How We Launched Our Singapore Startup for Under SGD 8,000

Congratulations! You've decided to take a leap of faith, put on your founder hat and start your first company. Then it hits you: your corporate job never taught you how to actually start a business or make money. You were one function in a big organisation, paid by someone else each month. Now it's just you, doing accounting, legal, brand, marketing, sales, IT and your website, all for the first time.

Don't panic. Our real startup costs in Singapore came to SGD 7,429.84 for the first year. Here's exactly where every dollar went, what we'd skip, and how AI makes launching lean easier than ever.

• We launched GoKoach for SGD 7,429.84 in year one, against a self-imposed cap of SGD 20,000.
• Until a stranger pays you, again and again, you have a project, not a business. Spend like it.
• Our biggest savings came from legal (consultancy agreements instead of a legal pack costing up to SGD 22,500) and development (prototyping with AI first).
• Website and development was our biggest cost, and where we made our most expensive mistake.

What it really cost us to launch GoKoach

Let's rip the band-aid off and let the numbers speak for themselves. Here's what it cost to set up GoKoach Singapore and almost everything you see on this platform. Some items are billed monthly, so we multiplied them by 12 to show a full year.

• Business incorporation: SGD 1,250 a year
• Virtual office: SGD 50 a year
• Legal documents and compliance: SGD 900 one-time (SGD 500 for partnership agreements, SGD 400 for our website terms and conditions and privacy policy)
• Domain registration: SGD 14.29 a year
• Microsoft Business: SGD 219 a year
• Tech subscriptions (Vercel, Supabase, GitHub, AWS and so on): SGD 540 a year
• Website, tech and development: SGD 4,456.55 one-time. Much of this was wasted. More on that below.

Total first-year cost: SGD 7,429.84

Our founder budgeted a maximum of SGD 20,000 to launch this "project", and wasn't willing to invest a cent more until it had proven itself. Which brings us to the most important rule.

A project is not a business yet

Until you've sold your product to a stranger, and kept doing it over a long stretch of time, you don't have a business. You have a project. That's not a bad thing. Every great business starts as one.

While you're at project stage, your main job is to limit financial risk. Never go all-in before you have a single paying customer, let alone repeat ones. You'll almost certainly redo things as you learn that what you thought customers wanted isn't what they actually want. So launch as lean as you possibly can.

Now, let's go through each cost.

Do you need to incorporate a company yet?

For a business like ours, yes, eventually. We debated this for a long time and didn't want to at first. But we couldn't get past compliance without it. Payment gateways, for example, need a registered business and a corporate bank account before they'll connect to your site. A Pte Ltd (private limited company) also protects you from personal liability. And if you have partners, you'll need the company to attach them to your legal documents.

Of our SGD 1,250, only SGD 315 is the government fee: SGD 15 to apply for a name and SGD 300 to register with ACRA. The rest pays a provider to do it properly.

We used Sleek. With no background in accounting or finance, our strategy was simple: pay someone to get it right in year one, and learn how it works by watching. When every dollar is your own, your time is better spent on the business. From year two, if you still don't have traction, you can take over the accounting yourself and save a few thousand dollars a year.

We also chose Sleek because it prices accounting by your expenses (our tier was up to SGD 30,000 a year), while many other providers price by revenue. Work out which suits you.

Our tip: strip your package down to the basics.

• Get only what you need: incorporation, essentials plus corporate secretary, annual accounting and tax filing, and CorpPass setup (the government login your company uses for official services).
• Remove bundled extras: we swapped the "Business Address + Digital Mailroom" add-on (SGD 450 in the quote we got) for VOffice at SGD 50.
• Incorporate as late as you can: the earlier you incorporate, the sooner the financial year clock starts and annual fees come round again. Our product took 4 months to build, and we only incorporated in month 3.

Legal documents: what you actually need at the start

What lawyers will quote you

We called 10 to 20 law firms, so you don't have to. Drafting fees ranged from SGD 600 to SGD 4,500 per document. Most lawyers recommended five: a shareholder agreement, a constitution, an employee stock option plan (ESOP), general terms and conditions, and a privacy policy. That's up to SGD 22,500 in legal fees before you've earned a cent.

This is why we keep coming back to our principle. Don't spend on what you don't need yet, because everything will change as you search for your first customers and product-market fit (the point where people clearly want what you sell). Invest in lawyers once you're a company, not a project. At project stage, a freelance or fractional lawyer, legal advisor or corporate legal consultant can get you what you need for a fraction of the cost.

Decide the deal yourself, then get it drafted

No lawyer in the world will know your business, or negotiate with your partners, better than you. Not without big fees, anyway.

