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"I find it very weird that the scammers can be out in the open while the victims have to hide in shame. That logic does not sit well with me. By showing my face, I hope it encourages more people to speak up." - Adrian Tan

"Scammers rely on three things: infrastructure, trust, and greed. You lower your guard because you are brought over by someone you know—an ex-colleague, family member, or even a pastor. The ultimate hook is greed; the promise to turn $50,000 into a million dollars is a return you cannot get in any legal setting." - Adrian Tan

"The grand narrative is that this is a secret government initiative to bring back overseas Chinese to Nanning. They legitimize the scheme by linking it to the Belt and Road Initiative and ASEAN developments, creating targeted groups for Singapore, Malaysia, and Taiwan." - Adrian Tan

The Nanning scheme in Guangxi, China, reported to be the "1040 Sunshine Project", recruited overseas Chinese, including Singaporeans, to buy in for between S$26,000 and S$50,000, with returns of up to 10.4 million yuan. 

In September 2026, 52 Singaporeans were detained in Guangxi over suspected pyramid scheme offences. No official count of how many people paid in has been released.

What can creators learn from this?

In this episode of BRAVE, Adrian Tan was invited to join the scheme in 2018 and after a few days, decided to walk away. He wrote of his experiences then, and when the news caught wind of this in 2026, his post went viral. Where everyone else hid their faces, he stood up and spoke openly about it to make sure others don't fall for this.

He joins Edric Poon to talk about why he spoke out, why he still won't name names, what the scheme's marketing got right, how his YouTube Q&A rode the wave to monetisation, how years of blogging made him Mr HR Tech, and why AI won't hurt creators who have something to say.

Adrian Tan is a marketer, author, podcaster and content creator. He founded Marketing Sumo, where he provides fractional marketing leadership to B2B HR tech companies.

He hosts The Adrian Tan Show, a solo podcast sharing his take on current affairs, and hosts and produces other podcasts alongside guest appearances. Through newsletters, video and social media, he brings candid observations and humour to conversations about work and everyday life.

Adrian is the author of the Amazon Singapore bestseller 'No More Bosses: The Journey to Sustainable Self-Employment'. He began his entrepreneurial career by co-founding an award-winning recruitment business. He is a father of four.

Adrian’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adriantanck/

Website: https://www.adriantan.com.sg/ 

00:00 Introduction
02:13 The 1040 promise: S$50K for a million
02:46 Singaporeans recruiting Singaporeans
05:05 A secret government narrative, and no product
07:00 "So it must be legit"
08:44 Paying to get out
10:52 Why it worked: narrative, trust and greed
15:11 Lured by her stylist: 15 months to get half back
17:29 Sunshine Empire and get-rich-quick schemes
19:50 Why he showed his face
21:38 From blog post to viral YouTube video
24:14 Why he won't name names
29:05 From Blogspot to Mr HR Tech
34:37 What AI means for creators

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What the Nanning Scam Teaches Us about Marketing | Adrian Tan - E746

Channel NewsAsia

CNA: Marketing professional Adrian Tan travelled to Nanning in 2018, when he was going through a rough patch in his career. He was the only interviewee who agreed to be identified.

Adrian Tan: This programme is essentially like a membership-ish kind of programme. You pay a lot of money, but there’s an incentive involved, and the incentive comes in the form of you getting downlines. Any new member you bring in, you get a cut of it, and your members’ members also trickle up to you. So there’s no product. It’s just purely membership.

CNA: Adrian wrote about his experience in a social media post in July, after hearing that more Singaporeans had been approached recently.

Introduction

Edric Poon: Hi, everybody. Welcome back to another episode of BRAVE. I’m Edric, co-hosting this time around.

In this episode, we’ve got Adrian Tan, a very familiar face. I’m sure you’ve seen him on the news and in podcasts, and I’m sure you’ve subscribed to his newsletter, his LinkedIn and much, much more. If you haven’t already been to his website, it’s adriantan.com.sg. Remember, adriantan.com.sg.

Adrian’s here to share a little more. He was recently in the news with regard to the Nanning scam. But more importantly, what can creators learn from that experience, and how can we actually ride the wave? So now, onto the podcast.

Adrian, welcome to the podcast.

Adrian Tan: Thanks, Edric. Thanks for having me.

Edric Poon: Thanks for coming on to BRAVE, man. I really appreciate it. It’s not your first time here, but I think it’s the first time we’re officially talking about the tumultuous experience you had over in Nanning.

Adrian Tan: Yep.

The promise: 50K for a million

Edric Poon: For those who didn’t hear much about it, it’s been going on for many years. Part of this entire… what, 1040, or 4080? What was the number they promised you?

Adrian Tan: I think it’s 1040, if I’m not wrong. That’s the number, in renminbi, basically. So essentially, the amount you put in, in Singapore dollar equivalent, is 50K or so, and you can get back a million if you max out the whole thing.

Edric Poon: So that’s on the assumption that there are downlines. Basically it was a pyramid scheme, right? From what I understand.

Singaporeans recruiting Singaporeans

Edric Poon: But why would they specifically reach out to Singaporeans? Or when you were there, did you see not only Singaporeans, but a myriad of people?

Adrian Tan: According to what I was told, there are actually different groups for different nationalities. There’s a Singapore group, a Malaysia group and a Taiwanese group. Each of them deals with their own people, so it’s not unique to Singaporeans. But given that I’m Singaporean, when I went down there, the mingling and the brainwashing were all done by fellow Singaporeans.

Edric Poon: Oh, so it was Singaporeans themselves in on the action?

Adrian Tan: Oh, yeah. All of them are Singaporeans. None of them are Chinese, to my understanding.

Edric Poon: That was very interesting, because I watched a few other accounts that came up recently. They said the organisers were on you basically 24/7. There was no room to breathe, and everything was about keeping you contained in the area. You couldn’t even get out to have your own breakfast.

Inside the trip: breakfast, brainwashing, lunch

Adrian Tan: My experience was slightly different. I went there in 2018, and it was the first time my introducer had got into the programme. I think he was still a bit 50/50 about the whole thing, so he didn’t go all out being too aggressive.

Having said that, I don’t recall us heading out on our own, because one of the premises they tell you is: we’ll cover your F&B, we’ll cover your lodging. Which means any time you go out to eat, you want to go with them, because they’ll cover it. Even shopping, same thing. So there’s this natural tendency to just hang around with them.

But the scheduling was very, very intense. You have breakfast, then a brainwashing session, then lunch. The lunch itself is also another brainwashing session, and so on and so forth.

And yes, all of these are Singaporeans, because once you’re in the programme, to my understanding, you’re obliged to go back there regularly to be part of the logistics crew.

Edric Poon: Oh, I see. Man, that sounds almost like a cult, to an extent.

Adrian Tan: Yep.

Edric Poon: When you say brainwashing, I’m very interested in this particular type of programming. What exactly were they using to hook you and keep you going? And every time there was doubt, they’d probably identify it and try to nip it in the bud. What did you see?

The narrative and the missing product

Adrian Tan: The grand narrative is that this is a secret government initiative to bring back overseas Chinese. Not in the physical sense, because nobody can become a resident or migrate to China, but at least at the economic level. Hence the narrative that there’s a Singapore group, a Malaysia group and a Taiwan group, all reaching out to their respective Chinese.

And why Nanning specifically? Because there’s the Belt and Road Initiative there. There’s this Beibu Gulf thing happening there, and there’s also this ASEAN thing going on there. So all these stories seem to link with each other to legitimise the idea that it’s a secret campaign by the government.

Hence, they’ll also tell you: because of this, you just need to get a phone number, you just need to get a bank account, and then you just bring fellow Singaporeans in.

Of course, the natural doubt is: then what’s the product? When I was first approached, it was more of a “go there and find economic opportunity, whatever that may be.” And when you throw in “we’ll cover your lodging, we’ll cover your F&B,” it sounds like a good deal. If nothing materialises, just take it as a holiday. So I paid for the air ticket and went there.

And then you realise: hey, there’s no product. Even with other MLMs you know of in Singapore, at least there’s a product. There’s a health supplement. It may not work, but at least there’s something. But with this Nanning thing, there’s really no product. You just keep bringing in downlines and you benefit from it, then your downline’s downline, and so on. It’s essentially what they call a money game. You get the money from the bottom and you just keep pushing it up.

“So it must be legit”

Adrian Tan: Along the way, you also get to speak with, or at least I got to speak with, people who are quite reputable in society. As I mentioned in my blog post, I met a former MP. There was a Singaporean of the Year nominee. So over time, as much as you have those doubts, it also occurs to you: they can’t be that stupid, right? So it must be legit.

When you try to probe more, you also realise all of them tell you the same thing. They always say, “Just wait until the last day. All shall be revealed.” They keep saying this sentence in the exact same format. And like you said, it almost seems like a cult. One person telling you that, still okay. If ten people tell you the same sentence, it really feels very cultish.

Then of course I tried to go online and Google it, and I couldn’t find anything incriminating. But interestingly, when I decided to Google in Chinese, everything came out, on YouTube and all that. That was when I realised something was really wrong. It’s not right.

But I also don’t think it’s made possible by Singaporeans alone. One of the ways they pay you is through your China bank account, and you’re paid in a very specific denomination. I can’t remember the exact amount. But you can imagine: if so many people get the same payout every month, it should trigger some anti-money-laundering (AML) checks, right? I would assume. I’m not a banker. But if it doesn’t trigger any AML, then I guess someone inside is controlling things. So those are the things I managed to piece together.

Getting out on the last day

Edric Poon: That’s very interesting that you found all of those things. I’m glad you got out unscathed, or at least you only paid a certain amount to get out.

Adrian Tan: The last day is a very lengthy session, just like this one. You’re sitting across the table, and there are other Singaporeans trying to get you to sign up. Signing up is just a commitment on paper, and of course you have to pay a deposit of, I can’t remember, 300 renminbi or something like that.

Initially, the guy who went down with me and I were both like, “No, we’re not interested.” But they couldn’t accept no for an answer. It just went on and on and on. So eventually, the guy and I just signalled to each other: okay, let’s just…

Edric Poon: Lip service.

Adrian Tan: Yeah, lip service. Just pay and get out. So we did pay. But of course, when we came back… I’m not sure about him, we don’t keep in touch. But when I came back, I said no. So that was my damage: 300 renminbi.

Edric Poon: But did they keep hounding you? Because I saw in some reports that they were hounding one person for almost a month.

Adrian Tan: I think I’m also quite lucky that, again, my introducer had only just started this whole thing at that point, so he wasn’t full-on aggressive. When I said no, he did try to say, “If you don’t have enough money to join, we can top up half of it. We’ll forsake our commission.” Because he’s my introducer, by me joining straight away, he gets commission. In fact, by me joining straight away, I get commission. I get a cut of the money that I paid them. Stupid. So they were saying that all of this would come back to me as a kickback.

They were, I believe, aiming for my network. Ultimately, for this to succeed, you want someone with a very established network so that the downline keeps growing. Hence, you’ll see in reports that there were celebrities. I’ve heard of cases where there were pastors of churches, and naturally they would ask their church members, which is quite sickening.

Why it worked: narrative, trust and greed

Edric Poon: Wow. Well, I guess greed is good, in that sense. What movie was that? Wall Street.

So, I’d like to dial this toward something positive. Number one, I just want to highlight that I do not condone scams, pyramid schemes and so on. Let me make that very, very clear. I do not appreciate such things. However, in all things that are tragic, there’s also the comedy side of things, and there are also learning points.

This is a drastic shift, but from your end as a marketer: what do you think they were actually doing right? Ethics aside, I’d say they were quite successful until recently, when they were clamped down on by the Chinese authorities. They were running in a relatively successful manner. From a marketing perspective, what did they get right?

Adrian Tan: I think they really rode on the infrastructure and the narrative, and rode it really well. It’s like how, right now, the haze is causing visibility to be quite bad. You can ride on it and say, “Oh, natural filter. You take a picture, you don’t have to apply a filter anymore.” Something along those lines. So with the kind of connections and the kind of things happening in Nanning, the stars seemed to be aligned.

Secondly, a lot of the time you’re brought over because you trusted someone you know. In my case, it was an ex-colleague. In other people’s cases, I’ve heard of a father-in-law, mother-in-law, brother, cousin, pastor of a church, celebrities and so on. That naturally clears a lot of doubt, because you think, “I look up to that person. If that person thinks it’s okay, then I should think it’s okay.” So you lower your guard.

And of course, lastly, greed. To turn 50K into a million dollars by going all out, that’s a lot of money.

Edric Poon: That’s the real hook.

Adrian Tan: Yeah. How do you even get that kind of return in any legal setting? It’s not possible. In an illegal setting, maybe. I become a bookie, or I go and traffic drugs. But those seem a bit more risky.

And I imagine that certain people who know for sure this is illegal will also think: this is in China, who’s going to catch me? Singaporeans cheating Singaporeans out of money, the China police won’t give a sh*t. So because of that, they may feel there’s a certain level of indemnity.

Edric Poon: It’s very interesting, though, the way they put the guardrails up. Now that you bring it up, it really is very easy to turn your countrymen against themselves. Thanks for bringing that up. If we broke it down to those three salient points: they make sure the carrot is dangled very, very clearly. There’s nothing unclear about the message. You put in this amount, you get X back. We also have trust: people who are trustworthy. And ultimately, there’s the idea that everything is convenient. It’s easy for you. From a marketing perspective, that seems like a dream combination.

Adrian Tan: Yep.

Writing about it years later

Edric Poon: Then for yourself, as a creator: you put this out… was it eight years ago? You shared this information back in 2018, right?

Adrian Tan: The incident happened in 2018. I didn’t actually write anything about it back then, but I did share it with a journalist I spoke with, and I also made a police report. That was the extent of what I did.

I only wrote the blog post about five or six months ago, if I’m not wrong. That came about because a common friend, who also knows my introducer, told me that group of people wanted to reboot Nanning, because everyone had to stop during COVID. So at least back then, they had the confidence to do it again. I was like, “What? They’re still doing it?” And I got somewhat pissed, because I also have friends who really got hit badly.

I have a friend who was lured into the scheme by her stylist. And they always have this caveat: “Don’t worry. If you think this isn’t for you, someone will definitely buy you out.” But if you think about it, who would want to buy you out? In buying you out, there’s no more upstream commission. It’s already been paid out. It doesn’t make sense. So a buyout only happens if your introducer has the money and the intent to buy you out and take your card, because each card allows you a certain number of downlines.

Edric Poon: Right. It’s kind of like buying your policy, in that sense.

Adrian Tan: Correct. So in my friend’s case, she regretted it a few weeks after. She went back to the stylist and said, “Hey, I want out.” It took her 15 months of hounding before she got back half of the amount, in dribs and drabs. And thereafter, no more payment.

I forgot to share something. At the tail end of my trip, when I recognised this wasn’t legit, I did ask myself: willing buyer, willing seller, right? Maybe I should give it a go. But then it also occurred to me: if my downline, or my indirect downline, had to beg, borrow, steal or threaten, whatever, just to get that 30 or 50K, I could not live with that blood on my hands.

Similarly, I’ve heard of many cases. I’m not sure if you’ve seen it, but there was even a recording of a guy telling people who didn’t have that 30 or 50K: “Go get a bank loan.” My friend herself was told, “Go and cash out your policy. Go and sell your Rolex.” Just for the sake of getting into this illegal scheme. When you hear a lot of these stories, you start to think more clearly.

And as a father, I say this to all the parents who are in those schemes: is this what you want to tell your kids? Seriously? You think there’s no such thing as karma? Maybe there isn’t, but seriously, is this what you would encourage your kids to do? I don’t think so.

We’ve seen this before: Sunshine Empire

Edric Poon: That’s a fact. I think we’re old enough to understand that there’s no such thing as quick money or get-rich-quick schemes. Anything like that is high risk, high return. Do you remember those days when there was this thing called the Sunshine Group, or the Sunshine…

Adrian Tan: Sunshine Empire.

Edric Poon: Yes, Sunshine Empire. I was around during those days, and they would always tell you it was about hedge funds. Everybody was wondering, what are hedge funds? Because the market can only do this in small percentages, but in hedge funds you can 3X, 4X your investment within the span of three to six months. All you need to do is keep at this thing. And what was the term they used all the time? Compounding interest. That was what they kept telling you.

What was amazing is that people moved from Sunshine Empire all the way to this thing called… I think it was Swiss Cash. They had all these other online hedge funds, which were crazy. You’d just put in US dollars. This was 2005, 2006. You just had to wire money in online, in USD. They had an online currency converter. You just put it in there. And again, greed made it so easy. You’re just thinking, “Okay, I’m just going to watch this.” And I realised, oh my God, I got suckered into it as well. I tried it for a couple of months and realised: okay, 1,000 gone, 1,000 gone, a couple of hundred gone. Yet there were other people going, “Hey, I got 12,000, I got this, I got that.” And then you realise it’s because those were your one-level-up guys.

Adrian Tan: Yeah.

Edric Poon: You were the downline.

Adrian Tan: Yeah, exactly. I actually read a bit more about Sunshine Empire after this whole thing blew up, because a lot of people on Reddit were commenting, “This sounds like Sunshine Empire.” Some people actually said, objectively, that Sunshine Empire was better because it actually gave members benefits, like a clubhouse or whatever. So when you look at the Nanning thing: since there’s no product, at best you can call it a membership programme. But at least SAFRA gives me a clubhouse. SAFRA gives me a swimming pool, a gym and all that. What do you give me? Nothing.

Edric Poon: Nothing. Empty promises. Obviously that one is more of a money-mule kind of scheme. But it’s interesting how it’s evolved to that point.

Why he showed his face

Edric Poon: And now we’re back on this topic. You mentioned that a number of friends were in the report that aired on CNA a while back, and many of them decided not to show their faces. I’m just wondering: what made you go, “It’s okay for me to put my face on it”?

Adrian Tan: The CNA producer asked me the same question: why I decided to show my face. In fact, that was after the filming, which I found quite weird. You should ask me before that. But my answer to him was: I find it very weird that the scammers can be out in the open, and the victims have to hide in shame. That logic doesn’t sit well with me.

So I feel that by doing so, it would, and I hope it did, encourage more people to speak up. I’m not alluding to the people who spoke up to me, but I think it does have that effect. When people are sitting on the fence and they see this person speak to the camera without a mosaic over his face, I think it has a certain effect on them: “Okay, f*** it, let me do it also.”

Edric Poon: I agree with you there, because you become almost a beacon. And the only way to get rid of a dark place is to shine a light. So showing your face is being that light, that beacon, that lighthouse, and I completely applaud the bravery to do that.

At the same time, I also have to ask, from a contrarian angle, as a creator putting your face on screen: did you also leverage some understanding of how to ride this wave, to keep spreading what I’d call a message of good? How did you position that as part of your workflow? Let’s put it that way.

Riding the wave: blog, media and YouTube

Adrian Tan: Okay. Firstly, let’s go back to the timeline. When I wrote the blog post and it went viral, that was when the media picked it up. So the media actually came in after. Having said that, the media already knew about 52 people being apprehended. It’s just that they were embargoed. They couldn’t say anything until MFA said yes. So when they saw my article, they wanted to build the story first, so that when MFA lifted the embargo, everything could go out. The dam could be opened.

So I somewhat unintentionally rode the first-mover advantage. That’s one. I wouldn’t say that was the intent. Okay, to some degree, it definitely was, to spread the word as much as possible. And of course, with that, I got a lot more enquiries from other news outlets as well. I just had one from a newspaper in China that interviewed me about the same thing.

Edric Poon: Recently?

Adrian Tan: Probably about three weeks ago.

Edric Poon: Wow.

Adrian Tan: And of course, today we’re talking about the same topic.

One good thing that did come out of this for me: I put together a Q&A on my YouTube to address it, because whatever was in the documentary and whatever was in the news articles was always truncated. A lot of points weren’t being brought across. So I thought, maybe I can do a deep dive on my YouTube. And that video went viral too. I think about 140K views or something.

Edric Poon: I think you’re at 151K by now.

Adrian Tan: And that helped me reach the monetisation threshold on YouTube.

Edric Poon: Congratulations.

Adrian Tan: So that’s the whole benefit to me. I was joking with my friend: “Actually, this whole thing is my own scam. My intent was to monetise my YouTube.” It also got me to be a bit more intentional with my YouTube itself.

But I guess the good thing is that when you have it out there on a prominent platform, you’re hoping the education will keep compounding. Like I said earlier, when I was in Nanning, I Googled this thing and couldn’t find anything. I searched on YouTube in English and couldn’t find anything. It was only when I switched to Chinese that I found something. So hopefully, moving forward, if a younger version of me is stuck there and goes to YouTube to search “Nanning scam,” they’ll come across my video.

Naming names and doing the right thing

Edric Poon: But with anything where you want to be as honest as possible, I’m sure there are also a lot of scathing comments, and even very invasive questions. “Who was the MP that you saw?”

Adrian Tan: Got a lot of that.

Edric Poon: “Who was the celebrity that you met?”

Adrian Tan: A lot.

Edric Poon: So I know there’s always a tendency to either play to the crowd or stick to your guns and stand by your principles. What I want to ask is: once a certain level of publicity comes up, do you face a temptation to pander to the crowd? Or are you okay just being in your own skin and going, “Nah, I know what I’m trying to say”?

Adrian Tan: Pander to the crowd, huh? Maybe I should. Become a member of my channel, then I’ll reveal the name to you. I should’ve done that.

I decided not to name them because these are people far richer than me. Even if I’m dead sure they’re wrong, they can still hire a lot more lawyers than I can afford. So there’s no point going through that just because some rando on YouTube asked me, “Tell me the name.” It’s not worth it.

Privately, I did share the names with a few friends, because why not? The truth of the matter is, they were there. They really were there. They really did try to sell all this stuff to me. Why do I have to protect their reputation?

Edric Poon: Yeah.

Adrian Tan: They’re the ones who screwed up their own reputation in the first place. I’m a victim.

So again, when you think about it, and again, seeing things through a father’s lens: if your kid were in my shoes at that point, what would I, as a father, advise him to do? I would advise him to do the right thing. Call it out, because that’s what you should do in society. Do the right thing. Those are the scenarios that played out in my own head over time.

Having said that, there are also other considerations at play in deciding whether I want to just put it out there. Importantly: so what if I put it out there? Would action be taken? Look at the situation right now. Most people don’t even remember this news. The 52 people in Nanning: are they still there? Have they been charged? Are they back in Singapore?

Edric Poon: No news about it.

Adrian Tan: Nobody knows. I guess the next wave will only happen when they come back, or when there’s a follow-up. Even so, I’m hearing people outside the 52 saying things like, “Oh, those 52 got caught because they did something shady. We’re the legit ones.” So there are still plenty of those kinds of things going around. And if you think long and hard about it, you can only do so much, because ultimately I’m not a full-time Nanning scam activist. I have other stuff to do as well.

Survival mode

Edric Poon: Well, you do have a day job. But I think the message is very clear, and if you do get word of it, I’m sure we’ll hear from you again, telling people this scam shouldn’t go on any further and that we should put a stop to these things. Like you said, if you have loads of money to just throw at it, it’s okay. What’s 50 grand to a millionaire? But to somebody who only has 30K to their name and has to take a bank loan of 50K, that’s financial suicide. Yet some people are so desperate to do that.

Adrian Tan: And that’s very dangerous. Especially in current times, when the market isn’t so good. Even for some people driving Grab, they can barely cover their expenses. It’s tempting to look at all these options as a way out. And even though, as you rightly pointed out, there’s no such thing as a free lunch, oftentimes when you’re down and out and so stressed by your daily money woes, logic can be quite hard to prevail.

