2122T2 Silicon Valley/Participant Information/Clarissa LIM Yan Ting

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About Clarissa Lim

SMU email: clarissalim.2019@scis.smu.edu.sg
Linkedin: LinkedIn
Academic Year: Year 3
Degree: BSc Smart City Management and Technology

Why Virtual TSM?

  • What motivates you to join TSM?.
    • Saw the itinerary and the company list looks dope. These companies are at the top of their game or shaping the world in a huge way; there will be a lot to learn from them if we can interview the people working there.
    • I wanna get a better understassnding of why SF works so well as a startup hub (social, economic, political factors), and why despite SG govt trying to be like them, it’s still not really working for us. I have a rough idea from my own research, but we’ll probably will be able to get some firsthand insights that can’t be googled by speaking to the people who actually work there
    • Also wanna get a good idea of the cons that are present also. I know that housing is very expensive, homelessness rates are high and safety is bad in certain areas of SF, and I want to know how the people working there feel about it and how they think it is going to change.
  • Bonus if we get to go to SF:
  • Where would you like to visit virtually?
    • Israel - they’ve got a lot of good agritech going on there for a desert country.
    • China - bet they’re hiding some secret AI tech that they’re gonna unleash onto the world to wipe us all out with. Got to get first dibs on that scoop.
    • Japan - they’ve got quite a few startups trying to combat the problems of an ageing problem, which is pretty relevant to SG

Starting a business

  • What types of business interest you?

Clean energy, waste removal/recycling, low-resource high-yield foods.

    • I like those companies that do saigang/work with trash bc they don’t look like it but actually they're making a lot of money. There’s just something appealing about that juxtaposition y'know
    • Also Amazon keeps pumping out consumer goods, someone’s gotta clean up their trash right?
    • Knowing that there are solutions out there to our trash and pollution problem helps alleviate my existential dread a little
  • What plan do you have in starting a business?

As of now, I have no plans to start a business, but I am open to doing so after I have accumulated more experience in the workforce, and identified feasible ideas (not an easy feat). I co-founded a clothing subscription box startup in secondary sch that earned $50k/year, and my friends and I had plans to use AI to model/predict clothes sizes that was in 2013 but at that point the tech still wasn’t advanced enough and we didn't have the necessary resources. A few years later in JC my friends and I wanted to come up with a longform blogging site with social capabilities similar to Instagram or twitter, but not long after we started work on it Twitter founder Jack Dorsey created Medium – which is the exact thing that I wanted to create. The product was perfect and everything I wanted, so I saw no need to continue with mine. After that I was involved heavily in Singapore’s startup scene, volunteered a lot in pitch competitions, and what I observed about the competitors is that it is really quite difficult to start and run a successful business without experience, expertise and a good amount of luck. Additionally, I realised that the people who won the pitch competitions tended to have very solid business plans (mostly practical products like healthcare and defense) and the founders were in their late 40s and they had been working in their respective fields for a long time before deciding to branch out into entrepreneurship. I think the judges trusted the older people more as well. This is the same thing that happened with Medium – Evan Williams was able to easily create Medium and gain good traction and a large customer base because of the resources, experience and connections that he’d accrued from co-founding Twitter. A few more years and failed ideas later, my observations were validated when HBR published a study in 2018 saying that the average age of a successful startup founder is 45, and usually people who have worked for a long time and branch out later after creating a product using their years of expertise, and leveraging their contacts from years of working in their field. They are often more successful because their experience helps them: ● Identify gaps in the market way more accurately than uni students ● Think of way better solutions that actually work ● Most importantly, actually execute their solution because they are able to acquire capital and connections necessary to do so

My current plans: I plan to learn as much as I can and provide as much value as possible where I am. I'm currently interning at EY-Parthenon, and they provide technology-focused strategy solutions for both public and private sector clients in Singapore. Through this study mission I hope to learn as much as I can about the new technologies available, management strategies of successful companies, and how to best manage the changing geopolitical climate to come up with better solutions that will benefit Singaporean companies and the Singaporean government (v impt to keep SG in good shape so I don’t suffer later on also HAHAHA). I’m learning a lot in consulting and am planning to do it in the long run. I believe the things that I learn over the years in this sector will prepare me well for starting a business in future. My plans aren’t exciting by most standards, but based on my past experiences and research-backed evidence I feel that it’s good to be a bit more grounded.

Past Experiences (optional)

Past Education

  • Dunman High School
  • Temasek JC
  • Ngee Ann Poly (International Business)

Past Experiences: Work:

  • Strategy and Transactions Intern, EY-Parthenon
  • UI/UX Intern, GovTech (Open Government Products)
  • Photography and Marketing Intern, Vickii Ma
  • Business and Marketing Intern, Czeg’s Cafe Australia
  • Co-Founder, Lowinsky

Competitions:

  • IS425 SMU-X Digital Transformation (SCDF), Winning Team
  • Overseas Innovation Challenge Hong Kong, Winning team

Other stuff:

  • Emceed for Ngee Ann Poly’s Business School Orientation event that had an

audience of approx. 1500 people

  • Organised a community walk on World Water Day in 2016, raised $3k SGD

for charity:water, partnered with Uber Co-curricular activities:

  • SMU Soundfoundry, i play the bass

What keeps you ticking?

A piece of paper covered entirely with checkboxes, and a small fine print on the bottom right that says ‘keep ticking these boxes or you will die’.

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