'Grandfather of S'pore tech': Sim Wong Hoo's Creative legacy is showing small country can make world-class products, say tech players

SINGAPORE — Creative Technology's founder Sim Wong Hoo put Singapore on the global map for technology innovations and showed that success was possible despite the country's small size. This was the legacy of the 67-year-old who died on Wednesday (Jan 4), industry players and observers said.

Mr James Chan, 41, founder and chief executive officer of Singapore tech startup Ion Mobility, said: “Its world-record-setting products and business-run in its heyday, these remain firmly in tech history annals and continue to inspire future generations of entrepreneurs (within) our shores.” 

Sim's achievements made Mr Chan proud that "Singapore could give birth to such an entrepreneur... and company success story".

Mr Christopher Quek, managing director of tech venture capital firm Trive, said: "(Sim) was a pioneer to the tech startup industry, where a number of successful Singaporeans in the tech industry credit him as an inspiration.”

Entrepreneur Yee Jenn Jong recounted how Sim, who was invited with him to give a talk at a junior college more than 15 years ago, challenged the students to pursue what Sim called “Big Hairy Audacious Goals” or BHAG.

Mr Yee was then chief executive officer of startup AsknLearn, an educational technology firm. He is also a former Non-Constituency Member of Parliament for the Workers’ Party.

“His speech was very motivational and action-oriented," Mr Yee wrote in a Facebook post on Thursday.

"He challenged the audience to dream big. I recall some students coming forward after his talk and using the mic to share their BHAG. I hope they have succeeded.”  

Mr Ku Kay Mok, senior partner of venture capital firm Gobi Partners, believes that besides putting Singapore on the world map, the success of Sim and Creative Technology in the 1990s was one reason why the Singapore Government provided significant financial support to catalyse the development of a vibrant venture capital sector here.

In 1999, for instance, the Government set up a US$1 billion Technopreneurship Investment Fund to co-invest in startups with venture capitalists.

“This has spawned a generation of Singapore venture capitalists who are now part of the global Midas list as they found success investing in the Chinese tech startup scenes in the 2000s,” Mr Ku said, referring to the yearly ranking by Forbes magazine of the most influential and best-performing venture capital investors.

'GRANDFATHER OF SINGAPORE TECH'

People who have followed the tech scene here closely dubbed Sim as the “grandfather of Singapore tech”, being instrumental in putting the country on the tech innovation map. 

Former journalist Oo Gin Lee who covered technology news said: “He’s the one that first put Singapore on the map for high-tech consumer products imagined and built in Singapore.

“Every new player that I have met over the years… they always make a comparison to Mr Sim, whether they like him or don’t like him… the reference is always Creative Technology.” 

Mr Oo, who is now the managing director of a tech public relations firm, said that when Creative Technology was at its height in the 2000s, it “set the standard and set a dream that people can follow”. 

“It was an example of how Singapore may be a small country, but it could be a global champion in consumer tech even with our small population, and this is something that people will always remember,” he added. 

Agreeing, Ms Grace Chng, a former tech news editor at national daily The Straits Times, said that Sim had put Singapore on the map not by luck or happenstance, but with sheer determination. 

She added that she had been on multiple overseas trips with him to tech conventions and, from her interactions with him during those trips, she noticed that Sim was constantly thinking about how to take his company and innovations forward. 

“He would expound on his ideas and where he wanted (his company to go). He was a man with many, many ideas,” Ms Chng said. She is now the editor-in-chief and strategic adviser for a tech media website. 

FROM CHINATOWN TO TAKING ON CUPERTINO'S TECH GIANT

Sim founded Creative Technology with childhood friend Ng Kai Wa in 1981 as a small computer repair shop in Chinatown. Sim had been its chairman and chief executive since then.

The company was known for launching the Sound Blaster sound card in 1989, at that time a breakthrough in audio technology for personal computers. 

The firm also launched the Nomad series of portable audio players, which competed directly with Apple’s iPod and Sony’s digital Walkman. 

Sim sued Apple founder Steve Jobs for patent infringement in 2006 and won S$100 million in settlement from the American tech giant based in Cupertino, a city in California.

In an interview with business news channel CNBC in April 2020, Sim said: “It was something we had to do because Apple did not just, you know, infringe our patent." 

He added: "Actually, Steve came to our booth, saw our products and liked the product. He saw the future of Apple there.”

Creative Technology was also the first Singaporean company to be listed on Nasdaq — America's tech-heavy stock exchange — in 1992.

However, it voluntarily delisted in 2007 and is now trading on the Singapore Exchange, closing at S$1.76 on Thursday, a three-month high.

At its peak in early 2000, the company’s stock traded at about S$64. 

The company has also been losing money in recent years.

Its net loss for fiscal year 2022 ending June 2022 widened to US$10.99 million (S$14.77 million), compared to the US$7.62 million reported in 2021. 

Though critics have been saying that the company now pales in comparison to its peak, with its products arguably not reaching the heights achieved during the company’s heyday, Mr Chan of Ion Mobility said that “the hallowed halls of ‘world class products’ is already a peak that’s unreachable for many”. 

“(Creative Technology) sustained its peak for quite many years. It is certainly not a one-hit wonder in my view.” 

INSPIRATION FOR FORMER EMPLOYEES

Mr Leow Siew Kiat, 58, a former Creative Technology employee who had worked in the company for about 12 years starting in the early 1990s, spoke fondly of his former boss at Sim's wake on Thursday held at the Garden of Remembrance building along Old Choa Chu Kang Road.

Mr Leow said that when he worked overseas, he noticed how his counterparts from other countries would somehow look up to those from bigger markets such as Japan and the United States, while Singaporeans such as himself viewed them as equals.

Mr Leow attributed this to Sim who had “put Singapore on the map of the technology world”, thereby inspiring Singaporeans to operate confidently at the global level as well.

“After working for Creative, when I worked in a multinational company... I always had that kind of confidence and pride, because of my experience working in Creative.”

Another former employee on whom Sim left an indelible mark was Mr Howie Chang, who was only 21 years old and fresh out of school when he first joined Creative Technology in 2006 as a user interface designer.

Mr Chang, now 39, said that his interactions with Sim at the start of his career had imbued in him important values, and even inspired him to start his own company later in 2019. 

He founded Forward School based in Penang, Malaysia, which focuses on software engineering and data science programmes to impart skills to tertiary-level students and working adults.

Sim’s approach to learning was what inspired how he ran the school, Mr Chang said.

The Malaysian and Singapore permanent resident also said that it was Sim’s “big, hairy and audacious goals” that he had seen play out in his years in Creative Technology that inspired him to start a company in the first place. 

“He always, always set that bar extremely high and I think that sort of caught on with me.”