Christopher Quek
Appearances
Chief Change Officer
#222 Inheritance? No Thanks. Chris Quek’s Boldest Bet Yet – Part 2
And that kind of pricing, lowered pricing, helped to really make things a little bit more affordable. Especially for this family business, they operate in a very large nation in Southeast Asia. And they decided that they will sell at a lower price of all their food produced to a certain much poorer province, if I would say.
Chief Change Officer
#222 Inheritance? No Thanks. Chris Quek’s Boldest Bet Yet – Part 2
And because of the technology that Agrimax gave it to them, by helping them to increase those crop yields, it's totally helped people in that society that they could actually put more food on the table because their produce has decided to become slightly cheaper. I'm just giving a little bit of some of the very interesting things that we did not expect.
Chief Change Officer
#222 Inheritance? No Thanks. Chris Quek’s Boldest Bet Yet – Part 2
We more or less knew that, okay, AgriMax we invest is because you're going to see more increase in crop yields, better food supplies, everyone gets to have food on the table, that's great. But what we didn't realize that what this family business did was that it took that technology
Chief Change Officer
#222 Inheritance? No Thanks. Chris Quek’s Boldest Bet Yet – Part 2
have more food, more quantity and decided to sell it cheaper to a poorer province where those villagers were now able to obtain more quantity of food for their families. So I think that was a little bit of the very interesting heartwarming stories that we see on and off here and there. And the best part about it, we're making money as well.
Chief Change Officer
#222 Inheritance? No Thanks. Chris Quek’s Boldest Bet Yet – Part 2
It's not that we are not, we are doing well, we are making money. It's just that we have made things more efficient to the way that society works in Southeast Asia. And yeah, I think that was just some of the very interesting anecdotes that we're going through our venture capital journey.
Chief Change Officer
#222 Inheritance? No Thanks. Chris Quek’s Boldest Bet Yet – Part 2
Not just investing in the company, not just helping them grow, commercialize the business, talking to the family businesses to become client, but really reaching the end consumer. Realising that the impact that we gave to the end consumer is something so significantly different now. We didn't realise that kind of ripple down effect would have been so much bigger than we thought it was.
Chief Change Officer
#222 Inheritance? No Thanks. Chris Quek’s Boldest Bet Yet – Part 2
In fact, we are talking to a second-gen family where this person is just transforming his whole family business towards FMCG, a brand. And I can't say too much yet, but when it comes, I will definitely announce that. And it's really exciting to see Southeast Asia is not only being
Chief Change Officer
#222 Inheritance? No Thanks. Chris Quek’s Boldest Bet Yet – Part 2
supported by Southeast Asia entrepreneurs, but you're getting international entrepreneurs deciding to say that Southeast Asia is a great market. I'm going to try to do something about it. I'm trying to make a change in the way Southeast Asia operates. And it's always for the better. It's exciting to me to know that we are starting to embrace companies even as far as going out of Southeast Asia.
Chief Change Officer
#222 Inheritance? No Thanks. Chris Quek’s Boldest Bet Yet – Part 2
And I would feel that there were going to be very interesting dynamics as we engage more of these second gens that's coming out from other parts of outside of Southeast Asia. And all you can say is that their diversity of views, the diversity of mindsets are just going to improve things better. And they're going to be sharing a lot of best practices over to the
Chief Change Officer
#222 Inheritance? No Thanks. Chris Quek’s Boldest Bet Yet – Part 2
next generation business owners here in Southeast Asia. And I think that really excites me where you get two of them together, they have a conversation and person A teaches person B what he has been doing and person B says, I'm going to bring this back over to my family business to endorse, to apply it, to work on it and see the improvement.
Chief Change Officer
#222 Inheritance? No Thanks. Chris Quek’s Boldest Bet Yet – Part 2
So it's exciting to see that kind of a network effect that we're seeing, not just for our startups, but the next gens who are entrepreneurs themselves. They are also somewhat, in a sense, a pseudo kind of startup founders themselves, trying to transform a business to become something very vastly different. Yeah, I think that's the really exciting thing about it.
Chief Change Officer
#222 Inheritance? No Thanks. Chris Quek’s Boldest Bet Yet – Part 2
Being an entrepreneur and also supporting entrepreneurs because you are just happily living in your own world, coming up with new ideas, brainstorming to find the best solution. I think that really is something that excites me a lot.
