Posted on by blockadmin

All Founder's Stories

He Failed 3 Startups. So How Did The 4th Succeed?

15/07/2025

You wanted to get on a train but the gates wouldn’t budge because the card had insufficient value. As you tried to reload it, you realised that both your personal and company accounts were empty. You couldn’t even scrape together $10 to meet the minimum top-up value for public transport.

 

This was Eric Chean’s reality in early 2020, as the toll of running his third consecutive business completely engulfed his finances.

 

“What exactly am I doing with my life?” Eric asked himself as he walked to his destination. “I could have worked for a Big 4 firm. I could have been in a bank. Why am I doing this?”

 

An Entrepreneur Who Couldn’t Stop

 

For most people, that moment would have been a wake-up call to get a “real” job. But not for Eric, who saw entrepreneurship as his life’s purpose.

 

The enterprising streak started soon after finishing mandatory military service at 21. Instead of heading straight to university, he took a gap year to work for his uncle’s oil and gas business in Dubai, much to his parents’ strong disapproval.

Eric made waves in the startup competition circuit with his second startup, Marine Nexus.

 

But Eric thrived and came home to start two ventures during his undergraduate days. Though both ceased operations, Eric was emboldened by the journey and in 2018 embarked on his most ambitious startup yet: Ship Supplies Direct, the “Uber of the Seas.”

 

The Third Startup That Almost Made It

 

Massive cargo ships typically anchor in Singapore waters for just a day and during this period they had to restock all kinds of supplies from land. Deliveries from onshore to offshore were inefficient and costly: one small boat per ship per trip, so that boat drivers could earn more. 

 

Eric saw the same opportunity that made food delivery platforms billions: route optimisation and consolidation. Why not have one boat serve multiple ships? It was Logistics 101, but nobody in the traditional marine industry was thinking digitally.

Eric explaining Ship Supplies Direct’s proposition at BLOCK71

 

The vision was brilliant but the execution got messy.

 

Eric soon found himself subsidising clients to generate volume, which he needed for his optimisation algorithm. And yet, while his clients demanded 60-90 day payment windows, Eric was paying suppliers with terrible 30-day terms. Bootstrapped, the startup was fast burning cash to the bottom. 

 

“I was prioritising user acquisition,” Eric explained. “I had a chicken-and-egg problem. I was saying okay, I need scale, but I can’t get good rates if I have no volume, and I can’t get volume if I have no good pricing.”

 

A few days after the train station incident, a client’s payment came through. With a little room to breathe, Eric shifted from growth to receivables to claw his way back to stability.

With more certainty, Eric embarked on a fundraising journey in late 2020.

 

The new focus gave Eric the opportunity to restart his fundraising efforts. But just as he was making his pitch rounds, his CTO decided to call it quits. Being the non-technical founder and not wanting to outsource development, Eric simply couldn’t produce an acceptable route optimisation algorithm and so decided to wind down the startup in 2021.

 

Fourth Time’s The Charm

 

While many entrepreneurs would lick their wounds and maybe write a LinkedIn post about “failing fast”, Eric was already planning his next move before the remains of his third startup could turn cold. He was thinking of something totally different but as fate would have it, he was introduced to Mr Shamir Rahim, an established founder in the logistics space and an excellent data architect. Shamir had also wanted to create a maritime version of Uber and was looking for someone with strong commercial experience in the industry.

 

Someone exactly like Eric.

Co-founders of GotSurge: Shamir (left), Eric (centre), and Naazira (2nd from right)

 

With an aligned vision and perfectly complementary expertise, the duo set out to create GotSurge with another co-founder, Ms Naazira Nasir. It was Eric’s fourth venture and an upgraded version of his previous startup.

 

GotSurge turned out to be a breath of fresh air and went on to win first prize at the 2022 Smart Port Challenge, organised by PIER71™ and Maritime Port Authority of Singapore. It was then acquired by KSLE-listed Yinson Holdings the same year.

 

Notes For New Founders

Photo credit: Yinson GreenTech

 

Today, Eric is with Yinson GreenTech pushing for decarbonisation of the maritime sector, launching electric vessels and building marine electrification infrastructure. Though in a corporate setting, he still operates like a founder, thanks to the organisation’s empowerment. 

 

For anyone wanting to launch startups, Eric offers the following pointers:  

  • If you can, start young. Start when you have nothing to lose.

  • Choose your crowd carefully. Who you spend time with affects what you think is ‘normal’.

  • Focus on value creation, not valuations. Solving a problem you’re passionate about is your top priority.  

  • Your lowest point is not the end, just an expensive market research.

 

There’s always a time and place for everything. Eric persisted with extraordinary grit and finally met the right people at the right moment. If you’ve been tirelessly building your future, we hope Eric’s journey can give you the strength to continue.