So don't ask a lawyer or legal consultant what to do. Be clear on what you want first. If you have partners, tell the lawyer the deal you want to cut, then have them draft documents to match. You'll be surprised, as we were, how many lawyers have no idea what a lean, bootstrapped project looks like. They recommend a shareholder agreement, constitution and ESOP far earlier than you need them.

Partners vs early employees

Ask yourself: are your partners true partners, or are they early employees?

In our view, partners take on equal risk, whether in capital, sweat equity (unpaid work in exchange for a share) or both. Early employees just agree to work for free. Many don't understand the difference, and ask for crazy amounts like 20, 30 or even 50% of the company as sweat equity. It's your decision in the end, but don't let ignorance push you into this mistake.

Unproven early employees should not go into your shareholder agreement, constitution or board. NEVER. It's the costliest mistake you can make. If you're the founder taking all the risk and bringing on partners to "help out", keep your shareholders, board and cap table (the record of who owns what) as clean as possible. Badly drafted ones can be dealbreakers that crush your company later. You want full control and freedom if things change.

There are common tools like vesting, where shares are earned over time. But in our honest opinion, these suit venture capital (VC) funded start-ups, not project-stage ones.

Why we used consultancy agreements

Here's our tip, and the magic words: consultancy agreements.

We believe any partner who only contributes part-time sweat equity should be on a consultancy agreement for their first year. You don't need a lawyer for this, because a legal consultant will do. It simply agrees upfront on any future stock, equity or payouts. That stops partner greed from taking over if your company becomes wildly successful and everyone suddenly wants a bigger slice of the pie. The rules are set before anyone knows how things will turn out.

If you're the key founder who quit your job and put in the capital, you have every right to ask for full control. See if your partners will agree to a one-year test period before these terms move into a shareholder agreement, constitution or ESOP. It gives you room to change course, and the truth is you'll never know what you need until you execute.

One story sums it all up. Of the 10 to 20 lawyers we spoke to, only one told us: "Pay them if you can afford it, or just draft a consultancy agreement." That's what we did. It was the smartest advice we got, and it was no surprise that he was the only start-up specialist in the bunch. We didn't hire him, because his fees ran into the thousands. He told us simply that we didn't need him yet.

This is what worked for us, not legal advice. Every partnership is different, so make sure the deal you want is drafted properly.

Domain, email and Microsoft setup

If you've always had a corporate IT team to fix your email and tech problems, this one will hurt. As a founder, you suddenly have to work out what "Microsoft Global Admin", "DNS", "CNAME" and "MX record" mean just to get your company emails working. It's irritating, and it eats your time.

After a lot of frustration, we paid an IT specialist from our old company for one hour of his time. A week's worth of troubleshooting was sorted in a day. We recommend you do the same. Our guy is listed on GoKoach, and he's magic: [LINK: book our IT expert on GoKoach].

The 3 tech subscriptions every website needs

If you've never built a website, you only need to understand three core subscriptions:

• Hosting (AWS, Vercel or Netlify): this lets people visit and see your website.
• Database (Supabase or Firebase): this is where all your data and records are stored.
• Code (GitHub): this is where your code lives. Developers work on it together, every version is saved, and you can safely go back to an old version if something breaks.

Our tip: trust your tech partner, but pay the bills yourself.

Many non-technical founders worry that their developer or tech partner will run off with the product. The honest answer is that you have to trust them. If you can't, why are they your partner?

At the early stage, you'll also want to save on seats. Two users (you plus a developer) can double your running costs. If that's not a problem, pay for two seats. If it is, you'll have to trust them and work with shared logins. Either way, the one safeguard you can control is this: make sure you're the one paying all the bills.

How much it costs to build a website or app in Singapore

This is where we went through the ring of fire, and where much of our SGD 4,456.55 was wasted. Our mistake: we paid a developer before we had a prototype, then had to rebuild it.

Do you need a technical co-founder?

Say you're a completely non-technical founder building a SaaS (software sold as a subscription), a marketplace or any product with technology at its core. If you don't have deep pockets, please get a technical co-founder, or at least start with a developer or engineer. Otherwise, here's what will happen: you'll build what you think people want, find out it's not quite right, and have to rebuild within six months.

If you're selling goods, services or products that don't need much customisation, you don't need one. Shopify, Wix or Envato templates will do the job.

If you need lots of customisation, you need what's called a custom build. That means building everything from scratch: booking systems, carts, calendars and so on. You can plug in ready-made tools (integrations or APIs), but think of it as running 5 to 10 different systems at once. You'll still need a capable developer to join them up, and each one has its own subscription cost.