Edric Poon: I agree with you. A friend of mine gave me a pep talk around that time, because I really didn’t know what was going on at the beginning of the year. You and I have talked about that before. The beginning of the year was really tough, and the end of last year was terrible. There was this thing about being in survival mode. The weirdest thing about survival mode is that you’re content being in it, because you don’t see anything else. All logic goes out the window, because you’re okay as long as there’s the next meal. You’re not thinking about tomorrow, next week, next month, the next three months or the next year.

So I think there are a lot of creators out there who probably face these things too. They go, “Okay, I’ll just take anything at this point,” but they don’t realise how detrimental it could be to their own careers moving forward.

So on your end: again, this channel is going to be very dedicated to creators, for creators, and for those interested in getting into the field. Do you recall what got you into the space in the first place? And do you even consider yourself a creator?

From Blogspot to Mr HR Tech

Adrian Tan: By definition, I’d fall into that category.

Edric Poon: Not influencer, huh?

Adrian Tan: Okay, I’m not really sure what the technical difference is. But I got into the space when I decided to take up blogging, when blogging was just becoming a thing. Back then, it was Blogspot.

Edric Poon: Blogspot.

Adrian Tan: I always enjoyed writing, so I decided to write about random stuff. Back then, blogging was always about random stuff. Then it became a bit more intentional, because I was running a recruitment business. So I wrote about recruitment, then career advice, then entrepreneurship. I even wrote about parenting, and eventually HR tech.

Over time, some of the topics got dropped. I stopped doing recruiting, so I stopped writing about it, and I focused very much on HR tech as a genre, more so because I wanted to get into that space. I just kept at it while doing my other stuff as a day job.

But over time, the content compounded. It snowballed, and I became what people would call Mr HR Tech. I became the subject matter expert. That actually opened the door for me to get my first job at an enterprise HR tech company, because they got to know my content. That was amazing.

Then I did podcasts. At that point I was looking for a new opportunity, and I remember telling every one of my guests who came on the show, “Hey, I’m on the lookout. If you know of anything, let me know.” And lo and behold, one of my guests became my ex-boss.

So it taught me that content can lead to good things. But of course, you have to be intentional. I’m not saying that I was, because it never occurred to me back then that it would lead to anything. It’s like what Steve Jobs said: you have to connect the dots when you look backwards.

Calling out the BS

Adrian Tan: So all this has led to a lot of things, and I just continue to write and create content, primarily on LinkedIn, because writing is so much easier to produce than video for TikTok, Instagram and so on. It’s also a bit more professional over there.

That in itself also created a lot of other opportunities for me, mainly through branded sponsorships. I just did one for OpenAI, I just did one for Grab for Business, and I think I’ve got a few more lined up as well. Currently I’m also toying more with video, because with AI it’s so much easier to do the editing. You just have to do the actual production.

So I guess it’s a way for me to express myself through different means, and to say what’s truly on my mind. If I had to attribute this to a single event, it was back in Bangkok, I think around 2017. I went there to give a talk, and before it was my turn, there was this professor from Switzerland talking to the crowd. He was very, very sharp, and the whole crowd was just laughing and laughing and laughing.

Towards the tail end, he said, “You know why I can say all this?” Because a lot of what he said was very controversial. “It’s because I’m already retired. I can say whatever I want.” And the crowd was like, “Ha ha ha.” Same for me. But when I caught my breath, I thought, “Wow, you must wait until you’re 70 years old, with one foot in the coffin, before you can say what’s on your mind.” That’s so sad, because that guy probably has just ten more years, and then that’s it.

So I told myself I don’t want to lead that life. Hence, I decided to be more vocal about things I feel are just BS. Most of us have been in office jobs. You know BS when you see it. It’s just whether you want to be part of the BS or call it out.

So I became the person who calls it out. I became the anti-influencer, so to speak, against the slew of BS you usually get on LinkedIn: turning a sad story into a lesson and selling you a course, selling you a mastermind, that kind of stuff. Not that I never tried. I did. But I realised I can’t. It’s just not me.

So it continues to be an expressive kind of thing, and not so much about gaining an audience. I think I’ve reached a stage where, given my small little space, enough people already know me. I don’t see the need for more. It’s just a way to keep calling out the truth from my own lens, which occasionally, actually frequently, steps on a lot of toes. But to me, that’s the truth, and the truth is worth saying.

Edric Poon: You’re right. There’s that saying: the brighter the light you shine, the more shadows you cast. You can’t get everybody on the same page all the time. Not everybody’s going to follow you. But for those who do, you know it resonates with them.

Creators after the AI bubble

Edric Poon: One last thing before we close this off: what do you think the next couple of years are going to be like for creators? With the rise of AI, or if the AI bubble’s going to burst, we don’t know, right? We were just talking about this off camera. We’re also relying on AI. If the AI bubble just goes, does it mean everybody goes back to work? Does it mean I have to manually grind everything again, back to the ’90s, almost? What’s going to happen?

Adrian Tan: Actually, even before AI evolved into what it is today, there were already a lot of content creators. It’s just that the level of polish was very different. If you look at a creator like Chloe Cye, her post-production is crazy. I’d imagine that pre-AI, she probably spent at least 20 hours just doing a cut for a single reel, because that’s how intense it is, with all the motion graphics popping up, all through After Effects. But nowadays, you can probably achieve the same thing by throwing it to Claude and waiting 40 minutes while you watch Netflix or go to the toilet or whatever.

So the natural inclination, I guess, is that if the AI bubble bursts and AI becomes so expensive, it just regresses back to the mean. You may not reach Chloe’s level, so you just don’t be so ambitious in your post-production. Skip the motion graphics, skip the sound effects, whatever it is. You can still put things out there. Nobody ever said you can’t put out raw footage on TikTok.

Edric Poon: That’s true.

Adrian Tan: And will AI have an impact in the future? Definitely, yes. But again, I think it shouldn’t have much of a detrimental impact on creators. Look at a lot of local creators. One guy I really like to follow is a local creator called Fuzzy. His skits online are very funny, but if you look at the post-production, there’s barely any. This guy has hit, I don’t know, at least a million followers, maybe.

There’s another guy I follow, a Korean guy. He calls himself Uncle Wook. He just videos himself having meals and random moments in life, but it’s accompanied by a voiceover about the lesson of the day.

Edric Poon: Sounds like somebody else who does things like that.

Adrian Tan: So when I saw it, I actually tried to replicate it. And when I did, I realised, hey, it’s actually very easy. I’m eating my lunch anyway, so I just video myself eating lunch, and afterwards I do a voiceover from a script. Voiceover is so much easier than doing it on camera. On camera, you say something like, “Ah, sh*t,” and it’s retake, retake, retake. With a voiceover, you’re reading off a script. It’s usually one take, or two. And that guy definitely has a million.

So I really don’t think AI will have that much of an impact on creators. It will have an impact on the sh*tty creators, though. Right now there are too many of them on IG and TikTok trying to sell you some AI course, or telling you, “Please DM this in the comments and I’ll send you my workflow.” There are too many already. Too many.

And I came to realise that a lot of the things they share don’t actually work. You try to replicate it, and you can’t. It’s like the crypto days: they promise you the moon, and then they just pump and dump. Right now, you’ll see everyone promoting Higgsfield and all that. Then when you try to replicate it, the whole thing just doesn’t work. I’ve got the same account, I used the same prompt, and it doesn’t work. So that can be quite frustrating. I do hope that when AI reaches its peak, or the bubble bursts, we’ll see less of that kind of content.

AI slop and micro dramas

Edric Poon: That’s very interesting. So: AI slop removal, less repetition, more originality. The challenge I think we’re also going to face is a battle of algorithms, because of the velocity and sheer volume AI helps us produce. It’s almost meant to gamify the algorithm. So depending on how it moves, that’s probably going to shift the needle on what the algorithms look for. And again, we’ll go through that iteration of what’s hot and what’s not, be it on YouTube, LinkedIn, IG or whatever you’re on. Those things are going to change a lot.

On social media, for example, you do all the reels. If you cut it ten different ways, you’re just pumping the algorithm: okay, I’m relevant, I’m relevant, I’m relevant. But if you stop… There are those who have a good base, and that’s why they can afford to do one episode, one solid video, a month. But for those who don’t and are trying to get into that space, it’s going to be volume. So I think that part is probably going to change as well.

Adrian Tan: And one thing: right now there’s so much AI micro drama.

Edric Poon: Oh, yes. I’ve seen a few.

Adrian Tan: I still refuse to watch it. I just can’t. I have friends who’ve already fallen to the dark side, very into it. They keep sending me, “Hey, you should catch this AI thing.” I just… I don’t know. I find it a bit hard to accept, because I realise one thing: when the stakes are low, you won’t go all out. Since it’s so easy to prompt an episode, the script is slapdash, good enough to pass, just put it out there. So you get a lot of meh kind of content.

In the sea of content out there, I have Netflix, which maybe pumps in a few million just to make a movie. Why would I want to watch an AI micro drama that people just half-ass through, versus something Netflix poured a few million into creating? So I don’t get the AI drama thing. But I think, to some extent, maybe we have the attention span of a goldfish.

Edric Poon: I think so too. And it’s also very easy to consume. That’s the thing. These micro dramas are addictive because you’re taking them in small bits at a time. And visually, if you look at it, it’s getting better and better. However, continuity is always a problem. Sometimes it’s left hand, right hand. Sometimes you get weird things: the door doesn’t close properly, the watermelon doesn’t fall out of the truck, small little things like that.

But the ones I enjoy the most are when they take period dramas and turn the characters into cats or something.

Adrian Tan: Oh.

Edric Poon: Those are much more enjoyable for me. But the full-on productions… Take the Hong Kong supernatural films from the ’80s, with Taoist priests fighting zombies and so on. They do that now, and they have full-on horror action movies, one hour, full feature length, using AI. That’s crazy work. And I have to say, that’s why, on the China side, they’re saying all the actors are starting to go out of work, because now they can do that. Look: an entire production studio is 20 computers.

Adrian Tan: Yep. Already happening.

Edric Poon: Already happening.

Adrian Tan: And a lot of directors also have to ramp up, because with AI, instead of pumping out one show a week, they’re now expected to pump out six to ten shows. But one thing, though: your creative muscle doesn’t work that way. You can’t go to the gym 24/7. So they’ll reach a point where it just comes crashing down.

Edric Poon: Yeah, eventually, right? Either that, or all the studios will end up underwater, because they need to cool the data centres.

Wrap-up

Edric Poon: Okay, we’re going to wrap this up. Thank you so much, Adrian, for being here and sharing the experience, and also those wonderful nuggets for all creators to pick up, and for just being brave in that journey. Thanks a lot for being on this podcast.

Adrian Tan: Thank you for having me.

Edric Poon: All right, see you next time. For everybody here, thanks so much. Please remember to like, comment and subscribe, and don’t forget to go to bravesea.com to find out more about our content and be part of the community. I’m Edric, and this has been another episode of the BRAVE Podcast. Thank you so much. Bye, everyone.

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"The proliferation of AI agents performing a number of tasks for us in and around moving value means they will prefer to use, and execute, via wallets, blockchains, and tokens. That trend broadly put together represents better, faster, and cheaper transactions. Cheaper in terms of transaction costs, faster because everything is in real time with atomic settlement, and better because they are inherently more programmable, both at the smart contract layer and in their interaction with AI agents." - Richard Schroder

"The first place to look is the existing real-world assets, which is around 20 trillion dollars, while what is tokenized to date is only around 38 billion. By any measure, we are at the beginning of the journey. The adoption speed depends on how fast we can show proof points around why being in tokenized form creates additional utility, alongside the speed of what is happening in AI. I believe that agents will prefer to interact with stablecoins, tokenized real-world assets, and crypto rather than interacting with the traditional fiat banking system." - Richard Schroder

"We are bringing in Australian and Singaporean money market funds because, in this part of the world in APAC, we are a multi-currency jurisdiction. For the most part, there are only US dollar stablecoins and money market funds available, and we do not think that should hold true for APAC over the longer term. We think it is today a multi-currency jurisdiction in trade and capital flows and will continue to be so, which is why we are building for that with our multi-currency capability." - Richard Schroder

Money is being rebuilt for AI agents, and the first regulated funds are already open to them. Richard Schroder spent 25 years in institutional banking, led the ANZ digital assets team that issued the first bank stablecoin on a public blockchain, and left to co-found Conduit Digital Holdings, which tokenizes money market funds for corporate treasuries across Asia-Pacific. He joins Jeremy Au to cover why asset managers moved on-chain before banks, what Sibos and Token2049 now agree on, how a tokenized fund is made agentic-aware, the three controls that let an AI agent subscribe, redeem and transfer without going rogue, collateral mobility, how Federated Hermes and BNY fit into the stack, where the moat sits when most of the technology is open source, and the gap between a roughly $20 trillion real-world asset market and the $38 billion tokenized so far. Plus his advice for fund managers ready to make a start, and the $30 million stablecoin trade that felt brave at the time.

Richard Schroder is the Co-Founder and CEO of Conduit Digital Holdings, the digital assets business of Conduit Group, an independent investment group headquartered in Singapore. Conduit Digital Holdings tokenizes regulated money market funds for institutional and wholesale investors in Asia-Pacific, with a strategic alliance with Federated Hermes, and offers tokenization-as-a-service and agentic services to fund managers. Richard previously spent 25 years in institutional banking and led the digital assets team at ANZ.

Richard’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/richard-schroder-76961140/ 

Conduit Digital Holdings: https://www.conduitdigital.xyz/

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Money Is Being Rebuilt for AI Agents. Where Do You Start? | Richard Schroder - E745

From Institutional Banker to Founder

Jeremy Au: Welcome to BRAVE Southeast Asia. I'm so excited to be here with Richard Schroder. He's an expert, a leader and an investor in digital assets, and in understanding what needs to happen for everything you want to know about real-world asset tokenization. This is a wild frontier for me, and I think it'll be a frontier for many of you as well.

I'm really excited to talk about this because we're seeing a huge transition from regulated institutions, the traditional approach of finance with its suits and ties, to this wild world of decentralized finance. I'm so excited to have you as a guest here.

Richard Schroder: Thanks, Jeremy. It's great to be here. I'm a family guy. I've got four great kids, a neurotic dog and a beautiful wife. We live in the suburbs of Melbourne, and that takes up a fair bit of my time. In terms of my career, I was an institutional banker for 25 years, in project and structured finance through to corporate finance and corporate treasury solutions.

But around 2014, I got really interested in the exponential technologies, the technologies that double in performance and halve in cost every year, and tend to reshape industries. So I started gravitating towards them and took up roles leading data analytics for the institutional division at ANZ, and then leading the digital assets team at ANZ. Then I spun out with my own new venture, Conduit Digital Holdings, in partnership with Conduit Group and, on the tech side, Cubewire. We're about ten months in.

Why Asset Managers Moved First

Jeremy Au: Wow, fantastic. Lots of growth there. What's interesting is the timeline of that transition from traditional finance to, let's say, the brave new world of digital and decentralized finance. Could you talk a bit more about what you saw that made you say, "I could keep going this way, or I could do something different with the technology and the approach"?

Richard Schroder: The big transition for me: we pioneered in this space at ANZ with a stablecoin in 2022, the first bank to issue a stablecoin on a public permissionless blockchain. They say being early is sometimes the same as being wrong. There just wasn't the customer demand at the time, or the risk appetite. Banks in particular have to work within prudential regulatory frameworks, and those just haven't been developed enough for them to operate on public blockchains.

It was the asset managers who were the first regulated players to move onto public blockchains, notably BlackRock, Fidelity, Franklin Templeton and others. That was around 2024, and it inspired me to get out of banking and into asset management.

Sibos and Token2049

Jeremy Au: So there you are, having seen both sides of the table, traditional finance and decentralized finance. What would you say are some of the differences, before versus after?

Richard Schroder: I've just been on the conference circuit. The largest global banking conference, which happens every year, is called Sibos. It was in Miami, with 12,500 bankers, central bankers and regulators gathered together. One of the main themes of that conference was the intersection of tokenized finance and agentic AI, and the role it has to play.

Then I come down to Token2049 here in Singapore, and there are 25,000 crypto bros in T-shirts. And what do you know? The main theme of the conference this week is the intersection of tokenized and agentic finance. So there is a convergence happening. But I don't think there are many companies at both conferences, so there's still a bit of a bridge that needs to be crossed. And at Conduit, we seek to be that bridge.

Jeremy Au: What's the difference in flavor in how these two conferences approach the same topic?

Richard Schroder: In banking, it's always about the regulatory parameters within which the banks can operate. There's general agreement that the question is not if, but when, and how to build the capability so they have the strategic optionality to move when they need to, and when their customers move. So there's a lot happening where they can be on blockchain: private permissioned blockchains, tokenized deposits and so on.

Token2049 was very bullish. A big theme is financial instruments, RWA, coming on chain. That's part of why there's that bullish sentiment, because it's using the crypto rails. By volume, the traditional market is still significantly bigger than crypto, so as those assets start to come on chain, it's going to be big for the underlying crypto rails.

Better, Faster, Cheaper, Programmable

Jeremy Au: We're going to talk about the trend, and eventually we'll talk about Conduit. The trend we're talking about is the tokenization of real-world assets as digital assets. For someone who isn't familiar with this trend, how would you describe it?

Richard Schroder: There's an inevitability to it. There are the rails themselves, the use of blockchains, and then the smart contracts that can be executed on chain, the tokens that can be held on chain, and, increasingly, the AI agents that can interact with those tokens and wallets.

Put together, that trend represents better, faster, cheaper. Cheaper in terms of transaction costs. Faster, because everything's in real time, with atomic settlement between assets and the like. And better: the big one I see coming is programmability. As AI agents proliferate, performing a number of tasks for us in and around moving value, they will prefer to use and execute via wallets, blockchains and tokens.

From Stablecoins to Money Market Funds

Jeremy Au: It's interesting to see the different types of assets being moved and tokenized. We've obviously seen US Treasuries. I guess stablecoins are a form of currency, but also of tokenization. We also see student debt and other kinds of assets. Can you talk more about what kinds of assets are being programmed this way?

Richard Schroder: Stablecoins were the first, as a medium of exchange. Then the money market funds. I didn't see that one coming. Money market funds are amongst the most efficient financial instruments going. There's nothing wrong with them, so why do they need to be put in tokenized form? Initially, it was to provide access to a customer segment that preferred to use tokens, namely the digital asset natives: the exchanges and the projects.

But since then, additional utility has really started to come through, and that's supporting further growth into other asset classes. That utility falls into a couple of areas. The first is collateral mobility: the ability to get more out of your asset, to use it, lend against it, move it around, and use it as collateral for trading and the like. The second area is programmability. Tokenized assets are inherently more programmable, both at the smart contract layer and in their interaction with AI agents.

Jeremy Au: Why is programmability important from your perspective?

Richard Schroder: It's at the heart of productivity, of automation, of making better decisions, supported increasingly by AI, and of enacting those decisions through agents. That's the key area. What about you? Are you playing around with AI agents? Have you got any portfolios going? What's your take?

How Jeremy Uses Agents

Jeremy Au: For me, it's primarily in two domains. The first is personal productivity and learning, and the second, of course, is work. On the personal side, I read a lot. I have my little agent gathering a bunch of desktop research on the trends I like. I used to use an RSS feed, and it would give me 100 links to click through and read. It's been nice to have something run around, do a quick summary and let me dig deeper. It's also contextualized by me, for example when I ask questions at night about what's happening in the news or in geopolitics. So there's a nice personal learning side.

On the work side, it's just some very basic agents around emails and very basic research for meetings. I haven't done the work to let it actually run a business function yet. Personally, I'm waiting for the right platform that makes sense and won't do anything irreversible. You've seen some of the scary mistakes people have made. Recently, I think somebody's barbecue meat shop just emailed its entire customer base. So it's interesting to see.

Opening a Regulated Fund to AI Agents

Richard Schroder: Yeah, it's a really interesting area. I'm a director of the fund, so if some agent goes rogue on my fund platform, I could go to jail. That's the last thing I want. We've actually made our funds available to agents already. That's called being agentic-aware, and I think we'd be amongst the first regulated funds to put that in place.

We worked through a few key due diligence areas, because we have a fiduciary obligation to our customers. We have to assess a platform before we allow it to integrate with our tokenized fund platform. Out of interest, and for your audience: beyond the information security review and the normal stuff like that, the three key areas we came up with were these.

First, a unique agent identifier, and how that's linked through to a KYC-onboarded customer.

The second was the ability of the platform to define the agent's tasks. There are only a few tasks you would expect an agent to be doing in a tokenized fund environment: subscribing, redeeming, transferring. They shouldn't be going anywhere near the whitelist contract, or other things like that.

Finally, and probably most importantly, the controls that can be put around what the agent can do at the wallet level: threshold limits, and multi-approver capability where you want it. That puts the user back in control of their agent.

Collateral Mobility

Jeremy Au: So what are the benefits for your fund of being tokenized, and also of having this access for agents?

Richard Schroder: It's a great question. We're starting with multi-currency money market funds. As I mentioned, the underlying funds we're tokenizing are amongst the best in the world. What we're seeking to do in this first phase is demonstrate to ourselves, our investors and our customers the additional benefit of being in tokenized form. For us, in the initial phase, that's about collateral mobility, getting more out of your assets, for example the ability to lend against them. And secondly, programmability.

A good example of collateral mobility that's come through really recently is the tokenization of US stocks. That puts owners of those stocks in a position to readily access liquidity or lend against them while holding that long-term position, maybe to get a bit of working capital for something they want to do. So it's getting more out of their asset, and being in tokenized form really enables that.

Corporate Treasury as the First Customer

Jeremy Au: What's the breakdown of the people who are excited about this? Is it, for example, crypto bros, as you mentioned? Is it family offices? Who's making the decision to say, "Okay, this is something that's really compelling to me"?

Richard Schroder: For us, our target customer segment is corporate treasury. Within that, the starting point will be the digital asset exchanges, through to mid-market corporate treasury management. It's about them being able to really reshape, and make much more efficient, their ability to go in and out of positions.

A typical flow for an Australian company, as an example, is that they'll earn in Aussie dollars but buy in US dollars. They want to stay in safe, secure yield on both the Aussie leg and the US leg, being able to move between the Aussie money market fund and the US money market fund. Then they can use the best of agentic capabilities to forecast what's coming up, prepare for it, make those movements, pay suppliers, and just operate a lot more efficiently and effectively.

Jeremy Au: The value of tokenizing the fund makes total sense, because it gives people more optionality to move fast. I'm always curious about who's at the other end of that. Is it a CFO making the decision? Is it a platform making the decision? Is it an engineer? And then they send those agents to work with your fund through the various middlemen and platforms?

Richard Schroder: I think it very much has to come from the C-suite level. They're effectively onboarding a form of extra staff, so it's about putting the right governance around it. First the business requirement, then the governance around it, and then it passes through to the tech teams to execute. But we are talking about a future state here. As I say, I can't find other regulated funds that are available to agents yet.

I think where we are with agentic is more like what you describe for your own personal use cases. It starts off with generating some interesting pictures, then it goes to supporting your information needs, and then ultimately to deploying agents to support tasks. In a corporate environment, I think we're still talking about a future state. There are a lot of internal use cases deploying agents to support engineering functions, but what I'm talking about is corporate treasury. That has to come from the business, because there's a lot of governance overlay and there's value being moved.

