E:39 Mak Choong Moon is Vistage Chair where he coaches over 40 CEOs and business owners each month. He has been deeply involved in Malaysian property development for close to 40 years. He is an expert in turning businesses around and selling them. His family business has been involved in private equity before it was even a well developed asset clas…

Description: This episode is a solo episode on some thoughts I had about pricing products and services especially for early stage companies. The original thought came from listening to an old This Week in Startups episode with Marco Zappacosta (https://open.spotify.com/episode/5ylxDbTCXPzoNy8ZizCNJ3?si=c6ccf80ecf984f8f). This episode covers the gen…

The second wave tech boom for Vietnam is here and it is crypto driven. In this episode Don Phan, a pillar to the Vietnam technology and investing community discusses the latest trends and developments in the Vietnam crypto space. We discuss Crypto Gaming, Axie Infinity, Yield Guild Games, Centralization vs Decentralization, Web3, DeFi and much more…

The Thai startup and venture capital ecosystem. Why is Thailand so corporate venture driven? In this episode we discuss the big trend changes in banking and the various challenges fintech players face from regulation, licenses, culture, and unique customer profiles. We also cover what it's like to be a VC in Thailand and what it takes to be a succe…

Yi Jean Chow, Investment Principle at E.ON, and Future Energy Ventures. What is it like to work in Silicon Valley? What are the challenges, and how does a Venture Capitalist and corporate venture capital fund work? More importantly, find out why solving energy is so important for humanity and how it is related to climate change.…

How do startups, family business and SME’s relate? Brian Soo’s experience tells us exactly how. As Chief Innovation Officer of Malaysia’s oldest fire safety company, Fire Fighter Industry, Brian is constantly driving change and value in it’s 47 years old business. In this episode we learn how Brian has leveraged his super powers, what defines good …

Pei Fu Hsieh is CEO and Co-founder of Karbon Card. This episode, recorded towards the end of 2021, discusses Pei Fu’s background in private equity, venture building with Rocket Internet, working as a Venture Capital in early days China with Kleiner Perkins and later 01VC. We later discuss what exactly the Karbon Card is and the pain point it is sol…

Rajiv Lamba has worked in Southeast Asia, mostly Indonesia, for more than a decade. After his first successful exit he decided to roll the dice again and embark on a new business in market research and eventually founded a competitor to the famous Qualtrics survey company, SurveySensum. After getting to Rajiv and the companies he founded, we dive i…

Chong Siong is a serial entrepreneur with experience across Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and Africa. He has managed multi-million dollar budgets for Lazada’s marketing, has worked for publicly listed companies, built his own cryptocurrency startup, and most recently worked at a Y-Combinator company in the construction space. Chong shares his we…

Did you miss Rocket Internet's global expansion train back in 2010-2012? Don’t worry, you can live vicariously through Stephen Chung as he relates his stories and lessons learned building 6 ventures for Rocket Internet whose companies have left a lasting legacy in the Asia region. For the second half of the episode we dive a bit deeper into adtech …

Why is it very hard to innovate fast in Energy and what are the barriers of growth? Walter entertains a seemingly wild idea of “space mirrors” that will power solar energy. Secondly, we get a bit more grounded and discuss how fintech in SEA will unfold between the giant platform players like Grab and Shopee and the other older financial institution…

Are you a founder hiring? Are you a recruiter? If so, don't miss this episode. In this episode we sit down with a regional expert for the talent markets of Southeast (SEA). We discuss one of the biggest challenges facing the SEA talent market, which is talent scarcity! Should you build it first yourself then hire or hire first? Should you hire a ge…

Part 2 of Nattapak’s Journey. In this episode we discuss the difference between working in Thailand, the Philippines, and Indonesia. We also compare and contrast some cultural differences between the east and west and how that affects the work environment. Lastly we discover how Nattapak founded his current startup Trash Lucky by asking the 100 mil…

Nattapak is a serial entrepreneur who shares his journey on how he got started and ended up building ventures across Thailand, Philippines, and Indonesia. In this episode, we discuss some aspects of social life in Thailand, working as an engineer at AMD glory days, working in a Thai Family business, business school, and how Nattapak got started in …

Is coworking dead? NO! In this episode Dewan Ng shares his fresh perspective of what the future of co-working looks like. WeWork? WeWho? Good riddance. The future of co-work looks bright and agile where flexible spaces will be driven by community. We go deep into the world of co-working, co-living, community and much more.…

