From Military Officer To Entrepreneur: How GetGo’s Founder, Toh Ting Feng, Took A Structured Approach To Entrepreneurship

Whether you have seen their cars on the road or tried one yourself, chances are that you would have seen one of GetGo’s carsharing fleet on the roads of Singapore.

Launched in February 2021 during the pandemic, GetGo has grown to become Singapore’s largest Point A-to-A carsharing service in Singapore. Ting Feng co-founded GetGo with a team of 10, and now has 130 employees. Scaling a business is a difficult task. But he took it all in stride.

Despite having an entrepreneurial family background, it is possible to enter military service 

Ting Feng grew to be surrounded both by cars and entrepreneurs as a child. His father was a first-generation entrepreneur – a secondary school dropout who started his own used car trading business.

“Growing up, I never had the aspiration to be in the used car business, but I always knew that at some point in time, I wanted to be an entrepreneur.”

Ting Feng, a junior college graduate, chose to enter the military profession instead of choosing to become an entrepreneur. After accepting a SAF Scholarship, he was sponsored for four years to study in the US. He then served seven more years in the military as well as MINDEF.

“I thought it was meaningful and exciting, and at the back of my mind, I knew that if I wanted to build a large and meaningful business, I needed to be a leader who understood both strategy and operations.”

Moving from the Civil Service to the Private Sector: From a Giant Organization to Large Organisations

It is difficult to leave a secure and promising career after seven years of service. According to Ting Feng, “it’s very tempting to continue to stay… but coming from an entrepreneurial family, I knew that eventually, I do want to do my own thing.”

After making the tough decision to leave the SAF, he could either help grow the family business or start one of his own. Ting Feng decided to enter the private sector.

“I knew that I wasn’t ready to jump into entrepreneurship straight away. I’ve only been in the civil services for seven years. I haven’t had to be responsible for a P&L. I wanted to be more visible. So, I decided to take a more structured approach towards entrepreneurship.”

During his time in private sector (CapitaLand and Grab), Ting Feng went from “National Defence to real estate development to the leading edge of mobility tech”. These experiences allowed him to build a portfolio of corporate business.

It is about the people you meet on your journey

Although most people view entrepreneurship as something that you can do immediately, there are many benefits to taking a more indirect route. Ting Feng has had many different career paths and gained valuable experience that can help him deal with the challenges of starting a company. He has built relationships with many of the core members of his team, and that is even more important.

“Entrepreneurship is never about one person or even just about the founders. It’s about the team you build together. Some of the relationships that I built came back to pay back in terms of building the team as well.”

Johnson Lim, his co-founder, Chief Marketing Officer and Malik Badaruddin were both people Ting Feng had made connections with while he managed his family’s investments following his corporate career. GetGo’s Chief Product Officer, Lionel Fong, was his university mate who had decided to relocate back to Singapore. Ting Feng took the longer route to start his business and was able to put together an A-team to solve one problem. This problem and this opportunity came up during the pandemic.

Timing is crucial when it comes to starting a business

“Not everyone is fortunate enough to find a meaningful problem that they are more uniquely positioned to solve”

Ting Feng’s COVID-19 experience was not easy for everyone. But he and his team were in a place to help others start GetGo. The right people, skillsets, and background were all necessary to make the pandemic a success.

“Timing is so important if you try to start this business. Five years ago, we might have been struggling. There wouldn’t have been COVID as the catalyst, technology won’t have been advanced. There’s a tech saying: sometimes if you are early, you are wrong. So, we also did this at the right time as well”

Ting Feng and his cofounder founded GetGo in February 2021.

Read Also: From Being $70k in Debt to Building Singapore’s No.1 Online Renovation Media Portal, The Story of James Soh, Founder Of Renopedia

Scale from The GetGo

While most entrepreneurs struggle to scale their businesses, Ting Feng’s experience, through his SAF leadership days and private sector work, enabled him to set the company up for success when it comes to growing the team and operations in a structured manner. GetGo’s original 8 employees have grown to 130 since the company’s launch.

Ting Feng, GetGo and their team had big dreams from the beginning.

“You want to solve a problem in a meaningful way. You need to solve the problem at large scale. So you need to have the end in mind or at least some milestones. Next, you must plan and work towards it. How am I going to hire and organize myself and the team to solve this problem in a larger and larger manner?”

Ting Feng, along with the GetGo team, have steadily moved towards larger milestones since their initial press release at their launch. They set out their goal of 1,000 cars by 2021.

They are also working towards their vision of a sustainable mobility ecosystem. Their goal is to have more electric cars in Singapore by 2030. They also plan to expand their service abroad.

As we parted ways, what struck me about Ting Feng’s entrepreneurial journey was how his structured approach to entrepreneurship has led him to his current place as the co-founder of GetGo. He did not jump into a new venture as a young man, but he learned from his experiences and built up his knowledge so that he could create an A team to solve the problem.

You can also read The Koufu Story: From a coffee shop to a food brand conglomerate

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