Chief Change Officer
#222 Inheritance? No Thanks. Chris Quek’s Boldest Bet Yet – Part 2
When you talk to fellow next-gen business owners, there is a lot of emotions that will come out when we describe this whole relationship with our parents. It's complex because it's personal and it's business at the same time, right?
Chief Change Officer
#222 Inheritance? No Thanks. Chris Quek’s Boldest Bet Yet – Part 2
I wanted to also point out in a very interesting way, when I left the whole business, it was a point that it took many years for my father to really accept who I was, being an entrepreneur in my own right, but not taking on his legacy. And it was a close ending where he's currently now in a more retired mode. And he decided to sell off that particular factory that I was there 20 years ago.
Chief Change Officer
#222 Inheritance? No Thanks. Chris Quek’s Boldest Bet Yet – Part 2
And they finally have sold it. So I think there was a bit of a closure. So if you ever tell me that, oh, you can always rely on going back to your family business. I will tell you that's not possible because I forced that door to be closed because he didn't have another person to take over that business. It was quite an emotional turmoil.
Chief Change Officer
#222 Inheritance? No Thanks. Chris Quek’s Boldest Bet Yet – Part 2
In fact, during my days when I was in Malaysia, because I will come back over the weekend and my father and I would not see eye to eye on a lot of things. And I would try to share with him about what I'm doing in e-commerce, but he didn't believe in it. But one of the really important things that I was very fortunate, I was very blessed was that he still supported.
Chief Change Officer
#222 Inheritance? No Thanks. Chris Quek’s Boldest Bet Yet – Part 2
In fact, when I sold my inheritance, my mom came to him and said that your son wants to do his own thing. Are you going to block him or are you going to support him? And in fact, my dad got my family friend, he introduced him, our family friend to come and support me. And without that support initially, I don't think I had enough funding to start off my investments in a tribe.
Chief Change Officer
#222 Inheritance? No Thanks. Chris Quek’s Boldest Bet Yet – Part 2
So if you look at the whole thing, my father has been a mentor, but he has also been a very difficult traditional Asian man, Asian patriarch with an iron fist.
Chief Change Officer
#222 Inheritance? No Thanks. Chris Quek’s Boldest Bet Yet – Part 2
And one thing I realized because of my self-development, because of even doing extra self-enrichment courses by taking a CAIA and a CFA at the same time, I found myself becoming more useful and to the point that when he now talks to me about the side businesses that he's doing, He's asking me as his advisor and no longer as the son where he has, he looks down on.
Chief Change Officer
#222 Inheritance? No Thanks. Chris Quek’s Boldest Bet Yet – Part 2
Because that is actually very typical of Asian generation kind of businesses, families. You will see that parents will naturally always think that they are naturally more experienced, they're smarter. But I've seen this radical change in my father and I realised that if I didn't go out on my own, worked on my own, he would have never given me that respect.
Chief Change Officer
#222 Inheritance? No Thanks. Chris Quek’s Boldest Bet Yet – Part 2
And I went back to my friend, my high school friend, I told him about it and he told me, I think you truly found what you were looking for, which is endorsement from your own father. And I think that is really a lot of next-gen. Sometimes where people think that they have done a lot, but they always crave for the approval of their parents. And so I think I went through that.
Chief Change Officer
#222 Inheritance? No Thanks. Chris Quek’s Boldest Bet Yet – Part 2
I was craving for the approval of my father, and he doesn't say it. He's never expressed it. But the point that really comes to me and asks me for my network, for my advice, I know that there has been a significant change of acceptance and the way he perceives me.
Chief Change Officer
#222 Inheritance? No Thanks. Chris Quek’s Boldest Bet Yet – Part 2
Thank you for really succinctly summarizing that in just a short sentence. Really, it does speak into my life. So really thank you, Vince, for saying that. It's been 26 years in the making. So I still believe that I'm evolving. I'm still learning more in terms of understanding my identity. And if I might put it, enjoying the journey as I go along.
Chief Change Officer
#222 Inheritance? No Thanks. Chris Quek’s Boldest Bet Yet – Part 2
I think that a lot of, I know it's a bit cliche, it's about enjoying the journey, not the end goal. It's just about enjoying the journey and I think for me, that is what I am relishing at this moment. I wouldn't say that life is a bit of roses. While I may have described everything, it sounds like it was really sweet.