This Part 2 of Dave’s journey, experience, and lessons. Feel free to listen to Part 1 first for more context. We start where we left off with Dave’s transition to Living Social. Later we cover the nature of the startup & VC ecosystem in Southeast Asia, the importance of owner engaged companies, what's it like working in Genting Casinos, the strengt…

Dave Chang, bestie, master of the high ground, and entrepreneur turned media investor; this exciting Part 1 of 2 episodes covers Dave’s Theory of Economic Bundling where we explore his thesis in the context of media from gaming, movies, music and e-commerce. We also get to hear about his experiences moving from communist China to growing up in the …

In this episode we sit down with Jaclyn Lee, Founder of the Conscious Reboot an up and coming health and wellness platform. Jaclyn details her Journey from America to Asia which sets up our important discussion on the nature of burnout, balance in startups, what coaching is and how one can tangibly approach wellness in a meaningful way. If you have…

In this episode we chat with Daniel Torres, currently an entrepreneur in-between startup projects. Daniel has spent a solid career working in Silicon Valley and scaling ventures across Latin America to Southeast Asia. In this episode we hear a bit about this journey, meditation, building playbooks for companies like Eatigo, Zyllem, and Circles Life…

In this episode we get a chance to talk to Jonathan Liang, Brand Director of KSK group, and Co-Founder of the Jonathan Liang fashion brand spanning across 11 locations from Hong Kong, China, Japan, Malaysia and Singapore. In this episode we briefly cover Jonathan’s story of becoming a fashion entrepreneur, working in corporate luxury fashion under …

This week we sit down with Rajan Devnath who is Co-Founder of a company called NEVO, a work in progress. In this episode we cover the ups and downs of starting a new tech venture along with the founder journey and some of the wisdom Rajan has gained over the years from bootstrapping to growth scaling. We also get to discuss his past experiences in …

In this episode we sit down with YK Goon, CTO of Kakitangan, an HR SAAS platform that handles payroll, leave applications, taxes and more. We get to discuss the Engineer mindset vs the Artistic Mindset, developing software engineering talent, technical leadership and software engineering management, early Rocket Internet and its technology stack, d…

Justin Ahn, Co-founder of Quidli, a fast convenient cryptocurrency wallet allowing you to store or use cryptocurrency as you please. We continue our blockchain discussion in this episode and talk about the nature of cryptocurrency and where its headed, the next evolution of fiat to digitalization, We also dig into Justin’s background and discuss th…

Crypto currencies are back and stronger than ever before. Today’s episode we sit down with TM Lee, co-founder of CoinGecko, one of the largest, if not the largest, cryptocurrency data aggregator in the world. In the first half we get to learn more about TM and his journey as he shares his philosophy on committing to developing CoinGecko for the lon…

In this episode Yorlin Ng, COO of momentum works, shares her thoughts from the challenges of being a woman in corporate and startups, juggling those mental models with being a leader as well, the pros and cons of the corporate world vs startups, and why those topics are important for her. Those on a journey considering corporate or startups will fi…

Jianggan Li is Founder and CEO of Momentum Works, a venture outfit that has focused on venture building, consulting, media and much more. In this episode we get to hear a bit about Jianggan’s Journey from growing up in Communist China, to stumbling upon entrepreneurship as a journalist in a media company to joining the rise of Rocket Internet durin…

In Part 2 of Allen Ding’s session we get down to the pragmatic details of what makes a great software engineer. As you would expect the answer is never 100% straight forward and what Allen looks for in Southeast Asia has been very different than what he experienced in Silicon Valley, Netherlands or South Korea. We also cover what makes a great CTO …

Kicking off 2021 with the story of Allen Ding. A Malaysian based entrepreneur who runs a software development agency here based in Kuala Lumpur. In Part 1 Allen shares his story of how he was able to build a successful profitable agency well known for high quality and care. The story involves supercomputers, to silicon valley startups and companies…

This episode features an amazing founder and F&B entrepreneur, Marcus Low of Table & Apron and Universal Bake House. Marcus is a tremendous entrepreneur and I would urge anyone working in or interested in the space to learn and listen from him. Marcus presents a very thorough business philosophy and strategy that has allowed him continued success d…

This week’s episode is a talk I gave for the Singapore Tourism Board Accelerator’s Cohort 3 founders. The program is called Learning from Legends. I was invited by Found 8’s (co-working space) Program Manager - Katrin Miller, to present what I learned from my most recent interviews on the EOA platform. There is a lot of great content revolving arou…

