Singapore has once again proved its technical expertise as it has beaten Silicon Valley as a startup ecosystem in terms of talent, according to a survey of 10,000 startup founders across more than 100 cities.
The survey, Global Startup Ecosystem Report and Ranking 2017, was done by Startup Genome which assessed the startup ecosystems in 50 countries based on overall performance, funding, market reach, talent and startup experience.
The island nation occupied the top ranking in terms of talent due to its strong performance in access to quality talent and cost. In addition to this, the experience levels of Singaporean talent was found to be comparatively strong, with 80 per cent of engineering and 74 per cent of growth teams boasting at least two years of prior startup experience compared to the global averages of 72 per cent and 60 per cent, respectively.
Further, the average software engineer’s salary in Singapore, at USD 35,000 (SGD 49,000), was also below the global average of USD 49,000 – pointing to lower costs for businesses.
However, Silicon Valley in the US remained the dominant global ecosystem, followed by New York and London. The Bay Area tech hub reigned supreme in all metrics in the report except talent, where it was ousted by Singapore.
Startup founders based in Singapore were the youngest in the world, with a median age of 28 years.
However, Singapore slipped two places from 10th to 12th place among the cities surveyed in 2015, due to the entrance of Beijing at fourth place and Shanghai at eighth place.