The 27-Year-Old Hawker Scaling Faster Than Silicon Valley's Paper Unicorns
The Great Tech Illusion: Why Real Business Beats Vanity Metrics Every Time
We have built a startup culture intoxicated by scale-at-all-costs. Open any tech blog or financial news portal today, and you will be blasted with breathless headlines about venture capital rounds, multi-million-dollar valuations, and founders raising staggering eight- and nine-digit sums. The underlying narrative is clear: if you aren't building a deep-tech AI platform giant burning cash to capture market share, you aren't really doing entrepreneurship.
It is time we dismantle this dangerous myth. Entrepreneurship is not confined to fancy deep-tech AI stuff. If your business is profitable, cash-generative, and scalable, it is a fundamentally good business.
Consider the inspiring blueprint of Mitchell Ong, a 27-year-old hawker who built a nine-outlet Hokkien mee chain in just three years. Starting from a single stall at Golden Mile Food Centre during late 2023, working through gruelling 14-hour days peeling prawns and navigating profound personal loss, he bootstrapped his expansion across Singapore. His stalls typically cost modest amounts to set up and break even within a month, ploughing profits back into operations while paying his team competitive, above-market wages. There is no artificial silicon valley hype here—just raw execution, operational discipline, and an obsession with product quality.
For over a decade, however, we have watched heavily funded tech "darlings" parade their massive funding rounds as badges of ultimate honor. Yet, a horrifying number of these unicorns are light-years away from profitability—and many of them will never reach it. Let us be blunt: raising millions from venture capitalists only proves that one is exceptionally good at fundraising. That's all. It has precisely nothing to do with one's competency to run a sustainable, resilient business. Venture capital is an oxygen mask, not a business model. The moment the funding winter sets in and the capital stops flowing, these cash-hemorrhaging giants simply die.
This obsession with paper valuations and vanity metrics has real casualties, particularly in local markets like Singapore. Look closely at the public markets: a depressing number of Singaporean companies that went public amid intense hype have since cratered, losing more than 90% of their investors' hard-earned money. Retail investors and public shareholders are left holding the bag for enterprises that prioritized growth charts over gross margins.
Why do we glorify a founder who burns ten million dollars of OPM (Other People's Money) to acquire unprofitable users, while dismissing the entrepreneur running a tight, highly profitable traditional business or hawker concept? The former is playing a high-stakes financial game of hot potato; the latter is building an enduring economic engine.
The truth is that the absolute best way to raise money—and the only validation that truly matters—is raising it directly from your customers.
When a customer opens their wallet and pays for a plate of noodles or a practical service, they are casting an unvarnished vote of confidence. Revenue from operations does not demand liquidation preferences, board seats, or artificial hyper-growth metrics that force you to compromise your unit economics. Customer revenue forces you to listen to the market, solve a genuine problem, and maintain rigorous financial discipline from day one. It builds muscle; venture capital often builds fat.
As we look toward the future of our economic landscape, we need a fundamental paradigm shift. We must stop measuring business success by the size of a Series A or B announcement deck. Instead, we need to respect the grit of building real, revenue-generating enterprises that stand on their own two feet without needing an artificial life support system.
Real entrepreneurship is about creating value, generating cash, and respecting your capital. Funding is a tool, not a destination. And in a world full of paper billionaires, a profitable business that actually serves its market will always be the ultimate flex. __________ The author has been a practising venture capital fund manager since 2013 and invests in startups (up to Series B) in the SEA region. Contact email: ian.gan@smaths.com.
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