist about it, with no (national) Navy for almost a decade (and Jefferson being opposed to one permanently) until the Barbary pirates forced the government to raise what were initially one-off taxes to create what became a standing Navy in 1794. Even during WWII, the government preferred issuing war bonds than increasing taxes to finance the war effort.

How does Singapore fit into this? The degree of rights infringement to which the government lends itself is always justified. Conscription? Well, both neighbours are or were hostile states and the region is not exactly a mainstay of political stability, but Singapore's enormous and well funded armed forces are a very powerful deterrent. Is it necessary today? That's a long debate which the Singaporeans are continuously having, with the conclusion so far being yes. The chewing gum ban? A pragmatic decision implemented as the lowest cost solution to damage being done to the private property of SMRT corporation and the annoyance of its millions of customers (who happen to be citizen).

The tough penalties for drug trade? They stem from a long history of drug use in Asia creating significant costs for the commons be it in increased crime or in broken populations, we're not talking about Valley developers enjoying a spliff in their basement whilst watching the latest Silicon Valley, we're talking opium addicts in Clarke Quay overlooking the brackish waters of the Singapore River then famous for its stink.

The freedom of speech restrictions? They fit in basically two categories: national safety (such as those making racist speech illegal, preserving the country from flashpoints such as the 1964 riots), and libel. On the latter, the world is a big place and Singapore is small; if there was value in the libel suits (such as the recent CPF debate), why wasn't the information released abroad? The foreign media loves a Singapore-critical story and would have a field day giving PR to any valid criticism.

Libel exists for a reason, which is that real damage is caused by unfounded rumors (see aforementioned Herman Cain campaign last primary), and citizen and entities ought to legally be able to protect themselves against such damage, which they aren't in many Western countries where well placed campaigns can rapidly destroy someone without much consequence for the rumor spreader.

Citizen being exiled? All the ones I had a look at were openly communist or had ties to communists; in the 1960s, those were effectively enemy agents in a state of war, Mao's teams set off thousands of bombs in neighbouring Hong Kong and Suharto's way of dealing with the "problem" in Indonesia was to slaughter over half a million people with suspected ties to the PKI; let's not even talk about Latin America and things like Condor. I think exile is a comparatively much more acceptable way to deal with such opposition than systematic murder, and this is a credit to LKY's management of such crises.

Where Singapore shines, in an almost unique way globally (Switzerland might fit to an extent) is in the degree to which it does not impede the freedom to trade. I think the most important part of that today is the freedom of movement and doing business with foreigners, via the visa policy and lack of minimum wage. Friedman thought minimum wage would increase unemployment, but its real effect in the United States was to push around 11 million workers into illegality (80% of unskilled workers), and thus severe curtailment of their rights (when you are scared of La Migra, you do not go to the police). Singapore considers foreign citizen as guests, with rights granted on an increasing basis depending on salary. It's a visionary policy which is rarely commented upon because immigration is a loaded subject, because the real topic of immigration is one of cultural and racial replacement as immigrants settle down and change the makeup of your population (imagine if say, Sweden opened its door to a million new immigrants a year today). It takes enormous courage to formulate policies that effectively allow for large changes in the cultural makeup of your electorate and I can't think of any other country that does it to the same extent (perhaps Australia, where about a quarter of the population is first or second gen foreign if I recall well; and of course the United States right up to the mid-20th century). So most countries restrict the right of citizen to trade labour with foreign citizen, and freedom of movement across their borders. Singapore doesn't, or not much.

Then you look at restrictions on consumption. Guns are not banned, they are merely very expensive to own - a permit for a non NS-man involves a $3k/year membership to a gun club. In the United States, real estate is plenty and the police cannot expect to be the first line of defence everywhere, so, particularly in states like Alaska (where a bear might be waiting on your driveway) and the rural states (to the bewilderment of city dwellers in California) guns become an important right to citizen. In Singapore, which is almost 100% high density housing and has an exceptionally efficient police force, this is not an issue. Cars are also expensive to own, to curtail the damage to the commons (roads, and air quality) that comes with high car ownership. A quick trip to Hong Kong (or, for that matter, London) and you rapidly understand why this was implemented.

A last, and very important point if we're comparing to the United States is the government's approach to business competition. Temasek and GIC are big investors in Singtel, yet they allowed and encouraged many competitors to develop; I am most familiar with the team from MyRepublic whose growth has been spectacular and whose founding was determined by the extremely low CAC for telecom in the country. In France, Xavier Niel fought tooth and nail to have the permission to run a telephone network against the existing oligopoly which had many powerful friends in government. In the UK, Virgin was the first company to successfully fight the BA-led legacy airline oligopoly; BA went as far as offering free flights "as a national service" to MPs and it was only Virgin's diversification which gave it the reserves and time to beat BA's long price war. In the United States, in contrast, lobbying is a huge ticket on most companies' P&L, and anti-competitive legislation being introduced is almost a standard and accepted way of doing business (e.g. Rick Santorum trying to stop the National Weather Service from making its data public, on behalf of the people who funded his campaign - a textbook anticompetitive move which should be highly illegal and is definitely anti-constitutional).