Chief Change Officer
#222 Inheritance? No Thanks. Chris Quek’s Boldest Bet Yet – Part 2
There were a lot of massive challenges and running your own business, running other startups, just helping other startups run businesses, there are very high chances of failure. And I think that is something that I've learned to adapt. And I would have been very different if I just worked for my father, where I don't really see, it's a very kind of sheltered way of running a business.
Chief Change Officer
#222 Inheritance? No Thanks. Chris Quek’s Boldest Bet Yet – Part 2
You have teams of people behind you when it comes to doing it on your own. You really have to navigate it on your own, but it really builds that resilience in you.
Chief Change Officer
#222 Inheritance? No Thanks. Chris Quek’s Boldest Bet Yet – Part 2
I guess for me, it's really about passing my values rather than being so rigid about my processes. So when I say about values, it's that I truly believe in positive impact. I believe that we're not here on this earth just to enjoy extravagant lifestyles. I wouldn't say I have an extravagant lifestyle, but I'm just saying that While we can have that, I feel that most important is that
Chief Change Officer
#222 Inheritance? No Thanks. Chris Quek’s Boldest Bet Yet – Part 2
Yeah, so it was quite an interesting season in 2015 where Singapore celebrated its 50th birthday as a nation. And it somehow triggered me a lot about how Singapore was evolving itself Singapore evolved itself out of necessity, where it built a whole nation, a workforce of engineers, scientists, bankers, lawyers, doctors, specialists, if you want to call it. You name it, they are there.
Chief Change Officer
#222 Inheritance? No Thanks. Chris Quek’s Boldest Bet Yet – Part 2
leave something that is very positive for your generation. I do not know what my children's generation face in terms of the world. Maybe we're talking about climate change, food security, but I hope that they don't become the liability of the world, but rather be the solution. And I think that is something that I inculcate into my children. In fact, that I am also starting them young.
Chief Change Officer
#222 Inheritance? No Thanks. Chris Quek’s Boldest Bet Yet – Part 2
My youngest daughter is nine, second one is 11, and the third one is 13. And I share with them basically what I do. And they already know how to use the apps. And I'm also explaining to them the origins behind it. And it's to get them to really understand perspectives and context rather than just be consumers. And I feel that is what I want to pass to them.
Chief Change Officer
#222 Inheritance? No Thanks. Chris Quek’s Boldest Bet Yet – Part 2
Because I feel personally that if I would try to teach them that, oh, this is daddy's way of doing things. is going to be outdated in the next five years. But values shouldn't change. Values, good values that... In Asia, we have thousands of generations... Thousands of years of... great values, great teachings, and they've been brought over throughout the generations. And it's still evergreen.
Chief Change Officer
#222 Inheritance? No Thanks. Chris Quek’s Boldest Bet Yet – Part 2
It's still very important. Feeling of piety, for example, doing good to society. And I think that's something I just wanted to end on, that anybody who wants to to help the next generation or feel for the next generation is be a mentor of values rather than a mentor of processes.
Chief Change Officer
#222 Inheritance? No Thanks. Chris Quek’s Boldest Bet Yet – Part 2
So I'm just going to end it there and I hope that will give some further thoughts for anybody who has been listening that make a difference. It can be even just advising or mentoring just one person, but that is already a very significant impact to society.
Chief Change Officer
#222 Inheritance? No Thanks. Chris Quek’s Boldest Bet Yet – Part 2
But what actually happened was we started losing a whole generation of entrepreneurs. When I did just back of envelope, just checking around with people, next-gen families, I found that they're very successful entrepreneurs, had children who are doctors or lawyers or bankers. And I was like, then who's going to take over your business? And they themselves had no clue.
Chief Change Officer
#222 Inheritance? No Thanks. Chris Quek’s Boldest Bet Yet – Part 2
And one of the biggest challenge that Singapore is going to face is the lack of entrepreneurial, lack of entrepreneurship, if I might say. Entrepreneurship drives economic activity. Entrepreneurs are the ones that pool resources together and generate that economic activity.
Chief Change Officer
#222 Inheritance? No Thanks. Chris Quek’s Boldest Bet Yet – Part 2
When you look at Singapore many years ago when it was founded in 1819, it was the merchants that plied the trade and entrepreneurial trading was the biggest thing. A lot of merchants were there, a lot of entrepreneurs were there, were generating economic activity.