The 4 roles nobody tells you about

There's no single tech person who can do everything below. We'll cover this in its own post in the future. For now, know that without a CTO (chief technology officer) to connect the dots, these are the people you'll have to find and manage yourself:

• Brand system: before you build anything, you need your foundations: brand colours, logos and fonts at minimum.
• UI/UX designer: they turn your brand system into a digital design system (website colours, buttons, headers, navigation bars). They also create the sitemap, the structure for every page and action on your platform.
• Web developer (front-end and back-end): front-end is what users see. Back-end is what they don't: your databases, customer information and security. If your developer is "full-stack", they can do both and you're in luck. If not, you'll struggle.
• Performance marketing (SEO, AI search, Google Analytics, Meta Pixel): we'd love to call this optional, but it's not. It's how you track your core numbers (visits, actions, traffic sources and conversions) and how you run Meta ads. You can spend weeks working it out yourself, or get a coach or expert to set it up for you.

What agencies quoted us

We asked 10 to 20 companies in Singapore to quote for building GoKoach. Most came back between SGD 12,000 and SGD 60,000. Freelance platforms like Fiverr came in around SGD 8,000 to SGD 10,000 for similar work. They'll execute, but don't expect them to think about or recommend how your site should work.

Our gold standard process: prototype it yourself with AI first

If all of the above gives you major panic, good. We've seen so many people get caught in development traps and pay ridiculous amounts just to finish their project. Not even a company. A project.

This is THE GOLD STANDARD process. Hold on to it tightly and take our word for it. To save on UI/UX and development time, you as the founder must first build your own working prototype, turning your vision into something tangible. Luckily for all of us, AI has been god-sent.

1. Get a lite brand kit. Before you even start your company, have a brand strategist create your brand colours, logo and fonts at minimum. With the right people, this costs SGD 500 to SGD 2,500, and you can find them on GoKoach: [LINK: browse brand strategists on GoKoach].
2. Decide your features yourself. This is YOUR job as the founder, not the designer's or the developer's. Remember, they're not business people. Will you have a booking system? What's the flow? Which buttons do you need?
3. Build a prototype with AI. Give Claude Design, Claude's design tool, your brand kit and your feature list. Ask it for a "high-fidelity, mobile-responsive UI mock-up". You're not a UI/UX designer, and that's the magic of AI: you don't need to be.
4. Hand it to a UI/UX designer. Your prototype shows them exactly what you want, and they polish it until it's pixel-perfect.
5. Then hand it to your developer to code it and bring it to life.

Could you skip the developer and build it yourself with an AI coding tool like Claude Code? You could. But there will be bugs, security flaws, updates and fixes that are hard to manage well if you're non-technical. Save yourself the hassle. That's why we say that if you're building a custom or tech-core product, you absolutely should find a technical partner.

Follow this process and you'll cut your chances of costly mistakes, and save a ton of money and time. We learned the hard way, so you don't have to.

Get help from founders who've done it

Starting a business is not easy. The hardest part isn't any single task. It's having to be good at ten jobs at once, all for the first time, with nobody to tell you what you really need and what you can skip. But if you stay curious and resourceful, and keep learning, it's one of the most rewarding things you'll ever do.

That's as much as we could pack into one post. For everything else, the GoKoach team offers free consultations for small businesses and early-stage founders who want big results, value precision and want to work lean without big agency budgets. Our team includes:

• Brand strategists
• Web developers
• PR and influencer specialists
• Social media and content specialists
• Digital marketing specialists

We're founders ourselves. Our consulting arm understands what bootstrapped founders really need, and what big agencies that burn cash never will: how to work lean.

To book your free consultation, WhatsApp us at +65 8985 2330 or email enquiry@gokoach.com with your requirements.

FAQs

How much does it cost to register a company in Singapore?

The government fee is SGD 315: SGD 15 to apply for a company name and SGD 300 to register with ACRA. Most founders also pay a provider for incorporation, a corporate secretary and accounting, which brought our first-year total for this to SGD 1,250.

Do I need a company secretary in Singapore?

Yes. Every Singapore private limited company must appoint a company secretary within six months of incorporation. That's why a corporate secretary is part of most incorporation packages.

Can I accept online payments without a registered company?

It depends on the payment provider. Some accept individuals or sole proprietors, but the gateways we needed required a registered business and a corporate bank account, which is why we eventually incorporated.

Can a non-technical founder build an app with AI?

You can build a working prototype with AI tools like Claude Design, even with no design or coding background. For a live product that handles payments and customer data, we still recommend a developer or technical partner to manage bugs and security.