Ramen To Riches

Thanks for listening to my first video back since COVID lockdown, video to come to Youtube soon. Special Thanks to: Editing Advisor- Corine Tiah Colour, Studio setup: Rob Chua Makers of Da Vinci Resolve Software Casey Faris Video tutorials helped a lot All the artists involved including: Audio: Think Media […]

Thanks for listening to one of our most popular episodes, click the Play button! In this episode, hear how an Iranian-born Swede, now a Singaporean PR, achieved the near-impossible by raising $55 million dollars for his startup that aims to make buildings more energy-efficient, using technology to save clients money […]

Thanks for listening to one of our most popular episodes, click the Play button! What would you do with your career if you were the head of your department at one of the world’s best companies? Would you stay or would you go? Would you embark on a risky startup […]

Thanks for listening, click the Play button! Hey, welcome back to season 2 of ramen to riches. It took me a long time to really think through what is going on right now in the world. If you’ve been following the news, it’s clear the world is in a state […]

Ten years ago, ordering food was pretty much a hassle…it was like how you remember it when you were a kid, if you wanted delivery, you’d have to call hours ahead, and only some restaurants would deliver. And I say ten years ago because timing is everything. Ten years ago, […]

Hey, welcome back to season 2 of ramen to riches, I hope that you’re doing alright, with what’s happening now with COVID19, these are hard times, not only to record the podcast, but in every way. This feels like an episode of Black Mirror. Societies, economies and families are on the verge of crumbling. Actually all of 2020 has been pretty bad so far.

After 4 long years of struggling to build a product that customers actually needed and bought, Aston and his co-founder Zen from Overdrive Singapore slowly raised US 2.9Million but achieved the dream Government-backed investor, and you’ll find out how they did that in this episode. 

Founded in 2015 by technologists Aston Chia and Zen Chin, Overdrive’s customer portfolio include Sentosa, Nanyang Technological University, Fedex, Ascendas, the Ministry of Manpower in Singapore, and Volkswagen and Mazda in Malaysia via its local IoT partner. They’ve just raised US 2.9Million, find out how in this episode with Aston. Overdrive operates an IOT platform that automates data sensing of various types of assets within a business ecosystem, from vehicles and machinery, to goods and people. It leverages on a “mash-up” of different connectivity technologies and curated 3rd party devices, that is configured to optimally deliver business objectives such as real-time tracking and monitoring, exception alerting and command centre visualization. On this episode, you’ll hear why he built a startup that tracks sensors all around Singapore. How many sensors does he track? 30,000. What does he track? Stuff, where thousands of kids, vehicles, machinery, you name it, are located in real-time, he can track anything. Is that creepy? Maybe a little, we talk about it, and how a humble, technically oriented guy developed himself into a salesman and because of that, has been able to charm investors, raising a very nice US 2.9 million dollars. The biggest message you’ll get in this episode- If he can do it, then so can you. 

At the end of season 1, which took 6 months to record and ended with 22 episodes, I just had nothing left to say after that, and that’s why I took a break before making season 2. It’s like when you’re at work, and you have a really good meeting, that feeling after, you’ve said everything you needed to say and also taken in a lot. Here's what I learnt.

Chris Chong was just 21 years old when he sold his first startup Beeconomic to Groupon, achieving the entrepreneur’s goal of a million dollar exit.

Welcome back to part 2 of this 2 part series, if you haven’t checked out the first part, then I recommend listening to it first, where we explore the early days of Karl Mak’s journey building SGAG with his co-founder, Adrian. In this part, we discuss building relationships with clients, his future plans for SGAG and the Hepmil Group, and his experience raising SGD$1.3 million in pre-series A funding through angel investors. Introducing Karl Mak, the very intelligent, measured, co-founder of Hepmil Group, best known as the holding company in Singapore of SGAG and other entities, whose content is now seen by over 10 million millennials across the region weekly.

Introducing Karl Mak, the very intelligent and well-spoken co-founder of Hepmil Group, best known as the holding company in Singapore of SGAG and other entities, whose content is now seen by over 10 million millennials across the region weekly.He talks about how important data and metrics are in order to discover strategies to create viral content, creating a proper content strategy for something as eclectic as comedy, and working with conservative clients to create buzz around issues that Singaporeans can relate to, even convincing their clients- big household brands- to make fun of themselves along the way in a pursuit to connect with millennials.He starts off by telling us about his startup, that essentially started off as a joke between two friends.After raising SGD$1.3 million in pre-series A funding through angel investors, I ask him whether he was literally scrolling through his phone to show investors his most popular recent memes.

At the end of the day, that’s the point about life. It’s whatever you want it to be. It’s whatever lens you choose to see it through. Being average is so contagious it should be labelled by the medical industry as a communicable disease. That means it’s as easy as catching a cold. When you see someone else frown, those muscles around your mouth, they just start to naturally drop into a frown.

Imagine you’re 18 years old, and in your spare time, you hang out with your friends at an internet cafe to play computer games religiously. That’s the childhood that most of the kids from my generation grew up in. We’d spend hours in an internet cafe. But I was never the best at computer games. In fact, I was crushed in nearly every game, even my favourite game, Starcraft. But imagine being the kid who was so good he’d go on to represent your country in computer games. That was Bryan Choo, the founder of TheSmartLocal, one of the biggest local digital media companies in Singapore.Listen to how a computer game geek used his skills and strategy as a national champion to then build a culture and lifestyle website that now gets 3-4 m page views per month, a Facebook page with 360k followers, and a Youtube page with 230k subscribers. It took him 7 years, but Bryan now develops viral content for millennials on a daily basis, and if you’re under 35 or Youtube is the first page you go to on the internet, it’s likely you’ve seen a video that one of his over a hundred staff have created. He also talks about taking on traditional media giants SPH and Mediacorp, and how he got his first big break.

My brother and I had a startup that had just been bought out by Groupon, the world’s biggest daily deal website, for an estimated $24 million according to the Straits Times. We made it on the front page of the national newspaper, I was busy representing Groupon on breakfast TV shows and on Channel NewsAsia, while my brother was busy moving our new offices to Harbourfront Centre. Enjoy part 2 of a 2 part series, don't forget to listen to part 1 first.