YSE Series 2 — Showcasing YAC alumni S2 Skilio
COVID-19 has forced policymakers, academia, investors, and young entrepreneurs to rethink jobs and the future of work. To demonstrate how social entrepreneurs are taking the lead to empower youth and students for entry into the workforce, we spoke to Felix Tan, Co-Founder of Skilio — a one-stop, pedagogy rooted, and data-driven soft skills development platform. Using artificial intelligence, Skilio helps students effectively measure and track personal growth in soft skills over various school experiences and activities to be relevant and ready for the future workplace.
Felix Tan shares the challenges and benefits of being a student entrepreneur, why soft skills are so important in the future work environment and key pieces of advice for fellow youth exploring the entrepreneurship ecosystem.
What is the story behind Skilio? What inspired you to start?
Felix Tan: I started Skilio with my team — Ho Zhi Hui and Dody Senputra — in 2019 with the aim to help youth and students become ready for the future work environment. We noticed that the education system does not teach soft skills, such as leadership, teamwork, and communication. These are important skills employers are often looking for.
The frustrations some of us and our peers were having in regard to our job and internship search prompted us to look into this problem. We realised that a lot of the work that students do throughout their educational journey, whether it is leading a project or volunteering in the community, helps manifest their soft skills. The need for a tool to track these skills led to the launch of Skilio, an AI-powered digital soft skills portfolio. With Skilio, students can document the moments through which they are demonstrating soft skills, and this information is then compiled into a coherent and credible portfolio that they can add to their resume or application for a job or college.
How is Skilio helping students develop the necessary soft skills to be successful in their future work? What soft skills are you focusing on for Skilio?
Felix Tan: At Skilio, we believe that soft skills are not something you are born with, but something that you can nurture along the way. Currently, we are looking at five soft skills in particular: leadership, teamwork, communication, adaptability, and willingness to learn. Based on our research, these are the five foundational soft skills that will allow a young person to gain a competitive advantage when entering the workforce.
Skilio allows students to articulate actions on our platform and, using natural language processing, translates those actions into soft skills. As a next step, Skilio helps students develop their soft skills. Using data points and information gathered, Skilio draws up a soft skills profile for students where they gain insights into their strengths and weaknesses. Skilio then also offers access to resources where they can develop these soft skills.
What have been some of the most pressing challenges during your entrepreneurial journey?
Felix Tan: The biggest challenge as a student founder has been building credibility and getting support from different stakeholders. Many potential investors and clients we pitched to in the beginning were constantly asking if Skilio is a student project. It took us some time to build up credibility and to prove to them that we are not just a student project, but an enterprise. We sought out mentors to tap into their experiences and their network. We also participated in competitions such as the Youth Action Challenge that helped grow our visibility and showed stakeholders in the ecosystem that we are taking this seriously.
Thankfully, for the past two years, we have been able to slowly build that trust with our partners. Currently, we have more than 800 users on the platform.
Tell us about your Youth Action Challenge experience
Felix Tan: We wanted to join the Youth Action Challenge because it allows for holistic stakeholder engagement, something we didn’t see in other initiatives. During the YAC, for example, we were able to engage with representatives from the Ministry of Education to discuss how we could collaborate to make youth and students ready for the future work environment. The programme also gave us access to incredible mentors from different industries and from diverse functions and backgrounds which helped direct the impact of Skilio. Finally, the funding and post-event support offered by the National Youth Council and the Youth Co:Lab Singapore team, including funding and mentorship from CVC Capital Partners has been immensely helpful for our work.
What advice would you offer young and aspiring social entrepreneurs?
Felix Tan: My advice to any aspiring young social entrepreneur would be to take the first step and figure things out along the way. Also, do fall in love with the problem! The reason you should pursue entrepreneurship is that you identify a big problem and make sure it affects you, or the people around you. This mindset helps you stay grounded in times of difficulties and in times of challenges. In a nutshell, be super passionate about the problem because that will be your North Star that you will work towards.
And of course, always look for opportunities and actively seek support and advice. We could not have done it without the support we have gotten from our university. They have given us funding and access to a co-working space at the university. Being in a university environment has also allowed us to build our product more quickly, as we are surrounded by our target audience: youth and students.
What is next for the Future of Work and for Skilio?
Felix Tan: As research suggests, companies will look more at skills-based hiring and how to hire employees with the right soft skills for the right role. With Skilio, we want to equip students who are about to enter the workforce with the soft skills and the mindset needed to be relevant for a potential employer.
In the future, we want Skilio to become the LinkedIn for soft skills. Specifically, we want Skilio to be a depository for every single individual to showcase evidence that they have demonstrated their soft skills. To achieve this goal, we are currently working on a free version so that every student can create their soft skills portfolio. We are aiming to have this launched by the end of summer.
What inspires you and your team to continue on this journey?
Felix Tan: Mostly, our passion to solve this issue, along with our users. Ng Hau Yee, Director of Junior Achievement Singapore, recently gave the following testimony about Skilio: “We have always asked ourselves how do we measure the impact of the JA Company Programme. We found Skilio’s platform that enables students to track their soft skills development over their JA Company Programme journey to be the tool for us to demonstrate such impact measurement. We will be rolling out Skilio to all that are part of our JA Company Programme this year and have recommended it to other locations in APAC.”
About Youth Action Challenge (YAC)
The YAC provides an opportunity for youth to turn their ideas into reality through curated workshops and guidance from experienced industry professionals. The YAC is a key thrust of the SG Youth Action Plan (SG YAP), organised by the National Youth Council in partnership with UNDP and Citi in Singapore through their Youth Co:Lab initiative.
YAC Season 3 is back and open for registrations! For more information, visit: https://youthactionplan.sg/YACSeason3/ (register by September 15th)
About Youth Co:Lab
Co-created in 2017 by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the Citi Foundation, Youth Co:Lab aims to establish a common agenda for countries in the Asia-Pacific region to empower and invest in youth, so that they can accelerate the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) through leadership, social innovation and entrepreneurship. To learn more about the Youth Co: Lab, visit: https://www.youthcolab.org/