How Traditional Banks Are Responding

Jeremy Au: How are traditional banks reacting to this?

Richard Schroder: As I mentioned, coming from Sibos, there's agreement that it's a question of not if, but when. They're mobilizing where they can, particularly in private permissioned environments and with tokenized deposits.

We have a great bank that supports us in BNY. They're the largest custody bank in the world, and they're one of those forward-looking banks that is, for want of a better word, getting around this. As the largest custody bank in the world, they're already managing the largest amount of real-world assets, and they're making those available for tokenization in an appropriately regulatory-compliant but also efficient way. So firms like ours can access the underlying assets, tokenize them and get them distributed to our customers, who can then take advantage of some of the things we've talked about from being in tokenized form.

There'll be other banks who will try to resist the change as much as they can. The better ones will seek to reposition their business in anticipation of it, and take advantage of the technologies themselves.

Jeremy Au: How do you pitch to those forward-looking banks?

Richard Schroder: Well, I'm an asset manager now, so the bank's serving me, and we've got a great one in BNY. But when I'm talking more broadly to banks, fund managers or existing players, the starting point is that you've got to get a wallet, a wallet that enables governance around it. And you've got to start finding use cases within your business that might take advantage of some of this new technology, and then iterate from there. How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.

Why Partnering Beats Building

Jeremy Au: Is it easier for the banks to build, buy or partner in this brave new world?

Richard Schroder: I think partnering is critical, and it's certainly at the heart of what we're doing at Conduit Digital Holdings. TradFi does certain things really, really well. The first fund we've tokenized a portion of is the Federated Hermes US Prime Fund. We're very proud to have Federated Hermes as a partner on this. Their underlying fund has hundreds of credit instruments that they manage really well. We don't need to replicate that, and we don't want to replicate it. This is a safe, secure, well-managed triple-A fund. I've talked about BNY as well.

Then there are certain things DeFi does really, really well. Some of the protocols that came out of DeFi Summer have been in operation for over six years, and they're very much battle-tested, such as a lending protocol or a market venue. I think the secret sauce is in configuring the best of both of those worlds.

What Makes a Moat

Richard Schroder: We're raising some venture capital at the moment, and "What's the business moat?" always comes up. There's a tendency sometimes to look for the patent, the particular one-off thing that separates you. My view is that it's actually the configuration, and the speed and quality of delivery of that configuration. Across the business side, the partnerships and alliances you form. The legal and regulatory side, the licenses and jurisdictions. And the technical side, where most of it's open source, so it's how you bring it together in an institutional-grade stack, something that's well certified: SOC 2 Type 2, ISO 27001. Put all that together, deliver and execute well, and to me that starts to look like a business moat.

But you're the venture guy, so I want to ask you the same question. What defines a good moat, and how would you look at this space?

Jeremy Au: Historically, moats ranged from weak to strong, and from well understood to less well understood. IP and patents would be one. Number two would be economies of scale. Another would be a team in a limited talent world. For example, quantum computing has a limited pool of talent, so talent is a moat. Regulatory licensing is a big one. And the last would really be network effects. I'd say network effects are probably the strongest moat of all in the digital world, but also probably the least well understood.

Richard Schroder: And the hardest one to get.

Jeremy Au: Yeah, it's hard to get.

Richard Schroder: Particularly at an early stage.

Jeremy Au: Yeah. Some things are easier and some things are harder. But to get a world where every additional user makes the product better for everyone else, and to have that at the company level, is difficult. I think Tesla is a good example. Every person who buys a Tesla trains its computer vision for its self-driving models, so the self-driving cars get better and better. Whereas Waymo at Google has to buy every car itself to get the training data. So it's interesting to see those moats. How about you? When you think about it, I think regulatory is of course a big one. Compliance, leadership.

Richard Schroder: In my regulated financial instruments context, I see it as that configuration across the business, regulatory, legal and institutional-grade tech. That's what matters when you're moving value around, which is a bit different from when you're just moving information around.

Moving Information Versus Moving Value

Jeremy Au: Let's talk about that. What's the difference between moving information and moving value?

Richard Schroder: Moving value has traditionally been very much the domain of banks. Now, through blockchains, there's a considerable amount of value being moved independently of banks. But it's really in the quality of the controls: the cybersecurity controls put in place to support the stack, and how the engineering code gets released and deployed.

It's a shortcut way of thinking about it, but there's such an important role for certification and standards. That's where SOC 2 Type 2 comes in: how you actually run your processes end to end, and getting that attested. Then the ISO standards, which reflect how you go about your information security practices, the likes of ISO 27001. Put together, those reflect discipline around deploying your applications.

When it's just a website with information flowing, there can be some important customer confidentiality considerations, and that pushes the need for something more institutional grade. But if it's just an information exchange website without any particular consequences or private information, that's a lesser standard to adhere to. Most of those information-based websites then have you click through to a financial service, be it the likes of Stripe.

Stripe and Agentic Commerce

Jeremy Au: That's interesting, because historically people think of Stripe as a platform that helps people with their e-commerce transactions. Now you see them starting to expand into providing treasury services for companies as well, doing all these things that look a little bank-like. I'm curious how you see that trend.

Richard Schroder: I think they're going along exceptionally well. Alongside others, I think they're leading the way in this first phase of agentic commerce. But I've not seen it elsewhere yet, say in the regulated fund space, which is the path we've gone down. So I still think it's early days for what they're doing in that space, but they're showing the way and it's very promising. What's your view on where things are at in the evolution towards agentic commerce, or the use of blockchains, by those players?

Websites Built for Agents

Jeremy Au: Well, I'm somebody who likes reading science fiction, so where my brain normally goes is this: I'm pretty sure an agent, maybe even today, is out there buying server space for itself to continue living an independent life, doing the transactions it needs using blockchain to sustain itself, generate economic value and stay alive. That would be my science fiction side.

That comes back to what you just said. I think there are going to be a lot of people deploying agents at the enterprise level, or even as sole proprietors. Even today, I see a lot of engineers busy building their own agents to look at their personal finances. For myself, it's primarily been on the information side, using agents to understand information for finance decisions. But I'm not letting it touch my wallets or my bank accounts, anything.

Richard Schroder: It's coming.

Jeremy Au: It's coming. I think there'll be a day when that happens, and I'll probably pay somebody to take on the liability of what happens if it goes wrong. But it's coming, so it'll be interesting to see how that plays out. I was just reading today that Cloudflare reported that, of human traffic versus bot traffic, the internet is now majority AI traffic. So it's quite interesting to see that happening.

Richard Schroder: Yeah. I love showing an MCP server, the Model Context Protocol. It's ultimately reflected as a website, but it's not like a human website. It's not a nice UI that a human engages with, with buttons and dashboards and the like. It's just a whole lot of text that reflects the services available on the website. It's the same sort of thing, but a very different user interface, because these large language models are text based. A UI that's good for them is not the same as a UI that's good for humans. So what you're going to see, with this traffic, is a majority of websites that look not so great to humans but beautiful to agents.

Jeremy Au: Yeah, it's a wild world. One point Cloudflare also made in its comments is that the majority of traffic on the web today is now AI bots. That's great for the bots, because they're out learning and reading everybody's Tumblr and WordPress accounts. But the humans who maintain those websites and pay the server costs for that traffic always assumed a model where humans are reading. A human will read maybe one or two pages of your website. A bot is going to read every page, every graphic and every hidden subdomain you forgot to lock down.

So there are actually some cost dynamics for webmasters and engineering teams, who have to ask whether they're making their websites for humans only. Some have tags saying no to bots. Who knows how effective those warnings are? Others are open to both humans and robots, some are charging robots, and like you said, some will probably become robot-only. It's going to be wild.

Richard Schroder: Yeah. Going back to regulated financial institutions making their platforms available to these agentic platforms, there are some questions to be asked of those platforms about whether they're suitable for integration with a regulated financial platform that's going to result in the movement of value.

Jeremy Au: That's interesting, because we already see agents online repurposing message boards into forums to trade information. But you're right that value is something that's difficult for them to access as of today.

Conduit's Products

Jeremy Au: So let's talk about the products Conduit has.

Richard Schroder: We're multi-currency money market funds to start with. The anchor product is a tokenized version of the Federated US Prime fund, and then we're bringing in Aussie and Singapore dollar money market funds. In this part of the world, APAC, we're a multi-currency jurisdiction, yet for the most part there are only US dollar stablecoins and money market funds available. We don't think that should hold true for APAC over the longer term. APAC is a multi-currency jurisdiction today in trade and capital flows, and it will continue to be, so we're building for that with our multi-currency capability.

Then we'll go up the risk curve. Stocks are a really interesting one. They're the flavor of the month, following the SEC's innovation exemption allowing for the tokenization of US stocks. There are significant flows of retiree money in particular out of APAC into US stocks, and my home market of Australia is a big one. So we'll have a look at that. Commodities and private credit have already got off to a good start. But we'll be led by our customers in terms of what comes next. We've got to get across the main currencies for our core multi-currency tokenized money market fund offering, and then we'll move up the risk curve into other tokenized RWA.

A $20 Trillion Market, $38 Billion Tokenized

Jeremy Au: One thing I'm curious about is the market size of this opportunity. In finance, there are a lot of fancy dinners, and everyone has a nice corporate headquarters. But how do you define the market size for real-world assets, adding in other angles like tokenization and agentic finance? How do you define the market Conduit is going after?

Richard Schroder: The first place to look is the existing RWA, and that's around 20 trillion. What's tokenized to date is around 38 billion.

Jeremy Au: So that's really, really small.

Richard Schroder: By any measure, that's where we're at.

Jeremy Au: The beginning of...

Richard Schroder: The journey, yeah. We're in the first chapter. There's a long way to go and a lot of assets to tokenize.

Jeremy Au: When you think about that, how fast do you think it'll get tokenized?

Richard Schroder: That's the $20 trillion question: how fast will this play out? It's the speed at which we can show the proof points for why being in tokenized form creates additional utility. Then there's the speed of what's happening in AI, and whether my view holds that agents will prefer to interact with stablecoins, tokenized RWA and crypto rather than with the traditional fiat banking system.

How Conduit Is Different

Jeremy Au: How is your team approaching this differently from the other players going after this market?

Richard Schroder: We're really fortunate to have a combined Web3 and AI capability that can also deliver in the institutional-grade setting I've described. I think that's key for us on the tech side. The other side is that we're really well licensed for this region, either directly or through partners, in Australia, Singapore and the BVI, where we're a regulated fund. Those are the two key areas. The other thing that makes us different is being firmly based in APAC and servicing APAC clients. A lot of this has been pretty US-centric to date, and we call APAC home.

Jeremy Au: Fantastic. There are a lot of clients in APAC that need your help and support, both in thinking through what to tokenize and how to get into this category, and in picking the right funds and choosing the right opportunities to go after.

Advice for Fund Managers

Jeremy Au: For any fund managers thinking about tokenizing their fund and taking the steps you have, what advice would you give them?

Richard Schroder: The most important thing is to make a start, if you've formed the view and done the research. Larry Fink says that 100% of all asset management is going on chain. At the moment, we're not even at 1%, so the answer is somewhere in between. But it's definitely only going to increase from here. So make that start.

What we've tried to put in place is this: work with someone like Conduit Digital Holdings, ideally with Conduit Digital Holdings, so that you can start with a fund-of-funds approach. You go out under our licenses, we tokenize it, we buy the underlying, and then we observe together. It's the lowest-risk, lowest-cost way of doing it. Observe together: is it establishing additional utility? Is there product-market fit? Are proof points coming through as to why to tokenize? Then evolve to tokenizing your own funds in earnest.

That's the tokenization-as-a-service and agentic services side of our business, where we're a technology services provider enabling those fund managers to take a tranche of their existing funds, or a new greenfield fund, to market. Ultimately, if it goes as I think it will, all the new funds coming through will go out in tokenized form from day one.

Jeremy Au: Amazing.

A Brave Moment: The First Stablecoin Trade

Jeremy Au: Another question I want to ask you: do you have a personal or professional story of a time you've been brave?

Richard Schroder: I remember very vividly doing the stablecoin transaction. It was with one of the bank's oldest-standing clients, the Smorgon Group, a client for over 100 years. I was more focused on disaster recovery, on what would happen if something went wrong. Of course, nothing did go wrong with the 30 million stablecoin trade, but it felt a bit brave at the time.

But perhaps, more broadly, being brave was evolving from a product coverage banker into more of a technology focus, following these exponential technologies.

The Team Behind Conduit

Jeremy Au: Let's talk about your team. Obviously, nobody can know everything, and nobody knows much about agent finance because it's such a new field. What's the team you've built at Conduit?

Richard Schroder: I've been really fortunate in the founding partners I have in Conduit Group and Cubewire. Cubewire, on the tech side, is genuinely impressive. We've got dedicated infrastructure in our offices for large language models, working with Nvidia chips and putting them in place, and that really helps us. We don't just access models from other providers. We also have an in-house capability on the AI side, and that's a point of difference, to be able to combine it directly with the Web3 side of things.

Then in Conduit Group, I'm very fortunate to have a well-licensed, very experienced finance team across all facets, and good guys to boot. It's that combination we always wanted for the tokenization of financial instruments: licenses and tech capability. Even though we mostly provide, and seek to provide, a tokenization-as-a-service and agentic services proposition, we think we're better placed if we can work right alongside our customers and walk in their shoes, particularly around what it is to be a regulated finance company in our own right.

Why Build This Now

Jeremy Au: I'm curious, because you could just retire, or you could have stayed in banking. And here you are, building at the frontier of finance, agents and tokenization. What's driving you to push with this?

Richard Schroder: It was the right time for me, in terms of family and personal position. And I thought that I, with my team around me, have as much right to do it and as much capability to do it as anyone. So if we can do it, should we do it? Yes, we should, because there's a lot of room for improvement in the provision of financial services: access, efficiencies, getting rid of a few intermediaries, making them high quality.

There's also the issue that about every seven years there's a banking crisis. We can evolve to a better provision of financial services for the customers we serve. I fundamentally believe there's that gap, that delta, that can be achieved, and we're going after it.

Jeremy Au: Thanks, Richard, for these insights. For those who want to know more about you and your work at Conduit, how can they find or follow you?

Richard Schroder: There's the Conduit Digital website. There's also the broader part of the business through our shareholding, Conduit Group, and you can find us there. They have a very capable broader sales team to support. And of course Telegram and LinkedIn. Find me there. I'd love to connect with you all on LinkedIn, for those who have found this discussion interesting.

Jeremy Au: Thank you so much for sharing. You're really a pioneer in getting this all set up, and I'm so excited to see what the next chapter brings.

Richard Schroder: Thanks so much, Jeremy.

"But once you come in here, you pick the five people, and because of our history, we are naturally very resilient. And that's why the advantage is when you're an entrepreneur, when you're starting up, you need to do the work of 10 people. And I think that we've been able to identify." - Chalinda Abeykoon 

"There is no support system, but just randomly reaching out to people.  That's why I say it's amazing — that ecosystem. Every single person that I reach out to, including you, it was a random message on LinkedIn. I have LPs that I'm, to date, I've never met face to face." - Chalinda Abeykoon

"The way that I wanted to solve it was by attracting the diaspora to invest because they're already in that market. They're in the US, they're in North America — they're closer to the customer." - Chalinda Abeykoon 

Chalinda Abeykoon, managing partner of nVentures, traces the seven or eight ways he tried to solve startup funding in Sri Lanka, most of which failed. At the Brandix apparel accelerator, the products were good, but the startups lacked the enterprise sales skills to sell to brands like Nike and Lululemon. A diaspora equity crowdfunding platform raised about $1 million in 20 months before the Easter bombings, the pandemic and the economic crisis ended it. nVentures is a $2 million fund, with 70% of LP money from the diaspora, backing B2B fintech. He reports two exits, about 30% IRR and 1.8x TVPI. He argues early-stage support is an art, going from minus one to zero, and that founders grow by leaving their comfort zone for Singapore.

Chalinda Abeykoon is Managing Partner at nVentures, an early-stage VC fund investing in technology startups across South and Southeast Asia. His portfolio includes two global exits, including an acquisition by JPMorgan Chase.

Chalinda is a recipient of the Chevening Fellowship from the University of Oxford and an Australia Award from the University of Queensland.

Chalinda’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chalindaabeykoon/

nVentures: https://nventures.sg/ 

00:00 Opening themes: Cold open on local problems, a small market, negative search results for Sri Lanka, and a Dan Sullivan quote.

02:20 Graduating into a hiring freeze: The war ends in 2009 as the financial crisis hits; 30-plus interviews, Virtusa and Millennium IT, and a government job that leads to incubators.

04:38 Childhood in Colombo: Growing up away from the northern and eastern front, close to bombings, with cricket and normal teenage life.

06:40 Teaching students to pitch: Getting students to pitch ideas, reading TechCrunch, and hackathons that brought different ethnic groups together.

08:40 The Brandix accelerator: An apparel-industry accelerator built on known pain points, where startups struggled to sell to large global brands.

12:00 B2B strength, B2C bias: Why Sri Lanka's strength is B2B engineering, with the WSO2 and London Stock Exchange examples, while investors favor B2C.

14:30 How nVentures began: nCinga Innovations, its 2019 acquisition by Zilingo, and the decision to build a Singapore-based fund after Oxford.

17:50 Fund structure and results: A $2 million fund, LP mix, two exits, about 30% IRR, 1.8x TVPI, follow-on rounds and profitable portfolio companies.

20:00 From minus one to zero: Why pre-seed support relies on judgment, and where AI hiring and contract tools help from Series A.

23:00 Sri Lanka and Singapore: Sri Lankan professionals in Singapore, founders leaving their comfort zone, and not waiting for policy back home.

30:40 Losing his father young: How the loss shaped humility, and the Dan Sullivan definition of hell.

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"Because in Web3 ecosystem, once you approve the transaction, it's irreversible. So our security element focus on pre-trade risk simulation and analysis will intercept what's high risk. We'll, we'll seek user confirmations, even the agent want to make this transaction." - Lennix Lai 

"So agents starting to trade, negotiate handling pricing with the other agents. So that's why we, we, we envision that w a agent marketplace that talk to each other as subscribing service each other and having, having, having a meter service, different pricing system within." - Lennix Lai 

"For the same level of product service that OKX offer. So our future customer was not only human, but also agents, or we need to be, or the our product and service and features need to be Agentic ready." - Lennix Lai 

Lennix Lai, general manager at OKX, describes moving from trading roles at JP Morgan and AIG into crypto after reading the two-page Bitcoin whitepaper, despite first thinking Bitcoin was a scam. He argues DeFi can grow into a connected global marketplace, citing the recent SEC innovation exemption for tokenized securities and OKX's joint venture with ICE for tokenized equities that trade around the clock. He explains OKX's shift toward serving agents as well as humans, including an agent-to-agent marketplace, private keys held in a trusted execution environment, user-defined security policies, and pre-trade risk simulation. Early adopters of OKX Agent Trade Kit and Onchain OS are semi-professional retail traders who trade more often and with more discipline.

Lennix’ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennix-lai-808abb1a/ 

OKX: http://www.okx.com/ 

00:00 Introduction

02:04 From banking to crypto: His path from analyst and trading roles at JP Morgan and AIG to OKX, and why the Bitcoin whitepaper changed his mind.

03:53 Why blockchain: Trust, collateral and counterparty risk in traditional finance, and how Bitcoin's original vision was fulfilled through stablecoins and tokenized securities.

08:26 The future of DeFi: DeFi framed as a peer-to-peer on-chain market, and the SEC innovation exemption as a step toward one connected global marketplace.

12:21 Tokenized equities: OKX's joint venture with ICE and three drivers of liquidity: more participants, trading around the clock, and global settlement.

14:35 Agent-to-agent marketplace: Why OKX needs to serve billions of agents, and how agents may subscribe to, price and pay for each other's services.

18:38 Building for agents safely: Translating plain-language intent into actions, keeping private keys in a trusted execution environment, and pre-trade risk simulation.

21:43 Agents moving value: Agents doing work such as booking travel, why branding matters less to them, and how agents could make markets more efficient.

25:09 Advice for agentic finance builders: Security policies set by the user, hardware-protected keys, and agents acting only within limits they cannot change.

27:36 Early adoption results: Semi-professional retail users of Agent Trade Kit and Onchain OS, options advice from agents, and more disciplined trading.

31:30 Staying the course: Working from a garage in 2017 to 2019 amid regulator and banking pushback, and his advice to keep building.

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"And we would love to at least squeeze half of that into just one workspace, and that workspace contains sketch, 2D, 3D, video, drawings et cetera. So the premise is also not that we are against any company, but because we orchestrate more than 60 plus frontier and custom-trained models." - Goh Yiping

"Because design has always been a communication opportunity or problem to solve. The more you can communicate what is in your mind the faster you get to a decision." - Goh Yiping

"But there were enough signals that the growth is actually very fast. Within 4-5 weeks of that public beta, we rapidly scaled to about 4K registered users. Then they're asking really good questions. And they also ask, "What does this mean for me now as an architect?"" - Goh Yiping

Goh Yiping, co-founder and CEO of Formas.ai, traces her path from startup founder and venture capitalist to McKinsey partner, then to an executive role at immersive entertainment company NEON, and explains how each stage taught her to scale and think at an institutional level. She then explains the family decision to found Formas.ai with her husband Carlos: an AI-native design workspace, billed as the “Figma of architecture,” that aims to cut seven weeks of rendering work to two days. She closes on risk, courage, and why she chose to drive AI rather than consume it.

Yiping Goh is the Co-Founder & CEO of FORMAS.AI, an AI Design and Agentic 3D Modelling Workspace for architecture, interior design, and the built environment. FORMAS.AI helps designers move from sketches, floor plans, references, notes, and spatial intent into visual design iterations, photorealistic renders, and connected design workflows with greater speed and control.

Under her leadership, FORMAS.AI was named the Global Winner of SuperAI Genesis 2026, strengthening its position as one of the emerging AI companies shaping the future of spatial design.

Yiping is an entrepreneur, operator, investor, and business builder with nearly two decades of experience across startups, venture capital, private equity, and corporate innovation in Asia. Prior to FORMAS.AI, she was a Partner at McKinsey & Company, where she worked across new business building, growth strategy, and private capital. She was also a Partner at Quest Ventures, one of Southeast Asia’s leading venture capital firms, backing and advising high-growth technology companies across the region.

Earlier in her career, Yiping co-founded and scaled ventures including All Deals Asia, and contributed to the growth of MatahariMall in Indonesia. She has been recognised as one of Singapore’s notable women in technology and entrepreneurship, named among Singapore’s 100 Women in Tech, awarded the NUS Outstanding Young Alumni Award, and featured in Harper’s Bazaar Singapore, Tatler Asia, and The Peak Singapore.

She also serves on the National University of Singapore Alumni Advisory Board and is an active voice on AI, venture building, and the transformation of design-led industries.

Yiping’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/yipinggoh/ 

FORMAS.AI: https://www.formas.ai/ 

00:00 Preview of the 5-to-10 tool problem for architects, the leap from a nine-year career, and the early user growth.

02:39 Why leave VC for McKinsey: In 2021, with capital at a peak, she sought a structured environment to learn how large organizations think at scale.

05:23 An outsider at McKinsey: Resistance as a non-career consultant, and what the firm taught her about top-down communication and 15-minute meetings.

11:37 Scaling at NEON: Change management at a growing company: SOPs, KPIs, and getting teams to adopt new ways of working.

13:24 Buy versus build: How her view of buying enterprise software versus building changed with AI coding tools, and why she favored low-cost trials.

