FOUNDER MODE: One day. One market. One entire company.

THE EVENT IN ONE PARAGRAPH

Finance students value companies they will never run. Business students write go-to-market plans for products that do not exist. Everyone gets one slice. FOUNDER MODE gives students the whole thing in a single day. You draw a market at nine, spend two hours learning the AI stack that does the work of four departments, then research it, price it, sell it and set up the company that would own it. Real outbound goes out before three. Judges ask where your numbers came from, and they check.

WHY THIS IS DIFFERENT

•   No idea required. Markets are drawn on the day from six curated sectors, so nobody wins by having prepared for a month.

•   No code required. This is a business hackathon. The build is a company, not an app.

•   You run every function. There are no tracks. The finance student has to sell. The business student has to model.

•   Real outbound, not slideware. Every team sends at least ten genuine messages to genuine prospects before submission, and reports the replies honestly, including the silence.

•   Cite or die. Any fabricated figure or invented source voids the section it sits in. For anyone about to walk into finance, consulting or a founding role, this is the most useful hour of the day.

WHAT THE DAY COVERS

Two hours of teaching in four tight modules, then seven hours of doing. Every module maps to a deliverable you will be judged on.

Module 1  /  Market intelligence with AI  (0915 to 0940)

How to form a defensible view on a market you knew nothing about ninety minutes ago.

•   Narrowing a broad sector to a segment small enough to win

•   Sizing a market bottom up from published data instead of quoting a headline number

•   Mapping competitors and, more importantly, substitutes

•   Finding the one regulatory constraint that either kills the idea or protects it

•   Research prompting that forces citations, and cross-checking a second model against the first

•   How to spot a hallucinated source in under a minute

•   Tool ground covered: conversational AI for structured research, AI search, Singapore public data sources including SingStat, ACRA and regulator publications, and a citation log every team keeps.

Module 2  /  Numbers that survive questioning  (0940 to 1010)

The model, the memo, and the three assumptions everything rests on.

•   Choosing a revenue model that fits the market rather than the founder's mood

•   Unit economics from first principles: acquisition cost, lifetime value, gross margin, payback period

•   Building a working model in a spreadsheet with an AI copilot, then deliberately breaking it

•   Sensitivity analysis, and naming the assumptions that would sink the business

•   A simple comparables or return case, sized to what a solo operator can actually reach

•   Writing a one-page investment memo the way an analyst writes one

•   Tool ground covered: spreadsheet modelling with AI assistance, prompt patterns for stress-testing your own numbers, and memo structure.

Module 3  /  The sales engine  (1010 to 1045)

Nothing counts until somebody outside the room replies.

•   Defining an ideal customer profile, and why 'everyone' is not a market

•   Positioning, and the single sentence that earns a reply

•   Pricing: cost-plus against value-based, anchoring, and packaging a solo offer

•   Building and enriching a prospect list fast

•   Writing outbound that does not read as AI-generated, and personalising at speed without sounding like a template

•   Handling the first objection and booking the call

•   Running a pipeline in a free CRM so the claim is verifiable

•   Tool ground covered: prospecting and enrichment tools, a free CRM, email and LinkedIn sequencing, and AI-assisted personalisation with a human quality gate.

Module 4  /  The company in a box  (1045 to 1115)

Everything a real company needs, sized for one person and a stack of agents.

•   Sole proprietorship against private limited, and the point at which switching is worth it

•   What incorporation in Singapore actually involves: name application, registered address, directorship and the paperwork that follows

•   Banking, payments and accounting for a solo operator, and what to automate first

•   The first three contracts you will need: a services agreement, an NDA, and IP assignment

•   PDPA in practice: what data you may hold, what you must tell people, how long you keep it, and what happens when a client's data goes into a chatbot

•   Designing the AI operating stack: which agent runs finance, admin, support and content, and where a human must stay in the loop

•   Tool ground covered: ACRA BizFile+, cloud accounting, payment rails, e-signature, document and knowledge management, and the governance rules that keep an AI-run company out of trouble.

