Danny Loong
Built Timbre Group over 20 years into Singapore's premier live music and lifestyle empire.
Starting from zero?
Develop a solid understanding of your profit and loss statement to ensure a strong financial foundation for your business.
Danny’s journey
The full story. The pivots. The lessons. One path among many.
What Danny started with
He came to business from the stage, not from a desk. He was a working blues musician and bandleader of Ublues, whose "Get On The Blues Train" toured the United States, Australia, Spain, Italy and Asia in the early 2000s, and he ran Ublues Network, an events and artiste management outfit, alongside it. So he started with a name inside Singapore's music scene, the contacts that come with one, and a co-founder — and with no F&B experience at all.
Every founder starts from a different place. Use this to calibrate — not to compare.
On the road with Ublues
Early 2000s
Bandleader of Ublues, touring Get On The Blues Train through the US, Australia, Spain, Italy and Asia, and running Ublues Network alongside it.
Battle stories
The hard moments that shaped Danny.
Musicians get paid
Bands earned a living from the room rather than exposure, which set what Timbre was for.
From bar to food hall
A venue that feeds a crowd at lunch does not depend on a band selling tickets at night.
The Substation goes
The government took the building back and Timbre lost its original venue. Four outlets became three.
Teaching as well as staging
An events management course with SMU, on the reasoning that the industry needed people who could run it, not just play in it.
Advice from Danny
Pay the people who draw the crowd
If your business runs on other people's talent, budget for them as a cost of goods, not as marketing you can cut in a bad month.
A hard location can work
Being tucked away is survivable if there is a reason to make the trip; being forgettable in a good location is not.
Build something that eats
Add a line of business that pays the rent on the quiet nights — food carried Timbre through two years with no stages.
Culture is the spine
Decide how people will be treated before you are big enough for it to be a policy, because you cannot retrofit it onto forty staff.
Teach what you know
Training the next set of operators builds the industry you depend on, and it keeps paying when your own venues cannot open.
Ask Danny a question
We review questions and bring the best ones to Danny in an upcoming interview.
Most asked
- How did you get your first 100 customers?
- What was your biggest financial mistake?
- How much did you really start with?
Founders with a similar path
People who started small and built something big.