17:10 The decision to found again: A year of discussion with her husband, the November 2025 launch, the user signals, and the response to her LinkedIn post.

26:57 The problem in architecture: Why 61% of architects want to leave the industry, and how fragmented, legacy tooling and long rendering hours contribute.

32:16 Beyond AI wrappers: How Formas differs from first-generation rendering apps, with data carried from sketch through to construction handover.

36:33 Working as a couple: How the Casa Julia side business and Carlos's AI design work led to co-founding Formas, and what they share in work ethic.

44:16 Risk, security and timing: Why no career path feels safe, how she measures security in years, and the case for driving AI rather than consuming it.

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"I know the series of decisions I made, even though they felt like the right decisions at the time, and they felt like no-brainers. But I had to convince so many people to change their life for me. That's what founders feel." - Rosaline Chow Koo

"It didn't take me 18 months to build the tech. It took me 8 hours to build the insurance policy extraction component. It's 100X. Three of us built what 330 of us could not build. It took 6 months to build the rest of our extensive platform which includes the auto-comparison of insurer quotes, the HR employer analytics & census upload and the end-to-end employee app." - Rosaline Chow Koo

"And we built for the three of them. And because we did for the three of them, within five years, we won 500 companies." - Rosaline Chow Koo

Rosaline Chow Koo, founder of covee and formerly of CXA, traces her path from a Procter & Gamble plant in Iowa and banking to insurance in Singapore, where she grew Mercer's Asia business 800% and went from 4 to 14 countries. She left at 51 to build CXA, a tech-led benefits brokerage that won 500 companies in five years, funded partly by her husband's $3 million. An 11-year SaaS contract with a bank, 150 contract engineers and COVID forced her to sell the brokers and the platform. She describes the shame that followed, caring for her 97-year-old mother, and why AI brought her back: three people built in eight hours what 330 could not, and she says reading a policy now takes a minute instead of 30 to 40 hours.

Rosaline founded CXA after five years trying to convince the world's largest brokerage to invest in Asia, putting in $5M of personal savings and borrowing $5M more. Grew CXA to #3 in benefits broking across Singapore, HK and China, with 500+ corporates and a million employees, winning Insurtech of the Year, the Digital Insurer Innovation Award and Global Innovations in Healthcare. Built HSBC's Benefits+ bancassurance platform for the bank's global SME customers, and sold CXA to HSBC, Pacific Prime and a China firm.

Now co-founder of covee, building what the industry never had: one AI-native platform where brokers, insurers, TPAs and providers share the same policy, census, claims and health data, so every employee gets a personal health journey and every employer can bend its cost curve.

Rosaline’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rosaline-chow-koo-212334/

Find out more about covee: https://www.covee.ai/ 

Show Notes

00:00 Opening: The cancer insurance question that started her vision, and the sale of the SaaS platform when COVID hit.

02:31 Early career to insurance: Born in San Francisco, factory manager at P&G, banking, the 1996 move to Singapore and how she entered insurance.

09:11 Growing Mercer in Asia: The 800% growth, and an HR head's remark in China about late-stage cancers that shaped her prevention thesis.

10:40 Leaving to build CXA: Why a $10 million request was refused, how she funded the startup, and how MAS blocked her PE backing.

27:08 Why a brokerage model: Commission funds the tech, so clients get the platform for the price of insurance; design partners and the acquired broker.

36:38 The SaaS build decision: Bank-led 11-year contract, the lost CTO, the outside tech firm, the fixed January 1 deadline and the monolith platform.

41:56 COVID and selling the company: Frozen funding, the convertible debt clock, protecting 75 employees, and selling the brokers and SaaS IP.

45:30 Shame, letting go and reset: Feeling she had betrayed investors, clients and family, the life coach, and caring for her mother in Los Angeles.

53:50 Why build again with AI: Unchanged broker pain points, AI cutting build time, and her co-founders and team at covee.

59:40 Value for brokers and insurers: Renewals she says now take a minute instead of 30 hours, claims analytics against 16.9% medical inflation, and PE-backed brokers.

1:04:00 A time she was brave: Growing up in South Central Los Angeles during the Watts riots and her family of survivors.

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"I always say to people, "Please read more and learn more and find out the human story of things," because if not, people are just gonna scam you, man. People are gonna straight up scam you." - Gita Sjahrir

"But David Van Reybrouck, the writer, said, actually the concept of the Dutch taking over Indonesia is very much like a jigsaw puzzle. So it's not that hey, we took over from here to here point, end to end point for the next 350 years." - Gita Sjahrir

Gita Sjahrir, an Indonesian who lived abroad for decades and now lives in Indonesia, joins host Jeremy Au to discuss Revolusi by David Van Reybrouck, which she has read twice. She describes how the book, built on interviews with about 185 people, presents Indonesian independence as the work of ordinary people, including students in the Netherlands. They compare the Dutch VOC and the British East India Company, and trace Singapore's path through Japanese occupation to independence in 1965. Gita covers the 1928 Youth Proclamation that chose Malay as a shared language, the 17 August 1945 proclamation after Japan's surrender, and the book's ship-class metaphor for colonial hierarchy. She argues that learning history beyond short-form content helps people avoid being misled.

00:00 Why history matters: Jeremy and Gita introduce their shared interest in Southeast Asian history and pattern recognition, with independence as the topic.

01:04 Reading Revolusi: Gita explains why she turned to books for hope and why Revolusi by David Van Reybrouck was her top read of the year.

03:36 Four chapters of regional history: Jeremy outlines pre-colonial trade, the colonial era, independence movements and the post-Cold War ASEAN period.

04:53 Ordinary people in the story: The author interviewed about 185 people, from Dutch and Japanese army veterans to activists, showing history as more than good versus bad.

09:47 The 350 years jigsaw: Gita explains that Dutch control came piece by piece, and that Aceh and Bali show people did fight back.

12:19 VOC, East India Company and Raffles: They compare the two trading corporations, Raffles' founding of Singapore as a free port, and the Dutch swap of New Amsterdam for a spice island.

20:22 The 1928 Youth Proclamation: Young people from different islands agree they are one people and choose Malay as a common language.

22:23 Singapore and Japanese occupation: Jeremy describes the fall of British Malaya and Singapore and how Lee Kuan Yew's experience shaped his view on independence.

27:18 Proclaiming independence in 1945: Activists listening to news in Dutch and English declare independence on 17 August 1945, followed by years of fighting with Dutch forces.

34:49 The ship metaphor and unity: Gita describes the book's class-ranked steamship as colonial society, and how nationalists, Islamists and Communists united for sovereignty.

39:17 Takeaways: Gita urges listeners to learn the human story of history to avoid being scammed, and Jeremy notes the shared regional pattern.

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Keywords: Indonesia, Indonesian Independence, Revolusi, David Van Reybrouck, Southeast Asian History, Singapore, Dutch East Indies, VOC, Youth Pledge, Decolonization

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"Historically in Singapore, we have always wanted our politicians to be predictable. However, Lawrence Wong's savviness with social media shows he understands that in today's age, garnering votes requires seeming like a human being. Part of convincing people to support you is to show them that you can play the guitar." - Jean Hew

"Moving online means you inevitably have to deal with ads and sponsorships, which sparks conversations about how they might affect your editorial values. It was a gamble thinking about whether the average Singaporean reader would be willing to pay for quality, slow journalism, but the core of making journalism work today is bringing in money in a way that does not compromise your offerings." - Jean Hew

"When thinking about the worst things that could happen before releasing the podcast, I worried about getting “POFMA”-ed or politicians claiming it was an inaccurate representation of the PAP or Lawrence Wong. However, we went into the project with the intention of creating a balanced narrative and a fair, multifaceted portrayal of somebody we did not have direct access to." - Jean Hew

Jean Hew explains how The Neighbourhood Boy, Jom's podcast series on Prime Minister Lawrence Wong, was made over three years. The team picked the subject because Wong had just been named the next PM, and Sudhir and economist Donald Low could speak about his early years. Most interviewees described a guai, down-to-earth technocrat, while Low alone saw him as a PM frontrunner. Each episode went through about 15 drafts, and recording paused when the general election was called, which revealed a more political side of Wong. When the planned narrator withdrew, Jean became host, aiming for a kopi-chat tone. She covers the feedback, including requests for more criticism of the PAP, and why most of her 20-plus interviewees felt Singapore is on the right track.

Jean Hew was the first employee and head of research at Jom, a weekly digital magazine covering arts, culture, politics, business, technology and more in Singapore. She is the host, producer and co-author of Jom's podcast on prime minister Lawrence Wong, titled "The Neighbourhood Boy". She now works in corporate investigative research.

Jean Hew’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jean-hew/

Jom: https://www.linkedin.com/company/jom-media-mag/ 

00:00 Introduction
01:43 Stumbling into journalism
05:08 Why philosophy fits journalism
07:42 Joining Jom when it had nothing
09:49 Year one and the editorial boot camp
12:22 Carrie Bradshaw and paying for journalism
16:14 Why a podcast, and why Lawrence Wong
18:58 Born on reclaimed land, and very guai
21:19 "I don't care about being sweet"
24:08 How the GE changed the script
28:15 Coffee in Siem Reap, and becoming the host
32:13 Gossiping about the Prime Minister
35:31 Launch nerves and letting go
38:52 How it was received
41:31 Is Singapore on the right track?
43:38 Being brave
45:06 Three takeaways

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Meet Jean Hew

Jeremy Au: Hey, Jean. Really excited to have you on the show.

Jean Hew: Thank you for having me.

Jeremy Au: You're a podcast veteran by now, having produced a podcast series on our Prime Minister Lawrence Wong, which is such an interesting piece. But you're also on the founding team of Jom, a fresh, hungry, growing journalism business by Sudhir, who has been our guest twice on the BRAVE podcast. So I'm really excited to hear your story. Could you share a little bit about yourself with those who have not yet met you?

Jean Hew: Sure. My name is Jean. I started out doing curation at an arts organization, then I went on to do journalism, and now I work at a risk advisory firm doing corporate investigative research.

It may sound like these industries are quite different, but I would say the common thread across all of my work is research and writing. It's just a matter of what kind of research, and what kind of writing is used to convey that research, to contribute towards what kind of product, for what kind of target audience.

Stumbling Into Journalism

Jean Hew: I stumbled my way into journalism. I had no intention of joining the industry. It started because I wrote an essay that went into a booklet accompanying an art piece when I was at that first company doing curation. The essay was edited by an arts editor, and after reading my piece she said, "Hey, have you ever considered a career in journalism? I think you would be really well-suited for it."

I was quite surprised, because it had never crossed my mind. In the four years I was in university, I didn't take a single journalism class. Not because I didn't want to; it just didn't occur to me.

She said, "I think you should apply for this new media outfit that this journalist, Sudhir, is creating." I was about to graduate, so I thought, "Sure, why not? I'll just email this guy. Maybe if he wants to, we can meet, have a conversation and see how it goes." I went into it thinking maybe I could be a contributing writer. At the time I was considering pitching stories to Rice and to different magazines, so I thought this was something I could do for this new media outfit.

I emailed Sudhir, we met up, and after our meeting he emailed and said, "Hey, I think we could use a head of research." At that point he had found his two other co-founders, Waye and Charmaine, but nothing was set in stone. We had no name, no email, no bank account, no registration with ACRA. Literally nothing.

So I thought, "Sure. It sounds like an incredible opportunity to work with really seasoned journalists." I was just about to graduate, and I thought, "Okay, this is perfect." It had just fallen into my lap, and it felt right. So I joined them, and we hit the ground running. We launched Jom about seven to eight months into working together.

I was there for three years as head of research. My role evolved as Jom grew and as I wanted to explore different facets of journalism. I started off just helping to get Jom off the ground, and over time I started to write a bit more and explore different kinds of writing: not just essays, but contributing to our weekly column, Singapore This Week, and then working on the podcast and event planning.

At the end of my second year, I told Sudhir, "I think I'm going to leave in about a year. I want to try something different." I'm still very much in the early stages of my career, so I want to try different things, push myself, be a bit more experimental and be curious about different kinds of work. So I left after my third year. Then I did a little side quest: I got my yoga teacher training certification and taught yoga for about six months while applying for different roles. Earlier this year, I started at the risk advisory firm.

Why Philosophy Fits Journalism

Jeremy Au: Amazing. What a journey. This is so fascinating to me. Did you know that you would do journalism? You were doing philosophy, reading about, I don't know, Kant, and then journalism. How did you decide this was something worth joining?

Jean Hew: When I was in school, the area of philosophy I was most interested in was the philosophy of aesthetics, and I was very keen on working in the arts world. I took classes like Buddhist art and exhibition design, and I was particularly interested in curation. I thought that was what I was preparing myself to do. That's why my first internship was as a curatorial intern, and then I joined that company part-time while I was finishing my last semester.

But when that editor told me, "I think you'd be very well-suited for journalism," it opened my mind to that possibility. It just hadn't occurred to me; it's not that I wasn't interested. I also really trusted the editor. She's really experienced. And I was drawn to writing and to research.

In my time doing curatorial research, I was doing a lot of on-the-ground work. I don't want to call it investigations, but I guess it was kind of investigations. I was walking around Jalan Besar for two months, talking to strangers, talking to whoever was willing to talk to me, talking to artists. I really enjoyed that process of immersing myself in a space or a topic, trying to talk to anybody in that area and learning from them. I enjoyed the human connection and the conversation, and I thought journalism would give me a good opportunity to do exactly that: talk to people, hear their stories and try to convey those stories in a particular way. So it all made sense.

I wouldn't say philosophy is that far from journalism. There are a lot of transferable skills: reading, writing, critical thinking, organizing your thoughts, making a sound argument. Those are skills I use all the time, every day.

Joining a Brand-New Outfit

Jeremy Au: It's one thing to say, "Okay, journalism is something I'm interested in." It's another thing to join a brand-new outfit. J-O-M. What is Jom? What was it like to say, "Hey, this is something I want to sign up for"?

Jean Hew: I was really drawn to the opportunity to work with the three co-founders. They're incredibly experienced. Sudhir, at that point, had been writing for as long as I've been alive.

Jeremy Au: Old man Sudhir.

Jean Hew: Yes. And Waye, I think, had also been working for about as long as I've been alive. Charmaine is incredibly accomplished. The opportunity to work so closely with such experienced, seasoned journalists doesn't present itself all the time.

But also, when I met them, I thought they were kind, really respectful and very candid. The first time I met Sudhir, he said, "I'm figuring it out. I don't actually know 100% what I'm doing, but I want to create a team that I can work together with." I appreciated that candor and that honesty, and I felt like I could trust them. My gut instinct was right. Even though I was so much more junior than all of them, they were very accepting of and receptive to my ideas. They never dismissed me, and I learned so much from them in my three years there. So it did feel like a bit of a leap, but I'm very happy I took it.

Jeremy Au: Were your parents like, "Oh, you could have joined The Straits Times or The Business Times"?

Jean Hew: Not at all. My parents are very open-minded. They knew I was doing something that, first of all, I was interested in and passionate about, but that also aligned with my strengths. So it didn't feel like I was going against the grain or forcing myself to fit any kind of mold. They were very happy for me to make my own choices. They trust me, and I appreciate that.

Year One at Jom

Jeremy Au: Amazing. And there you are in that new build. What's it like being on the inside? Because from the outside, I'm like, "Okay, Sudhir's a cool guy: wise, thoughtful, considerate." He's writing every day, and then I just get the emails.

Jean Hew: Love that.

Jeremy Au: So I don't know how the sausage is made. What was it like inside this new build in year one, for example?

Jean Hew: In year one, at the beginning, when we started?

Jeremy Au: At the beginning, for you.

Jean Hew: When we started, it was so exciting. Like I mentioned, when I joined, we had nothing. No name, nothing. A really blank slate. We started with an editorial boot camp. We had all these readings about different approaches to journalism: how print media has changed over the years, how moving online has shaped journalism globally, what it means to ask people to pay us a monthly subscription fee, and how that business model might affect our offerings. So the first stage was really ideation and brainstorming, and then nailing down the editorial values we wanted to hold ourselves to. That was a very fun process. We were also getting to know each other, because none of us had ever worked together.

It was also during that time that the seed of the podcast idea was planted. We were discussing what kinds of offerings we wanted for our subscribers. Apart from the core offerings of the essay, the weekly column and the newsletter, what other, maybe more short-term, projects did we want to develop on the site? We discussed long-form video, short-form video and podcasting, and what kind of podcast we would want to make.

At the time, I had a little bit of prior experience. I had done some creative producing before Jom, including producing a couple of podcasts for a local comedian and influencer. I also just enjoy listening to podcasts, so I said, "If we have a podcast arm, I would love to spearhead it." And they said, "Sure. Go for it." It was only about a year after that that we started to discuss a podcast series more seriously. We were brainstorming ideas for different subjects, and then Lawrence Wong came about.

Carrie Bradshaw and the Business of Journalism

Jeremy Au: Wow. So much to unpack there. Before we talk about the podcast about Lawrence Wong, you mentioned that journalism is changing. How do you think it's changing? It's interesting because you have three roles here. You're part of a company that's redefining it. You're also eventually doing a podcast. And you're a consumer of journalism as well, as a Gen Z, I guess. So how do you see that, and what was that conversation like internally?

Jean Hew: Since you bring up the Gen Z of it all, I don't think I'm that Gen Z, actually. I was born in '98, so a bit of a…

Jeremy Au: So an elderly Gen Z?

Jean Hew: Yes, elderly Gen Z, or what some people call the millennial-Gen Z cusp.

Jeremy Au: Oh, wow, okay.

Jean Hew: So during the transition. Not super Gen Z. My first impression of journalism was through 2000s rom-coms.

Jeremy Au: Ah, yes.

Jean Hew: Or even Sex and the City. Carrie Bradshaw was a columnist, and she was earning $4 per word for her weekly column, which is absolutely unheard of. You will never get those rates today. Unless somebody would like to offer me those rates. $4 a word! And then there was Confessions of a Shopaholic and all those 2000s rom-coms where the main protagonist works at a magazine.

As you know, magazines look very different today. Even the big players, all the Condé Nast titles, Vogue, Architectural Digest, Bon Appétit, have had to transition online. Teen Vogue, for example, I believe is completely online. They no longer do print. So that's one of the really big shifts in journalism: moving online.

The moment you move online, you inevitably have to deal with ads. How are you going to bring in money if you're no longer selling physical copies? And the moment you talk about ads, there's a whole conversation about where to place them, how many to place, and who you should and shouldn't allow to advertise. How closely related do the advertisers have to be to your core offering? Then paid sponsorships come into the conversation. How do you navigate paid sponsorships and their potential effect on your editorial values and offerings?

That's something we talked about a lot at Jom. Even before Jom was founded, when Sudhir had the idea to create a media outfit, I believe he already wanted to experiment with a business model of monthly subscriptions. It's quite rare in Singapore to pay for journalism. I don't think Singaporeans are very used to it. I don't want to say Jom is the only one, but I believe it's one of very few media outfits that actually say, "You pay us a monthly fee, and then we're going to give you this." We're very used to The Straits Times, Rice, Mothership, The Online Citizen and things like that. It's free.

So it was definitely a gamble. Would the average Singaporean reader be willing to pay for quality journalism, for slow journalism? That's something Jom is still trying to make work today. I think the core of making journalism work today is how you're going to bring in the money, and how you do it in a way that ideally does not compromise your editorial values and offerings.

Why a Podcast

Jeremy Au: So here you are, being part of the change and observing the change, and somewhere along the line you said you wanted to do a podcast in year one. So why a podcast? Does it blend, or is it different? Stay in your lane: words are for words, voice is for voice, and video is for video.

Jean Hew: Like I mentioned, a lot of print media has had to transition online, and part of that transition is that you have to be on social media. You have to create some kind of video content. And now, increasingly, it seems like you have to have a podcast. For me personally, I just enjoy listening to podcasts. I enjoy long-form content, and I felt it made sense for Jom. Some of our first projects outside the core editorial offerings were a short-form video and then a longer video, so the move to podcasting felt very natural. It felt like the right next step. The only question was: what is the right story to tell?

Why Lawrence Wong

Jeremy Au: Interesting. And why was the right story our dear Prime Minister Lawrence Wong?

Jean Hew: For a number of reasons, but two main ones. The first is that it felt timely. Around the time we were discussing ideas, I believe Lawrence had just been announced as the next PM, but he had not been officially inaugurated yet. When the announcement was made, there was a flurry of essays, short documentaries and deep dives into who Lawrence Wong is. What is his background? Where did he study? What was his family like? Where did he work? I believe it was CNA that produced a short documentary about him. We were watching all of these things, and we thought, "It seems like everybody's asking who he is. Who is he really?"

That combined with the fact that we had a little bit of access. Sudhir went to school with Lawrence Wong, and he also knows Donald Low, the economist who worked with Lawrence when they were both starting out in the civil service. So we thought, "We already have two sources. We have two interviewees who can speak about Lawrence in his early days, before he became the Lawrence Wong." It made sense. Let's follow this thread and see if we can find anybody else around him.

Born on Reclaimed Land

Jeremy Au: Amazing. That makes so much sense. Even today, people are still asking, "Who is Lawrence Wong?" There are a lot of, I don't know what the word is, slogans around him: he's a neighbourhood school boy, he's an ex-civil servant, he's a nice guy. So I'm curious, what were some surprising things you learned about him as you did that early research?

Jean Hew: First of all, one of the things we talked about was that he was the first prime minister to be born on reclaimed land.

Jeremy Au: Oh, wow. That's interesting, actually.

Jean Hew: He grew up in, not Pasir Ris, Marine Parade. Marine Parade was one of the first, I believe the first, land reclamation projects in Singapore. So in that way, Lawrence is very much that classic Singaporean neighbourhood boy, which is how we came to the title of the podcast.

Initially, there wasn't much surprising information. The first few interviewees we spoke with had a picture of him that aligned with my understanding, which is that he's very guai lor.

Jeremy Au: He's very obedient.

Jean Hew: Yes, just an obedient, good guy. One of my favorite interviews was in the first episode, where we interviewed somebody who went to TK Tech, his secondary school. They weren't in the same year; our interviewee was a couple of years older. And he said, "Oh yeah, Lawrence, he's just super guai. He was never at the smoking corner. He never rolled up his sleeves. He didn't wear his singlet." He was just very guai. He studied really hard and was a good guy. Maybe what's more surprising is that I was not really surprised.

Jeremy Au: He strikes you as somebody who was…

Jean Hew: A very classic civil servant. A technocrat. No skeletons in the closet that I know of. His trajectory made a lot of sense.

"I Don't Care About Being Sweet"

Jeremy Au: What's interesting is, for those who knew him, did people know he was destined to become prime minister? Was there some early sign that he could make it all the way to the top?

Jean Hew: Most of the people I spoke with did not expect him to be PM, just because he's very down to earth, at least from the impression they got. What they told me was that he's just a very down-to-earth, very normal guy. Not yaya papaya. Not out there or super gregarious. So a lot of them were quite surprised that he's Prime Minister. He's top dog.

For example, the interviewee I mentioned who went to school with him said that he and his friends weren't surprised when Lawrence became a civil servant. They weren't surprised when he became a minister. But the moment he was announced as being in the running to be PM, they were like, "Oh, whoa, this is big." It was the same for Sudhir, who went to school with Lawrence at Harvard. He also described Lawrence very similarly: a down-to-earth guy, and he wouldn't have expected him to be PM.

