Serial Entrepreneurs Visit to the Alibaba Cloud

On 7 Feb 2018, the Singapore University of Social Sciences (SUSS) Entrepreneurship Programme welcomed two successful serial entrepreneurs, JD Lee and Benjamin Lee, to share insights on financial literacy and how to embark on a startup journey. Students of the Alibaba Cloud – SUSS Entrepreneurship Certificate/Minor and other guests had the chance to learn from the experts themselves. Interestingly our students were silent when asked about the difference between a startup and a SME. However, they were visibly enlightened when Benjamin Lee, Founder of Sapio, an edu-tech company, explained that the main difference is the scalability.

While a SME growth’s rate is constant, a startup’s growth should be exponential, also called scalable. A shop that sells bread is a SME, however if that shop owner decides to spend money on branding and creates a franchise, we call that Breadtalk in Singapore, and considered it a scalable startup ready to meet investors to attract funding.

This event is part of the FROM.IDEA.TO.STARTUP series which is organised by the Center for Experiential Learning together with a group of student volunteers.