The SAFE Signs in Singapore Because the ISA Fund Never Cut a Peso
Filipino founders keep booking one-way flights to close seed rounds abroad, because a law that promised money at home still hasn't wired a single first check.
A founder in Makati can pitch, negotiate, and sign a term sheet without ever leaving her laptop. Then she books a flight to Changi anyway, because the money that actually clears sits in a Singapore account, not a Manila one.
The Innovation and Startup Act was supposed to fix exactly this. It set up support programs, promised grants, and named a fund meant to put public capital behind early companies before private investors would. Years on, founders describe the same thing: paperwork moves, checks don't.
What a first check is supposed to do
Seed rounds work on trust and timing. The earliest money takes the most risk, and it makes everyone after it feel safer to follow. That first check is the whole point, and it is precisely the one the law's fund has been slow to write.
So founders route around the gap. They incorporate a holding company in Singapore, sign a SAFE that investors already recognize, and close in dollars that hit the account inside a week. The Philippine operating company becomes a subsidiary, and the intellectual property, the cap table, and the exit all sit offshore.
PEZA paper against a bank transfer
The incentive agencies pitch tax perks and registration status, and those matter later, once a company has revenue and headcount. At the seed stage a founder needs cash to make payroll and ship a product, and a certificate of registration doesn't cover either.
PEZA and the CREATE MORE regime can offer a founder standing. They can't offer speed. A registration that takes months of endorsements loses every time to a wire that clears before the next salary run, and founders make that call with their eyes open.
This isn't only a Manila problem. Cebu and Davao founders run the same math, and startup groups across the region point out that some neighboring governments have moved faster on public co-investment while the Philippine version stayed a line item.
Who keeps the upside
The cost lands quietly. When the parent company sits in Singapore, the taxable exit sits there too, and the jobs that stay in the Philippines are the support roles, not the ownership. The country trains the engineers, hosts the users, and absorbs the churn, while the capital gains clear on someone else's ledger.
Fixing this doesn't require a new law. It requires the fund the existing one already authorized to name a check size, publish a timeline, and disburse to a company that can prove traction, without a founder having to fly out to raise it.
Until then, the pattern holds. The founder signs the SAFE in a serviced office near Raffles Place, wires her own runway home, and files the PEZA paperwork later, once the money that made it possible has already picked its country.
