The Founder Institute's four-month curriculum covers everything you would expect from an early-stage startup program, including topics like "Startup Legal and IP” towards the beginning, to “Fundraising” near the end. What makes the curriculum special is the Mentors that teach it, whose passion, feedback and support helps our companies avoid rookie mistakes and set the foundation for a meaningful and enduring company.
The Founder Institute carefully recruits approximately 25 Mentors per Semester, who are normally the CEO or founder of a successful startup. Rather than specialists or consultants, we prefer Founders and CEOs to give our companies "the entrepreneur's perspective." The mentors share their experiences, best practices, and mistakes, while also providing specific guidance and feedback on the Founder companies.
In addition, the Founder Institute's unique Graduate Liquidity Pool allows our mentors to share in the equity of companies formed in each program - and, their share is based solely on the anonymous ratings they receive from the Founders both during, and after the program. In this way, the Founder Institute incentivizes mentors to take a special interest in our startups, and provide as much assistance as possible after the program.
We have a great lineup of Mentors confirmed for the Spring 2013 Kuala Lumpur Founder Institute, including many from out of town. See the full list below.
Adeo Ressi
CEO, TheFunded.com
Adeo Ressi is Founding Member of TheFunded.com, an online community of 17,000 CEOs to research, rate, and review funding sources worldwide. Adeo also runs the Founder Institute, a mentoring program that helps entrepreneurs launch hundreds of world-class companies each year. The Institute is the eighth start-up that Adeo has founded or built, four of which were acquired and three of which are still operating.
Benjamin Joffe
Founder & CEO, Plus Eight Star
As CEO of the Asia-based digital strategy consultancy +8* | Plus Eight Star (www.plus8star.com) , he works with clients such as Microsoft, Adidas, Nokia, China Mobile, Harvard Business School, the European Commission as well as media companies and startups worldwide to bring them the best practices from Asia’s web and mobile scenes. Bridging technology, sociology and anthropology, his research today covers trust networks, virtual economies, online third places, artificial artificial intelligence (AAI) and digital social dynamics.
Douglas Khoo
Co-Founder, Qunar.com
Douglas Khoo has been involved in both the interactive and traditional advertising and marketing communications business for almost 20 years. He was a co-founder of Qunar.com and led the company's sales, marketing and business development activities until its acquisition by Baidu in a landmark deal in 2011. Douglas was also Asia Director of Unicast, an internet advertising company specializing in rich media that was recently acquired by Viewpoint. Prior to these activities Douglas was a co-founder and Director of Shawei.com which was acquired by Li Ka-Shing owned vehicle Tom.com in 2000.
G Jay Yong
CEO, Gajah International Pte. Ltd.
G-Jay Yong (Guan Jer) is CEO of Gajah International Pte. Ltd. G-Jay built his two-man startup into a multinational consumer electronics design success within four years, it has since evolved to be a prominent provider of innovative and visionary digital lifestyle products including Tablets, ebook readers and multi-media players to markets primarily in China and Europe. Gajah was established in 2004. It grew swiftly in its early years and had achieved an annual turnover of S$6 million before the global financial crisis struck in 2008. The company managed to weather the crisis to record annual turnovers of S$16 million and S$38 million in 2010 and 2011 respectively. G-Jay is a Malaysian who graduated from the National University of Singapore (NUS).
Gary Gaessler
VP Sales & Marketing, Cloud Elements
Gary is the VP Sales & Marketing at Cloud Elements. Cloud Elements reduces the time and costs to develop and run Cloud Applications. We build open cloud applications faster with re-usable elements and a cloud-centric product dev team providing a unique blend of technology and app dev skills that accelerate the development of highly functional, supportable cloud-optimized apps. He was previously VP Sales of StreamStep- aquired by BMC Software in 2011. Co-founder of VoipReview- world's largest site for VoIP reviews, 8 million+ visitors, acquired in 2008. TechStars & Founders Institute mentor.
Hanson Toh
Serial Entrepreneur
Hanson Toh is ex-Google Country Consultant (Malaysia), where he worked as a consultant to Google in a variety of business / technology / marketing capacities, as well as performing the role of a “Google Evangelist” to various industry sectors such as govt, education, technology groups and businesses in its widest forms. He is currently a CEO of a startup focused in the consumer internet space. Hanson graduated from the University of Warwick and an MBA from Oxford University.
Henry Goh
Co-Founder & COO, Macro Kiosk Berhad
Henry Goh is the Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer of the MACROKIOSK Group of Companies. Together with his brother, Kenny Goh, they grew MACROKIOSK from a mere 9-man team to over 200 employees from 14 different nationalities. Today, MACROKIOSK is an award-winning company, with a string of accolades awarded by internationally-acclaimed establishments and faculties. With operating offices in 14 major countries across Asia, MACROKIOSK is the preferred Mobile Technology Enabler to a multitude of local and global clients. Goh earned his Executive MBA via a long-distance study program from the University of Boston, United States. In 2006, he clinched the Ernst & Young Emerging Entrepreneur of the Year Award.