Chief Change Officer
#222 Inheritance? No Thanks. Chris Quek’s Boldest Bet Yet – Part 2
And my personal fear was that if you don't actually infuse Singapore with a continual breed of entrepreneurs, that would spell trouble for the country down the road, where you will have to start to give your economic privilege, authority over to the giant MNCs, which were hiring all the people.
Chief Change Officer
#222 Inheritance? No Thanks. Chris Quek’s Boldest Bet Yet – Part 2
And I felt that was a personal motivation on my side that could we actually build a whole group of entrepreneurs. And that was the original intent. And very interestingly, now that I've looked at it 11 years, it's evolved to a whole generation of entrepreneurs across Southeast Asia. And why did I decide to expand that whole vision?
Chief Change Officer
#222 Inheritance? No Thanks. Chris Quek’s Boldest Bet Yet – Part 2
was because when I looked at how India and China were developed, they developed really fast. They had really skilled entrepreneurs to really build their economies up. But here in Southeast Asia, it's a little bit more complicated. It's not homogeneous, the first thing that we know. Ten nations, very diverse groups of ethnicities, and it was very fragmented.
Chief Change Officer
#222 Inheritance? No Thanks. Chris Quek’s Boldest Bet Yet – Part 2
And one of the biggest, very interesting points that I like to note resonates a lot to me as a next-gen family business owner was 92% of all businesses in Southeast Asia are family-run businesses. From your micro SMEs, people who are one-man, two-man show, to your big conglomerates like your CP Group, your Alliers, your Sampornas and all that.
Chief Change Officer
#222 Inheritance? No Thanks. Chris Quek’s Boldest Bet Yet – Part 2
And I realised that it is really essential is to understand the DNA of the entrepreneurs, which are mainly the next generation of entrepreneurs, and to really expand on that vision, to really incorporate them as part of this whole regional vision, as I call it, where we are starting to...
Chief Change Officer
#222 Inheritance? No Thanks. Chris Quek’s Boldest Bet Yet – Part 2
in how I say, mentor, guide, build up this next gen entrepreneurs with the latest technologies, the latest kind of mindset, and to really make sure that they have a certain set of very good values that they can follow, for example, the ESG value set that will really change the way that Southeast Asia is being developed.
Chief Change Officer
#222 Inheritance? No Thanks. Chris Quek’s Boldest Bet Yet – Part 2
So I think this is just a little bit of a personal want that I really want to see in my vision down the road is like a whole group of next generation entrepreneurs running together side by side with me, helping each other out, whether they are from Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand or Philippines and sharing best practices so that businesses start to grow and they can make a very positive impact back to the people of Southeast Asia.
Chief Change Officer
#222 Inheritance? No Thanks. Chris Quek’s Boldest Bet Yet – Part 2
If I may just do a small comparison where against Europe versus Southeast Asia, they got quite a very similar kind of economic situation of fragmented natures, different economic activity. I would say different levels of economic development around, if I put that into context. And Europe is what I call a very established and developed way of family, intergenerational family businesses.
Chief Change Officer
#222 Inheritance? No Thanks. Chris Quek’s Boldest Bet Yet – Part 2
A number of them have reached maybe six to seven generations by now. Some of them, like the Vinyard families, are 14 generations. But when you look back here into Southeast Asia, it is still very young. At most, like the Indonesians, it has moved down to the fourth generation and
Chief Change Officer
#222 Inheritance? No Thanks. Chris Quek’s Boldest Bet Yet – Part 2
The context here that you will see is that the next-gen business owners are having very different challenges from that of their parents. And the unfortunate thing is that the parents are also very new as entrepreneurs. The evolution of how family businesses are in Southeast Asia versus Europe is still very nascent at this point. So what are the very interesting challenges?
Chief Change Officer
#222 Inheritance? No Thanks. Chris Quek’s Boldest Bet Yet – Part 2
I actually have a network of over 300 family business owners across Southeast Asia. And there's always these common themes that starts first. Number one, how do I talk to my parents? How do I have a good working relationship with my parents and a family relationship back at home? Number two, I don't like the way that my parents are doing things and I need to transform this business.
Chief Change Officer
#222 Inheritance? No Thanks. Chris Quek’s Boldest Bet Yet – Part 2
How do I convince my parents I can transform this business well? And what do I do next to transform this business to make sure that it survives and is in tune with the current trends and interests? And so it leads down to one, What I'm doing right now is a venture capitalist at Thrice.
