When I saw the news that Singtel has shut down HGW after 15 years, it wasn’t too surprising for me.
Singtel bought HGW for $12m in 2012, nearly 7 years after it was founded in 2006 by 3 friends.
For a Singaporean startup, in 2012, I would say it was actually a pretty decent exit for the young founders who were basically trying to build a food review website.
If you look around, there really were quite a few carcasses lying around Singtel, like Lyke, Newsloop, Wavee, WePlay, Genio, Pixable… you get the picture.
I’m not too sure what really went wrong with the whole Singtel-HGW marriage.
Was it because Singtel didn’t know how to bring HGW to the next level?
Did they fail to integrate into their existing offerings and products properly?
Was it really too top-down in Singtel to effectively manage and run these “startups” well?
Reading between the lines, I have to admit one thing: Singtel, to a large extent, was trying to adopt the lean startup approach and experimenting with new products, and quite ferociously too.
I’m a fan of that. I actually think that’s really commendable.
Sure things didn’t quite work out and there’s tweaks to be made.
But they actually walked the talk and put their money, millions of dollars, into experiments that never worked.
That deserves so much respect, especially coming from a traditionally conservative telco titan.
What do you think?
Should other giants emulate Singtel in its daring experimental approach or play it safe and trudge along quietly?
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