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NYEA Past Winners
Read what our past award winners have to say!
Charlotte Chan, Senior Technology Analyst at Accenture
NYEA 2017 University Category - Bronze
1. What are your thoughts in being one of the winners for NYEA?
As undergraduate then who was incredibly passionate about the technology industry and decided to fill the gap of opportunities and tech talents in my management-focused university, I founded my university’s first technology initiative focused on cultivating innovation capabilities with an emphasis on critical thinking and computational abilities. It has attracted the attention of the university management and 4000 strong cohort through our highly popular Fireside Chat series where we invite some of the best local entrepreneurs and tech corporate representatives to share. I was very grateful to be recognised for my efforts through NYEA and that spurred me to continue driving my initiatives and reminding myself to always give back to the community.
2. How have your idea/company grown or changed since the award? If changed, do share with us the details.
With my entrepreneurial spirit, I have gone on to start a new initiative called TheTechNative with my co-founder, Monica at the start of lockdown last year. TheTechNative is an education course and community platform that seeks to help unlock one’s fullest potential and help one leverage their assets through focused and engaging content in technical topics and soft skills. We seek to empower those who are starting out, in early careers to mid-career transition to become the trailblazers of tomorrow, as we recognize and have been receiving multiple questions related to exploring the roles that we are in, within tech. We find that many people are unsure about how to approach employment in certain tech niches, navigating within careers and branding oneself. Hence, with our expertise in soft skills, cybersecurity and cloud we hope to provide our relevant experiences. We are to go-live with our first course release mid of this year.
3. Any other words you would like to share with the public and budding future entrepreneurs?
“Tired of lying in the sunshine, staying home to watch the rain. You are young and life is long and there is time to kill today. And then one day you find ten years have got behind you. No one told you when to run; you missed the starting gun.” – “Time” by Pink Floyd”
The above song lyric motivates me to keep doing things in areas I am passionate about every single day. People might not know what is is like behind the scenes of being a founder but it is important that you thoroughly love what you are doing, that your team has a strong culture and believes in the product/service that the team is building and that you are focused and have an action plan – the charter for your sail ship even in turbulent weather. There’s no other better day than to start today. Good luck!
1. What are your thoughts in being one of the winners for NYEA?
I think NYEA is a great platform to recognize and promote young entrepreneurs who demonstrate the aptitude and ability to turn ideas into actions and products that ultimately creates more value in the society.
2. How have your idea/company grown or changed since the award? If changed, do share with us the details.
We have since grown from a fledgling start-up brewing kombucha to having one of the first licensed kombucha microbrewery in Singapore with an in-house lab. Our team has also grown from 2 to 5. The Kombynation Co. brand is also recognized as one of the more popular kombucha brands in Singapore.
3. Any other words you would like to share with the public and budding future entrepreneurs?
Entrepreneurship sounds sexy but there is a lot of blood, sweat, tears and worries behind the glorious façade. But because of this, there is nothing that brings more satisfaction than when you see your ideas turn into reality and make the world a little better to live in. Remember that everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you.
1. What are your thoughts in being one of the winners for NYEA?
Very honoured and privileged to be part of the NYEA network and alumni. Enjoyed the process of interacting with other participants during the process and looking forward to engaging with the network more.
2. How have your idea/company grown or changed since the award? If changed, do share with us the details.
Vision has grown significantly since despise the turbulent times and markets of 2020. Due to increased awareness and demand of digitization and technology future readiness, Vision has increased contracts from existing customers as well as new customers looking to innovate. Customer focus has navigated to be more local due to travel restrictions, yet headcount has close to double in the last 1 year.
3. Any other words you would like to share with the public and budding future entrepreneurs?
In “good” or “bad” markets there are always opportunities and as entrepreneurs, our role is to be able to discover these opportunities and assist our stakeholders both customers and partners to leverage upon these opportunities. Those who are able to continually discover gaps and opportunities and solve these problems would be the ones that can sustainably create value and triumph within the space.
1. What are your thoughts in being one of the winners for NYEA?
I am definitely honoured to be given such an opportunity to be recognised as one of the winners for NYEA. This has also further encouraged me to increase my outreach to give back to the youth entrepreneurship community in Singapore.
2. How have your idea/company grown or changed since the award? If changed, do share with us the details.
Since the award, we gained better media attention and awareness of what we do. This has enabled our company to build credibility and outreach to more clients in the space we operate in. We were given some airtime on local radio and in fact, one of our clients asked us if we were the company he heard about on the radio. Thus, our small startup was able to gain more awareness and credibility because of this award.
3. Any other words you would like to share with the public and budding future entrepreneurs?
For budding future entrepreneurs, do not be afraid to try and fail. Sometimes, you will never know if it will work out if you do not put your foot forward! Just do it!
More stories to be added!
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