Chief Change Officer
#222 Inheritance? No Thanks. Chris Quek’s Boldest Bet Yet – Part 2
And basically for us, our goal is to be that bridge between family businesses and technology startups with very good solutions and to actually add on these technology solutions into the family businesses. So I'm actually, you put it this way, we're creating a little interesting ecosystem where Thrive is really invested by the family businesses.
Chief Change Officer
#222 Inheritance? No Thanks. Chris Quek’s Boldest Bet Yet – Part 2
It is for the family businesses because the startups that we bring in, the technologies that bring in are being integrated into the family's operations itself. Just a little bit of that element that we are seeing here is that we understand the challenges that these next-gens are facing.
Chief Change Officer
#222 Inheritance? No Thanks. Chris Quek’s Boldest Bet Yet – Part 2
We do, number one, the solution, which is, of course, the technical solutions, getting the startups to support them. But the next step that we also get involved with them is also counselling them, advising them and showing them best practices of how other next-gens do it.
Chief Change Officer
#222 Inheritance? No Thanks. Chris Quek’s Boldest Bet Yet – Part 2
Thank you very much for affirming and endorsing this model, Vince. It speaks a lot of weight when you share that with me. And it helps to affirm that what we're doing is right. In fact, I would have to admit to you that while that is our major goal, is to build this whole ecosystem of next-gen, we also have a little bit of our fun. Where we get to pick on kind of pet projects that
Chief Change Officer
#222 Inheritance? No Thanks. Chris Quek’s Boldest Bet Yet – Part 2
We want to get very deeply involved. I have been really fortunate to have this opportunity to invest in this company called TADA, which is the third largest ride hailing in Southeast Asia. Think of your Uber, think of your Grab. TADA is number three across Southeast Asia and it's highly profitable. But the reason why we went in wasn't because it was just profitable.
Chief Change Officer
#222 Inheritance? No Thanks. Chris Quek’s Boldest Bet Yet – Part 2
We went in because we wanted a positive impact to humans. And we found that also resonated with a lot of next-gen business owners who were educated in the Western world. And they wanted to make sure that there's a little bit more heart in their businesses. And we had a number of investors that came in to support this particular investment healing.
Chief Change Officer
#222 Inheritance? No Thanks. Chris Quek’s Boldest Bet Yet – Part 2
And the reason why we love this one was that a partner driver that is part of TADA earns 1.4 times more than its competitors when they use the TADA platform. And that's because TADA platform does not charge any commissions to the drivers. I guess this is just something that we felt really good that we're making a difference to humans.
Chief Change Officer
#222 Inheritance? No Thanks. Chris Quek’s Boldest Bet Yet – Part 2
The average person in Southeast Asia who is driving, their main occupation is about private ride hailing. And knowing that they are taking back 1.4 times more back home by supporting their families was something that I felt was really important. It found actually extra meaning to me. Not to say that our current main agenda is not delivering also the outcomes that we're expecting.
Chief Change Officer
#222 Inheritance? No Thanks. Chris Quek’s Boldest Bet Yet – Part 2
But this is just a really interesting story that I wanted to share that I feel very happy to note that despite earning less revenue, we're still so highly profitable. And it just speaks a little bit about the nimbleness of some of the startups that we invested in. We also have another example where we integrated a technology into one of our startup technologies into a family business.
Chief Change Officer
#222 Inheritance? No Thanks. Chris Quek’s Boldest Bet Yet – Part 2
So basically we have another company called Agrimax. It helps to increase crop yields by 20 to 60%. And that means that if you are a farmer with the same amount of time and effort, you get 20 to 60% more food supply. Of course, the story of food security, fantastic. Check off that list. That's great.
Chief Change Officer
#222 Inheritance? No Thanks. Chris Quek’s Boldest Bet Yet – Part 2
But I think the other great thing was that there was this particular family business that took on AgriMax technology as a client, and they started seeing more and more produce. And because of the produce that they have, they decided that they don't need to charge too high a fee to the next stage of consumers or to your wholesale distributors.
Chief Change Officer
#221 Inheritance? No Thanks. Chris Quek’s Boldest Bet Yet – Part 1
Sure. So I guess it's just about the lesser of the two evils. Was I going to go into Malaysia that was unknown or will I go back to China where I can't even speak very good Mandarin to start off with? And was I going to continue to manufacture automotive parts? Now, the family business was actually a supplier of plastic tooling and injection molds for automotives.