There are a few laws (such as 377A) which (oddly) nobody brought up yet that are a holdover from the British colonial legislature and haven't been voted out yet, for cultural reasons. I think it's a matter of time, as the nation evolves these things will too.

So, under that framework, where is Singapore's rights infringement? Which of my arguments do you disagree with?

"a concept pioneered by the Magna Carta, refined by John Locke, and implemented most famously by the Founding Fathers of the United States (for the first time in the history of mankind, without compromise or exception)"

The mere fact that (at least some of) those Founding Fathers had slaves acts against the "without compromise or exception" argument. As for Magna Charta, it was not "pioneering" anything, because comparable arrangements, even in a formal written form, existed long before. So you may say that it was "pioneered" only in the north-western Europe in order to be accurate (and I can't be sure about that either)!

I don't think it's particularly productive to nitpick on the origins of freedom; you can go back a long way, even to Hammurabi, but virtually all free first world countries today (except, perhaps, Switzerland?) derive their individual rights from the concepts pioneered by the events that led to the Magna Carta, that is, the first (famous) time that citizen decided that kings and the aristocracy (and later, religions) were not above the law.

I do agree with you regarding the Founding Fathers; it was worse than this, as despite willingness from several of the Fathers to end slavery there and then (one could argue that Washington's manumission of all his slaves at the end of his life indicated his vision for an equal future), those who were slave owners pushed hard to keep the practice going and consider slaves as property to be protected, and the Fathers compromised. As we know, it took over half a century until the matter was settled militarily.

Nevertheless, they did not need to change the philosophy of the country, merely to affirm the status of slaves as human beings covered by the protection of individual rights, unlike, say, the Ancients (such as Aristotle, one of the fathers of reason), who happily justified slavery as natural and a perfectly justifiable practice in a modern free society. To put it down in software terms, whilst the model was sound, the implementation was lacking. There was no previous, compromise-free, sound model. Washington could have called himself King, he chose President, setting such an example that the United States has yet to yield to a tyrant.

I believe 2 people were executed for drug crimes last year.

I would argue that the government is overbearing. The air is clean until Malaysia starts a few fires again. Were you there for F1 in 2014?

Certainly living in Singapore has its upsides. You trade away certain rights for what some would consider a high quality of life. It's basically ethics bargaining. I'm not saying it's terrible. I'm just saying it's not conducive to entrepreneurial ventures. Out of curiosity, do you work for a large, multinational company?

Also not to be pedantic, but it's hanged, not hung.

It is called Disneyland with the death penalty for a reason. Forget weed, can I drink a glass of wine in public?

Of course you can. Singapore isn't an Islamic state you know?

It has some alcohol curfew laws yes. No public space drinking after 10pm. But in a bar which has tables/seats on the street; that's fine.

> It is called Disneyland with the death penalty

If William Gibson is the only person you get your opinions from, sure.

Some legal casual drinking where I had a drink myself not long back:

http://www.straitstimes.com/sites/straitstimes.com/files/ST_...

erm, actually yes i'm fairly confident we do not have such a thing as open container policy - there is no such rule that you cannot drink in public.

Technically, you can't, in Little India, during certain times, because of the riots recently. Cold Storage also says they can't sell booze between 10.30pm and 7am for the same reason. I suspect this will eventually go away again.

I'm just curious but doesn't US citizen have to pay tax regardless of where they work?

People from SF moving to SG to work would be double tax no? That would also be a big hindrance imo.

Plus there are more than enough decent tech job in USA than risk working in another country with laws you don't know or understand. SG seems like a country with very harsh laws, not entirely sure I want to risk accidentally break something law (like chewing gum?).

On taxes, I'm sure somebody on HN knows better than me, but you are rarely 'double-taxed' under 200k as you say. The first 90k or so is exempt, plus any foreign tax you pay you can claim as a non-refundable deduction on your US return.

Singapore is an amazing country that is really geared towards making things easy for expats. The chewing gum thing is a bit of a red-herring. Ending up in jail for a minor offence is not something you generally have to worry about.

Yes, US citizens have to pay tax no matter where they live. You may be eligible for the Foreign Tax Credit[1] or, even better, the Foreign Earned Income Exclusion[2], though. For 2015, you can exclude up to $100,800 of your earnings with the Foreign Earned Income Exclusion, which will cover most if not all of your salary (for the majority of people).

