Philip: Start-up co-founder; Aim to sell before you build

Philip Andrew Wee De Wang

Class of 2022, Computer Science and Design
Co-founder, FireJet

If you want to be a start-up founder, you should always aim to sell before you build.

My job

I am currently the technical co-founder of our Figma-to-Code start-up, FireJet.

My day-to-day involves implementing new features, architecting the software/algorithms that will be used in our software, as well as guiding and mentoring our software developers and reviewing their work. From time to time, I also help on the business development side by discussing technical requirements with potential enterprise clients and checking the technical feasibility of said requirements.

How I started

It is not too challenging to get a job if you hire yourself.

Jokes aside, to start a start-up, you need to find someone who shares the same values and goals as you. This will be the most important decision you make because the leading cause for start-ups failing is co-founder disputes.

Thankfully, SUTD has quite a strong maker culture, so there is seldom a shortage of people who want to build something cool and bring it to the world. For example, my co-founder was my classmate from SUTD and I am very fortunate to be working with such a capable and dependable individual.

The hghs and lows

I am extremely passionate about the work I do here at FireJet because we work on cutting-edge of technology.

At the heart of it, we are trying to solve front-end development by automating the process of design to code. This will save developers and companies thousands of hours and help them move their products and software forward even faster. What makes running FireJet challenging (but yet exciting) is that we are in an extremely competitive space. We are competing with other start-ups with millions of dollars and established companies worth billions.

My happiest moment at work

I think our biggest achievement is being able to earn revenue. Too many start-ups in Singapore fail without even making a single dollar.

One of my happiest moments was when we got our first paying customer. Back then, we were still fresh graduates and it was incredibly scary to even ask for people to pay for our product.

However, our first customer offered to pay six times the original price we were asking for, just because it was something he needed, which gave us a huge sense of relief and validation.

I remember the day we managed to get that first customer. I printed out the letter of intent signed by the customer and framed it up. Even today, I still have that framed copy of our first paying customer.

Some advice

Starting and running a start-up is surprisingly straightforward – there are many reliable resources online, such as Paul Graham’s essays on entrepreneurship and the Y Combinator YouTube channel. The difficulty, however, is following the straightforward advice. If you want to be a start-up founder, you should always aim to sell before you build. Especially as SUTD students, it is all too common to fall for the trap of building before validating if the idea is something that anyone even wants.