Financing and budgeting are essential first steps for any entrepreneur looking to start and grow their business. The skills and knowledge required to curate a financing plan aside, getting funding-ready is another area that is critical to a business’ long-term sustainability, and it is something that many early-stage or aspiring entrepreneurs struggle with.
That is why we once again collaborated with our long-time program partner, FundFluent, to organize a workshop on 17 January to equip the mentees and mentors of our 2025-26 Mentorship Program for Ethnically Diverse Entrepreneurs with the necessary knowledge and information to achieve funding readiness for their business ventures.
Approaching Funding As A Tool
Running the funding readiness workshop in collaboration with us for the fourth year, FundFluent, our program partner since the inauguration of the Mentorship Program, took participants on a deep dive into the basics of budgeting and building funding readiness.
Leveraging their respective experiences of coming from families of small business owners, Jenny Au, Founder and CEO, and Wilson Tai, Co-founder and COO, generously shared their knowledge on financing and budgeting, taking advantage of this time of year typically reserved for financial review and planning.
Stressing the importance of approaching funding as a tool instead of a starting point, Jenny and Wilson encouraged participants to identify the missing piece in their business operations, and make plans for addressing that missing piece with the appropriate funding and budgeting solutions.
For this purpose, the FundFluent team prepared a “funding readiness scorecard” for the participants to use as a self-check mechanism to understand their current situation, taking into account budget planning, cash pressure, existing systems and habits, governance, and compliance etc.
With the scorecard, participants were better able to identify the missing pieces, prioritize areas that demand immediate actions, before coming up with a “focus statement” that would serve as a guide for subsequent funding option exploration. Here, the FundFluent team also offered their expert insights to help participants find ways to address their respective missing pieces.
Nearing the end of the workshop, participants delved into the “Funding Readiness Action Canvas” to plan out the actions to tackle the issues outlined in their respective focus statements. This was followed by a Q&A session where participants’ queries regarding financing, budgeting, and funding readiness were answered by the FundFluent team, drawing insights from their rich experience in supporting startups and small businesses secure funding with clarity and confidence.
“Incredibly Useful” Workshop for Early-stage Entrepreneurs
We couldn’t have equipped our mentee entrepreneurs with the knowledge and skills to build funding-readiness for their businesses without the long-time support of FundFluent, who has been organizing this workshop since our inaugural Mentorship Program.
“We keep coming back to this program because we see ourselves in these founders,” said Jenny and Wilson. “Many people aren’t taught to talk openly about budgets, cash flow, or financial trade-offs, even though these factors determine whether a business survives. Our partnership with FSI is deeply aligned with our mission to make the business world more friendly to small businesses and startups. Funding itself is not the starting point; clarity on what actually needs funding is. Our hope is that participants leave with the confidence to translate that clarity into practical financing strategies that support sustainable growth.”
Indeed, the workshop was well received by the Mentorship Program participants, with 85% rating it as very satisfactory, and the rest 15% describing it as satisfactory.
Said Kaylini Naidoo, Founder of Upeeling: “I really found the session incredibly useful for me as someone only starting their business now. It’s great to know what the fundamentals are and to try build these systems and consistent habits from the start, to help with planning and budgeting as well as feeling confident in knowing your numbers.”
“Thank you for offering this session,” said Jerome Bautista, Co-founder of Sacred Space Therapy and Wellness Limited. “It was very helpful for a new entrepreneur in terms of what we need to look at and how to do so with limited resources available. The worksheets are very helpful to go through!”
“The session was an eye-opener,” said Nisreen Muchhala, Founder of Nourish Scrubs. “The use of personal examples helped simplify complex issues.”
Get Involved
The mentees and mentors of our program will convene again on 7 February for the Pitch Perfect workshop to build and practise business pitches to capture target audiences. Stay tuned to this space!
A big shout-out to the Hive Poho, our venue partner who has been supporting us and our community of under-resourced entrepreneurs through our mutually beneficial partnership. Our program’s success also owes in part to the dedicated support of FundFluent, who doesn’t only co-host the funding readiness workshop for our program participants, but its COO, Wilson Tai, has also served as a mentor to the three past annual cohorts of aspiring and early-stage entrepreneurs.
If you would like to support our community of under-resourced ethnically diverse entrepreneurs, whether as a sponsor, subject matter expert, or skills-based volunteer, get in touch with us at cbs@shared-impact.com.
