Despite being Singaporean, I had never lived in Singapore until National Service. After NS, I left Singapore again to study and work in the US, but after seven years, I decided to move back to Singapore to spend time with family and be an entrepreneur. I started Rocket Academy to give back to Singapore and help more Singaporeans start businesses.
When I moved back to Singapore in 2017, I would often get questions such as, “Why did you come back from Silicon Valley [where salaries are higher]?” “Why do you want to be an entrepreneur [and forego a safe, lucrative career]?” “Why not work at another company [to learn about Singapore and develop your business idea] before working full-time on your own?”
I moved back from Silicon Valley to spend time with family, and I felt that I should get to know Singapore better as a Singaporean. I wanted to be an entrepreneur because I wanted Singapore and Southeast Asia to have more homegrown multinational companies to help us “stand up” globally.
The best way to learn entrepreneurship is to do it; It would be a long journey, I would have more obligations with age, and I felt inspired by the young entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley.
Three years to find an idea
It took me almost three years to find the idea for Rocket Academy. My original idea was in senior care, an app to help family members coordinate care for their loved ones. I spent over a year iterating on this idea and learned valuable lessons about business and how societies care for their seniors.
It turned out that being a caregiver for anyone is hard, and the biggest need caregivers have is physical care for their loved ones, not a coordination tool, not even a community of caregivers.
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When I realised what the market required (medical care) was not something I could provide, I decided to move on.
After leaving senior care in mid-2018, I moved to Jakarta to join a friend’s student loans company Dana Cita; a startup recently graduated from Y Combinator that aimed to help Indonesians access education. I still had entrepreneurial ambition but needed to reset and develop new ideas.
Dana Cita’s team and mission excited me, and it would allow me to learn about Indonesia, the largest market in SEA and a centre of Malay culture. It was an incredible experience, and after one year, I decided to resume my entrepreneurial journey.
I continued living in Jakarta for six months after Dana Cita and met over 100 investors, prospective co-founders and industry experts.
I explored e-commerce logistics, e-commerce marketplace aggregation, an English-language tutoring marketplace, smartphone leasing, and even on-demand fried chicken. None of the initial ideas worked out, but many investors later invested in Rocket Academy.
After many failed attempts, I stumbled upon an innovative online coding boot camp in the US called Lambda School.
There was a large opportunity in online vocational coding education in SEA, and I happened to have the perfect background as a software engineer and former teacher.
Starting something from nothing in Singapore
The pandemic helped Rocket Academy by driving people to code online, but we still faced many challenges building the business.
Rocket Academy struggled to enrol our first batch of students. I had moved back to Singapore (again) in late 2019 created a company logo and website, but I had zero students and zero track record. As a novice entrepreneur, paid advertising did not cross my mind, and I focused on reaching out to coding interest groups and friends of friends.
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After a month, I connected with 10 prospective students, of which six met me in person and three enrolled in Rocket’s pilot boot camp batch in January 2020. Those students later joined GovTech, Xfers and Glints after graduating from Rocket.
Rocket Academy’s biggest setback in 2020 was a miscommunication with government regulators, causing Rocket to stop teaching from April to September 2020. Pandemic restrictions prolonged the miscommunication, and I found myself taking long walks in the park, brainstorming other business models Rocket could pursue besides training software engineers.
I thought about quitting more than once. Luckily, Rocket and the regulators resolved the miscommunication in September and our team resumed teaching.
Rocket Academy’s next big challenge was developing course content to provide students with study material and standardised instruction. Rocket’s early team member Akira led these efforts with aplomb, burning the midnight oil for months to complete the first version of Rocket’s content while teaching. We even bought a portable air-con at one point because the air-con at our coworking space shut off at 6 PM, making the office otherwise unbearable at night.
2021 brought new challenges for Rocket Academy as we scaled. Our student numbers were almost 10x, we raised US$1.1 million, grew our team from two to 10 full-timers, and suddenly we faced challenges meeting student demand and managing the team.
In 2022, Rocket will continue to improve our student and instructor resources to empower students and software engineers to learn and teach at Rocket. I am also excited to improve as a manager, helping bring out the best in every member of our team.
Support for entrepreneurs
I have two suggestions for anyone starting a business post-pandemic.
Choose a market that is growing despite the pandemic. Examples include almost everything online, including online shopping, gaming, education, productivity and wellness.
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Choose a problem to solve that you are passionate about. Only then will you persevere through the inevitable setbacks.
Entrepreneurship has been tough yet rewarding and would not be possible without the help of countless others. If I can ever be helpful to your journey, please reach out!
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