MORE entrepreneurial Singaporeans will stand to benefit from a $25 million start-up seed capital fund as the Action Community for Entrepreneurship (ACE) moves to eliminate age limit and bureaucratic red tape to spur business start-ups.
Launched yesterday by the Minister of State for Trade and Industry Teo Ser Luck, the fund will replace the previous Young Entrepreneurs Scheme for Start-ups (YES! Start-ups).
'The mindset for this fund is simple, we want access to this (fund) to be widely available and the movement to be for every segment of society, and not just for youths,' he said.
The ACE start-up fund will do away with the previous requirement of applicants to be below the age of 26 years.
Mr Teo, who chairs the ACE committee, also highlighted the changes in criteria used to select potential entrepreneurs.
The search is now on for how start-up businesses can be differentiated from others in the same industry as compared to being measured on the innovativeness of the business idea.
The new fund will be more stringent with the matching of funds raised by applicants. It will offer a co-matching applicant-to-grant ratio of 3:7 instead of the previous ratio of 1:4 ratio.
However, the grant cap remains unchanged at $50,000.
Mr Teo also said that the committee will seek to reach out to community partners that advocate entrepreneurship to judge and qualify applicants in the effort to reduce the time taken for promising applicants to receive funding.
The funding process will also become more flexible as the timing and amount of fund advancement will be tailored according to the needs of the applicant.
To complement the financial needs of budding business owners, the committee will also play the secondary role of mentors in the hope of forming an informal 'Silicon Valley' styled mentoring network.
Steven Fang, ACE deputy chairman and mentoring sub-committee chair, reaffirmed that beyond getting the product, funding, and financing right, there was one key aspect missing - advice and help from successful business leaders.
'I look back at the mistakes and misjudgements that I've made, all of them could have been prevented if only I had someone to talk to,' said the Cordlife Group CEO.
The plan for mentoring will also take into consideration the suitability between the mentor and mentee where there are benefits to be had for both parties, Mr Fang added.
The fund will seek to seed up to 500 startups within the next three to five years but Mr Teo laid down the challenge to the committee to achieve that target within a year.
As the committee transits from the previous scheme, it will accept applicants with newly registered companies on a case by case basis.
Applications open on Feb 1.