Punggol Park Toastmasters Club 20th Anniversary Message

As part of Punggol Park Toastmasters Club’s 20^th Anniversary, I contributed the following message as the Division Director, Division G (2020/2021). 

Punggol Park Toastmasters Club is a club with history.  It produced Singapore’s first world champion of public speaking, Darren Tay Wen Jie.  This is an achievement that has inspired Toastmasters in Singapore.  Since then, we have had Manoj Vasudevan as champion, and we have had Wiwiek Najihah binte Hairudin as a finalist.  Now, we have Ng Kin Foong, who has dominated the speech contests in recent years, and is knocking on the door as the next world champion.  That is the legacy of one club, inspiring others. 

Rhetoric is one of the oldest skills of humanity.  It is the basis of our civilisation.  In Toastmasters, Punggol Park Toastmasters Club was one of the temples of rhetoric in the community.  It is a fixture of Division G, and its members are a pillar of the community.  Punggol Park Toastmasters Club has a proud tradition of its members serving in the District.  It gave District 80 a District Director, in Patricia Lum, who now serves at Toastmasters International level.  It gave us many Area Directors and Divisional Council members. 

Punggol Park Toastmasters Club is not a club anyone joins to merely be a better speaker.  It is a club with history, and people join to be part of that history.

Quora Answer: How Can Singapore Have an Iron Dome System from Israel, When the US Does Not Have It?

The following is my answer to a Quora question: “How can Singapore have an Iron Dome defense system from Israel, when the US, which is Israel’s biggest ally, does not have it?” 

The United States has procured the Iron Dome II, and is currently being trained in it.  The Iron Dome system was officially developed by Raytheon Technologies Corporation of the US, and Israel’s Rafael Advanced Defense Systems.  That is not the whole story. 

Singapore has the Iron Dome because it saw a strategic need for it.  Singapore is between two halves of Malaysia – East Malaysia and Peninsula Malaysia, and there is little that we can do to stop Malaysian satellites passing overhead and having an accurate topographical map.  Malaysia has multiple-launch rocket systems as well as artillery.  The MLRS system is unguided, and they have not invested in their artillery capabilities due to budget constraints.  Singapore, however, does not play dice with national security. 

It is suspected that Singapore’s DSTA was involved in the development of the Iron Dome, and Singapore funded it.  Israel’s economy is weak because of decades of being on war footing.  They do not have the money to fund such a programme by themselves.  The US were not going to fund it because they saw no need for it then, and viewed it as a potential rival to their Patriot system.  It made sense for it to be developed, and field tested in Israel.  No other nation involved in the development of the weapon system actually had belligerents tossing rockets across the border. 

Now that the system is proven, the Americans suddenly found a need for it.  They stepped in and started funding improvements that met their specifications, including an increase in range from around 70 km to 250 km, and the ability to track more than one missile at a time from different trajectories.  This is a forward defence system to be deployed overseas, to protect American installations and assets in conflict zones.  This is especially pertinent with the proliferation of advanced drone technology, as demonstrated by the Houthis, in Yemen.  While the Patriot is effective, it is also expensive.  A Patriot PAC-3 missile costs around US$3 million each, while the Tamir missile is US$40,000.  It is not cost efficient to shoot down a Qassam rocket that costs US$800 to build with multi-million dollar missiles.

Quora Answer: How Do You Obtain Necessary Capital without Surrendering Ownership in a Business Idea or the Company?

The following is my answer to a Quora question: “Suppose someone has an idea for a new business that will cost $100,000 to start, but generate $250,000 annually.  However, they have almost no money to invest.  How should they obtain the necessary capital without surrendering ownership in the idea or company?” 

First, they have to develop the idea, and put it into a business plan.  This means they need at least four things: an executive summary to explain it in two paragraphs, a financial plan to show the projections and the cost, an introduction of the team and their roles, and finally, an exit strategy to give an idea of how they want this to end for the investor. 

Second, they need to spend time practising their pitch.  In four to six minutes, they should be able to explain to the investor what the business is about, and what they are offering for the investment.  If the investor puts in capital, they get an equity stake.  If they extend debt financing, they have options for convertible debt at a later date, with coupons payable at agreed upon intervals.  Sometimes, the investor would request board representation. 

You maintain control of your company in two ways.  The first is to keep the majority of the equity, and only release enough of it to reach the next stage of fundraising, or until you have raised enough that you do not require further fundraising.  The second is to ensure that you have majority board representation. 

If you have a good idea, and the ability to execute it and make money out of it, you should not be the one coming up with the money.  Investors are plentiful; good ideas are not.  Getting an investor is like a marriage.  If that investor does not fit, look for another one.

Quora Answer: Should a Non-Disclosure Agreement be Part of a Shared Business Plan?

The following is my answer to a Quora question: “Should a non-disclosure agreement be part of a shared business plan, if it is part of a financing agreement?”