Chief Change Officer
#221 Inheritance? No Thanks. Chris Quek’s Boldest Bet Yet – Part 1
So usually when you are manufacturing plastics, it gives us a very accurate kind of smell and I didn't feel good. And in fact, there was already a trigger point in my value system that was I going to continue as the next generation of business owners to continue polluting, to continue doing the same mold just to make money for the sake of money.
Chief Change Officer
#221 Inheritance? No Thanks. Chris Quek’s Boldest Bet Yet – Part 1
And I was not very happy of what the family was actually building towards. I didn't want to have my name stuck on it that Christopher Kwak, manufacturer of automotive parts. But rather, when I went over to Malaysia, my Malaysian friends were really nice to me and I got really influenced by them.
Chief Change Officer
#221 Inheritance? No Thanks. Chris Quek’s Boldest Bet Yet – Part 1
In fact, one of them was just telling me about the immense economic prosperity that Malaysia will go through and this kind of potential opportunities that you can work on. At that time, I created an e-commerce business that was very similar to Amazon. But what I did was an arbitrage advantage where Amazon couldn't actually enter Malaysia at that point in time.
Chief Change Officer
#221 Inheritance? No Thanks. Chris Quek’s Boldest Bet Yet – Part 1
That was in the early 2000s because Malaysians couldn't use their credit cards overseas. And so what I did was that I established a very localized payment system. Malaysians were happy to purchase books, beauty products, and I shipped them via Singapore. So I think this was just a little bit of creativity that I discovered.
Chief Change Officer
#221 Inheritance? No Thanks. Chris Quek’s Boldest Bet Yet – Part 1
I discovered the demand, and then I discovered the supply line that I could go for. And it was fantastic for those six years. I guess the reason what actually changed significantly was that regulations went down. That means credit cards in Malaysia were becoming much easier to purchase overseas. So I was starting to lose my advantage.
Chief Change Officer
#221 Inheritance? No Thanks. Chris Quek’s Boldest Bet Yet – Part 1
And the second one was like you having the likes of Lazada, Q10, all arriving and they were gladly throwing money to lose money. And I realised that my game is up and I decided that maybe this is a part of my phase of journey that I decided that it's time to actually move on.
Chief Change Officer
#221 Inheritance? No Thanks. Chris Quek’s Boldest Bet Yet – Part 1
And at that moment in time, coming back to Singapore and meeting my fiancé, I realised that life is becoming more deeply back-rooted into Singapore. So just to give you a little bit of context, what really transpired during that point in time in Malaysia.
Chief Change Officer
#221 Inheritance? No Thanks. Chris Quek’s Boldest Bet Yet – Part 1
And I also wanted to highlight to the audience, it's really interesting that sometimes when you've been to a place, it doesn't mean that it's the end in your life journey. In fact, this year, my venture capitalist company, we have actually gone full circle and I'm back in Malaysia very often is because half my team is in Malaysia.
Chief Change Officer
#221 Inheritance? No Thanks. Chris Quek’s Boldest Bet Yet – Part 1
My startup portfolio companies have built a huge regional ops HQs, not just one, but I think three or four of them have done that as well. So it's coming back to full circle and I do understand the Malaysian psyche and I feel that I'm not coming back as someone who is unknown to the Malaysian sea. I know it for the last 20 years.
Chief Change Officer
#221 Inheritance? No Thanks. Chris Quek’s Boldest Bet Yet – Part 1
So I think it's just to give a little bit of context when, you know, some people when they go overseas to another country, does not mean that's the end. You may actually end up going back there once again. So it's just a little bit very interesting about life experiences, how it comes back to you.
Chief Change Officer
#221 Inheritance? No Thanks. Chris Quek’s Boldest Bet Yet – Part 1
Wish I could tell you, Vince, that I'm a very organised person. I am a very good forecaster of my life, knowing where my life was going. To be honest, it was more of circumstances and situations and opportunities that just appeared. If you ask me, like, some certain...
Chief Change Officer
#221 Inheritance? No Thanks. Chris Quek’s Boldest Bet Yet – Part 1
crossroads in my life for example heading off to Malaysia instead of China I felt that was the right thing to do in fact it was part of my prompting was a very good high school friend of mine just told me do you want to be the son of Mr Quack or do you want to be Christopher Quack if you want to go back to China running that whole factory everybody knows Mr Quack and you are just his son.
