Founders to Be Awarded for Best ARR "Performance" at This Year’s Startup Oscars
Southeast Asia hosts its first Startup Oscars, awarding founders for the most wildly creative ARR claims in the region’s tech scene.
SINGAPORE — Southeast Asia’s venture community will host the first-ever Startup Oscars, a glitzy awards ceremony recognizing the region’s most imaginative approaches to “Annual Recurring Revenue.” The event, to be held at Marina Bay Sands, will feature a black-tie red carpet, a token-based seating arrangement, and a champagne sponsor “generously annualized” at $1.2 million ARR.
Organizers say the awards are meant to “honor the artistry behind startup metrics” in an increasingly crowded market. “Founders are the new storytellers,” said committee chair Reynard Lim of Infinity Ventures. “This isn’t about financial performance. This is about vision, confidence, and multiplying a pilot program by 365 with conviction.”
Categories announced so far include Best Fictional Run-Rate, Most Believable Pilot Spin-Up, and a special award for Lifetime Achievement in Annualizing Nothing.
While the official shortlist won’t be released until next week, several rumored nominees are already making headlines. One fintech startup from Jakarta is said to have secured a nomination for reporting $25 million ARR based entirely on a free trial sign-up sheet. A Singapore-based AI platform earned attention for its “aspirational revenue projection,” which converts a single whale customer’s usage during Ramadan into a full-year forecast.
“These founders are pushing the boundaries of what ARR can be,” said lead judge Anika Sharma, a partner at the regional accelerator Rainforest Labs. “It takes true skill to annualize an event sponsorship, a one-week hackathon prize, or an invoice that hasn’t been paid yet. We’re recognizing that creativity.”
Sources close to the committee say there will also be a special “Audience Award” for Best Use of a Spurious Metric, voted on live by attending VCs via an app that converts applause into notional MRR.
Investors are embracing the event as a useful networking opportunity. “These awards help us identify which founders are the boldest,” said Victor Ngo, GP at Tiger Unicorn Capital. “Frankly, if someone can sell us on $100 million ARR from a two-week pilot, they can probably sell enterprise software too.”
Critics, however, argue that the awards normalize what has become an industry-wide numbers game. “It’s fun until the lawsuits start,” said an accounting professor at the National University of Singapore. “At some point, ‘creative accounting’ stops being cute.”
Still, organizers insist the Startup Oscars are meant to celebrate narrative craft, not to condone fraud. “This is a night for founders to shine,” said Lim. “Let’s not get bogged down by definitions like ‘recurring’ or ‘revenue.’”
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