THE FOUR GATES

Every team clears all four. Everything goes into one Founder Pack, submitted at 1500.

Gate

What you do

What you hand in

1  SIGNAL

Read the market. Segment, size, competitors, substitutes, the regulatory constraint that matters.

One-page market brief. Every number carries a source.

2  VALUE

Price the opportunity. Revenue model, unit economics, the three assumptions and what breaks them.

A working model plus a one-page memo.

3  DEMAND

Prove someone will pay. ICP, positioning, price, channel, then send it.

One-page sales plan, ten or more real messages sent, pipeline screenshot with replies logged.

4  ENTITY

Stand up the company. Structure, contracts, finance stack, PDPA, and the agents that run it.

One-page company map where every box is either you or an agent.

RUN SHEET

Time

Block

0830

Registration, coffee, team check-in

0900

Opening and the market draw. Each team draws one of six sectors

0915

THE ARMOURY. Two-hour tooling workshop, four modules

1115

Build block one

1230

Working lunch. Mentor floor opens

1300

Build block two. All outbound must go out in this block

1500

Hard submission. Founder Packs locked. Judges read

1510

Pitches in two parallel rooms. Five minutes, three minutes of questions

1620

Final four on the main stage. Six minutes, four minutes of questions

1700

Awards, prize presentation, close

How the pitching works

Sixteen teams split into two rooms of eight, three judges per room. The top two from each room advance to a final four on the main stage in front of the full panel. Judges receive every Founder Pack at 1500 and read during the break, so pitch time is spent on questions rather than recap. A head judge runs the clock and cuts at time.

JUDGING

Criterion

Weight

What judges look for

Evidence quality

25%

Every claim traceable. Numbers that hold up under questioning

Commercial logic

25%

The model works. The team knows exactly what would break it

Demand proof

20%

Real outbound sent, real responses, honest reporting of what failed

Operating design

15%

The company could actually run. Compliance and data handling taken seriously

Use of AI

15%

Deliberate tool choice and verification, not one prompt and a copy-paste

The one hard rule

Cite or die. Any fabricated figure, invented source or hallucinated citation found by a judge voids the section it appears in. This is stated in the marketing, taught in Module 1, and enforced at the table.

WHO CAN ENTER, AND THE RULES

•   Open to students currently enrolled at any Singapore polytechnic, ITE, university, junior college or millennia institute, and to exchange students studying here

•   Built for business, entrepreneurship, finance, fintech and investment analysis students. Computing and design students are welcome and tend to do well on Gate 4

•   Teams of one to three. Mixed-discipline and mixed-institution teams are encouraged

•   Sixteen teams maximum, roughly forty-eight participants. Registration closes when full and a waitlist opens

•   Free to enter. Lunch and refreshments provided

•   Bring your own laptop and charger. Everything else is provided

•   You own everything you create. CWG Innovations takes no equity and no IP

•   A setup pack goes out five days before with the tool list, accounts to create, the Founder Pack template and the six candidate sectors, so nobody spends the morning signing up for things

The six sectors in the draw

Personal finance and wealth tools for young Singaporeans  /  SME cashflow and payments  /  Sustainability and carbon reporting for small business  /  Health, wellness and eldercare services  /  Education and upskilling  /  Food and F&B supply chain

QUESTIONS WE EXPECT

Do I need to know how to code?

No. Nothing in the day requires code. The build is a company, not software.

Do I need a business idea already?

No. You draw a sector at 0900. Everyone starts level.

Can I come alone?

Yes. Solo entries have their own award, and there is time to form a team at registration if you would rather not go it alone.

Do I have to actually register a company?

No. Incorporation is taught and prepared, not required. The grand prize covers it if the winner wants to go ahead.

What AI tools do I need to pay for?

None. Free tiers cover the whole day. The setup pack lists exactly what to create before you arrive.

Do I really have to email strangers?

Yes. Ten real messages minimum. It is the part everyone remembers.

Who owns what I build?

You do, entirely.

Is it recorded?

The workshop is recorded and shared with participants. Pitches are not recorded unless your team agrees.