We track down a Lee Kuan Yew Global Business Plan Competition alumnus from 2006. Games developer extraordinaire Leonard Lin reflects on how the competition has evolved.
In a 2008 Straits Times article titled “Budding entrepreneurs blaze new trials”, it featured Leonard Lin – a Singapore Management University (SMU) student who took part in the Lee Kuan Yew Global Business Plan Competition in 2006.
His startup – which created Web-based applications for social networking sites such as Facebook – scooped third prize in the competition. According to the article, beyond the prize, “more importantly (Leonard) learnt about financial management, planning, forecasting and all the other details that go into running a successful business.”
Today Leonard is a Senior Software Engineering Manager at Unity Technologies.
His professional journey included starting and running Tyler Projects, a mobile solutions and game and software development company between 2009 and 2013. It developed Battle Stations, a popular Facebook multi-player game, and had S$1.95 million in annual revenue.
What led you to the Lee Kuan Yew Global Business Plan Competition in 2006?
I was a student at SMU's school of Information Systems (now known as the school of Computing and Information Systems). I was working with some friends on developing a mobile games platform and we had formed a startup that was incubated at SMU's incubation centre.
One of my professors, Arcot Desai Narasimhalu, was the Director of the Institute of Innovation and Entrepreneurship. He encouraged us to participate in the competition.
It’s been 18 years! What are your enduring memories from the competition?
We were still studying and working on our product on the side. In the run up to the competition we had to pull a few overnighters. It was exhausting but we achieved some good results.
Is there anyone you met in the course of the competition that made an impact on you?
Our biggest champion before and after the competition was Professor Desai. I believe we were the most profitable startup to come out of the programme for a few years. But I'm glad to see that our startup has been long since overtaken by other SMU alumni startups.
Are you still in the innovation and entrepreneurship space?
I'm currently a senior software engineering manager at Unity Technologies, a global company best known for our game engine that powers 70 percent of all mobile games.
Any thoughts on how the competition has changed over the years?
The competition has evolved and now attracts startups that have been working on specialised tech. It's probably a lot harder for a student startup to just build a web or mobile app to compete. But it looks like a lot of the newer participants work with corporations which would give them a deeper understanding of the problems they're trying to solve.
As one of the “oldest” alumni of the competition, would you still wish to be involved with the competition in any way?
I think it was a challenge then to find suitable mentors who were in the games or tech industry. It's important for startup founders to find the right mentors with relevant experience.