The non-disclosure agreement should be signed before you start giving out details of how you run your business to potential investors.  There is no point in giving it out at the same time – they already have your business plan. 

Investors have a legitimate right to understand how the business intends to create that return on investment, but they do not need to know everything.  The business plan you provide to the investors should have enough details for them to do a proper due diligence, and verify that what you have is viable, but not enough that they can say thank you, and do it on their own without you.  In such a case, an NDA is not going to be helpful because you probably do not have the resources to take legal action.

Quora Answer: Do Startup Founders Earn Less Than Their Employees Trying to Get the Company Off the Ground?

The following is my answer to a Quora question: “Do startup founders usually earn less than their lowest paid employees during the first few years of trying to get the company off the ground?” 

That really depends how much your lowest paid employee gets, and it is depends on many factors, including your relationship with your investors.  I have run companies, and we raise funds for projects.  As directors, we pay ourselves first, because our time, our effort, our network, our expertise, is worth something, and it is a cost to the business.  If an investor cannot understand that, that is an investor we can do without. 

This comes down to how you negotiate the deal, shape the conversation, and structure the relationship.  The investor is not merely putting money into an idea, a product, or a service.  They are investing in the people who came up with it, and set up the company.  In our case, they are investing in us.  Money loses leverage as the company grows and the business gains traction.  It is only logical that an investor would seek to extract as good a deal as they can when the power dynamic of the relationship is mostly in their favour. 

On the other hand, the investor understands that we have options in financing, and we can walk away if we do not like the deal, because we have the idea; all they have is money.  Without people with our ideas, they do not have the opportunity to make money from investing in this end of the spectrum.  It would be illogical for us to work for free, in the hopes that the business might make money some day.  That is playing the lottery with your personal finances.

Quora Answer: Do You Think Every Country is Responsible for Providing for the Needs of the Poor?

The following is my answer to a Quora question: “Do you think every country is responsible for providing for the needs of the poor?” 

The citizens of a nation are a resource.  Utilised well, they contribute to the development of the nation, and its economic growth.  For that to work, people need to be enfranchised, and have the possibility of social mobility.  This is what motivates them to work and contribute to society.  To get the best of people, they need to be equipped to contribute.  This means funding healthcare and education, and subsiding it for the lower social strata. 

The poor who are disenfranchised do not contribute to society.  They are a wasted resource.  People who have no hope of bettering their lives will become a drain on the state.  They contribute to crime, they become a source of disease, they are a cost.  If they are homeless, they are invisible to the system.  When there are enough young people who are disenfranchised from the system, they become a threat.  This can be as mundane as petty crime, to organised crime, all the way to insurgency. 

It is not just a responsibility for a state to take care of the needs of the poor, it is practical nation building and economics.  Contrary to how some may characterise it, social welfare and a social safety net is not charity and handouts; it is investing in people as a human resource because every person has a potential to contribute to the greater whole.

Quora Answer: Why is Singapore Offering Couples Thousands of Dollars to Have a Baby?

The following is my answer to a Quora question: “Why is Singapore offering couples thousands of dollars to have a baby?”  

Singapore’s fertility is low, below replacement level.  As such, there needs to be a policy shift to address this because it is becoming a problem.  These problems affect the stability of the state, and the security and cohesion of society. 

When the demographics is so skewed, we have an uneven tax base, since the people who will be drawing for medical and other reasons will start to exceed the people contributing to the economy, which is unsustainable.  This can be seen in the CPF, and especially Medisave.  Medisave and the Shield plans work because it is front loaded.  This means the younger people, who statistically make less claims per capita, pay just a bit more to keep the costs down for older people, who statistically pay more per capita.  As long as there are more younger people, it works.  When the number of older people increases relative to the number of younger people, the system starts to break down, and it feeds medical inflation.  This is carried over, on a larger scale, with our taxes.  We need more people paying taxes to offset the cost of keeping retirees alive, and in relative comfort. 

One alternative is to increase immigration of younger, skilled people, which makes perfect sense logically.  Unfortunately, the electorate, as a whole, is not logical; they are emotional.  What they see is a threat to the mythical status quo and their livelihood, without realising that this immigration is meant to support their livelihood.  This makes the level of immigration we require to be politically untenable. 

As such, the government has to go back to coming up with policies to encourage younger Singaporeans to have more children.  This was always the primary policy, but because of the demographic crisis, it is not enough.  Those young Singaporeans born are not enough to fix that demographic time bomb, and they will not be contributing members of the economy quickly enough to stem future borrowings, possibly from our Reserves, to maintain some semblance of our standard of living. 

When we factor in the cost of climate change, and the infrastructure development required to cope with it, along with the manpower, we may not even have enough in our Reserves, which would explain new legislation that authorises future governments to borrow specific to this, and raises the fiscal limits of other borrowings.  Eventually, we still need to come back to immigration to address the issue.  In the meantime, we have little option other than to throw what money we can spare at the problem, and find ways to incentivise Singaporeans to procreate the next generation of tax payers.