Entrepreneurs of Asia (EOA)

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 making Lalamove Malaysia profitable, moving to Singapore for more food related startups until finally landing on his current role with Knock Knock a laundry and cleaning service platform. In this episode we talk about his early start from Studying in Wisconsin USA, to the pains of growing rideshare in the early days. We later talk about he we was able to help contribute to the Happy Fresh turn around by cleaning up its unit economics and pivoting it to a gig economy play. We also briefly talk about how Lalamove was so successful in Malaysia and what it would take to replicate a Happy Fresh model in this day in age in terms of resources and money. Lastly we talk about some of the darker aspects to VC in Singapore and what the VC scene is like in Singapore. 

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 state of their tech startups they have seeded, Sunday, a full stack end to end insurtech company, and Carmana, an second hand auto marketplace. Lastly we discuss KSK groups current initiative the Platter food accelerator, Asia’s first food accelerator. 

Joanne as a Leader - 00:04:32

Joanne's Early Career in London - 00:16:45

Brief History Family Business - 00:25:11

Selling Kurnia Insurance - 00:28:29

KSK Group is Born (going private) - 00:32:53

The 8 Conlay Legacy - 00:38:10

The Conlay Project - 00:39:32

KSK Tech Startups (Sunday & Carmana) - 00:48:05

The Platter Food Accelerator - 01:02:00

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 are a lot of misconceptions about inheritors of family businesses. Ben’s humanistic touch and insights sheds light to this space and gives advice on navigating complex family business relations, to succession planning, and sharing his journey of finding his own purpose and motivations when he could have gone for a much easier life and path. Lastly we dive into the current state of co-working in Malaysia and discuss the broader landscape and Co-labs plans to keep growing in the space.

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 round (00:14:21). We further discuss product market fit (00:24:56) and how that affects the time to raise capital and when to monetize (00:41:46). We also discuss other topics from technical founders, blitzscaling, grit/determination, and the definition of success (00:54:22).

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 personal with Renyi, and learn about his experiences in America, how he leads as an introvert, his favorite foods and ratatouille moments [00:32:12] . I especially love our conversation around the idea of “best foods”. Towards the end we discuss building a culture of understanding, communication, and accountability along with the future of F&B [00:54:31] , and myBurgerlab’s expansion plans[01:07:39] . Lastly we talk about how to handle difficult conversations[01:29:33] . 

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 user experience. Later on we get to hear about the behind scenes of how tiring it is to work at Michelin Star restaurants, and we get to understand why some countries get more stars and some countries don’t. Zeehan and Chai do an amazing job on breaking down the food culture and what needs to happen before we see more Michelin stars in Southeast Asia. Lastly we directly hear how Covid lead to the closing of Copper but at the same time having a silver lining in the future for the founders new ideas on what they will focus on in the future. 

Building Company culture of a restaurant [00:01:20] | Micro vs Macro management [00:02:50] | Creating an amazing user experience [00:07:16]  | ABaC and Oud Sluis Experience [00:11:20] | Different flavors of Michelin Star Restaurants [00:20:20] | How can countries get more Michelin Stars [00:22:02] | Food Culture [00:24:19] The idea for Copper its evolution [00:29:38] | The impact of the pandemic and the future [00:42:08]

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 a family, and starting a new restaurant. We then quickly dive into their early careers before they started Copper from their culinary training, to how they got started in the business, their values, and motivations and much more. Towards the end we get a taste of the early experiences of a young chef breaking into Michelin star restaurants and the value of hard work and ethics. 

Brief Background of Chai and Zeehan [00:02:14] | Can a Husband & Wife work together (values, communication, defined roles) [00:05:50] | Running a business while raising a family [00:12:34]  | Early experiences of Chai & Zeehan [00:15:36]  | The Food Scene Europe vs Asia [00:41:08]  | Early experiences in Michelin star restaurants [00:49:23]  | Work Ethics [00:56:17]

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 ride hailing and travel, the car rental business has been booming. In this episode we discuss the dynamics of family business from learning how to innovate in a family business structure, how to navigate complex family relationships along with succession planning and more. Later in the episode we go much deeper into the world of car rentals and how Kevin was yet again forced to innovate and pivot the business in these trying times. If you want to learn about the future of travel and more go ahead and listen!

UC Berkeley Experience [00:02:32]  | San Francisco experience during the financial crisis and after [00:05:32]  | PC culture [00:11:28]  | Family business framework [00:17:15]  | Innovating a family business [00:31:48]  | Europcar market size [00:42:33]  | Trends of travel industry [00:46:26] | Marketing a car rental business [00:49:57]  | Asset Heavy vs Asset Light business models [00:48:31]  & [00:56:38]  | Technology in Car Rental [00:59:31]  | Pivoting the business [01:00:43]

Continuing from Part 1 we dive deeper in to Andrew’s story of entrepreneurship. In Part 1 we left of where Andrew was ready to leave the Boston Consulting Group which was life changing experience. Little to his knowledge then his next chapter would be just as profound if not more. In Part 2 we learn more about what it is like to work with the World Bank and Global entrepreneurship program Endeavor. We further learned how Andrew was able to leverage a consulting gig into the world of startups. This episode also takes a deep dive and we get to see behind the curtains of what it was like to work at Lazada before and after the Alibaba acquisition. We talk at lengths about Rocket Internet Culture vs Alibaba culture and Andrew’s development journey in becoming a competent leader which allowed him to become CMO of Lazada within 6 months of joining the rapidly growing organization. We extend the conversation further and discuss the innovations of e-commerce in the Asia region and compare it Amazon and the differences between the two regions. Lastly we dig into some more recent topics of what 500 startups is up to and about Sequoia’s more recent 1 billion USD fund raise for further investment in SEA. Lastly the most impact question discusses learning how to build self confidence and guarding against self-assurance.

Grind Culture in Silicon Valley vs Management Consulting [00:02:26] | The World Bank & Endeavor [00:05:46] | Is business school a good value proposition for startups? [00:14:43] | Lazada Pre-Alibaba [00:21:09] | Becoming a competent leader and CMO within Lazada : [00:30:17] | Lazada Post-Alibaba acquisition [00:34:50] | The future of E-commerce in Asia | Leaving Lazada [00:52:13] | 500 Startups in Southeast Asia [00:56:00] | Sequoia in Southeast Asia [01:00:00] | Self-confidence vs Self-Assurance [01:02:02]

Extra Material: This Week In Startups - Episode1094

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 acquisition that ended contribution to hundreds of millions of Facebook’s user growth[00:32:43] . What is the Facebook growth team[00:40:56] ? Time at Facebook; Making enough money to live for for more than 20 years without having to work[00:41:56] . The tales of struggle and burnout in Silicon Valley’s hustle culture, and rising from the ashes [01:00:43] . Key lessons from Facebook; the importance of data for startups [00:56:05] and so much more. This is an episode you don’t want to miss.