The only person who said he really saw Lawrence as a front-runner for PM is Donald. We kept this bit in the podcast. When I was doing my research and trying to find all the people who knew him, and all the quotes about people being surprised, Donald was the only one. I can't remember which publication he told this to, but he said, "Yeah, I've always known that Lawrence is a front-runner," and it made perfect sense. Of the ministers who came into office around the same time as Lawrence, Donald said, "Obviously Lawrence is one of the obvious candidates for PM."

When I asked Donald about it, I said, "I think it's really sweet that you've always seen the potential in him and always believed in him." And he very sharply said, "Oh, I don't care about being sweet. I just want to be right."

Then Donald talked a little bit about how, in Singapore, we're not really looking for incredibly charismatic politicians. We're not looking for Trumps and Obamas, people who can stand on a stage and charm a crowd. We want technocrats. We want people who can do the work, who are very conscientious and intentional, and who are not prone to extremist views or any kind of impulsive decisions or actions. Historically in Singapore, we've always wanted our politicians to be predictable in a way, which I agree with. So Donald was the only person I spoke to who was not surprised.

How the GE Changed the Script

Jeremy Au: That is super interesting. There are almost two different jobs. One is being a civil servant, and I'd say a minister is similar: executing and making decisions around long-term planning, everything the Harvard Kennedy School is good at thinking through. Then there's the other part of the job, which is the politics: winning votes, and winning internal support as well, which is not easy. Those are the two parts I always see. In America, that split is much more obvious. You have government bureaucrats running the different agencies, and then you have politicians who are running for votes. So I'm curious how you see that play out in Singapore.

Jean Hew: Specific to Lawrence, it's actually quite funny. Developing the podcast took us a couple of years, and each episode went through upwards of 15 drafts.

Jeremy Au: Wow.

Jean Hew: Per episode. Things had to be updated because things were happening. I remember we were getting ready to record. We had locked in all the scripts, and I was planning timings with the studio for when we could come in and record, and then suddenly the GE was announced.

Jeremy Au: Oh, the general election.

Jean Hew: And we thought it didn't make sense to go ahead with recording the podcast and pretend the GE didn't happen. That would be weird. So we had to pause everything, let the GE play out, go back to the scripts, rejig everything, and then record.

I'm very glad we did, because the GE really showed us a very different side of Lawrence.

Jeremy Au: Right, a very different side.

Jean Hew: It showed us that he's maybe not just a technocrat. He's actually quite savvy when it comes to the political side, like you said. That political animal, if you will, started to show, and that was very fascinating for all of us to witness, because I don't think we had really seen that side of him. We had seen him be conscientious and steady when COVID was happening. We had seen him be intentional, hold his ground and be empathetic. But we hadn't really seen the side of him that was ready to be firm and let the political side take over. So I think he did manage to show us that he's capable of both.

Jeremy Au: That's also when I discovered that he could play the guitar. I think TikTok was very happy with those moments when he's in his element playing music.

Jean Hew: Yes. We talk a little bit about this in the podcast as well: the side of a politician that has to garner votes might look quite different in 1970s Singapore versus Singapore today. Of course, you still have to do rallies today, but maybe you had to be a bit more gung ho about it back then. You had to be a bit more firm.

Jeremy Au: You're competing against the communists…

Jean Hew: Exactly.

Jeremy Au: …and there are a lot of racial and religious tensions as well. So it's a little bit more like being a street brawler.

Jean Hew: Yes, absolutely. So contextually, what was required from a politician back then might look very different from what's required of a politician today. We talk a bit about Lawrence's savviness with TikTok and social media, the guitar playing and so on. Maybe he really does understand that, in today's age, it's part of garnering votes. It's part of seeming like a human being to people. And part of convincing people to support you is showing them that you can play guitar.

Jeremy Au: And that you like playing guitar, as a normal part of you. You're a human person.

Jean Hew: Exactly. So it's quite interesting how what we want from our politicians, what we expected of them in the 1970s, has evolved a little today.

Coffee in Siem Reap

Jeremy Au: What I find fascinating about this process is that I heard the host, the voice of the podcast series, had dropped out, and you stepped in. So you're the producer, you're the researcher and writer, and you're also the voice, which is a lot. I don't think I would dare to do all three. So I'm curious, how did that happen, and what did you learn from it?

Jean Hew: I came onto the project as a producer. Funnily enough, I told the Jom team at the time, because I was still head of research and busy with editorial things day to day, that I would love to produce it, but I'd like to bring on a team to write and host it. And over time, I ended up hosting and writing it, even though that's what I said I didn't want to do.

Jeremy Au: Incredible. So talented that you can do all three roles.

Jean Hew: No, no, no. But our whole approach to the podcast, not just production-wise but editorially, evolved a lot over the course of three years. When we first came into it, we were very inspired by two podcasts: The Prince by The Economist, which is about Xi Jinping, and The AWARE Saga. We knew we wanted to make a narrative-driven podcast. Not so much conversational, but narrative, very tightly scripted, with interviewees weaving in and out.

Our initial idea was to have a production team that would do the research, organize and run the interviews, and then we would write a script to be read out loud by a very experienced host. That host was incredibly accomplished as a narrator. She had done voice work and been in front of the camera, and she had a lot of experience in vocal performance and reading out scripts. But she had to pull out due to other commitments.

So the production team reflected: maybe it doesn't make sense for us to run the interviews and then have somebody else read the script. If we're going to approach this as a more personal take on Lawrence's story, maybe it doesn't make sense to have another person just jump in, read it and leave. It might feel a bit disjointed.

I remember this very clearly. We were still figuring out what we should do and what our next move should be. Then the Jom team went to Siem Reap for a film festival.

Jeremy Au: Oh, nice.

Jean Hew: On one of the days, Sudhir said, "Hey, do you want to grab coffee before dinner?" And I said, "Sure, let's go get coffee." Then he sat me down and said, "Jean, I think you should host the podcast." And I was like, "So no coffee? What?" It was very surprising.

But he laid out all the reasons why it made sense. If I was the person doing the research and running the interviews, it would make sense for me to host it, especially if we were going to write a script that felt like more of a personal take on Lawrence's story and on the story of Singapore. From a production point of view, I agreed with him. Even though it was a bit scary, and definitely a leap of faith for me, I trust their editorial judgment. So I said, "Okay. If you guys think this is the best way forward for the project, then let's do it."

Gossiping About the Prime Minister

Jeremy Au: A lot of it makes sense. You have the organization and the vision for the production side, and the interest in the topic for the research side. But I'm curious, when you were doing the voice side, did anything come up? For me, I would be in my own head about my own voice. Was it a different experience to be the voice? Or did it feel very natural, because you're just reading what you wrote anyway?

Jean Hew: No, no. It didn't feel like a super natural process. It was definitely still a challenge. We got a director on board who has experience in theater, and I believe she's a voice actor herself as well. I worked quite closely with her to develop the sound and the tone of the podcast.

First, we nailed down what kind of listening experience we wanted to create. There are a lot of different ways you can approach it. You can have a newscaster-type approach, very much "This is what's happening," or a radio-host approach. Eventually, what we decided on was to make the podcast feel like I'm sitting down with you having a coffee and we're gossiping about the Prime Minister.

Jeremy Au: Oh.

Jean Hew: That was the feel we wanted it to have. I'm just telling you, "I heard this thing. Did you know? My friend told me this."

Jeremy Au: Oh, I like that. It's very Singaporean.

Jean Hew: Yes, exactly. We're just drinking kopi, and I'm telling you, "Hey, I know somebody who went to school with him, and he said this, and Lawrence did this or didn't do that." We wanted it to be entertaining in that way, and to feel a lot more intimate than, say, listening to a BBC podcast.

I have no experience in voice acting or any kind of vocal performance. I did theater in school, but that's pretty much it. And we didn't have a lot of time in the studio either. We worked with a really amazing studio called Artwave Studio, and we had five sessions with them, each two hours long. Four episodes, five sessions: we spent four sessions recording the four episodes, and the last session was left for any re-records. So it was super tight. When I went in, we just had to hit the ground running.

But Ellison, our director, was really incredible. She was very good at guiding me through the process and nailing down exactly how something should sound tonally, and whether I should bring up the emotion or tone it down. Recording in a booth is very different from speaking conversationally. You really have to bring up the energy and the emotion, which took me a little while to get used to. And it's always a weird, vulnerable experience listening to your own voice. I don't know if you find that.

Jeremy Au: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jean Hew: It's weird. Not the most natural thing, but super fun.

Launch Nerves and Letting Go

Jeremy Au: And there you are, you've done it. You ideated it with the team. You produced it. You wrote it. Now you've recorded it, and you're going to release it. Were you anxious? Were you excited? And what was the reception like afterwards?

Jean Hew: First of all, it felt very surreal that the podcast was finished. It took us three years from inception to publishing, so I was just very happy the project was reaching completion and I could finally see the end. It felt very surreal at the beginning.

Then, when things started to settle, I started to process the fact that this project, which has so much of me in it, was going to be out in the world for anybody to listen to. It's quite a vulnerable experience. It's always a little bit scary to create public-facing work that anybody can listen to and anybody can comment on. I was quite nervous the week before the podcast came out.

That's also because I'm in the early stages of my career. It's not like I have a really long track record of being established, something to fall back on so that if anything happens, at least I'm more or less set. I'm still very early in my career, and much more junior than everybody else at Jom.

When I was most nervous, I was thinking about the worst things that could happen. Oh God, what if we get “POFMA”-ed? What if politicians come out saying this is an inaccurate representation of the PAP, or of Singapore, or of Lawrence? God forbid Lawrence comes out and says something about it, that he doesn't like it, or that he felt it was unfair to him or an inaccurate portrayal. All of these things could happen. And if, God forbid, we got POFMA'd and my name was in The Straits Times, what if a future employer Googled my name and all these terrible things came up? Very real concerns.

But I took a breather, thought about it, and realized that a lot of people had seen the scripts and read them. We had a focus group. I trust Sudhir and Jom's editorial judgment. We went into the project intending to create a balanced narrative and a fair, multifaceted portrayal. We've done everything we can to make this story as fair and as accurate as we can about somebody we don't have direct access to.

So I thought, okay, I don't want to sit here and catastrophize about the worst things that can happen. Whatever happens, we'll deal with it bit by bit. And all credit to the Jom team, because I also felt that if anything did go awry, I had their support. I wasn't being thrown to the wolves. So I do everything I can to prepare, everything that needs to be done, and then when it's out in the world, if it's out of my hands, it's out of my hands.

How It Was Received

Jeremy Au: And then the podcast releases. What was that like?

Jean Hew: We released it in stages, one episode per week over the course of about a month. So far, the feedback has generally been pretty good. But I don't know, maybe Sudhir is sheltering me from the more terrible things that have been said. But no, I think people found it insightful, which I'm grateful for. That's what we wanted to bring to people.

Some people did feel it was a bit too mild. They said they would have appreciated a little more criticism, not just of Lawrence but of the PAP, and I think that's fair. On the other hand, I've also had people tell me they didn't like that I called him Wong in the podcast. They said we should show a bit more respect and call him PM Wong. So, small editorial things like that.

I'm very happy that a lot of the interviewees featured in the podcast came back saying they enjoyed it and thought it was a balanced narrative. In particular, we featured Gillian Koh from IPS, and she wrote a very, very kind note saying she enjoyed it, that she thought it was a strong pool of interviewees, and that it was a balanced portrayal, which is important to me.

When I did the interviews, I wasn't even 100% sure how their quotes might be woven into the overall story. We had an idea that we wanted a person to speak about a particular thing, but depending on how the interview went, they might say something very insightful that would slot into a discussion about something else. So I completely understand that, from an interviewee's point of view, you don't know how what you say might be used. They're putting a certain level of trust in me, which I really appreciate. So hearing that they were happy with how their quotes were incorporated was a relief, and I was very happy about that.

On the whole, the reception has been pretty good. But as with anything at Jom, we're doing a lot of things for the first time and figuring a lot out as we go, so we're very happy to hear constructive feedback and criticism. We always want to make it better. If we were to do another podcast, there's so much we could bring to it that we learned from this first one. So I'm very happy to receive constructive criticism.

Is Singapore on the Right Track?

Jeremy Au: My second-to-last question: you're also somebody who grew up in Singapore and has a future in Singapore. How has making the podcast changed your view of what it's like to live in Singapore and have a future here, versus what you think still needs to change?

Jean Hew: In the process of creating the podcast, I tried to speak to as many different people as possible. I ran more than 20 interviews, and eventually we only used about six or seven. But I tried to speak to people of all different ages: new mothers, elderly people, young folks, students.

One of the things I always asked at the end of every interview was, "Do you think Singapore is on the right track, and do you think your children will have a better life than you did?" They could have spent the whole interview complaining about different things, but everyone had the same answer: generally, yes. They do think Singapore is on the right track, and they do think their children will have a better life than them.

I think that's a really good signal. Wherever you stand on the political spectrum, and whatever criticisms people might have about living in Singapore, at least from my experience speaking to these people, on the whole people do think they have a good future ahead of them, and that their children do too. I found that insightful and quite heartwarming. There are a lot of things that can be quite difficult about living in Singapore, but knowing that people from different backgrounds and of different ages still believe Singapore can offer them a good life and a good future is, in a way, quite comforting. It makes me a bit less worried.

Being Brave

Jeremy Au: I totally understand. For my last question, could you share a personal story about a time that you've been brave?

Jean Hew: Maybe this is a bit of a cop-out answer, but everything I'm doing in relation to the podcast is very new for me. It's not in my comfort zone at all. We have a couple of events lined up to promote the podcast. And like I mentioned, because it's so centered on me, one of the key narratives is my story alongside Lawrence's story, alongside Singapore's story. So putting myself out there in this very public way is a new challenge for me.

Jeremy Au: Interesting.

Jean Hew: I'm not the most used to selling myself, or selling or promoting a product. So it's new for me. It's exciting, as much as it can be a little uncomfortable at times. But I'm very happy and excited to be sharing this project I've been working on for a very long time, and sharing what Jom can contribute to the media landscape in Singapore.

Jeremy Au: Amazing. So where can people listen to this podcast series?

Jean Hew: You can listen to The Neighbourhood Boy anywhere podcasts are found. We have it on Apple and on Spotify.

Three Takeaways

Jeremy Au: Amazing. On that note, I'd love to summarize three big takeaways.

First, thanks so much for sharing about your early career and your choice to join Jom, a journalism company. It was such a fun way to hear how you went from philosophy to art and aesthetics, to curation, to research and now podcasting, all with that same observer's eye. It's such a wonderful journey, and really inspiring for people who are eyeing journalism as a career or interest.

Second, thanks for sharing what it's like to create a podcast series. It was such a fun behind-the-scenes look at the warm vocals and the writing, to see how the sausage is made. It was a lot of fun to hear about the editorial decisions, the process, and how you reach out to interviewees. A lot of color there.

Lastly, thanks so much for sharing about our Prime Minister Lawrence Wong: what was surprising to you personally, and the comments people had about him as a schoolboy and as an early civil servant. It was also quite interesting to hear some of that color about how Singapore views him, and how Singaporeans view their own future as well. On that note, thank you so much for sharing your experience.

Jean Hew: Thank you for having me. I appreciate it.

"The feeling was akin to climbing a mountain for ten years, and when you get to the summit, you realize you climbed the wrong mountain the whole time. The pursuit of prestige, money, title, and stability wasn't my dream; it was my parents' dream for me. When I checked that box, I realized I felt so hollow and empty." - Daniel Suh

"The biggest misconception about burnout is that it comes from the number of hours you are working, how demanding the work is, or how high-pressure it is. Burnout can be correlated with the number of hours you work, but the causal factor to burnout is what you are thinking and feeling during those hours." - Pooja Venkatraman

"It is not really about happiness; it is really about the pursuit of happiness, and our willingness to go through difficulty, challenge, and sacrifice. Instead of thinking about happiness and unhappiness as a temperature, what I find more interesting is the thermostat, which asks, 'Does this bring purpose to me?'" - Jeremy Au

In this compilation episode hosted by Edric Poon, Daniel Suh, general partner at Gold House Ventures and a former corporate lawyer, describes the guilt second-generation Asian Americans feel toward immigrant parents, and why that pushes many toward prestige careers. He recounts five years in consulting with senior military and government clients, a Northwestern JD/MBA, and summers at a big law firm and a private equity firm. A verbal private equity offer left him feeling he had climbed the wrong mountain. Executive coach Pooja Venkatraman argues burnout comes from the mental soundtrack running during work, not the hours worked. Jeremy Au says purpose, not happiness, sustains effort, citing his army service.

E713 Daniel Suh, General Partner at Gold House Ventures
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3BayAbDaMGM 

E712 Pooja Venkatraman, Executive Coach
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eG25OpGZ66c

E720 Jeremy Au on Life Self Mastery with Rohit Malhotra
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3GVydLTmN8c

00:00 Intro
00:36 Daniel Suh: second-generation guilt
03:03 Consulting and learning to speak up
05:04 The JD-MBA, Big Law and the rat race
09:14 The private equity offer and the wrong mountain
10:27 Pooja Venkatraman: burnout isn't about the hours
12:16 Imposter syndrome and the wrong path
14:16 Why not just quit?
16:15 When emotion is high, intelligence is low
17:38 The romanticization trap
18:13 Jeremy Au: the thermostat, not the temperature
19:44 Outro

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#CareerPivot #ImposterSyndrome #GoldenHandcuffs #ExecutiveCoaching #VentureCapital #PrivateEquity #BigLaw #Purpose #TechPodcast

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Introduction

Edric Poon: Welcome back to BRAVE. High achievers across Asia are systematically trained to optimize for external prestige signals: Big Law equity, private equity deal tables and corporate titles. Yet reaching the summit of someone else's mountain often triggers a quiet identity crisis.

In this video compilation, we examine what it actually takes to unlearn institutional prestige, unlock the golden handcuffs, if you will, of corporate security, and reconstruct an authentic identity beyond external validation.

We start with Daniel Suh, General Partner at Gold House Ventures and former corporate lawyer. Daniel reflects on the psychological friction of second-generation immigrant guilt, stepping away from high-status institutions, and why a private equity offer could no longer cover up a fundamental misalignment with his values.

Second-Generation Guilt

Daniel Suh: I think our generation, as the second gen in the US, we struggle in the sense that we are split between identities, and we feel almost a sense of guilt or debt towards the previous generation. And we feel that going down this prescribed route of being a white-collar professional, being a doctor or an engineer, is the best way to honor their sacrifice.

And because of that, you tend to diminish your own dreams, your own passions. You'll never hear Asian immigrant parents tell you, "Hey, go pursue your dreams. Go be happy." Maybe eventually. But I think that first instinct is to say, "Hey, we want you to be secure, to be financially stable." And basically the implication there is, "We don't want you to struggle like we did. We want you to be stable and financially secure first, and then you can be happy," right?

And so I think a lot of my generation now, we are entering a phase where, hey, we did everything right, quote unquote. We went to grad school, we worked at the best companies. But we feel this sense of hollowness, that maybe this is not the life that we wanted for ourselves. Now we're here, but maybe our real passions and real dreams are unfulfilled.

Side note, I actually think that's why the Asian founders we back are so exceptional. They all have the most amazing pedigrees. They come from Berkeley, Stanford, Harvard. They worked at the best tech companies, law firms, consulting companies. But now they're in their mid-20s, early 30s, and they're like, "Hey, I've already done that. Checked all the boxes. Now I'm going to go pursue my dream."

Jeremy Au: Amazing. And one thing that comes up for me is that in America, there's such a huge focus on academics, because it feels like academics is the only fair system, at least from a parent's perspective. It's an equalizer, right? Because it's not a social network. It's not who you know. It's very much like, okay, you got 99 out of 100, you get into the UC system, and then college will, you know.

Consulting and Learning to Speak Up

Jeremy Au: And I'm just kind of curious, because there you are, and you went through the experience where you went into consulting and you did five years there to support your family. What did you learn from that consulting stint?

Daniel Suh: I think consulting was one of the most formative experiences I've had professionally. Being in a big company really taught me how to speak the language of the corporate world. It almost felt like training. You go to college and learn, and it sets a baseline. I felt consulting was very similar: how to think in a structured manner, how to be analytical.

My clients were very senior military and government officials. So I'm in my early 20s, and Asians, we look so young too. So being in a room with a two-star general, or working with someone from the Pentagon, it's intimidating, right? And I'm also an introvert, so I think it really forced me to ask, "Hey, do you belong in this room?" It made me confront that question.

And my upbringing as an Asian son, an Asian immigrant, where we're told, "Hey, just blend in, just conform, don't stand out, don't cause any friction," kind of worked against me. But being in the consulting world, where you're client-facing and you have to present in a certain way, have a certain demeanor and engage, was super intimidating, but it really taught me the value of speaking up and being present. In retrospect, it's really the soft things that mattered.

Jeremy Au: And I resonated with that. I was also a consultant in my formative years after undergrad. I bought glasses so I'd look older.

Daniel Suh: The moment I started my consulting job, I got LASIK. I wore glasses to look smarter.

Jeremy Au: And older.

Daniel Suh: And older.

Jeremy Au: Seriously, it's a real problem for us.

Daniel Suh: Shout-out to Warby Parker.

"I Have to Be a Lawyer Now"

Jeremy Au: And so there you are, and you went back to grad school, looking at the joint JD and MBA. I think that makes a lot of sense for your career. I'm just kind of curious: there you are studying, and you made the decision to say not law, but to go into business. How did you come to that realization?

Daniel Suh: That in itself was a journey. I applied to the JD-MBA program because when I was applying, I was in my late 20s. Rather than go back to school twice, I'd just do it in one shot. Northwestern has an accelerated JD-MBA program, so that's what I applied to, and it was my dream program.

It was so funny, because I was also applying to regular MBA programs as well, and I got into a couple. But when I told my mom, she was just kind of lukewarm about it: "Oh, cool, that's a good school." But the moment I told her, "Oh, I got into law school," she just screamed, right? She's like, "Oh, you're going to be a lawyer!" And I remember thinking, "Dang, I have to be a lawyer now. I don't want to disappoint my parents."

Big Law and the Rat Race

Daniel Suh: So I went to Northwestern, I went to law school. And what I learned in law school was, one, I could do law school, which is pure grinding. I was in the library for 12, 14 hours a day, just really locked in.

But just because you're good at something doesn't necessarily mean you derive joy from it. And I never had this emotional invocation of, "Oh, this is what I'm meant to do," right? I think a lot of pressure came from seeing what everyone else wanted to do and comparing yourself: "Oh, they're going to work at this law firm," or "They got this clerkship." It almost became the ultimate rat race. You're doing something, you want to excel, not for yourself, but to keep up or just to race ahead.

And I caught myself just really sad and depressed about it, too. But, you know what? I'm here. I've got a ton of student debt. I've got to make it worth it.

So over the summer, I worked at a law firm known for being a place where you just really grind. And I saw the associates. They're so miserable. I think one reason is just the nature of the job, if you're working insane hours, billable hours. And I also saw the partners, and these are just amazing, incredible people. But what really stood out to me was that the partners who were crushing it loved what they do, right? They had a passion for law. Law was the entire thing. Whereas a lot of the early associates I met were just doing it to get on the partner track, or because they didn't know what else to do.

They're all brilliant people. But I just saw the difference, the gap between doing something you love versus something you feel like you have to do. And the questions of my purpose really started cascading in my head. What's something I'm passionate about? What makes me feel alive? At the end of the day, I thought, law is something I could do, but I don't think I could do it for the next ten years. I don't think I would really be the best at it.

