One Sneak Peek Into A Metaverse For Tomorrow's Dreamers

At the age of 10, he was building games for fun. 

Now, he’s creating virtual worlds that make dreams a reality for others.

Winston here is the CEO of Finute, which creates virtual worlds for the metaverse. 

His clients include large multinational corporations, government bodies, SMEs and non-profits. 

Notable clients include the Ministry of Defence, Singapore Police Force and the Singapore Civil Defence Force. 

They also collaborate with the National Day Parade every year, 

And their games allow their young players to experience whatever career they are curious about and learn what the real working world is like. 

He started all these as a young student studying for his A Levels in Millennia Institute, the only A Level school that provides the Commerce stream. 

Despite his young age, Winston has spoken at international and national level conferences and events like the Singapore FinTech Festival and AsiaTech x Singapore.

He has also guest lectured at the National University of Singapore for Master of Computing students. 

1. Time Management for Entrepreneurs

“Definitely, sacrifices will have to be made. 

To me, it is about setting and attaining achievable goals. I knew what course I wanted to enter in university, so I could just aim for the bare minimum to enter the course. This sacrifice allows me to pursue my startup dreams. It’s really about time management and planning, which you pick up over time. 

Currently, my team has around five to ten people. Some of them I met online, while the others are my real life friends. We came up with the idea together and wanted to create something.” 

2. On Public Speaking

“UNESCO contacted me to speak at the Artificial Intelligence For International Accessibility Day. 

It was quite interesting as I was able to talk to a vast audience, although they were mainly online. 

This opportunity gave me the chance to talk to conference attendees from across the world, including the Middle East and the Caribbean. Through this experience, I learnt more about what others have been using AI for. This happened when Chat GPT wasn’t in the mainstream yet, so there was a niche community of AI people.  

It was very eye-opening for me.

I think it is important to be genuine with what you do. If you know what you do and what your subject matter expert is at, the most important thing will be to be genuine with your words. Once you are genuine, thoughts would come to you. Instead of you talking to the air, a speech is more of a dialogue with the audience, where they will ask you questions. It doesn’t really have to be scary as you can also practice it. 

But the most important factor will still be authenticity as delivering something that is over-scripted will be tough for me to remember. And remember to understand your audience. If the audience is not as tech savvy, you don’t have to go into the nitty gritty details. Just the general view. Or they won’t understand what you are saying as the technical words will be like jargon to them.” 

3. The startup scene in Singapore

“The local startup scene is interesting. There is a lot of support given for entrepreneurs, so there are a lot of successful startups. Good examples are Carousell and Sea Group . 

These are both home-grown singapore startups and brands. 

For students who are interested in entrepreneurship, there is quite a lot of support given to people who want to be part of this ecosystem. Most polytechnics and universities have an entrepreneurship arm which supports student founders in their journey through grants and mentorship.

However, as my school was an A Level school, there was virtually no support for entrepreneurial ventures. 

I was the President of the Entrepreneurship Club at MI, and I had to juggle both responsibilities as a founder and CCA President, which required me to raise over 5K SGD for charity. 

Despite not being a Polytechnic student, I am grateful that Ngee Ann Polytechnic allowed me to incubate there and receive their mentorship and support. 

Although I believe more should be done to support student entrepreneurs as a lot of local grants currently are only given to full-time founders. I can’t attend a full-time university because of this.” 

4. Advice to youths

“The founder journey is not easy. Some people, when they start up, think creating a company is glamorous. It is not what it seems. The work is never about fame or fortune, but rather about creating something that addresses a need and a problem. 

When creating a startup, you have to know what is the need that you are trying to address. It will be very difficult if the service you are providing is not needed. It is important to see if there is the right product-market fit.

Lastly, most people cannot juggle both running a startup and their education. If you can get the best of both worlds that will be great.”

Connect with Winston here: linkedin.com/in/w-nston

Follow our telegram channel: https://t.me/onesneakpeekinto

And that is all for today’s One Sneak Peek Into.

Stay tuned for more insights from our interview series as we continue to explore the stories of trailblazers breaking barriers and redefining success.