Startupbootcamp Expand · For Government & Trade Agencies

Help your best companies win in Asia and prove it back home.

SBC Expand gives trade promotion and innovation agencies a delivery engine for the hardest part of the mandate: turning introductions into signed contracts, revenue and jobs you can put in front of a minister.

Agency Mandate

Introductions → Signed contracts
1,600+Startups Supported
Since 2010
5,000+Mentors In
Global Network
4Continents
Program Coverage
90dPilot: First Deal
Closed In Region
ActiveSG · MY · TW
The Shared Mandate

We understand what you’re measured on.

Objective 01

Economic impact at home

Help homegrown companies expand into global markets with measurable economic impact at home.

Objective 02

Sustainable expansion

Ensure that expansion is sustainable and grounded in genuine commercial opportunity.

Objective 03

Ecosystem strength

Strengthen the domestic ecosystem with credible, repeatable pathways to growth.

The challenge isn’t ambition or funding. It’s delivery.

Trade missions, market reports and introductions get companies to the starting line. Few programs get them across it, into signed contracts and sustained revenue. That gap is exactly where SBC Expand operates.

Why Conventional Programs Fall Short

Advice is abundant. Outcomes are rare.

◆The delivery gap

Your agency has no shortage of consultants. But most of them just deliver reports, then leave the execution to firms without the local network to make it happen. So you’re left with programs that look busy but underdeliver on what matters: durable revenue, real market footholds, and jobs at home.

Three problems in an expansion context:

01

Selecting before finding demand

Picking companies before there are real commercial opportunities on the ground wastes time and goodwill.

02

Fixed calendar cohorts

Running to a fixed calendar excludes your strongest, busiest firms, the very ones best positioned to win.

03

Market chosen before validation

Committing a company to a market before validating it can strand a promising firm in the wrong place.

Our Approach

Opportunity first. Company second. Outcome always.

SBC Expand inverts the traditional model. Rather than selecting companies and hoping opportunities appear, we maintain an always-on view of real commercial opportunities across Asia, and match your companies to them when the fit and the timing are right.

Two continuous engines drive this
Engine 01

Commercial opportunity mapping

We engage corporates, partners and distributors across Asia to identify and prioritize concrete openings, creating a live bank of opportunities that shortens every company’s validation cycle.

Engine 02

Ecosystem engagement

We equip the wider domestic community, not just the selected few, with expansion methodology, toolkits and coaching, lifting your ecosystem’s overall readiness.

Then we deliver. We localise the product, stand up a full go-to-market operation, and run the entire commercial motion from outreach to closed contracts. We do this as an operating partner with our own stake in the outcome, never as a consultant delivering a report.

Common questions

What agencies ask us

What happens in the first 90 days of a partnership?+

We start with opportunity mapping, not company selection. Within the first 90 days you get a shortlist of concrete commercial openings across Singapore, Malaysia, Taiwan and the wider ASEAN region, a matched shortlist of your companies against those openings, an honest fit assessment for each, and a delivery plan with named markets, buyers and milestones.

Which agencies are a strong fit?+

Trade promotion organisations, export development agencies, and innovation or enterprise bodies with a live Asia mandate, a portfolio of post-PMF companies with real technological edge, and pressure to show economic impact at home.

Which agencies are not a fit?+

Programs built around pre-revenue cohorts, fixed-calendar delivery, or headcount-and-events KPIs rather than commercial outcomes. If the mandate is to run a mission and publish a report, we are the wrong partner.

How is this different from a soft-landing or accelerator program?+

Accelerators select companies first and hope opportunities appear, run to a fixed calendar that excludes your busiest firms, and commit companies to a market before it is validated. We invert that: opportunity first, company second. And we do not stop at mentors and workshops, we localise the product, stand up a local entity, and run the commercial motion through to signed contracts.

How is this different from posting an in-market trade officer?+

A trade officer is a high fixed cost carrying a broad portfolio, and can open doors but cannot close deals on a company's behalf. We operate as a dedicated commercial team per company, with our own capital in the venture, and we complement rather than replace your in-market presence.

How is this different from commissioning a consultancy?+

A consultancy is paid for the report whether or not the company wins. Our revenue depends on the companies we back succeeding, so we are structurally incentivised to be honest about fit and to execute rather than advise.

What happens to companies we send that you assess as not a fit?+

We tell you, with reasons, the segment they would need to win and the incumbent they would need to displace. Companies outside the delivery track can still access our expansion methodology, toolkits and coaching through the ecosystem engagement track.

What if two of our companies compete in the same category?+

We take only one company per category, because we never represent competing products. We flag the conflict early and work with you to decide which company enters the delivery track.

What is the commercial and risk-sharing model?+

Two modes. As a paying program partner you fund delivery for selected companies and we commit to supporting them while retaining the right to assess fit. As a referral partner there is no obligation on either side. In both modes we co-invest our own team, technology and capital in each venture.

What reporting do we get?+

Live performance data per company, pipeline value, meetings booked and won, conversion rates and channel attribution, so you can evidence impact rather than reconstruct it at year end.

How much of our team's time does this take?+

Nomination, a monthly governance review, and reporting access. We carry the delivery load; you keep the relationship with your companies and the evidence base for your minister.

Who We Partner With

Designed for trade, export and innovation agencies

We work with the government bodies responsible for helping domestic companies grow internationally, trade-promotion organizations, export-development agencies, and innovation and enterprise bodies, whose companies bring the technological edge to compete and win across Southeast Asia.

Let’s turn your export ambitions into outcomes.

We’d welcome a conversation about how SBC Expand can help your agency deliver on its mandate sustainably, measurably, and with real skin in the game on our side.