The Startup That Felt Like Fun

Daniel Suh: And so I came back to school, and that's when my MBA classes started, and that was just so much more fun. I would wake up, go to school, go to classes, sit in the front, raise my hand to participate, just completely insufferable.

At Northwestern, there's a student entrepreneurship program. They choose ten of the top student entrepreneurs, and I was lucky enough to get in. Me and a couple of MBA friends decided to do a business together. We got funding from that, and in my year and a half at the MBA, all we did was work on that company. And I remember this came from the deepest parts of my heart: "Oh, this is so fun."

I lived in the apartment building known for having all the MBA folks, and Northwestern MBA students are known for being party animals. I remember on Friday nights, the unit next to me would have all these ragers, and I'm like, "Oh my gosh, they're so annoying," because I'm just working on my company at 2 a.m. on a Friday night. But to me, that was the most fun.

And then I think that made me think again: is this what I like? What do I really want to do?

The Wrong Mountain

Daniel Suh: That summer, I was lucky enough to also intern at a private equity firm. And in my mind, I was like, "This is so insane. I've reached the American Dream." Because, coming from poverty, a family of immigrants, I'm working at two of my dream firms, in Big Law and private equity, with these amazing people at these big-name firms.

So yeah, I was there, I got a verbal offer, and I was happy. I was elated for, like, ten minutes. I got back to my hotel room, and I was like, "Wow. It's gone, you know?"

And I came back to school, and I just got this deep, deep depression. I was like, "Why am I so sad?" And I think the feeling was akin to climbing a mountain for ten years. You get to the summit, and then you realize you climbed the wrong mountain the whole time.

And I was like, wow. I just grinded my entire 20s because I thought I wanted to be here. And the pursuit of prestige, money, title, stability, that wasn't my dream. That was my parents' dream for me. And when I checked that box, I realized I feel so hollow and so empty.

Burnout Isn't About the Hours

Edric Poon: Stepping off the track requires overcoming the internal machinery that got you there in the first place: fear, status anxiety and chronic imposter syndrome. Here's executive coach Pooja Venkatraman on why burnout has almost nothing to do with the hours on your calendar, and everything to do with the mental soundtrack running underneath your work.

Pooja Venkatraman: The biggest misconception about burnout is that it comes from the number of hours you're working, or how hard you're working, how demanding the work is, how high-pressure it is, right? People think, "Well, if you're working 24/7, you're up until two in the morning, my gosh, you must be burning out." And if you have two hours of work a day and you're barely doing anything, "Oh my gosh, what a luxurious life," right?

And what I find is that burnout can be correlated with the number of hours you're working, certainly. But the causal factor of burnout is: what are you thinking and feeling during those hours?

Because my project at BCG where I worked the absolute most, we literally worked till 2 or 3 in the morning, Monday to Thursday. My slides would be done, and I would regularly stay late to help make other people's slides, right? It was just such a team effort. Crazy hours on that project. Most fun time in my life. I genuinely still look back fondly. At that time I was like, "Oh, what a dream. That was so much fun," right?

Jeremy Au: It's like, wait, can we bring it back?

Pooja Venkatraman: Exactly, right? And I can also think of times in my career where I've had very little to do, not that much work on. And I have felt tremendously burnt out, because what I was thinking and feeling while I was sitting there was, "What am I doing? Why am I here? What should I be doing? Should I do this?" I don't know if that makes any sense.

And so I always bring people back to this: the cause of your burnout is going to be the mental and emotional soundtrack that's running inside you all day long.

Two Flavors of Burnout

Pooja Venkatraman: And I think there are a couple of flavors of it that tend to cause burnout. Because if that soundtrack runs for an hour or two, and it's very stressful, but then you're fine the rest of the time, it's not going to be a big deal. It's when it runs 24/7 for months and years at a time, right? That's when it really causes burnout.

So I'd say one flavor of that soundtrack is essentially, "I'm not doing a good job," right? You can call that imposter syndrome. You could call that just being in a stretch zone, being promoted and truly doing things you haven't done before. But any time people are feeling, "I'm doing a bad job. People are judging me. I'm going to get found out, that I actually don't really know what I'm doing. Every meeting feels so high-stakes. I always feel behind on my to-do list," right?

Any of those things, which essentially sum up to "I feel like I'm not doing a good job," for high achievers, that is an existential threat, right? To feel like, "Oh, I'm bad at this." The feelings associated with that are so fearful and so intense that feeling that way for a long period of time will absolutely cause burnout. And that's kind of the high-intensity one, right? Burnout with a high-intensity emotion.

The other one, which can be a little more subtle and doesn't come with that high-intensity emotion, is a sense of, "I'm not on the path I want to be on." I'm not doing a bad job. No one's yelling at me. Often, there are a lot of things about the job where, on paper, it looks great. People would think I was crazy if I stopped doing this. But there's just a voice inside that's like, "This is not it. This is not what I want to be doing," for whatever reason, right? Maybe it's because there's something else you want to do, maybe it's something you're not interested in, whatever it is.

And it's surprising, because that's not what people picture when they imagine burnout. They picture that high-intensity, "I'm working all the time," high-pressure thing. I have seen the second one create the same kind of burnout, right? Every day you feel that friction. You're like, "Okay, I have to respond to emails and go to the meetings and do this." But all the time there's this unanswered question of, "I don't want to be here. I want to do this. What are we doing? Why?" And you don't have a satisfactory answer to it. And that is the second flavor that I see also leads to burnout for people.

Why Not Just Quit?

Jeremy Au: So why not just quit? I mean, when people tell me they're burned out, I'm not an executive coach. I'm not trained to be an executive coach. I'm more of an operator, and I like investing. So I always caveat, and I always tell people, "Hey, why not just quit," right? Because that's what I did. I was at jobs I didn't like. I burned out and I quit. Five-minute call, I didn't try to do anything. It's like, bam. Okay, so what's the difference? Why not just quit?

Pooja Venkatraman: Totally. And it's funny, I will ask people similar questions. Not because I'm trying to tell them they should actually quit, but because it can actually be helpful to give someone an answer for the purpose of seeing how they react to that answer, right?

Because the reason people need coaching is that if 100% of them were convinced the right answer was to quit, they'd just quit. There's nothing to be worked through. They're just like, "Okay, well, I quit. I knew that there was no part of me that was against that decision," right?

Where people end up needing coaching, or just a thought partner to think things through, is when there's a tug of war internally, right? When one part of you is saying, "F*** this, I want to quit," but then another part of you is saying, "But all my friends would think I was stupid," or "My parents would be really mad at me," or "I don't know what else I want to do."

And often with burnout, it's, "I don't know what else I want to do. I'm afraid my ambition has just permanently gone offline. When I ask myself what I want, the answer is to lie on a beach for three months. But that's not a career plan, right? And I need to make money," all of those things.

And so that's really where I think coaching can come in. People feel this conflict between two sides, or even multiple sides, of themselves, and that's what stops people, right? Because if there's no conflict, my clients are extremely high-achieving and proactive and action-oriented. They're gone, right? They've already moved on to the next thing. They don't need me whatsoever.

When Emotion Is High, Intelligence Is Low

Pooja Venkatraman: But it's that conflict that I think people just struggle with, especially because our careers are so important to us, right? Achievement, status, success, ambition, all of those things are so important to us. And when the stakes are so high, one of my favorite coaches has this great quote: "When emotion is high, intelligence is low."

When the stakes are really high, when it's your baby, your career, your life, your LinkedIn page, your little announcement to everyone at the ten-year reunion, "This is what I'm up to, guys," right? Your emotions are going to be high. It's inevitable, right? Unless you're literally a stone-cold serial killer, you're going to have a higher level of attachment and emotional engagement when it's your own career.

And then inevitably, because your emotions are high, your intelligence is going to be lower, right? Your best thinking faculties are going to be offline. That's why it's so easy to give advice to other people. And then you come back to your own life and you're like, "Damn, I should take my own advice," right? Why is it so easy to solve that person's problem? Because you're not attached to it.

And so that's where I think coaching can really come in, to help people in two ways. One, my brain is not emotionally engaged, right? So my intelligence is online, and I can offer my perspective. But also, helping people learn: how do I calm my brain down in the moments when it's really high-stakes and my brain wants to be in a lot of fear, or just feels the pressure of the situation? How do I calm myself back down? How do I access my higher-level thinking?

And then once people can do that, they just have some space, right? To say, "Okay, one side of the argument, second side of the argument, third side of the argument. How do we solve the puzzle of all these pieces?" That's where it gets much easier for people to feel clear about what to do, and go confidently.

The Romanticization Trap

Edric Poon: Here's a blind spot many high achievers miss: the romanticization trap. Leaving corporate security is not a silver bullet. If you jump off the track without building internal discipline, freedom quickly turns into aimlessness.

In this final segment, originally featured on Rohit Malhotra's Life Self Mastery podcast, and of course reposted on BRAVE as well, Jeremy Au speaks more on why purpose, not ambient happiness, is the true thermostat for endurance, and how real agency means learning to hold your own leash. Here's Jeremy Au.

The Thermostat, Not the Temperature

Jeremy Au: In fact, it's not really about happiness, right? It's really about the pursuit of happiness: our willingness to go through difficulty and challenge and sacrifice.

And it always makes me thoughtful to say, "Yeah, I'm happy right now," or "I'm unhappy right now," which I just take as the temperature, right? The temperature is 18°C, the temperature is 25°C. Is the temperature right? What I find more interesting is the thermostat, right? Which is: is this something that gives me purpose?

Because when I was in the army, there were so many times I was very, very unhappy. I can tell you that the army is full of moments that make you very unhappy. Living through the monsoon in a jungle, having the water go right through you, trying to sleep while water is flowing all around you, right? You're very unhappy at that point in time. But when you have a sense of purpose and camaraderie and brotherhood, and your mission to go from point A to point B, then it's doable, right? It's survivable.

And 20 years down the road, it's a fun story that you talk about on a podcast, right? And you say, "Hey, that was a good time," even though at the time, I can tell you, I was very unhappy.

And so for me, it's being very thoughtful about the thermostat rather than the temperature. Instead of thinking about happiness and unhappiness, asking, "Does this bring purpose to me?" Right?

Outro

Edric Poon: Dismantling status anxiety, unlearning fear-driven achievement, and avoiding the trap of romanticized career pivots. True agency isn't found by changing your business card. It's built by changing the internal metric of who you're working for.

Thank you so much for watching this compilation feature. Check out the description below for full links to all three conversations. And once again, this has been another episode of BRAVE. We'll see you next time.

"For many Chinese companies, they are willing to test robots in actual production lines. When one company starts to do that, it can go wrong, but when it goes right, they can scale up very quickly. When competitors see that, they realize this company is now more efficient, compelling them to act as well. That kind of competitive pressure drives adoption much faster." - Jianggan Li

"People in China are competing against each other, so they are racing towards general intelligence, embodied AI, and world models. I don't see much talk about safety. People are still focused largely on the engineering mindset: here are the things we need to do, and here is how we want to get there." - Jianggan Li

"When I was speaking to the humanoid robotic companies in China, many of them said they assemble their own robots because the motors, arms, and hands are all commercially available at a reasonable cost. We don't only talk about the companies which eventually build the robot; we talk about all these three or four layers of companies supplying them different things to make that happen. That layer is something which we don't see extensively in the US yet." - Jianggan Li

Jianggan Li joins Jeremy Au to report back from a week in China visiting five humanoid robot companies and three AI investors. They cover the US-China summit that produced a hotline and the term superintelligence, why Jianggan reads the agreement more generously than the media did, and the near-absence of safety discussion among Chinese labs racing toward general intelligence and embodied AI. The robotics findings are concrete: everyone concedes a funding bubble, Figure sorts 1,300 parcels an hour with 2,200 expected within a year, and engineers say hardware is not the limiting factor, software is. Warehouses run 60 to 70 autonomous forklifts. They close on Jeremy's open question about America's structural advantages, and whether US firms have the upstream supplier depth to iterate quickly.

00:00 Superintelligence gets a name
02:07 Reading the summit generously
03:00 Long memories in Beijing
06:00 Setting the base tone
07:19 Agents that route around their guardrails
08:51 Safety is not the conversation in China
10:24 Regulatory capture, or a real race
13:15 Five humanoid robot factories
14:30 Hardware is not the limiting factor
17:27 Sixty forklifts and nobody driving
18:31 The Chinese tailwinds
19:11 What is America's structural advantage

Keywords: Artificial Intelligence, Humanoid Robots, US-China Relations, Superintelligence, Robotics Supply Chain, Warehouse Automation, AI Safety & Regulation, Geopolitics, Proptech and Manufacturing, Hardware Innovation

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Mooncakes for Doomsday

Jeremy Au: Hey, Jianggan. How was your trip to China?

Jianggan Li: As usual, I'm gaining weight. I went first for business, and second because it was also the Mid-Autumn Festival, so I took the opportunity to go back to my hometown for three days. And I just can't avoid alcohol at the dinner table, and with alcohol, you eat more than you should actually be eating.

Jeremy Au: I was going to guess it was the mooncakes.

Jianggan Li: No. We had lots of mooncakes on the table, and everyone looked at them. You know there's a ceremony where you light some incense for the moon goddess or whatever. But nobody ate anything, because everyone was saying, "Oh, you should really keep this at home for the doomsday scenario." It has so much fat and sugar that it will never go bad. You can keep it for two years, basically.

Jeremy Au: Yeah, I think a mooncake is 1,000 to 2,000 calories, depending on the ingredients. I was blown away. So if you eat one whole mooncake, which is quite doable, you're pretty much eating all the calories for one day.

Jianggan Li: Yeah. So if you're preparing for the end of the world, you should stock up on mooncakes. Besides, you always get them for free before the Mid-Autumn Festival anyway.

A Hotline for Superintelligence

Jeremy Au: Yeah, I guess so. The end of the world, like the AI doomsday, Terminator, Skynet. That was a big topic recently between the US and Chinese administrations at the summit in September in Washington, DC. They came to an agreement that there will be a hotline to discuss what they now call superintelligence instead of artificial intelligence.

So they agreed on two things. One is to keep talking about it, which is, I think, better than nothing. And secondly, they decided to call it superintelligence instead of artificial intelligence.

There were quite a few people who were disappointed that more wasn't done. Some people were asking, "Hey, where are the policies or guidelines?" That's what the media was thinking. I was thinking that it's good that they're still talking about it, and it's still early days for everybody. What are your thoughts, Jianggan?

Jianggan Li: I think we talked about this after Trump's visit to China earlier this year. Back then, the common media narrative was that it was for show. Nothing concrete was done, and the announcements were superficial.

What I was saying back then is that the two sitting down and agreeing on certain things is already a big achievement. In the current world, so many wars are going on, there are crises here and there, and there are so many things which could go wrong.

I saw the announcement from the Chinese side when I was in China. They announced eight points. Iran should not have nuclear weapons, and the two should respect each other. I think these are actually very concrete bottom lines that they have set and commonly agreed to.

Besides, there's something very tangible that has been done. Two pandas are going to Atlanta Zoo. That's something very tangible.

Pandas, Trees and Long Memories

Jeremy Au: The pandas. Tangible in the material sense, because the physical pandas are going there. But do you think it's meaningful?

Jianggan Li: Knowing the government in China, these guys have very long memories. They see friends as friends, and they see enemies as enemies. Whoever has said bad things about China, they remember for a very long time. And anyone who has made a small gesture, however minute, they remember that for a long time too.

When the Trump-Xi meeting was happening, Xi mentioned in his speech an American teacher who donated a small amount of money to a Chinese farmer to plant trees in the north to stop the desert. He and his friends donated about $5,000, and the Chinese government and people remembered it for more than 20 years. Right before the trip, they actually invited him back to China to see how the trees had grown, and he became a celebrity.

So it shows the attitude of the government there. If you treat us as a friend, we remember for a long time. If you don't, we also remember that for a long time.

Jeremy Au: Yeah, I saw that story. It's such a heartwarming gesture, because that Chinese lady used the money to build a whole forest to stop the desert from coming in. It took her entire life to plant those trees, which is really inspiring and will benefit so many future generations.

Jianggan Li: Yeah. And she's also quite well off now because of her effort and the subsidies she gets. But that is what happened afterwards. When she started, there was no guarantee her effort would be compensated. But someone who does all the work gets recognized, and eventually gets compensated.

Sometimes these kinds of gestures from a government or from the people don't really carry an economic rationale. It's an emotional rationale.

Setting the Tone From the Top

Jianggan Li: Trump went to China and had a grand reception, Trump reciprocated, and the two leaders agreed to meet two more times at each other's summits. For me, that is already quite good, because if they've agreed to meet, nothing terribly wrong is going to happen between now and their next meeting. And if they meet regularly, lots of bureaucrats and officials will work very hard to make sure no terrible world event happens during that period. So I see that as a positive thing.

Jeremy Au: Yeah, I think so too. It's interesting, because the US media is maybe a bit bearish on the outcome of summits. If you look at the tenor of what they said, it was very much all pomp, all show, no substance. That's their general concern.

From my perspective, maybe I'm just being Asian here, but I think showing face, or at least that relationship building, is still really important, especially since they have previously been negotiating hard and playing hardball with each other. Letting them rebuild trust at the personal level between the two of them is really important. And like you said, having some symmetry in how they receive each other matters symbolically. It builds up that trust.

That's a prerequisite for rebuilding the relationship, because if you don't have trust, you can't negotiate anything. People think you can negotiate anything, but it's not true. If people don't like or respect each other, nothing will happen. It'll be interesting to see what happens after this.

Jianggan Li: Also, in Chinese official talk, there's this thing called dingdiao, which means setting the base tone. If you are a more senior official, or in this case the most senior one, what you say sets a tone, and whoever is under you works towards that tone.

If they said, "Okay, we are going to do something to control narcotics," I presume that means fentanyl, or the chemical materials used to make fentanyl. I'm sure the officials will try to work on something more tangible to control that, because the leader has set the tone, and the others should be working on the details.

Jeremy Au: I think that's the important bit: what happens now, less loudly and more quietly, at the middle and lower levels of the administrations. And more importantly, like you said, Jianggan, nothing, touch wood, will go horribly wrong between now and the next few meetings and summits.

Wars, AI Anxiety and Bottom Lines

Jianggan Li: I really hope so. Right now there are wars going on in the world, and Ethiopia is at war again. And then there's this huge anxiety about AI, and not only about it taking over jobs. Some people are worried that it could eventually eliminate humanity.

So it's important for the two most important powers, especially in terms of AI, to be able to talk to each other regularly, understand each other's differences, and agree on a common set of bottom lines and principles. I think that's supremely important. So in my opinion, I would not focus on small details. I would focus more on the tone that's been set.

Agents That Hack Their Way Around the Rules

Jeremy Au: I think that's important as well, because we're looking at robotics and we're looking at AI. There's a lot of anxiety because most of the big labs are in the US and Asia, primarily China.

What has also happened over the past month is that US AI companies have disclosed a lot of cybersecurity incidents, where AI agents have hacked sites to accomplish goals, in ways definitely not anticipated by their engineers and creators.

The most interesting one I saw recently was that the agents weren't allowed to run code, so they generated code using a URL shortener. They created millions of short URLs that, chained together, effectively formed code. Then they took a virtual browser from another site and used it to run that URL shortener code in order to hack a site. And I was like, "Wow, what a complicated way to bypass your creators' restrictions on running code and using a browser, just to carry out those attacks."

Jianggan Li: That's exactly what many of the OpenClaw agents were doing on people's personal computers earlier this year, just at a more massive scale, with potentially much bigger damage.

Jeremy Au: Yeah, and in the OpenClaw days, the models were also less sophisticated. They were going rogue in the sense of accidentally deleting people's email inboxes or sending off weird messages. But those models didn't really know how to code or to hack, whereas the latest frontier models do have that capability. That's the issue we face today.

Safety Rarely Comes Up in China

Jianggan Li: When I was in China last week, I spoke with quite a number of people in the AI sector: investors, practitioners, robotics companies and so on. Actually, the problem of safety rarely came up in our discussions. And this is expected. People in China are competing against each other, so they are just racing towards general intelligence, embodied AI, world models, whatever. I don't see much talk about safety. I'm not sure whether that's a good thing, but I don't see much talk about it.

Jeremy Au: And how do Chinese engineers think about the AI incidents in America?

Jianggan Li: Funny enough, we didn't talk much about the incidents. We talked a lot about where the American models are, the gap between theirs and ours, and how we could potentially close that gap. So it was primarily goal-oriented. As for the hacking incidents, lots of them are watching closely, and watching the narratives different people are putting out about them.

I think the term superintelligence is probably apt, because it is very intelligent. There was also an interview in the West, I think The Economist with Yuval, the author of the books about Homo sapiens. He was saying that something superintelligent but not conscious could potentially be riskier, because it doesn't suffer pain, so it could potentially cause more damage.

But again, I don't see much talk about it in China. At least in the discussions I had, it is not a topic people naturally raise. People are still largely focused on an engineering mindset: here are the things we need to do, and here's how we get there. If safety becomes an issue, people will probably take an engineering approach to it as well.

Regulation, Liability and the Prisoner's Dilemma

Jeremy Au: One concern, from a game theory perspective, is that the big US AI labs are actually starting to ask for regulation, to help them coordinate their research and frontier work, and hopefully to prevent them from accidentally creating malware, along with the liability lawsuits that could follow. So the US government could act as a regulator for these US companies.

But the big concern, and I think that's what Trump was discussing, is that if you coordinate a slowdown on the American side, the Chinese frontier labs can catch up with the Americans. So, no deal. It's kind of like a prisoner's dilemma, where everybody is forced to develop as fast as they can because they have to compete with one another.

Jianggan Li: Is he genuinely concerned about Chinese models catching up, or is he just using that as an easier-to-understand, easier-to-communicate message to tell people, "No, I'm not going to slow down. I'm not going to legislate"?

I've been following the discourse of David Sacks, who advises Trump on AI and crypto policy. His perspective has been clear. He says all these frontier labs are for-profit corporations, and he always talks about regulatory capture. I think we ran a poll, and most people think it's regulatory capture as well.

He thinks the commercial liabilities if AI models go wrong are enough on their own to force these companies to take safety more seriously. So if a top lab wants to slow down, that's their commercial decision because of the potential liabilities, and he thinks that alone would be enough.

Litigation Versus Social Pressure

Jianggan Li: The question, when it comes to China, is that China doesn't have that kind of legal system to properly enshrine the commercial liabilities that model developers, or any companies building critical infrastructure, might have. It's not a system where litigation matters as much. It is a system based on social pressure and shame, much less so than Japan, but still.

If a Chinese company does something that violates the interests of the people, it will get attacked online, and the government will send an investigation. Japan is obviously more extreme. They will bow, they'll apologize, and in extreme cases, they'll commit suicide.

But essentially, it's the same sort of cultural and societal norms that are used to keep top players from doing something extreme, or from letting something happen through a lack of oversight. But is that enough for the age of AI? That has not been tested, so I don't know.

Jeremy Au: So what you're implying is that without commercial liability lawsuits, which are a privatized law enforcement mechanism, the state in China will probably take a more active role in regulation than in the US. Is that the end state you're describing?

Jianggan Li: I don't know what the end state is, but you can probably model it. You know who the players are, and you roughly know their constraints, whether legal, societal, cultural or organizational. Then you can model what kind of decisions will be made in what kind of scenarios. I think even a simple ChatGPT chat could model that.