For this week's episode we do our first remote session with my good friend Sik Hoe Yong. Currently he is CEO of Knock Knock but got his early start in tech startups with Rocket Internet during the rideshare boom with Easy Taxi. He later had a fruitful rise after joining Foodpanda, Optimizing Happy Fresh before the Grab investment, Launching and mak…

KSK group is a growing conglomerate led by CEO Joanne Kua. In this episode we get to learn more about Joanne as a leader and what it takes to build a conglomerate. KSK group was born out of the sale of one of Malaysia’s largest insurers Kurnia Insurance. We discuss their flagship project, 8 Conlay, as a property developer, and discuss the current s…

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to inherit a business that is generating close to USD200 million dollars a year? For this week’s episode we get a unique insight into Benjamin’s Teo’s family business and how his initiatives in innovating Paramount Corporation led him into incubating one of Malaysia’s top co-working spaces. Often there a…

This episode gets very tactical as we sit down and chat with Francesca Chia, Co-founder and CEO of GoGet. If you are looking for advice on different types of pitching from grants to raising money(00:04:23) this is an episode for you. Fran also shares her early experiences raising money from 500 Startups to the latest advice from her most current ro…

In this amazing episode we talk to Renyi Chin, co-founder of myBurgerlab, we discuss the extremely important topic of Shake Shack vs In-N-Out [00:05:06] , how Renyi discovered hospitality [00:15:11] , the culture of service and hospitality around Asia [00:20:05], and the evolution of the F&B industry of Malaysia [00:10:18]. Half way through we get …

Part 2 kicks off by talking about building company culture for a restaurant and how both Micro and Macro management are critical components for Copper and Chef and leader for the food side of business. Both Zeehan and Chai discuss the importance of paying attention to no only the customers but what external factors affect them in building a great u…

If you want to know what it's like to run a restaurant, raise a family, and work with a husband or wife this is the episode for you. This episode highlights the story of the co-founders of Copper restaurant which ran successfully for more than 6 years. Early in the episode we hash out what it's like working as a husband and wife team, while raising…

Kevin Tan, currently Executive Director Europcar has a fascinating background. Since graduating UC Berkeley he joined the family business, Wawasan TKH, where he built his business chops where he was eventually able to buyout a subsidiary of the family business for his own, the Europcar Franchise for Malaysia and Thailand. Previous to Covid, due to …

Andrew continues his story and dives deep into Lazada pre and post Alibaba acquisition and discusses the future of e-commerce.By entrepreneursofasia

Aizat Faiz, the story of a child of a global diplomat, who failed high school programming [00:14:51] , and never graduated from university [00:21:42], hacked his way into open source communities [00:25:37] , and eventually hacked his way into facebook’s most prestigious team, the growth team. The little known story of a Malaysian startup acquisitio…

In this episode our guest from Episode 1, Kevin Hoong, helps interviews Alexander Le the founder of Entrepreneurs of Asia. In this episode you will learn about why Entrepreneurs of Asia was started [00:03:00], thoughts on the format and style [00:07:41] , Alexander's early career before and during Rocket Internet [00:17:16] , the culture of Rocket …

Andrew Gnananantham, EiR of 500 startups and Lazada Malaysia's ex-CMO shares his tale of growing up in small town Ipoh to how getting into debate transformed his life from changing his thinking, opening doors to new cultures and ideas, traveling the world and eventually landing a job at the Boston Consulting Group.Early Childhoold [00:02:47] | Chal…

Amy Zheng, Co-founder of Amazing Grazes shares her "Amazing" journey from her early days in Communist China, life as an economic immigrant, what it is like to go to Harvard University, getting a job at the World Bank, and breaking into management consulting. All of this culminates into her co-founding Amazing Graze, an international multimillion do…

Have you every bought anything on Zalora before? Have you ever wondered what it would be like competing against a company like Grab? Why is the food space such a huge focus for all the super apps today? Joon Chan shares his epic journey from Rocket Internet early days when there were no investors willing to put more than a few million dollars of in…

In episode-2-part-1, Joon Chan, Co-founder of Cooked Global and veteran of Rocket Internet, shares what it was like for him growing up in Malaysia and the early experiences that helped define his later career in venture building across Asia. Part 1 explores the themes of different thinking, risk taking, and creating better opportunities from situat…

In our first episode of Entrepreneurs of Asia, Kevin Hoong, Director of Anthola talks about his experience in how he was able to get into Airbnb and eventually help scale Airbnb across Asia. He also shares his experiences and discusses his views as a Venture Partner for the venture builder Hype and his mentorship experiences with 500 startups and t…