What

This is not another panel, fireside chat, mixer, Q&A or other off-the-cuff discussion from “thought leaders”, our speakers have actually sat down & carefully thought about what they want to say. We work with highly experienced technology professionals to deliver a tight 40 minutes of stories that are directly useful to startup founders, built from hard won experience within their area of expertise.

For Founders

As a founder, your job is to be professionally bad at things. At the point you get just good enough at a thing, you now need to hand it off and be professionally bad at a new thing. 

This can feel overwhelming, so sometimes it’s nice to be around people who are professionally good at a thing. If you’re lucky, they might have a specific piece of knowledge that can solve a specific issue you’re plagued with in the moment! But more often, the value comes from being able to absorb their worldview and their highly specific way of thinking about problems, shaped by their experiences (and lots and lots of failures!).

Come to the Figuring Shit Out Singapore Speaker Series to hear from speakers that have recently transitioned into a “fractional role” or otherwise want to reach startup founders. But unlike a deeply unengaging “this is what we do and why you should buy from us” standard sales pitch, we believe the best approach is always selling through educating. We strictly limit each speaker to at most 3 direct salesy slides per talk and to focus instead on real life complex projects they’ve encountered in their own career, how the lessons from them shaped their thinking, and how these lessons can be useful to startup founders.

If this sounds like your jam, our next event is: TBD and sign up here to be notified of future events. 

Past Talks

Dec 4th, 2024 - Three Reasons why being Smart can harm Founders

— Xianhang Zhang, Founder Coach, ex 3x Founder, ex Head of Growth for SCMP (He’s done so much startup stuff he’s equally bad at all of it)

Upcoming Talks

To be notified of our next talk, join our Announcement Only WhatsApp Group:

From Masterpieces to Markets: Lessons in IR & IPOs

— Amelia Abdullahsani, Fractional Investor Relations

Building a Business? First, Get Over Your Ego

​— Rosann Ling, Founder of Prism Creative, bringing impactful stories to life

Just Enough DevOps Process - The First Steps Count the Most

— Geoff Halprin, Fractional SRE/DevOps/DevEx

How to Stop Fucking Up Your Team - Scaling Culture Before Your Startup Implodes

— Joe Black, Inspiring into purpose driven action

For Speakers

I believe that a great talk is the best “business card” any fractional can have (and others selling to startups too!). But when I came to Singapore, I couldn’t find many speaking events, it was all panels! So we’re creating our own speaker series because great talks were super useful to me as a startup founder and I want to see more of them in Southeast Asia.

As a speaker, we will primarily be working on three things with you:

  • Making sure your talk meets our standards of being useful lessons to startup founders and effective at selling your personalized perspective on solving problems.

  • Providing a venue to give the “first draft” of your talk to an audience of engaged startup founders.

  • (Coming next) Building up an ecosystem of partners in the ecosystem, first in Singapore and then across Southeast Asia, who are also excited to host the right speakers, so you can find further venues to deliver your message.

Speaking is completely free but we do ask speakers to agree to a referral fee for business gained as a way to support the series. More details here.

We have also compiled a Tips for Speakers page to better outline our expectations for what a talk that fits our vibe looks like.

If you’re interested in speaking, reach out to me and we can discuss next steps.

For Investors/Accelerators & Community Organizers

We view our speaker series as a “first stop” for our speakers to reach startup founders. We would love to develop an ecosystem of partners who are interested in speakers speaking in more private, intimate audiences with startups in your portfolio/at your events. If you’re interested in collaborating further with us, please contact me and we will reach out to you with more details.