Everyone Agrees It's a Bubble

Jeremy Au: What's interesting is that we're also seeing a lot of humanoid robots really take action. Last time we talked about the humanoid games, and some of the listener feedback was: what is the actual rate of progress in China around humanoid robots and the robotics space?

My quick answer is that there obviously seems to be a lot more build-out of humanoid robots in China compared to the rest of the world. That's one point. Two is that the supplier and manufacturer base is much deeper in China. But I'm curious how you think about the velocity of the build-out in China.

Jianggan Li: A couple of things. First, everyone recognizes there's a bubble. Last week I visited about five companies building humanoid robots, and three investors focused on the AI space, whether large language models or embodied AI. Everyone agrees there's too much investment in humanoids at the moment. Eventually, the market doesn't need that many players, or that many people researching it.

But the same can be said about everything, right? Solar panels, EVs and so on. First you create a very competitive environment, then it starts to consolidate, and the remaining players become very competitive. I think humanoid robots are at the early stage of that curve.

Hardware Is Not the Limiting Factor

Jianggan Li: From a technical point of view, many of them showed me that the hardware is advanced enough. We've seen the dogs, the real humanoids, the arms, the dexterous hands. Many of them say the hardware can now achieve much more than the software and algorithms allow it to do.

For instance, I'm not sure if you've seen the live stream by Figure, the American humanoid robot company, of a robot sorting parcels. Actually, it's parcel induction. A bunch of e-commerce parcels come in, and you need to separate them so they get onto the belt to be scanned and processed properly. It's a very simple use case.

Figure demonstrated that they could do it at a rate of, if I remember correctly, 1,300 parcels per hour. In China, of the companies we saw, three can do that now, at rates between 1,200 and 1,600. And the funny thing is that some of these companies were able to do that at the end of last year.

Jeremy Au: Wow. What?

Jianggan Li: Able to do that. And one company has even deployed, I think, 300 of their robots in actual production, across the sorting lines of different companies. All of this happened in the last three quarters.

I spoke with the engineers. They are confident that within a year they can raise the rate from 1,200 per hour to 2,200. I asked, "What's the limiting factor?" They said, "It's not the hardware." The hands, the motors and so on are fast enough. It's the software. You need to recognize what is there, and you need to direct the robot to do the right thing. That loop still takes a bit of time. Just like in the early days when we talked to Claude, it was slow. Now it's faster.

Inside the Warehouse

Jeremy Au: That's interesting, because I was actually friends with the co-founder of RightHand Robotics, which was, I think, an MIT, Boston-based startup, all the way back in 2015, 2016. Even back then, they were building a best-in-class picking system.

Most people don't know what happens in a warehouse. A big truck pulls in, and its container effectively gets unloaded into bins. The bins are stacked on giant vertical shelves, and when they come out, the items may still be in packaging. They need to be opened, and then when a customer orders, I don't know, three eggs, five toys and one book, everything needs to be sorted into packages and put together.

Jianggan Li: Yes.

Jeremy Au: There's Amazon at one end, down at the item level. But for small distributors, there's some level of pallets and other stuff. So picking is actually really difficult, and it's a human job.

What I learned from the co-founders was that the labor management is really tough, because you have up to 50% absenteeism. These are blue-collar day jobs, there's absenteeism, and new people keep coming in who have to be trained. So workforce management is really not easy.

They were doing the picking piece, using computer vision and suction. At that time, the Chinese were doing the big movement stuff: the trucks, the big lifters. Those could be American branded or Chinese, but the Chinese were doing the big stuff. It's interesting that you're telling me this now, because it feels like the Chinese are going full stack, all in one, because now they're able to do all of it.

Forklifts, Suction and Dexterous Hands

Jianggan Li: On warehouse use cases, I have seen plenty firsthand. Autonomous forklifts, for instance, are already quite advanced in China. We have seen sites where 60 or 70 forklifts are running around without humans operating them, and that's actually pretty impressive.

There are also a few Chinese companies building unmanned forklifts in China for the global market. The top company is Hikvision, the company that was doing CCTV security and got into trouble with regulators and global politics. They are on sanctions lists in the US, the EU and elsewhere. But the best technology is there, the supply chain is there, and lots of people are doing it.

In picking, yes, there are lots of companies doing that as well. There's Hai Robotics, which has already built lots of use cases in the US, and they're trying to build a factory in Atlanta as we speak.

There are different schools of thought in picking now. Some people still think suction will eventually solve most needs. Others say dexterous hands are much better, because they can handle lots of situations where the items are irregular. For instance, you can't suck up an egg, right?

China's Tailwinds and the Cost-Pressured Customer

Jeremy Au: Yeah. I was actually blown away by RightHand's robotics back in 2015, 2016. It was such amazing, incredible tech.

Now that you've made me think about it, what are the tailwinds for the Chinese? First of all, they have a huge domestic manufacturing and factory base, which is a huge domestic market, not just for themselves but also export-oriented. So there's a good tailwind there.

Two, they obviously already have the earlier robots and the larger robots in the warehouse, the larger machinery. That gives them an all-in-one cross-selling vector to sell more.

And thirdly, of course, they have the compounding supply advantage in terms of cost and production. So you have all these great tailwinds for the Chinese robotics and warehouse picking industry. It makes me wonder what the American structural advantages are.

Jianggan Li: The structural advantage is that many of the Chinese robots do not have access to the US market.

But in China, there's another structural factor on the demand side. All the customers are facing a lot of cost pressure because they're competing against each other. Under that kind of pressure, they'll take anything that can help them save cost.

They are not like incumbent US or European companies, which have to go through a long process to validate that something is safe, check the supplier's credentials, take months to add them to the supplier list, and then go through a long negotiation. Many Chinese companies say, "Okay, you have this. We have a use case. Can we bring in ten robots to try?" Many Western companies do that kind of trial in innovation centers, but many Chinese companies are willing to do it on the actual production line.

Obviously, when one company starts doing that, it can go wrong. But when it goes right, they can scale up very quickly. And when competitors see that, they say, "Shit, okay, this company is now more efficient than I am, so I need to do something as well." That kind of competitive pressure drives adoption much faster.

Copied in Three Months

Jeremy Au: That continues to be a theme. People underestimate how much competition there is in the commercial Chinese space, and how much of the innovation it drives. Most people look at it as a top-down, government-led initiative.

Jianggan Li: Yeah. The government provides the seed money, space and so on, but eventually these companies have to survive on their own, and they're competing against others who likely received the same initial subsidy from the government. It's not a nice place to be, because even when you have built something truly remarkable, you are constantly afraid that somebody else will copy it in three months' time.

Sovereignty and the Upstream Supply Chain

Jeremy Au: You're also right that if you are a US factory or manufacturer, you have to be mindful about compliance and cybersecurity. These are important assets: warehouses, supply chains, ports. In a world where countries want to be sovereign and independent, I think the US market will probably have to focus on buying US robotics.

That's going to be a theme for a lot of hardware startups. If it's anything national-security related, or has the potential to be a vulnerability in a global supply chain, you may be mandated to stay in your lane.

Jianggan Li: I think the US worry is this. Of course you can produce robots, and the US has amazing software engineers who can build algorithms. But when I was speaking to the humanoid robotics companies in China, many of them said they assemble their own robots, because the motors, the arms, the hands and so on are all commercially available at reasonable cost.

So with this supply chain, we go upstream a few layers. We're not only talking about the companies that eventually build the robot. We're talking about all the companies three or four layers up, supplying the different things that make it happen. That layer is something we don't yet see as extensively in the US.

You have amazing companies like Figure, and the robotics companies you mentioned, but do they have enough depth upstream to allow different kinds of companies to test and iterate quickly? That's a question that probably deserves more investigation.

Jeremy Au: And that's a question we will have to tackle more in our next episode, as the industry matures and develops. On that note, see you, Jianggan, and see you next time.

Jianggan Li: Yeah, enjoy.

"The journey is already hard enough in building a company. The best we can do is to make that a little less painful when they juggle immigration as part of a necessary step for them to expand to the US. I think that empathy is what differentiated us." - Frederick Ng, Co-founder and CEO of Beyond Border

"In the first week, without a website, without anything, we had 10 meetings. Within the first month, we got on a call with a Swedish entrepreneur. He raised $50 million and he needed to move to the US to build a geothermal plant. Within 10 minutes, he wired us US dollars, and so my co-founder Arnold and I looked at each other and we're like, 'Oh, wow, there's something here.'" - Frederick Ng, Co-founder and CEO of Beyond Border

"We spoke to about 6,000 founders in the last year. 55% of them don't know what an O-1 visa is, let alone the different visa types. Most of the founders that come to us think that typical US work visa can be done as soon as ESTA, which is, typically if you're a Singaporean... you fill out a form, and then within 48 hours, you get a visa outcome. It does take at least three months to run a good process." - Frederick Ng, Co-founder and CEO of Beyond Border

Most founders who come to Beyond Border assume a US work visa works like an ESTA: fill in a form, get an answer in 48 hours. Frederick Ng, its co-founder, explains why a good O-1 process takes about three months and a 700- to 1,000-page petition. He joins Jeremy Au to cover the O-1 and L visas for founders and their launch teams, why a spouse's work rights often decide the visa, and how executives tied to an employer-sponsored green card can move to the EB-1A. He also walks through how Beyond Border separates human judgment from AI-assisted case work, how it found product-market fit with no website, why he went from VC to operator and back before founding, and the silent retreat and Everest base camp trek that tested him first.

Fred Ng is the Co-founder and CEO of Beyond Border, a tech-enabled U.S. immigration platform helping founders, companies and global talent navigate the U.S. immigration system.

An entrepreneur, operator and former venture capital investor, Fred previously served as Country Manager at Glints, where he helped build and scale the company’s business across Southeast Asia. He later joined Square Peg, a leading Asia-Pacific venture capital firm, where he invested in and worked with technology companies across the region.

Fred founded Beyond Border with a simple belief: where you come from should never limit where you can go. Today, Beyond Border is a trusted immigration partner to founders, highly skilled professionals and growing companies looking to build their futures in the U.S.

Drawing on his experience across entrepreneurship, operations and investing, Fred regularly speaks on entrepreneurship, venture capital, U.S. and Asian startup ecosystems, global talent and immigration, and what it takes for founders to build and expand across borders.

Fred’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/frederick-ng/ 

Beyond Border: https://www.beyondborderglobal.com/ 

00:00 Introduction

01:10 Fred's path: Glints, Square Peg and Beyond Border

02:23 Hong Kong, London and multiple passports

05:16 Starting venture on the wrong side of the table

07:49 Why operators make better investors

12:48 Too impatient for a 10-year feedback loop

15:19 Finding product-market fit with no website

17:46 Empathy over the CRM

19:29 Judgment vs intelligence in immigration work

24:04 Why a US work visa takes three months, not 48 hours

25:34 The O-1 and L visas for founders and launch teams

28:02 Spouses, dependents and the EB-1A

30:46 Ten days of silence, then Everest base camp

33:42 Three takeaways

Watch on YouTube

Listen on Spotify

Listen on Apple Podcasts

Keywords: US Immigration, O-1 Visa, US Expansion, L Visa, Venture Capital, Tech Startups, Product-Market Fit, Founder Resilience, Southeast Asia Tech

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Meet Frederick Ng

Jeremy Au: Hello, Fred. Good to see you.

Frederick Ng: Great to be here, Jeremy.

Jeremy Au: I'm excited to have you on the show because you're talking about immigration to the US, which is a struggle that many founders have as part of their global expansion to the US market. I have referred many friends to my past immigration lawyer for help with the O-1 Extraordinary Alien Visa. I believe that's what it's called. They've had good outcomes with that, and I'm excited to hear that, Fred, you're offering a solution for founders to get this visa category, but also to explore the immigration opportunities and channels to the US. So Fred, could you introduce yourself?

Frederick Ng: My name is Fred. I'm a co-founder at Beyond Border. Prior to founding Beyond Border, I spent time on both sides of the table. For the last eight years, I've spent time operating twice and being a venture investor twice.

I think a common denominator of how I've spent my time professionally is being a facilitator of exceptional talent. At Glints, for example, that meant helping talent from the region to be discovered by companies that are not operating in the region, mostly from the developed side of the world, to work with them, and through that, providing a pathway for them to really realize their human potential.

As a venture investor, it's more about finding exceptional founders, sometimes begging them to take your capital, and helping them in a small way to achieve their ambition.

In all of that, I found a common denominator and a lot of joy in helping people get to where they need to be to achieve their dream. I'm very glad that immigration, and what we do at Beyond Border, became a very important vessel for helping them realize and accelerate their human ambitions. It also helps us create impact and help people not be confined by where they're born, limiting where they need to go or where they can go. So that's a brief summary of how I've spent my time in the last couple of years.

Hong Kong, London and Multiple Passports

Jeremy Au: Wow, fantastic. Let's get to it. You grew up in Hong Kong and then you studied at the London School of Economics. So that was your first experience with immigration. Was it easy? Was it hard? What was that experience like for you?

Frederick Ng: The immigration part was somewhat easier. I was very lucky that my parents did all the groundwork, and I think that was a very big plus in hindsight. Immigration is not something you can do at the flick of a switch. The immigration part was easy because my parents laid the groundwork and gave me multiple passports to allow me to make that move smoothly.

But living abroad taught me so much. It was the first time I realized that immigration, and being able to expand your horizon out of your home country or wherever you're from, really helps you realize what your potential can be. It was the hardship I went through living abroad for the first time that taught me how important this topic was.

A lot of it comes down to understanding a new way of doing things, and how people are funny in a different language and a different cultural context. Because you're immersed in such a different environment, it stretches you and helps you expand what you're capable of. It was a very impactful experience.

Chasing the Opportunity Home

Jeremy Au: I think that's a fair point, which is that your parents make such an important decision about your immigration status, either by blood, because of what nationality they are, or otherwise. So many parents are thinking about what is the best country for their kids to grow up in, to study in, to work in. So much of a kid's nationality is dependent on the parents, either by right, which is their blood or their nationality, or by location, which is the country they're born in. So a lot of decisions need to be made.

So I'm curious, when you think about those identities. You could have made a decision to keep staying in London. Your parents did all the legwork. You went to study at the London School of Economics. You did well in academics, and you could have stayed in the UK like so many Hong Kong friends of mine. What made you say you wanted to go back to Asia versus staying in the UK for longer?

Frederick Ng: It's about chasing the opportunity in front of me, and what I had the ambition to do back then. It was very difficult for me to find a role in venture capital. At that point in time, I was very dead set, for very different reasons from why I did my second stint in venture, on starting my career in venture capital. And it was very difficult for someone who was not born in the UK, and who naturally didn't have the right networks to tap into, to be effective as a venture investor. So I had to immigrate back.

This is one of the things I share with a lot of our clients: you have to chase opportunity and make decisions based on that, and hopefully immigration is not an issue. For me, it was moving back home to chase that opportunity. I was lucky it was home for me, and it was easy for me to go back, but it's sometimes very difficult for a lot of our clients. For me back then, it was about going back so that I could begin my journey in venture capital. That's why I made the move.

Starting on the Wrong Side of the Table

Jeremy Au: So there you are. You're doing venture capital, then you're an operator at Glints, and then you go back to being a VC again. Can you talk a little bit more about those career choices?

Frederick Ng: When I first started in venture, and I like to tell people this, I started on the wrong side of the table, because I went straight into an investor role, out of ego more than anything. I thought it was cool to do venture. It is quite cool in many ways, but I was going into it for the wrong reasons. When I became an investor for the first time, I had no idea how to operate. I'd never built a business before. I'd never run a business before.

It took me a good year to realize I was way out of my depth. If I had done my job right, I would have partnered up with best-in-class operators, and they don't need guidance. But ignorant me, back in the day, was trying to tell people that they should do this and that. It was very embarrassing. It took me a good part of a year to realize I was out of my depth.

What happened was, and kudos to Oswald at Glints, whom I worked with in my first operator stint, I picked up the phone and called Oswald, and I said, "Hey, sorry I was being very arrogant in the way I said things and communicated. I realize now that I need to earn some battle scars to do the venture job a lot more justice. So if you'd be so kind as to give me a shoestring budget and let me operate and learn through that, hopefully I'll build a business or two that's profitable and creating value for Glints." He was gracious enough to say yes to that.

So I made the switch and went to the dark side of operating. I did that for two years, and it was a phenomenal learning experience, because I learned everything. I'm still learning, but I learned the basics of operating, especially in a service-heavy industry, which is fundamentally what Glints is trying to disrupt. I learned a lot about operating a service business, and a lot about hiring A players: what an A player looks like, what B and C players look like, and what you can do to maximize your chance of getting lucky and partnering up with an A player.

So that was two years in. At that point, I decided that I had learned some skill sets. I had hit a milestone in building two profitable businesses for Glints, and it was easier for me to go back to the nicer side of the table, so to speak, and hopefully do it with a bit more justice this time, having operated a bit. So I decided to make the switch and got in touch with the team at Square Peg. They were very lucky to take me on, and I had a phenomenal two and a half years of learning and working together with some of the best founders in the region before I started building Beyond Border.

Why Operators Make Better Investors

Jeremy Au: Let's talk a little bit about that transition between venture capital, operating and venture capital again, because in some ways that's the dream job for many undergraduates.

Frederick Ng: Sure.

Jeremy Au: I've seen so many undergraduates who call me and say, "Hey, Jeremy, I'm an undergraduate. I would love to be a venture capitalist. Should I become a founder first to become a venture capitalist? Should I operate to become a venture capitalist? Or should I just go straight into a venture capital job?" I'm curious, because you said it was a mistake, that you felt out of your depth going into venture capital out of college. Could you share a little bit more about that reflection?

Frederick Ng: I want to start with a big caveat. There are great investors I've worked with and learned from who didn't come from an operating background per se, but they're still phenomenal. Tushar Roy from Square Peg, for example. I think he's hands down one of the best investors in the region, and he hasn't operated in a startup environment before.

A lot of it comes down to the way an individual learns. For me, it's always experiential. I had to go through things and experience them myself, as opposed to just intellectually understanding certain lessons, to apply my learning to doing a better job in venture capital. That's just the way I'm wired.

But personally, having gone through that operating experience became a superpower in some ways. One is, if you speak to 10 founders who are fundraising, 10 out of 10 will tell you they prefer to work with an operator investor, because they have gone through that journey and they know how tough it is. A very key part of having experience as an operator is that it gives you empathy. You also know that people work in spikes.

What I mean by empathy is that if you've gone through it, you understand that building a company has lots of ups and downs, and there are many things that are not within your control. So being a great investor, at least from my point of view, is sometimes about being empathetic about the situation. The founder already has a hard enough job to do. It's more than a job, it's their livelihood. Empowering them with empathy is sometimes the only thing they need to get through tough times. Because if you have done your job right and partnered up with best-in-class people, they're best placed to solve the problem they decided to put their life's work into solving. So just giving that emotional support is helpful, and being an operator in the past helped me realize that.

The second thing is that it helps you get into tactical conversations with founders if you've operated before. I'm a very big fan of founders, or generally brilliant individuals, who can think in levels. There are people who haven't operated before who have a natural knack for asking the right questions to get to what matters, even in an operating setup. But generally speaking, if you've operated before, you know from firsthand experience how to make better hiring decisions, and what's priority one versus priority zero. You know what is typically going to cost your business versus what's not. On the surface, if you haven't operated before, two fires that look similarly big might both look like P0 at the same time. So being an operator helped me massively as an investor, at least personally.

Empathy Means Knowing It's the People

Jeremy Au: I empathize with going through this set of experiences, because I was a founder and a management consultant, and then turned to venture capital. There was that dimension of conversation, which I think was helpful. One interesting part you mentioned was empathy. Could you share a little bit more about that? You had your first stint as a VC without any founder experience, and then you came back with some operating experience. What did that difference in empathy mean in terms of how you felt, or how you practiced venture capital?

Frederick Ng: The difference, having gone through both the operator and the investor route, is an understanding. Empathy is an understanding of emotion and also of the situation at hand. In a venture capital setup, it's understanding that people build businesses. Ultimately, what matters, at least what I chose to believe in having gone through that operator-investor journey, is that whatever your problem set or the idea you decide to embark on, it's the people that matter.

Without that operator experience, purely as an investor, I'd be very fixated on whether it's a good problem set, whether the economics are great, and whether the person is just smart. But what does smart really mean? That's where empathy comes in. Having operated, smart to me is whether you're a talent magnet, whether you're thinking from first principles, and in different contexts that would look different.

If you have operated before, you know that businesses come in different shapes and sizes. Some sectors require a lot of capital intensity. For example, if I'm building hardware, if I'm building, say, WHOOP, I would need to be a very good fundraiser to be a really good operator in that space, because you need to fund the J-curve with a lot of capital. That's different from someone like me, operating in a less capital-intensive industry. What exceptional looks like can differ in terms of the founder's background and DNA. So I think that's empathy, and the insight that having operated before unlocks.

Too Impatient for a 10-Year Feedback Loop

Jeremy Au: You've done both stints: operator, as a country market launcher and as a GM, as well as a VC. And then you decided to become a founder. You could have kept going in venture capital. It is hard times, but you have that experience and that perspective. Why decide to be a founder?

Frederick Ng: I decided to be a founder for two reasons. Number one is more personal, and I think it's also a function of time and learning more about myself: I'm a very impatient person. In venture, if you want to be very good, the number one trait you need is to be very patient. You need a 10-year learning cycle to know whether you're good or not. You make a decision, and then after 10 years you find out whether you're good. I'm too impatient for that. That was one big realization I had. I'd much rather be working on things where I can see almost immediate impact, either on the business or on the clients I serve. I like to be fixing the problem.

When I was an investor, one of the very big principles of how we decided to operate was that we wanted to stay out of the way of the founders we partnered up with. That means that even from a 20,000-foot view, you're sitting on boards and hearing how founders talk about their problems. There are certain problems where you think, I have experience with that, or I know the right person I can bring in to work together and solve this. But it's against the principle to do so, because you partnered up with the founder in the first place because you believe the founder is best placed to solve those problems. So there was always this itch that I could do more, and the impatience kicked in. I'd think, "I wish I were in the company, doing things for them and solving problems." That's part of the realization.

The second thing is that I had time to think back on what matters to me. Being in venture capital is great because you're partnering up with people wherever they're from, and they have very big ambitions they want to go after, but you can only play a small part in that journey. I think there's a lot more direct impact I could deliver if I'm hands-on, getting my hands dirty and solving impactful problems. Immigration became an extension of that understanding.

So without having anything lined up, I decided to make the switch and go find interesting problems to solve. It didn't take me and Arnold, Arnold being my co-founder, very long to decide that immigration was something impactful to solve. It comes down to two things. One is being able to roll my sleeves up and go solve problems, because I'm impatient. Number two, I'd rather be working on a problem than sitting 20,000 feet up and watching how others go solve it. I don't want to miss the fun.

Ten Meetings in a Week With No Website

Jeremy Au: How did you land on this product-market fit?

Frederick Ng: It was one of those where the dots connected, if you will. When I was in venture, part of my mission was to partner up with founders in the region who were primarily building AI SaaS startups. Typically, a lot of them would subsequently move to the US, because that's where the capital, the clients and the business development side of things are. I saw firsthand how my founders struggled with the immigration process while trying to build their companies, so I knew there was a big job to be done there.

The next thing was to see whether the problem was painful enough. Our journey to find product-market fit was to go to the market first, as opposed to building a product and hoping it sells itself. We decided it was easier to see whether we could reach out to third-degree connections. When Arnold and I embarked on the journey, we were very dead set on not finding friends to buy from us or be design partners, so to speak. Rather, we wanted to go out to almost complete randos and see, without a website and with nothing but a narrative, whether people were willing to pay, and pay a pretty high ticket, for the products and the visas we sell. If people are willing to pay despite all of that, it tells you pretty much that there's an impactful job to be done. There's a lot of value left on the table, and a lot of value left to be created.

