My first question to Vincent Ng, the co-author of “Why You Should Fail”, was, of course, “have you failed?” To which his eyes lit up with glee and he said, “Yes.”
“I’ve been doing entrepreneur things since I was 16,” he said proudly. “I sold candy to my schoolmates. The money I made, I put into a multilevel marketing company which promised I could become a millionaire overnight. I bought into it. I lost most of my savings and the proceeds from the candy. It was a few thousand dollars but to me, at the time, it felt like a mountain.”
So the first lesson he learnt was “there is no short cut to riches”. 
Studying business at National University of Singapore, he felt that maybe he should find a mentor and he found a company in the self-help industry that was looking for young talent to groom into future trainers.
So he worked for free for three years – using up his two final years in University and a gap year – on a project to build a mobile app where people could learn quick lessons on life while waiting for the bus or on their commutes.
Ng, who was at Tern, Travel Careers, to sign his book, said, “We didn’t do market testing. There was already such an app in the market, trainers in Singapore weren’t that used to creating digital content, unlike the US, and consumers weren’t ready to pay for such an app. Maybe we didn’t execute it well or maybe the market wasn’t ready.”
Streets Smart University – the name of the app – then pivoted into a company which ran self-help events.
One mistake he made at the company – he was offered equity after two years but he didn’t take it because “I felt I wasn’t as good as the others”.
In the end though, he left the company in January 2016 because “I felt the industry was not aligned with my values. I also realised that what I was passionate about was education and social service”.
A few months after, he met Grace Lin, who would eventually become the co-author of the “Why You Should Fail” book. “It started out as us talking to CEOs and getting their advice and then we realised a lot of our friends would benefit from their lessons.”
The book contains stories of failures and lessons from 23 Singaporean business leaders including Marcus Tan, co-founder of online marketplace Carousell, and Lai Chang Wen, co-founder of logistics company Ninja Van.
The book is published by the Entre Club, a network of entrepreneurs, through an introduction facilitated by their mentor Christine Sim, who’s the chief executive of the Club. Sim also introduced them to former Member of Parliament Leong Horn Kee, founder of The Entre Club, and through that, doors to many of the entrepreneurs featured in the book were opened.
Vincent at Tern speaking to Tahnya Butterfield Gill of NOSHtrekker at Tern, Travel Careers
From idea to launch, Ng said the book project took 453 days. “It could have been shortened to four months if we had brought in an editor from the start – an editor only came in six months into the project.”
Among the stories, the one he finds most inspiring is that of Edwin Chan, founder of the Cambridge Institute. “It was so popular in 2007, he had 10 outlets and he received an offer of $10 million for the business but he turned it down because he wanted to IPO. But due to a convergence in events, he ended up $1m in debt – his whole retirement fund was gone, he had to go to court everyday for a year.
“I am very privileged, I have not experienced this kind of suffering. Yet he doesn’t blame anyone, he’s not bitter. His whole thing was to take care of his employees – that was more important to him than money. That taught me the character of the man.
“The lesson for me is, be a person of character, not a personality.”
His dream is to start a Singapore branch of the Wayfinding Academy, a new 2-year college programme in Portland, Oregon that’s promising to revolutionise higher education. “Change in the education sector is necessary. We live in a very industrialised society and we are objects to be sorted, not humans to be nurtured. That is how we are measured – we are scared to fail.
“In Singapore, we don’t celebrate failures enough. Perhaps it’s because of the fear of vulnerability.”
He is aware that more failures await him as he pursues his dream but he seems prepared to face the long road ahead.
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