About

I’m an entrepreneur and a product manager, I also sometimes write code. I’m currently based in the San Francisco Bay Area.

The Beginning:

Born in late 1997 in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia to a humble family. I always wanted to have my own business ever since I was a child. I bought my first business book when I was 13. At 14 I started trading my savings into Japanese Yen and China RMB to earn quick bucks. But during that time, starting a business requires a lot of capital up front, and Internet startup were something unheard of in my region.

At the age of 16, I was introduced to the tech startup scene in Malaysia through a few highly motivated friends. I started attending events where I heard stories about how college students in western countries built amazing products, raised millions in funding and created a huge company from their dorm.  However, what truly inspired me was how these companies were impacting millions of lives through technology. Since then, I’ve been on a mission to search for great ideas that would push humanity forward.

At 17, I saw a problem in my local community that sparked me to start a startup, HaloGas , an Uber for propane cylinder (LPG) to tackle the inefficiency of ordering and delivering propane cylinder in Malaysia. In just 30 months, we became the first mover in the market, scaled our operation to 23 cities across 8 states, established a network of 300+ delivery partners, processed more than 150,000 cylinders, and built a team of 10+ across engineering, business development, growth, and customer support.

The Turning Point:

At 20, just 5 months after completing a $200,000 seed round for HaloGas, I made an extremely hard decision to leave the company for Silicon Valley. I felt that the potential of HaloGas as a local startup and that me being in Malaysia were limiting my potential. I was hungry, and I was looking for an international exposure and network to do bigger things. 

In March 2018, I moved to the US was fortunate enough to receive a full scholarship (including housing) to attend 42 Silicon Valley, a futuristic software engineering program based in the Bay Area. This allowed me to harness my technical skills that I didn’t have time for when running a startup, while being exposed to the world class tech ecosystem of the Valley. 

At 21, after a year of engineering I was recruited by the CEO of an AI startup, Deepen AI  to join them as their first product manager hire. Founded by 3 ex-Googlers, Deepen builds multi-sensor data labelling and validation tools to accelerate computer vision training for autonomous vehicles and robotics.

The Pandemic: 

At 22, the pandemic hits the US hard.  Due to the shelter-at-home order, over 50% of family-owned restaurants have been forced to close their doors and food banks are completely overwhelmed as 1.2 million Americans have filed for unemployment. Seeing this crisis, my entrepreneurial tendency got me and my friends to immediately start working on a novel solution of what would become OpenMeal. 

OpenMeal.org is a 501(c)(3) online non-profit marketplace allowing those in need to order food from family-owned restaurants with money funded by donation (think DoorDash for communities in need).  Food-insecure individuals would receive $20/week in credits which they can use to browse nearby participating restaurants and place an order directly from the OpenMeal site for pick up. As opposed to food banks, our diners are given the autonomy to order their own quality meals in a dignified manner, while bringing businesses back to family-owned restaurants.

We launched the product in 3 weeks on mid April 2020. And in the next 7 months, we scaled it to 7 cities across the US, partnered with 30+ small Asian American/BIPOC owned restaurants and grew the team from 3 to 70+ volunteers and alumni from top schools and tech companies.

Click on this page to see what I’m up to.

The Future:

My goal is to make as much impact as I possibly can in my life, due to the ever-changing of technology the possibilities are endless. Here’s some of the things I wish to do before I turned 30:

• Build a multi-billion dollar company that could bring humanity forward and changes the world as we know it.
  
  
• Build a global personal brand by documenting my entrepreneurship journey, fire-chatting with friends/experts and sharing my experience about tech/startups/finances through Youtube and other media.
  
  
• Start a Venture Capital firm with a team of successful founders, investing from pre-seed to Series A companies with a noble vision. I want a team that can act as a silent co-founder in the startups we invest in, and work alongside with the founders to shape and grow their product/vision early on in the startup lifecycle.
  
  
• Build a 7-figures passive income stream through investments in real estates, stocks and cryptocurrency. Then channels the returns into donation to my own non-profit OpenMeal and other organizations.