Entrepreneur and best-selling author Nir Eyal was one of the event’s keynote speakers, with a presentation based on his book Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life. He talked about how to go from being distractable to indistractable—something he identified as being “the skill of the century”.

Eyal spoke of two triggers that distract us but are key to controlling our attention. These include external triggers, the “dings, pings and rings” that come at us. These amount to just 10 percent of total triggers and can be easily mitigated by adjusting phone notifications settings, creating no-phone zones, or using an app to stay focused, suggestions of which include: Forest,which lets you to decide how much time you want to do focused work for; Cold Turkey, a desktop app that blocks distracting websites; and Focusmate.com, which allows you to make a social pact with another person to stay focused and keeps you accountable. 

The other trigger Eyal identifies is internal. These start from within and are caused by uncomfortable emotional states that we seek to escape, such as boredom, loneliness, fatigue and anxiety. Eyal encourages people to get comfortable with being uncomfortable when these emotions rise up, and learn to “surf the urge” to be distracted. “High performers in every field use discomfort as rocket fuel rather than trying to escape it,” he said. 

Eyal went on to discourage the use of to-do lists, which he believes are “one of the worst things you can do for your productivity,” and instead to plan days down to the minute based on your values. “Plan the input not the output,” and “spend more time concentrating and less time communicating. The good work that moves businesses forward is reflective work, and this can only be done without distraction.” 

A range of compelling discussions and sharp debates kept audiences engaged over the two-day conference. 

A discussion on AI and how we can harness its potential to make positive change saw Andrea Phua who is writing up Singapore’s national AI strategy; Jeanne Lim, co-founder and CEO of beingAI and the co-creator of Sophia the Robot; and Jingjing Liu, founder and CEO of corporate education platform ZaZaZu, whose mission it is to empower and help women build a successful life built not on what society tells us but what is inside us, take to the stage.

Later in the conference programme, Lim went on to debate whether AI will make humans obsolete alongside Dr. Miriam Meckle, CEO and co-founder of ada Learning, Prantik Mazumdar, entrepreneur, investor and president-elect, TiE Singapore, and Dr. Fermin Diez, senior consultant, NCSS.

There were a number of all-female panels too on topics from the climate revolution, featuring founder and CEO of Uncommon Bio, Benjamina Bollag, to women leading family offices, whose speakers included Veronika Linardi, co-founder and CEO of Togs Capital and Weiling Chua, CEO of One Hill Capital. There was also a keynote from Singaporean VC Jenny Lee and a session on funding featuring veteran investor Soo Boon Koh, founder and managing partner of iGlobe Partner, Singapore’s first female-founded VC firm.

She Loves Tech co-founder Virginia Tan kicked off the second day of the conference moderating a panel about female entrepreneurship, in which speakers Gita Sjahrir, head of investments at BNI Ventures, Laurien Field, global head of startup catalyst at International Finance Corporation (World Bank), and Ralitsa Rizvanolli, head of investments at Sarona considered whether the macro-environment is becoming more conducive or more challenging for women entrepreneurs.

All participants had seen things moving in the right direction, albeit slowly, with greater numbers of both female founders and women in investment teams, and Rizvanolli identified a return to business fundamentals with a focus on profitability, something that is “more beneficial to women entrepreneurs who tend to focus on that rather than on fantastic projections.”

Tan and the panellists shared personal stories of the bias they had experienced or seen over the years as founders and investors as well as guidance to the female entrepreneur, which included Field’s advice to be very strategic especially about the type of capital you want and need, Sjahrir’s instruction to “be a cockroach” where she advised founders to go back to basics and build a business so that it can survive anything, but also to make something your market will love you for, so much so that “if you go away tomorrow, the market will scream”. Rizvanolli added that it was important not to be on the entrepreneurship journey alone. She said that it’s a long journey and there will be ups and downs and it's key that you have champions around you that want you to succeed. 

The conference culminated in the finals of the She Loves Tech Global Startup Competition 2023, for which 29 regional rounds had been held across more than 70 countries, with a clear preference this year for certain themes. 

“Healthcare has been a top industry since 2019,” said She Loves Tech co-founder Rhea See. “But AI is the top theme for the first time reflecting the times and foreshadowing our entire metamorphosis-themed conference, followed by edtech, sustainability and social enterprise,” she said. 

Ten finalists had a few minutes each to pitch to a panel of judges that included: Sarah Chen-Spellings, co-founder and managing partner of Beyond the Billion; Ankita Vashistha, founder and managing partner, StrongHer Ventures; Sara D’Anzeo, partnership apecialist, Innovation, Enterprise and Investment section, United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific; Fady Abdel El-Nour, general partner, Antler; Chandan Deep, vice president, Strategy and Operations, B Capital; and Jenny Pan, All Things Startup, Amazon Web Services, who then had the opportunity to ask questions. 

After intense pitching and Q&A sessions with each of the ten finalists, the winners of the She Loves Tech Startup Competition 2023 were announced.

Third place went to Vietnam-based Claire Tran Dung, founder and CEO of Rayo, which empowers people with disabilities to enjoy equal digital accessibility. She noted that 98 percent of websites are inaccessible and 462 million people are underserved digitally. Rayo uses an AI-powered browser to simplify navigation and removes barriers with personalised browsing modes.  

Second place went to The Coring Company from the competition's Western Europe region. Co-founder and CEO Frida Vonstad wants to disrupt the mining sector and make mining more efficient and sustainable—today mines waste up to 60 percent of their minerals, while The Coring Company’s patented sampling solution can increase yields by up to 15 percent. 

A homegrown Singaporean startup took home this year's grand prize. Wini Wong’s Aprisium provides contaminant management solutions for any business looking to ensure safer food, water, health and consumer products for a cleaner, healthier world. 

“In my industry, there’s not a lot of women. At She Loves Tech I have met so many amazing women doing so many amazing things,” said Wong. “Thank you for believing in what Aprisium does. We don’t just want to change lives, we actually want to save them.”

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