Jeffrey Paine
Founding Partner, Golden Gate Ventures
Jeffrey Paine is the founding partner of Golden Gate Ventures, an early stage technology incubator based in Singapore. Jeff started and manages the Founder Institute in Asia where he is currently overseeing its expansion in the Southeast Asian region. Since 2010 the Founder Institute in Singapore has graduated over 60 companies in Asia. Jeff spent the first eight years of his career in early stage venture and private equity in the US, North and South Asia. He co-founded a China market entry advisory firm which was then merged with a China mid-market private equity firm. He also cofounded Pyrks in early 2012 and currently sits on the board of TheMobileGamer, Acheev.it and AtticTV. He is Singapore native and graduated with a Bachelors of Business Administration (Information Systems) from the University of Southern California.
Kf Lai
Co-Founder & CEO, BuzzCity
Dr KF Lai is co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of BuzzCity. Lai uses his entrepreneurial skills to spearhead BuzzCity’s strategy, leading the company’s engineering, product management and technology groups. Since its launch in 1999, BuzzCity has grown to be a leading global mobile advertising network. Dr Lai is often invited to speak at global mobile and media events, providing insight on the evolving mobile ecosystem to affiliates, analysts and industry commentators. Prior to founding BuzzCity, Dr Lai worked as an applied researcher in laboratories funded by the Singapore government, specializing in pattern recognition and text retrieval. Dr Lai graduated with First Class Honours in Electrical Engineering from the National University of Singapore and obtained his Doctorate in Electrical Engineering from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Dr Lai is also Adjunct Associate Professor with the Department of Computer Science at the National University of Singapore
Khailee Ng
Founder & CEO, SAYS.com
Co-founder of GroupsMore (acquired by Groupon), SAYS.com, a Social News Network in Southeast Asia, and Entrepreneur-in-Residence at 500 Startups. Passionate about using products and business as a force of change. Specialties: Product development, revenue model development, team and culture design.
Lim Cheng Soon
CEO, Netizens Media
Lim Cheng Soon is an entrepreneur, designer, and developer. He is the founder and curator of Hacker Monthly — the print magazine of Hacker News and one of the most prominent magazine among programmers. Before that, he had built and sold several online businesses.
Paul Whiteway
COO, The iProperty Group
Mr. Whiteway is an accomplished senior executive and entrepreneur with extensive global experience in the Internet industry including stints with Yahoo Asia, MSN and Yellow Pages Australia. He has been working with Internet companies since the industry's formation and is highly experienced at building businesses in both start-up and corporate environments. He is currently COO for The iProperty Group and Entrepreneur in Residence for INSEAD.
Ran Makavy
Growth Manager, Facebook
At Facebook, Ran is responsible for building Facebook’s international user base with a focus on high engagement and mobile usage. Before Facebook, Ran was CEO and co-founder of Snaptu, a leading mobile application platform acquired by Facebook. Ran has lived and worked in London, Australia and the US, and has worked at Odigo (acquired by Comverse) from its early days and was heading product management at Followap (acquired by NeuStar). Ran holds a computer science degree and an MBA.
Sau Sheong Chang
Director, Applied Cloud Computing Lab, HP Labs
Sau Sheong is currently leading the Applied Cloud Computing Lab in HP Labs, the research arm of Hewlett-Packard, to build cloud computing solutions using technologies researched on and developed within the labs. In the past, he provided technical consulting/advisory services to Internet startups, mentoring them in the technical and operational aspects of their business. He was also previously the CTO for a gaming platform and publishing company, Garena. His team developed Garena's software products and also deployed and maintained games published by Garena.
Stephanie Chai
CEO, TheLuxeNomad.com
A model-turned-entrepreneur, Stephanie Chai is an enterprising woman of her own right which led her to start the definitive wedding portal Wedding Guide Asia website. Besides Wedding Guide Asia, she is now focused on her new venture - The Luxe Nomad, a new booking site offering up to 70% discount on Asia’s most luxurious hotels and resorts. The LuxeNomad has secured early stage financing from Tigris Capital And Spring Seeds Capital.
Tzu Ming Chu
CEO, www.impersuasion.com
Tzu Ming runs Persuasion Technologies a web analytics software and solutions firm based in KL. He was most recently Partner and CEO of Netrove Ventures, a regional VC and advisory firm where he invested, restructured, acquired and took public many high growth Asian companies including one of Asia’s leading Online Advertising networks on the London Stock Exchange. He has also had stints at Techpacific Capital in Hong Kong, AT Kearney and Deloitte Consulting where he was involved in Oracle Applications and Databases. Tzu Ming graduated with a degree in Law from Exeter University, United Kingdom and an MBA from the Australian Graduate School of Management (AGSM). His credentials also include Google Certified Analytics and Adwords Certified Partners in Malaysia.
