HE MAY be just 26, but that has not stopped Justin Lee from thinking big. Lest you dismiss him as nothing but a dreamer, know this: Mr Lee is responsible for getting Facebook, a social networking site that is all the rage here, to open their network to three local universities, National University of Singapore (NUS), Nanyang Technological University (NTU) and Singapore Management University (SMU), in 2006.

He is also the co-founder of Entrepreneur27, a company that aims to help technology entrepreneurs, people who are interested in starting, or have started, a technology company. Entrepreneur27, or E27, is also the sister company of an organisation of the same name in Silicon Valley.

All that came about after a trip to Silicon Valley - home to a large number of high-tech businesses. A heartfelt interest in technology, in particular programming, led Justin to a one-year stint to the valley to learn from the experts in the field.

His interest in programming started in secondary school. 'My school actually had a programming class and forced everyone to take it,' he said.

But being 'forced' to study spurred his interest. 'It got to a point where I was so hooked, I went to the library and tried reading every single book on programming, and tried out every single exercise (in the books),' he said. In fact, he became so obsessed with programming that he would work on it the minute he got home from school every day, and did not stop till late at night.

He also took part in numerous programming competitions. 'In secondary school and junior college, my aim was to win prizes. I think I won enough to lead a comfortable life as a kid,' he said.

This passion did not wane after he entered university. The NUS student, upon hearing about the university's Overseas Colleges Programme (NOC) - which provides opportunities for students to spend a year of their undergraduate life overseas, working and studying in entrepreneurial-academic hubs around the world - immediately set his heart on getting on the programme.

Under the NOC, students can choose to go to IT hubs like Silicon Valley or Philadelphia in the US, Shanghai in China, Stockholm in Sweden or Bangalore in India, and study at Stanford University, University of Pennsylvania, Fudan University, Swedish Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) or the Indian Institute of Science respectively.

'Back in 1999 during the dotcom boom, I read magazines like Wired and Business 2.0, which carried many stories about entrepreneurs starting up companies and creating innovative products,' he said. 'I wanted to be a part of it.'

That desire spurred him to work hard to qualify for the programme, and the hard work paid off. In 2005, he travelled to Silicon Valley to work for a company called L2 Solutions, which helps create personalised marketing campaigns for its clients.

While the environment was not as lively because of the bursting of the dotcom bubble in 2001, things were slowly picking up with companies like Google, which launched its initial public stock offering in 2004.

'You can see the change,' he said. 'When I first got there in January 2005, the place was quite empty. But by the end of the year, rents were up and people were raising a lot of venture capital money.'

At Silicon Valley, he got to speak to people like Jerry Yang, co-founder of Yahoo; Luke Nosek, co-founder of PayPal and John Doerr, a venture capitalist who directed funding to companies like Google, Amazon.com and Sun Microsystems.

It was a priceless experience, Mr Lee said. He also met people from the Facebook team, and together with two friends Bjorn Lee and Qie Tao, pitched to the team the idea of opening up the network to the three universities in Singapore. A few months later, Facebook opened its networking site in Singapore, making the country the first in Asia to be added to the network. There are now more than 250,000 people in the Singapore network.

Having been a part of so much action, it is little wonder then that Mr Lee and his friends began to feel bored when they returned to Singapore. 'The successes we saw in Silicon Valley became a part of our lives,' he said. 'We personally knew people who became successful there, and that drove us to want to make things better when we came back to Singapore.

'The landscape here isn't as exciting, but we have people here with the brains, people with the talent and the energy to do stuff,' he said.

So even though it was his honours year at NUS, Mr Lee, together with Mr Bjorn Lee, decided to set up E27 in January 2006. The company organises events for people below the age of 27 to share their ideas and proposals on technology entrepreneurship with other conference participants. The aim is to create an open knowledge-sharing culture that is pervasive in Silicon Valley.

A year later, the E27 team came up with the Garage, a scheme that provides help and nurtures ideas and technology startups in Singapore. It collaborates with NUS Enterprise to provide grants of up to $55,000 as well as advice to these companies.

'Last year, we were focusing on creating high-quality events at E27. This year, we embarked on creating high-quality companies at the Garage,' Mr Lee said.

Naysayers may dismiss all these as fledgling efforts at best. After all, it's easy to set up a company, but it's not easy to run them successfully. Thankfully for Mr Lee, E27 is not mere hot air.

For instance, the company organised the Facebook Developer Garage in Singapore in October. The event is a forum to enable participants to engage in a wide array of activities, including sharing ideas with local application developers and looking for partners for projects. It was the first time that the forum, which requires approval from the Facebook team before it can be organised, was held in an Asian country. It attracted more than 150 participants.

The Garage has caught the eye of Reza Behnam, ex-managing director of Yahoo South-east Asia. He now serves as an adviser.

Said Mr Lee: 'I want to see a mini Silicon Valley here.'

Is this article useful to you?