Hello,
This is the first newsletter Asia Market Entry has sent in more than ten years of trading. I am not proud of how long it took.
In the interest of full disclosure, AI is what changed, though not in the writing. What changed is everything around it: the research, the list of people I think will find it useful, and the production now come together in one place, which is what lets me send this every month.
It will come once a month and take about five minutes to read. It is for B2B companies coming into Singapore and Southeast Asia, and the people who help them. It also follows the relaunch of asiamarketentry.com at the end of September, and most of the links below go to pages on the new site.
01 · ON SELLING IN ASIA
Why we start from signals
With good friend Andre at the Singapore Grand Prix last night, the end of a week of meetings with AI companies around the race.
Singapore always comes alive around the Grand Prix, and this year the city was full of AI companies. Last week, at events around the race, we met some of the world's leading and fastest-growing of them, the likes of Higgsfield, Genspark and Fireworks, all at the forefront of AI. It is exciting to see Singapore adopt this new world of AI so early, and lead it.
For most of the years we have been doing this, the best introductions came down to timing. A company had just hired a new leader, opened an office, won a licence or announced a project, and somebody noticed in time to call.
We call this signal-driven selling. For years we did it by hand, from our own reading and from what our partners and the trade agencies we work with told us first. Across more than 500 workshops and client engagements since 2015, the pattern has held: the right moment matters more than the right pitch.
Doing it by hand never scaled. The markets in Asia are so big that we were always limited by how many people each of us could reach in a week. In the last two or three years, the data and the tools have arrived to change that, and we have embraced them. Agentic AI now does much of that work. It runs every day, across every company that matters to a client, and we can be far more targeted than we ever were by hand.
One AI company asked us which businesses in Asia use the most AI, measured in tokens, the units AI models are billed in. Nobody publishes that, so we looked for clues. Working with The GTM Studio, we scanned job boards for companies hiring AI roles in procurement, including roles that manage AI spend, and tracked what companies were announcing about their AI plans.
For a small business owner like me, being able to do that is a gift, and it is why last week felt like more than a good week for Singapore.
See how we find buyers from signals →
02 · INDUSTRIES
Every industry has its own signals
The method barely changes from one industry to the next. The signals do. The rebuilt site now has a page for each of the 14 industries we work in. There is also one for trade agencies and accelerators, and one for investors.
Each page starts with the questions companies in that industry ask us first. Fintech companies usually want meetings with the banks themselves. A bank is most open when something has just changed, such as a new licence or a new head of payments. In manufacturing, projects are announced long before the tenders open, so the announcement is the moment to start.
From November, each issue takes one industry in depth, with examples from that month. Fintech and payments comes first, ahead of the Singapore FinTech Festival on 18 to 20 November.
03 · THE TECHNOLOGY
This month's tool: Clay
Knowing which signals matter is half the job. Finding them, every day and across thousands of companies, is the other half, and the tool at the centre of that for us is Clay.
Clay pulls together data on companies and people from many sources and adds the signals that show who is ready to buy. The people doing the selling then work from that. It is the foundation of the signal-driven selling we do. My other company, The GTM Studio, which I co-founded with Charles Tidswell, builds on it for its clients. Asia Market Entry works out the market and makes the introductions. When a client wants the system built for them, we advise and The GTM Studio builds.
September was a big month for Clay. Its new investment round, announced on 9 September, values the company at $7.1 billion, and more than 17,000 companies now use it.
Charles also hosts Clay Club Singapore. The first two this year were about building the community, with plenty of networking and some fun. The third, on 29 September, was a classroom on building Clay tables in practice. The room built tables that take a company and its contacts and enrich both records, and for many people it was the first time they saw Clay as the tool that can run a whole go-to-market.
Clay Club Singapore on 29 September, hosted by Charles Tidswell. The room building Clay tables.
Next month this section looks at another tool we use and the kind of signal it finds, including where its data runs thin in Asia.
Visit The GTM Studio's website →
04 · ALSO THIS MONTH
One grant instead of three. Market Readiness Assistance, the Productivity Solutions Grant and the Enterprise Development Grant closed to new applications on 29 September. From 30 September they are replaced by a single EDGE Grant from Enterprise Singapore, the government agency that supports company growth. It covers up to 70 per cent of costs for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Larger local companies can now get up to 50 per cent, depending on the activity. The cap is SGD 100,000 per company per year across everything it funds, and it can now support markets you already sell into. Market Readiness Assistance was for SMEs and new markets only. Those two tests ruled out most of the companies I talk to, so it is worth a second look. Read the EDGE Grant details on Enterprise Singapore's site
The Workshop is coming to SWITCH. The Workshop is our free one-hour session for B2B companies growing in Asia, and it is supported by the Singapore Economic Development Board (Singapore EDB). SWITCH is the Singapore Week of Innovation and Technology, at Marina Bay Sands from 27 to 29 October, just over two weeks away. The firms that deliver The Workshop are going together, in a Workshop zone, and we will be there for all three days with our own scheduled sessions. On the morning of Wednesday 28 October I am also on a panel about scaling across Southeast Asia, in the Networking Lounge. We ran The Workshop live at GITEX Asia in April and it worked better than we expected. If you are going, email me at steve.dawson@asiamarketentry.com and I will hold a session for you.
05 · THE DIARY
Dates worth putting in the diary
12 to 15 Oct (from today): Singapore International Cyber Week, with the GovWare exhibition from 13 October. Sands Expo and Convention Centre
21 to 22 Oct: Industrial Transformation ASIA-PACIFIC (ITAP), for manufacturing. Suntec Singapore
21 to 23 Oct: ITB Asia, for travel and hospitality. Sands Expo and Convention Centre
26 to 30 Oct: Singapore International Energy Week. Sands Expo and Convention Centre
27 to 29 Oct: Asia-Pacific Agri-Food Summit, during Singapore International Agri-Food Week. Suntec Singapore
27 to 29 Oct: SWITCH, with The Workshop zone. Sands Expo, Halls A to C, Level 1
4 to 6 Nov: Singapore Urban Mobility Week, the first edition, for transport and mobility. Suntec Singapore
18 to 20 Nov: Singapore FinTech Festival. Singapore Expo
We will be at SWITCH for all three days, and I will send our session times as soon as they are fixed.
Some of you have written a few words about working with us, and there are now more than 50 of those testimonials, on our website and on Trustpilot. Thank you.
The next issue is in November. If anything here is worth picking up, whether SWITCH or your own industry's page, email me at steve.dawson@asiamarketentry.com. It comes straight to me.
Steve
Steve Dawson, Founder, Asia Market Entry
First sent by email on 12 October 2026. Subscribe at asiamarketentry.com/newsletter.
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