[1] http://www.irs.gov/Individuals/International-Taxpayers/Forei... [2] http://www.irs.gov/Individuals/International-Taxpayers/Forei...

Any income taxes paid to SG would quality for a Foreign Tax Credit so you wouldn't be double taxed.

Does a place need to be a mirror-image of Silicon Valley in order to have some successful startups based there?

I see no reason why the proportion of programmers who are inclined toward drugs wouldn't be comparable to the proportion of programmers who are inclined to avoid drugs. The latter group may prefer a country like Singapore.

I don't think Silicon Valley culture is the only culture that can facilitate startups.

It's not, but most successful startup regions are left or libertarian leaning (Portland, NYC, Austin). Conservative states tend to produce conservative economies.

>Their iron-fisted approach to things from chewing gum, drugs, and even dancing on tables (for example) is antithetical to the dual veins of libertarian and liberal US political thought which is so firmly entrenched in Silicon Valley.

Yeah, because Silicon Valley is a hoot and all about dancing on tables...

I've stayed in both places, Singapore is by far livelier than SV.

Singabore is Asian Las Vegas. Very sterile, controlled "wild partying" dictated by large corporations.

SV had a wild counter-culture drug scene in the 70's and 80's. Things got tame in the 90's, but there's always SF nearby.

For example, take gambling in Singapore as a resident. You can only lose so much money per day, and it's tracked. While some might argue the merits of this, Americans would have a problem with not being able to risk it all or win their money back. Again, just an example of the SG thought process and not a certain dealbreaker.

We now have to compete globally for talent. What are Singaporean startups doing that would convince senior developers throughout the US and Europe to move to Singapore?

At a previous company, we had no issue finding talent. 150 qualified applicants (i.e. passed the test, which was to design an inventory management system in Haskell) for ~10 positions, all foreign; the majority came from the US, Germany and Scandinavia.

I'm concerned about the fundamentals. It looks like a low demand, low supply situation from the outside. I've worked on projects with more than 150 developers. Could one big player simply absorb all the available talent?

To have a thriving industry you need tens of thousands of available workers.

So I'll put it this way. I earn ~10k/month after tax as a senior software developer. Could I earn that much in Singapore? Or is cost of living so much cheaper that I'm better off even with a lower pay? Better lifestyle? Better culture?

Assuming you're living in SF Bay Area with ~120k/year ($10k/month) income:

Your earning after tax is ~$6600 per month. After ~$1800 rent and ~$1700 living costs (transportation, food, utils, ...), you get ~3100 in capital savings.

In Singapore, your personal income tax is nearly zero. To match that savings target and quality of life, you only need to earn SGD 7000 per month (~US $5200/month, or $62k/year) and you gonna spend about $1100 for rent and $900 for everything else (without car).

P/S: I'm a non-US citizen, lived in Philly for 7 years, got 120k offer in SF but declined, now working in Singapore.

Is $7k/month a reasonable salary for a software developer with 3-4 years experience in Singapore?

What can you earn with 8-12 years experience?

I had 6 months experience (in tech, anyway) when I arrived and still made 7.5k. In fact, that offer was made 4 months earlier, so with 2 months "experience". I was saving about 50-60% of that.

I think what salary you get can span anything from 2k to the sky (realistically, 20k and above will be very hard, and probably in finance or management). It's all about - here more than anywhere in the world - demonstrating value to the person signing the paycheck. If your value is much higher than what you want, then you can pretty much name your price. The tough part being convincing someone that you are worth that much. I think the rate for an American in a good corporate data science team should be at least 10-15k.

The marginal cost of foreigner vs local is, at least at these salaries, the flight. The EP costs $250/application and takes about 7 working days, with no quota. You turn up at the EP centre, pick up the card, scan your finger and you're gone within 5 minutes. Flying coach, you can get a return flight to the US for around 1k, less if you wait for a good sale. So, trivial. And it's easy to change employers - if you get a new offer, just get THEM to apply for EP and as soon as you have it, quit the first job.

Just be aware that flying to the US just plain sucks. London is a direct 12-16 hour (depending on direction). The US is one stopover, probably 20-24 hours. East coast worse than west, obviously. The other thing is expatriation has some invisible but very real downsides, the most painful one being away from family basically forever. On the upside, they get to visit an exotic country.

The GP said $10k after tax, not before.

Some European countries still have relatively high unemployment and the jobs can be rigid, so you will get expats from some euro counties. It's also treated by some as their weird neocolonial experience where the locals are warm and welcoming of their culture and visage.

Then, after a few years, most go bad home to settle down with a "proper" job.

I would be really grateful if every engineer who ever complained about San Francisco being dirty and full of homeless people would move to Singapore, because it's pretty crass to complain about poor people in a city you don't want to live in, whose lives are made harder by you being there. By all accounts, Singapore is "clean", so, by any means, go there.