Singapore’s Monk’s Hill Ventures leads Starboard’s $3.5m pre-Series A funding

Singapore-based venture capital (VC) investor Monk’s Hill Ventures has led the $3.5-million pre-Series A funding in Starboard, a platform for founders to start and run their companies globally.

The funding round was also backed by Actium Partners, Iterative Capital, Bruno Poh (General Counsel, Lyte Ventures), Lelaina Lim (CFO, Eu Yang Sang International Limited), Michael Tor (Executive Director, UOB), Soh Gin Wee, Sulyana Binte Abdul Aziz, and Terrence Hoon.

Starboard is focused on building a ‘Company OS (Operating System)’ to address a founder’s need to efficiently run global companies on a single platform with access to a range of corporate services including accounting and bookkeeping, compliance, payroll, visa applications and more. These services also include company formation and structuring, ESOP advisory and fractional-CFO services.

The startup said it will use the funds raised to expand Starboard’s engineering, operations and customer success teams, supporting users in Singapore, Southeast Asia, and the US.

Starboard’s platform automates workflow for corporate entity management and governance to increase productivity and reduce errors by traditional corporate service providers (CSPs). In Singapore alone, there are 2,000 such providers servicing over 290,000 SMEs.

The company has also set up operations in Silicon Valley to enable clients from Singapore and Southeast Asia to manage their US subsidiaries as easily as their local companies. Yuan, a three-time founder himself, strongly believes that US-based companies can easily expand into Asia through Starboard, tapping into the market and talent pool with Singapore as regional headquarters.

“Founders, today, often have to pull information from multiple sources about their business. Starboard is the ‘one place and one team’ solution for founders to efficiently manage their businesses. We are elated to have Monk’s Hill Ventures as our investor and aligned on a common purpose — to enable great founders to build great, enduring companies,” said Melvin Yuan, founder and CEO of Starboard.

The lead investor, Monk’s Hill Ventures, launched its $80 million first fund in 2014, with support from the Singapore Government via the Early Stage Venture Fund (ESVF) scheme under the National Research Foundation (NRF). ESVF selected venture capital (VC) funds investing in Singapore-based early-stage technology start-ups.