Once we decided immigration was an impactful problem to solve, one aligned with our goal to accelerate human ambition and help talented people get to wherever innovation happens, we decided to go out and find venture-backed founders and see whether they would respond. When we first went to market, we didn't have a website. We were just learning on every call. In the first week, without a website, without anything, we had 10 meetings.

Within the first month, we got on a call with a Swedish entrepreneur. He had raised $50 million, and he needed to move to the US to build a geothermal plant. Mind you, we had no website. We were armed with a little bit more knowledge about the O-1 visa, which was the hero product at the time. And within 10 minutes, he wired us. Arnold and I looked at each other and we were like, "Oh, wow, there's something here."

So that was the quote-unquote product-market fit exploration: compressing that timeframe, getting to the market as quickly as possible, and not being afraid of embarrassment, almost welcoming it, because you learn the most from it. That's how I think we accelerated our journey to finding product-market fit.

Empathy Over the CRM

Jeremy Au: Visas are obviously a problem, especially when you're applying from a foreign country and getting to the US is attractive. If you Google this, there are many services available. There are law firms and so forth. So what's your approach?

Frederick Ng: We wanted to work with a lot of empathy, compared to how others might have experienced their journeys with a traditional immigration law firm. What I mean by that is, having operated in this space and solved this problem, and with a team that is primarily immigrants themselves who have gone through that journey, we know it's a very emotional one. Part of what makes a great case is someone who has spent time with whoever is going through the process. Through the inevitable ups and downs of getting the case done and getting your evidence together to help your visa process go through, you support them emotionally, so that whoever's going through it doesn't get affected too much by the process while juggling building their thing.

I think that's the big part where traditional professional services are lacking, specifically in immigration. A lot of the time, especially when a firm is operating at scale, you start to become a number in their CRM. We decided that's not what we want to do, because a lot of our team members have been through that journey. We have team members who have done green cards for their own families as well as themselves, and that really changed their whole family's livelihood. With the same empathy that we received, that's how we decided to operate: to help founders achieve their ambition wherever they are. The journey of building a company is already hard enough. The best we can do is make it a little less painful when they juggle immigration as a necessary step to expand to the US. I think that empathy is what differentiated us.

Judgment Versus Intelligence

Jeremy Au: Based on what you share on your website, you're tech-enabled, you do things faster, and there's a money-back guarantee. Could you share a little bit more about how that works?

Frederick Ng: Our process is designed from first principles, differently from a traditional lawyer's. The framing is AI-native services. It just so happens that we're building this business in immigration. You can think of the job to be done as judgment and intelligence. That's typically what a body of work encompasses in professional service settings.

We can use a different industry to see the parallels. Let's say an accountant. You hire an accountant to do the work of keeping your books, obviously, but the accountant also tells you how to keep the books, and how to allot certain line items in a way that makes sense within the auditing standard.

If you take the same analogy to what an immigration professional or immigration lawyer does, the body of work comprises judgment, which is what you do in a particular situation, and then how you do it, which is the actual work that an immigration attorney and an immigration paralegal would do. How we do it differently is that we're very consciously trying to unbundle the two, and give more time back to the immigration professionals and attorneys we work with, so that they spend more of their time on judgment, which is what a human can do and what LLMs cannot. Then there's the intelligence, which is how you do it: how you compile a case of a 700- to 1,000-page petition with as much LLM-enabled assistance as possible, so that you give more time back to intelligence.

Let me put this into an actual situation. Let's say two founders come in who look completely the same on paper. Both are Series A founders, both are very well credentialed, and they would probably qualify very well for the O-1A. So the intelligence on how you craft the case will be very similar. But as you dig in and spend time with the founder, you start to understand the unique situation each person is in. Even though both are Series A founders, one might have, hypothetically, overstayed in the US on a B-1/B-2 visa.

That's where judgment comes in, and where our model lets immigration professionals and attorneys do their best work: freeing up more of their time to decide whether this is the right time for case number one, a Series A founder with a visa overstay, to go through immigration. Versus case number two, also a Series A founder but without that overstay, who can go through the process. We're very intentional about unlocking more time for judgment, and that typically makes or breaks an immigration case, because on paper you might qualify, but there are often nitty-gritty details in a personal situation that make or break a case, so to speak.

So where our model is different is that we try to automate as much of the intelligence work as possible, and unlock more time for the attorneys, or our immigration paralegals, to work with the founders. One immediate byproduct is that our clients get a lot more face time with immigration professionals and attorneys, and they feel more supported along the way. That's how we're different.

Why the Details Matter More Now

Jeremy Au: Can you talk to me about why that matters, that differentiation between the two founders?

Frederick Ng: Now is a very challenging time to go through immigration. It matters that we're able to spend enough time on one company versus another, or one founder versus another, because every case is unique. When you pair that with a very challenging immigration environment, the details determine whether the immigration process is a success or not.

I'll give you an example. Say that in the past, under a different administration, a founder was going through the immigration process and taking a launch team over to the US alongside them, which is a very typical use case for what we do. In the past administration, we would have taken everyone on an O visa: the founder and the founder minus one. If you'd spent enough time with the team members, you'd understand whether they could be a good fit for an O-1 visa versus a typical pathway like the L visa or H-1B.

Fast-forward to today, in a more challenging immigration environment, being able to spend time to really understand the case makes all the difference, because it helps you determine the right visa type. That's judgment: how do you decide the right visa type for the person, and for the team members, to move to the US? If you've spent enough time, that empathy and understanding allows you to say, "Okay, except for the founder, these people shouldn't go through the O-1 visa. They should go for, let's say, an L visa to bring the team over." That makes all the difference, especially in an environment like this: being able to zoom in, with enough time, on client A versus client B, who might look the same on paper.

Three Months, Not 48 Hours

Jeremy Au: What's interesting is that you're mentioning all these different types of visas, and I'm familiar with them because I was in the US. But for a founder or technology executive in Southeast Asia who's interested in moving to America, what's the span of visa categories they should be aware of, and who is each one best for, based on persona?

Frederick Ng: Let me take a step back. This is something I wish founders knew when they came to us. In terms of awareness of visa types, most founders haven't heard of O visas or L visas. It's great, Jeremy, that you've gone through the exercise, and I'd say you're in the minority of founders or venture operators who come to us already knowing about the visa type.

I'll give you a stat. We spoke to about 6,000 founders in the last year, and 55% of them don't know what an O-1 visa is, let alone the different visa types. Most of the founders who come to us think a typical US work visa can be done as easily as ESTA, which is what you'd use if you're a Singaporean, or coming mostly from developed or European countries. You fill out a form, and within 48 hours you get a visa outcome. It's not like that, and most founders don't know that it's not that easy. It's a 700- to 1,000-page petition, because you're literally going after the most powerful work visa for operating in the US.

So number one, generally the awareness is not quite there yet. If there's one thing I hope founders take away, it's that this isn't something you can get done within 48 hours. A good process typically takes about three months.

The O-1 and the L Visa

Frederick Ng: Then it's about the different options they have. The O-1 is great for venture-backed founders. If you think about it from first principles, what does the O-1 visa do? It has a reputation for being called the Einstein visa, or the extraordinary ability alien visa. Why are venture-backed founders a great fit? Because in spirit, this visa type is trying to attract people who are the crème de la crème of their industry to go and contribute in the US in a work setting. Being a venture-backed founder typically means you are one of the very few who have been selected by a venture investor and received institutional investment. Through that, you're among the very top in what you do, which is entrepreneurship. So the O-1 is typically a very good pathway for them.

One thing most people don't realize is that the O-1 has consistently had a broad-based, very high approval rate across different administrations. Case in point: in the first Trump administration, the O-1 visa had a 90% approval rate. In the Biden administration that came after, 93%. And in the latest stats published by USCIS, the US immigration bureau, so to speak, the second Trump administration has a 91% approval rate. Founders are expanding to the US, and they need certainty that the visa is there so they can go expand. What they don't realize is that this is a category with a very high approval rate, and hence the certainty founders are seeking.

Another typical visa type that fits a venture operator or a founder is the L visa, which is an intra-company transfer visa. The typical use case is founders who have built their base in Asia, need to expand to the US, and want to bring their launch team over with them. The founder minus one might not have as well or publicly chronicled a profile as the founder, so a better way to go through it is to say, "I've spent one year in a local entity affiliated with my US entity." A startup typically has a Delaware C-Corp or an LLC. If you've been on the payroll of that local entity for 12 months, you can do an intra-company transfer and say, "I need to do in the US the same thing I did with the local entity."

So these two tend to be the most typical pathways startup operators go through. If there's one thing to take away from all of this and from understanding the different visa types, it's that this is not something that can be done in 48 hours. It takes at least three months to run a good process. So as founders think about their US expansion motions, it's one of the first things they should think about.

Family First: Spouses, Dependents and the EB-1A

Jeremy Au: For many founders, when they think about their visa move, they're also often thinking about their spouse and sometimes their children. If you're a very young founder and maybe you studied at a US university, it's pretty straightforward to go through the practical training afterwards. There's a window to stay in America. But people who are using visa services often have a spouse, a girlfriend or boyfriend, and children. So how do you talk to them about that process?

Frederick Ng: It's one of the first things we try to get clarity on with founders, or even tech executives for that matter, who come through our door seeking advice on visa or green card types. To bring this to life: a lot of the time, whether you decide on one visa type versus another, or one green card type over another, comes down to family considerations. Maybe not so much for founders, but for tech operators especially.

We have a lot of executives from across the Mag 7 today, be it Meta or Google. The first question we often ask them is what their spouse's visa status would be if they were to go through this visa versus that visa, because not all visas allow the spouse to work in the US. They can live and stay, but not work. That's a main reason why people need to switch visa types, and it's something people should bear in mind. It's not just about the utility and how quickly you get the visa for yourself, but also the dependent status.

We've literally seen a lot of tech executives who couldn't make decisions that were more favorable to them and their families because they were boxed into a particular green card type. Case in point, a lot of tech executives from, say, Amazon come to us. Amazon will sponsor a category called EB-1C for them, which is for multinational executives, and the wait time is super long. Because Amazon is sponsoring their process, they can't leave. If they leave, it's not only their professional career that's in jeopardy, but also their family's livelihood in the US.

So a lot of the time they come to us and say, "Okay, I want a different visa." We chat with them and understand the practical situation the family depends on. Then we say, "Okay, have you thought about the EB-1A?" Without going into too much terminology, it allows you to anchor your professional merit against the qualifying criteria and be approved for a different green card purely on that basis. Once you've gotten that status, your dependents can live and work in the US without any ties to Amazon. That unlocks their ambition, because now they're not tied to an employer. They can go work for whoever they want, or even start a company.

So the dependent situation, the family situation, is often the first thing we talk about, especially for those who are already based in the US and have built some sort of livelihood there.

Ten Days of Silence, Then Everest Base Camp

Jeremy Au: That's so great to hear. My last question for you: could you share a personal story about a time that you've been brave?

Frederick Ng: That would be the time before I started this company. When I was a venture investor, I took a sabbatical. I knew I was going to build something. I didn't know what it was, but whatever I'd learned in the years prior taught me it was going to be a rough journey, a really rough journey, that would test my limits in every facet. So I decided to go and seek some hardship. I took a sabbatical, and that was the month when I was the bravest I've been in my entire life so far.

I went to two places, India and Nepal. In India, I locked myself in an ashram about an hour's drive from Hyderabad. I was the only foreigner there, and it was a super rundown situation. You wake up at 4:00 AM, and you're not allowed to touch your phone. You're not allowed to do anything outside of meditating. You wake up at 4:00 AM, you go to bed at 9:00 PM, and you do it again. You're not allowed to talk throughout the entire experience.

It was brave because I care a lot about the people around me, and I didn't want them to think I'd died. And vice versa. During those 10 days, so many of these thoughts came to my mind: "Oh, my parents might have died in these 10 days. For whatever reason, my partner might have left me." All sorts of things. It absolutely tested my limits. I went through it, and I thought, "Okay, if I've gone through and survived that, I can probably do something and not be daunted by the challenge ahead of me."

So to put that to the test, I took a bus across the border to Nepal, and I decided to hike to Everest base camp. Armed with all the confidence I had from Vipassana, and from having lived in the ashram without any contact with anyone, I went up toward Everest base camp. It was a long hike. I got to about 4,800 meters above sea level, which is relatively high, and I started developing altitude sickness, but I was three days from base camp.

The outcome I'd set for myself, to really test whether I had the resilience, was to reach base camp no matter what. I think this would resonate with a lot of founders as they go through their own company-building journeys, and it certainly resonates with mine. I was three days out from base camp, and reaching it was something I'd be really proud of for the rest of my life. I had a cracking headache every day. I couldn't sleep for three hours, three days straight. You're operating at really high altitude, so you get sick really easily.

The Sherpa had explicitly told me, "When you experience a headache, you should let me know, and then we're going to send you back." At that point, I decided I was either going to get there or die trying. I didn't tell him about my headache, and I made it all the way to base camp. Right after I reached base camp, I collapsed, and I had to be sent back by helicopter to Kathmandu to recuperate.

That one month really tested my limits, and it has helped massively in the journey of building Beyond Border, because of the many inevitable ups and downs. In the tougher moments, I go back and tell myself, "If I've gone through all of that and survived, I can probably survive this as well."

Three Takeaways

Jeremy Au: Thank you so much for sharing your experience. Wow, what a crazy story. On that note, I'd love to wrap things up by summarizing three big takeaways.

First, thanks so much for sharing about your early career and your own immigration and movements across Hong Kong, the UK and Singapore, and also your career across founder, VC and operator roles. There's a lot to learn from those career choices.

Secondly, thanks for sharing your experience of being on all three sides of the table, as a VC, an operator and a founder, and what empathy means in that context. Also some of your self-realizations about the skill sets you needed, how you could be helpful to founders, and how to be a real thought partner to founders.

Lastly, thanks for sharing about the immigration solution your company is building. I thought it was fascinating to hear a little bit about what you're planning, and also your first-principles approach to making this a better experience across the different visa categories, whether it's for a solo founder, a technology executive, or somebody with a family who is thinking through their spousal decision. On that note, thank you so much for sharing.

Frederick Ng: Thanks, Jeremy. Thanks for having me. This was fun.

"I actually think that in the long term, if we could also improve diagnostics to detect early disease, that would actively help the therapeutic space. You can go in earlier and treat problems earlier, and just like anything in life, the earlier you figure out the problem, the better you solve it." - Dr. Joshua Wang

"From a biological perspective, we know that Asians tend to develop complications from having excess fat, specifically visceral fat, at much lower BMI thresholds. As a result, we may not look obese on the outside, but we hide it really well around our waistline. This type of fat tends to be highly pro-inflammatory and contributes significantly to diseases like heart disease, vascular diseases, and kidney disease." - Dr. Sue-Anne Toh

"Everything works so well in Singapore that people do not have to think very hard as they go through life, meaning there is less of a survival mentality or sharp problem-solving skills born out of necessity. While this creates a phenomenal quality of life for citizens, it can dull the disruptive entrepreneurial spirit. Conversely, this is exactly why immigrant founders flock here—they see the operational chaos elsewhere and realize that in Singapore, they can focus entirely on company building." - Adriel Yong

In 2016, Singapore declared a War on Diabetes. This BRAVE compilation looks at what the Singapore blueprint gets right on health and public policy, and what that stability may cost in entrepreneurial drive.

Dr. Sue-Anne Toh of NOVI Health explains TOFI (thin outside, fat inside), why Asians develop diabetes at lower BMI, and how insulin resistance works. Adriel Yong of Clouted lays out the efficiency paradox: when public services work this well, fewer people grow up as problem solvers, and state ownership leaves few business families to build on. Dr. Joshua Wang of VerImmune covers why cancer is detected too late, why new therapies are tested on late-stage patients first, and how diabetes went from a death sentence to a chronic disease.

Watch the full episodes:

E718 Dr. Sue-Anne Toh, Co-Founder, CEO & Medical Director of NOVI Health

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pP0L_qhSRJA

E705 Adriel Yong, Co-Founder & COO of Clouted

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eOimzcac29w

E628 Dr. Joshua Wang, Founder & CEO of VerImmune

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=roXPyXASiRk

00:00 Intro

01:02 Dr. Sue-Anne Toh: Singapore's War on Diabetes

01:47 TOFI: thin outside, fat inside

03:38 Insulin resistance and the pancreas "factory"

06:43 AI, manual labor and the WALL-E future

08:28 Adriel Yong: the Efficiency Paradox

10:04 Temasek, GLCs and the missing business families

11:39 Focus or numbing? HF0 and founder distraction

14:21 Why swing for a billion?

16:12 Dr. Joshua Wang: therapeutic, not preventative

18:36 Why cancer is detected too late

21:27 From death sentence to chronic disease

22:55 Outro

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Listen on Apple Podcasts

Keywords: Singapore Healthcare, Biotech Innovation, Asian Metabolic Phenotype, Cancer Immunotherapy, Startup Ecosystem, Preventative Medicine, Public Health Policy, Immigrant Founders

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"As much as we like to credit ourselves—thinking we went to the right school, worked hard, and did all the right things to become successful—the reality is that's not even half of it. Along the way, people help when you almost fall. They are gracious enough to spend time on you, and it is the investment of colleagues and clients that ultimately gets you to where you are today." - Edy Widjaja

"Often, the frontline workers are actually more useful than senior management. They are the ones who go through the day-to-day operations. I would rather hear from a salesperson than a regional director because they are the ones who face the rejections and receive the customer complaints directly. That feedback is vital." - Edy Widjaja

"Way before becoming a senior partner, I was actually just a kid growing up in West Jakarta, Indonesia. I grew up working in my parents' nine-square-metre provision shop, doing everything from cashiering to deliveries. Returning to Asia after years abroad in science, consulting became the bridge that allowed me to learn and bring value back to the region." - Edy Widjaja

Edy Widjaja, former Senior Partner at Bain & Company and author of The Accidental Partner, joins Jeremy Au for a candid look back at a 16-year management consulting career. They cover what the job actually consists of once you take away the slides and the pitch, how performance reviews and feedback really work inside a top firm, how he handled clients and competing stakeholders, how he and his wife traded off two demanding careers around a young child, what a partner does day to day that nobody sees, and what happened after he retired at the end of 2025.

Edy Widjaja spent fifteen years inside an elite global management consulting firm, rising from an overlooked research scientist with zero interviews to Senior Partner advising top executives across Southeast Asia. 

He holds a BSc in Metallurgical Engineering from the University of Indonesia and a PhD in Materials Science from Northwestern University — a path that was originally meant to end in a laboratory.

Long before any of that, he learned to read a customer's needs from behind the counter of his parents' nine-square-meter provision shop in Chinatown, West Jakarta. That instinct, it turned out, mattered more than almost anything he learned in a classroom.

He co-founded his firm's Jakarta office, led its Southeast Asia Financial Services practice, and spent a decade shaping the region's hiring and mentorship as its Recruiting and People Partner. In 2026, he closed the laptop for the last time to write, travel, and figure out who he is without a calendar telling him.

The Accidental Partner is his first book. All net proceeds support education access, scholarship, and mental health initiatives in Indonesia. He lives in Singapore. Get the book at https://www.edywidjaja.com 

00:00 Introduction

02:37 From a provision shop in West Jakarta to Bain

10:21 The INSEAD MBA, and nearly not getting hired

14:21 What consulting actually is behind the slides

19:45 Performance reviews, feedback and the ego

26:58 Clients, stakeholders and the front line

37:23 Jakarta, travel and not being a weekend dad

42:08 Two careers, taking turns

44:19 What a partner really does all day

49:52 Why he retired at senior partner

53:45 Life after the calendar empties

56:57 Three takeaways

Watch on YouTube

Listen on Spotify

Listen on Apple Podcasts

Keywords: Bain & Company, Management Consulting, Indonesia Business, Career Transitions, Stakeholder Management, INSEAD MBA, Leadership Development, Work-Life Balance

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"Your brain is most receptive to absorbing educational knowledge as a young person, as a teenager. If you don't impart the right skills at that age group, it is difficult to course correct. It is never too late, but your best ROI you'll ever have is from getting K-12 education right. Getting K-12 right is the single most important thing that an education system can do." - Henry Motte de la Motte

"One of the consistent trends is that increase in screen time and increase in use of gadgets in schools has not improved, but made educational outcomes worse for the students over time. For the first time in global history, we see students' academic outcomes decreasing, not increasing." - Adam Huh Dam

"I built an education tech company in the US, and I'm choosing to raise my kids in Singapore. You had to build education tech in America because the public and private system, and the gaps in between were so bonkers that private market solutions were really the only solution for many people. As somebody who has the ability to access the Singapore education system, it felt like a no-brainer both on the value in terms of outcomes coupled with the safety and stability component, coupled with a tremendously low cost." - Jeremy Au

Get the basics right in school and everything else builds on it. Miss that window, and it is very hard to course correct.

In this compilation from the BRAVE archive, Adam Huh Dam of Stick 'Em, Adriel Yong of Clouted, Henry Motte-de la Motte of Edge Tutor and host Jeremy Au break down what actually improves learning outcomes, and why so much of edtech does not.

Why authenticity and real traction can beat a polished pitch, from the team that won the 2025 Hult Prize (Adam Huh Dam)

Why more screens and gadgets in schools have made outcomes worse, and where AI can genuinely help students (Adam Huh Dam)

How the US and Singapore education systems differ, and how gaps in public schooling create private markets like college counseling (Jeremy Au and Adriel Yong)

Why time abroad and cross-border relationships matter more for young people as AI takes over routine work (Adriel Yong)

Why selling into public school systems takes so long, from multi-stakeholder buying to risk aversion (Henry Motte-de la Motte)

Why K-12 is the highest-ROI investment a government can make, and what the Asian Tiger economies got right (Henry Motte-de la Motte)

Watch the full episodes:

Adam Huh Dam, Co-Founder of Stick 'Em

How To Win A $1M Prize And Fixing The Global Education Crisis | Adam Huh Dam of Stick ‘Em - EP682

https://youtu.be/jaeEyRF3doA 

Adriel Yong, Co-Founder & COO of Clouted

AI Has Changed The Way We Create, Consume And Value Content | Adriel Yong - E730

https://youtu.be/qqrkSe95nmY 

Henry Motte-de la Motte, Founder & CEO of Edge Tutor

Henry Motte-de la Motte: Education Tech Challenges - E372

https://youtu.be/oENqetfds_4 

00:00 Intro

00:40 Adam Huh Dam: going to London knowing we wouldn't win

03:48 Why Stick 'Em won the Hult Prize

04:50 AI in classrooms: the low-hanging fruit

06:07 More screens, worse outcomes

07:36 Jeremy Au & Adriel Yong: Singapore versus America

09:57 College counseling and pay to play admissions

11:51 The moonshot: six months abroad for every student

13:22 Henry Motte-de la Motte: education's long sales cycles

14:23 The window closes at 18

15:04 What the Asian Tigers got right

15:50 Outro

Watch on YouTube

Listen on Spotify

Listen on Apple Podcasts

Keywords: EdTech, Southeast Asia Education, K-12 Education, AI in Education, Singapore Public Schools, B2G Sales, Government Procurement, Hult Prize, Startup Founders, Screen Time Outcomes

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