I Thought My Startup Was Going to Die. What Kept Me Going as a Singapore Founder.

There were nights in the early days of my startup when I was certain the business would not survive. I would lie awake staring at the ceiling, mind going in circles, payroll due and no idea how to cover it. I would open the banking app and refresh the balance again, almost crazed, hoping the number might change. It never did.

I would write out scenarios on scraps of paper at 2am. Who should I call tomorrow. What could I cut. I rehearsed those conversations in my head until the sun came up. I told myself, just one more month, maybe things will turn around. Most nights I did not believe it.

That is what it feels like when your startup is dying. Not a single dramatic collapse. A slow grind of doubt and exhaustion that eats you from the inside.

I am Jeremy Foo. I founded Elliot & Co, a PR consultancy, before launching Alpha Story in 2023 as a PR agency in Singapore that uses AI and technology. This is about the period before any of that worked.

What are the biggest challenges startup founders face in Singapore?

Singapore is regularly ranked among the best places in the world to start a business. That is true on paper. In practice, the costs are brutal.

Office rent in the CBD can run S$6-8 per square foot per month. Personal living expenses here are among the highest in Asia. When your startup is pre-revenue or barely revenue positive, those costs eat directly into your runway. You are not just burning company money. You are burning your own savings, your own future.

Then there is funding. Singapore has a healthy VC ecosystem for later stages, but early stage founders often hit a "bottleneck period" where you are too early for Series A but have outgrown bootstrapping. Government grants through Enterprise Singapore help, but they do not cover operating losses. The gap between support and actual survival is real.

And then there is what it does to your head. Singapore's culture prizes success and stability. Admitting that your business might fail feels like admitting personal failure. Founders here tend to suffer quietly. A 2023 Vulcan Post feature called it "the shame faced by Singapore startup founders." I lived that shame.

What does it feel like when your startup is about to fail?

It feels like the numbers, the doubt, and the weight of everything would crush you before morning.

You stop sleeping normally. At 2am you are writing exit scenarios on scraps of paper. Who to call. What to cut. You rehearse difficult conversations with employees, with creditors, with yourself, over and over until dawn.

There is a specific kind of dread that comes with opening your banking app and knowing the balance cannot cover next month's payroll. You refresh it anyway. You check it again an hour later, as if something might have changed. Nothing changes.

I went through months of this. There was no single crisis point. Just pressure that kept building and never let up. Every morning I had to make a decision: get up and keep going, or admit it was over.

How do Singapore founders deal with startup stress?

Honestly, most of us do not deal with it well.

The stigma around failure in Singapore means founders rarely talk about how close they came to shutting down. You hear the success stories at conferences and in The Straits Times. You do not hear about the founder refreshing their bank balance at 2am, terrified of payroll.

That silence makes it worse. You assume everyone else has it together. You assume you are the only one drowning. The majority of Singapore startups do not survive past five years. You are probably not the only one lying awake.

What helped me was simpler than I expected. My team showed up every morning. They did not know I had been awake all night, terrified. They just saw me and kept moving. They believed I had it under control. Their consistency gave me something to hold onto when my own belief had run out.

What saved my business when I thought it was over?

Morning came. Every time.

That sounds too simple to be useful, but it is the truth. The nights were heavy. They literally took years off my life. But they ended. And each morning I dragged myself up and went back to work.

There was no dramatic rescue. No angel investor showing up at the last minute. What saved the business was a series of small, unglamorous decisions made under extreme pressure. Cutting costs that hurt. Having conversations I had been avoiding. Saying yes to work I would not have taken in better times.

And the team. I keep coming back to this because it mattered more than anything else. People who showed up and did their work without knowing how close we were to the edge. Their normalcy was my anchor.

What I learned about survival as an entrepreneur

Fear meant I was still fighting for something that mattered. If I had stopped caring, the anxiety would not have been there. That thought did not make the fear go away. But it made it bearable.

Courage lives quietly inside the hard moments, not on grand stages. Nobody sees you at 2am writing scenarios on scraps of paper. Nobody applauds you for getting out of bed when you believe your company is dying. But that is where the real work of being a founder happens.

Survival is a skill you do not know you have until you need it. I did not think I was built for this. I was wrong.

Advice for founders going through hard times right now

If you are a founder in Singapore reading this at 2am, here is what I want you to know.

You are not alone. The statistics say most founders go through something like this. The silence around it is the lie, not your struggle.

There is practical support if you look for it. Enterprise Singapore offers grants and mentorship for startups at various stages. SGInnovate runs programs for deep tech founders. IMDA has incubation support for media and technology companies. These are not charity. They are infrastructure that exists because the government knows how hard this is.

And talk to other founders. Not for advice, necessarily. Just to hear someone say they went through it too. Founder peer groups and NUS Enterprise programs exist for exactly this.

One thing I wish someone had told me: do not make permanent decisions based on temporary desperation. The 2am version of you is not the most reliable strategist. Write down your fears, then revisit them in daylight.

And show up tomorrow. That is what I did. Not because I was brave. Because I did not know what else to do.

Alpha Story exists today because of those mornings. We reached $1M ARR. We now help startups and enterprises with strategic PR because we know what it means to fight for survival before anyone knows your name.

If you are building something and need help telling your story, talk to us. We have been where you are.

Frequently asked questions

What percentage of startups fail in Singapore?

Roughly 50-60% of Singapore startups do not survive past five years, which is in line with global averages. Singapore's high operating costs and competitive talent market can speed up the timeline. Alpha Story founder Jeremy Foo nearly became part of that statistic before the company hit $1M ARR.

How do startup founders deal with burnout?

From Jeremy Foo's experience, the biggest thing was acknowledging fear instead of suppressing it. After that: lean on your team even if they do not know the full picture, commit to showing up each morning as a discipline rather than waiting for motivation, get practical support through Enterprise Singapore grants or founder peer groups, and do not make irreversible decisions at your lowest point. The 2am panic will feel different by morning.