Chief Change Officer
#221 Inheritance? No Thanks. Chris Quek’s Boldest Bet Yet – Part 1
But if you actually go out there and do things on your own, no matter how scary it is, to be very honest, when I went into Malaysia, I had no contacts. I only had my university friends who were willing to open doors and talk to me. I didn't have as much resources as I could. I was really more on my own during that time.
Chief Change Officer
#221 Inheritance? No Thanks. Chris Quek’s Boldest Bet Yet – Part 1
But I feel that is the most biggest takeaway that I got out of it was I found myself. I found my identity. I found myself going through a phase of learning and growing because I'm trying to put it into context with another friend, a very wealthy second-gen family. Family maybe has about $300-400 billion worth of net wealth all across the world.
Chief Change Officer
#221 Inheritance? No Thanks. Chris Quek’s Boldest Bet Yet – Part 1
And when you want to talk about his life, his lifestyle is just outrageous, extravagant. But he did tell me one time that he feels that he doesn't know who he is. And I think this was just something that if you ask me to reflect back, was there a common theme? Yes, it's about every season. It's about discovering a new part about yourself that... you did not realize.
Chief Change Officer
#221 Inheritance? No Thanks. Chris Quek’s Boldest Bet Yet – Part 1
And not only every season, I will set a very high bar or a very high vision for myself. Like when I started off running the incubator, at a point in time, Southeast Asia and Singapore were a cowboy town when it comes to the startup ecosystem. And I decided that I wanted to change all of that.
Chief Change Officer
#221 Inheritance? No Thanks. Chris Quek’s Boldest Bet Yet – Part 1
I wanted to say, let's just pay it forward, give free advice, build this ecosystem up so that we get fantastic entrepreneurs that start to grow out of this ecosystem and make real change for Southeast Asia. And I think that was my personal goal at that time. And it's changed. I will feel free to ask me, but how has it changed? But I think it's just to give you a little bit of the element of...
Chief Change Officer
#221 Inheritance? No Thanks. Chris Quek’s Boldest Bet Yet – Part 1
What at every stage is about really discovering yourself, which is really an exciting journey. You don't realize that you have actually a lot of things about yourself that you haven't discovered.
Chief Change Officer
#221 Inheritance? No Thanks. Chris Quek’s Boldest Bet Yet – Part 1
Yeah, so it was quite an interesting season in 2015 where Singapore celebrated its 50th birthday as a nation and it somehow triggered me a lot about how Singapore was evolving itself. Singapore evolved itself out of necessity where it built a whole nation, a workforce of engineers, scientists, bankers, lawyers, doctors, specialists, if you want to call it, you name it, they are there.
Chief Change Officer
#221 Inheritance? No Thanks. Chris Quek’s Boldest Bet Yet – Part 1
But what actually happened was we started losing a whole generation of entrepreneurs
Chief Change Officer
#221 Inheritance? No Thanks. Chris Quek’s Boldest Bet Yet – Part 1
Hi Vint, thank you for having me here today and hi everybody on the show.
Chief Change Officer
#221 Inheritance? No Thanks. Chris Quek’s Boldest Bet Yet – Part 1
Sure. Okay, so hi everyone again. I'm Christopher Kwak here, born and bred out of Singapore. I'm a third-generation serial entrepreneur from Mergent. I'd say a family that has been running family businesses. 46 years old this year, quite a few people ask, am I really that old? So I just normally tell people I buy a lot of cheap Korean face masks to make sure that I still retain my youth.
Chief Change Officer
#221 Inheritance? No Thanks. Chris Quek’s Boldest Bet Yet – Part 1
But in reality, about 20 years ago, I graduated from the University of Melbourne, where I was totally English speaking. And my father told me that once you graduate, off you go to our plant in China, manufacturing automotive parts. And when I went there, I had a massive culture shock, if I might say. Everybody spoke Mandarin, which is naturally expected, given the fact that it was in China.
Chief Change Officer
#221 Inheritance? No Thanks. Chris Quek’s Boldest Bet Yet – Part 1
And I was struggling. I couldn't stand the smoke. I couldn't stand all the pollution that the manufacturing plant was producing. And finally, after three days, I snuck back to Singapore. And my father saw me, he got angry, he shouted at me and he said, Off with you, go back to China. And I told him, I said, I'd rather not do that. And I fled over to neighboring Malaysia.
Chief Change Officer
#221 Inheritance? No Thanks. Chris Quek’s Boldest Bet Yet – Part 1
And I had a number of Melbourne University friends who were so kind to settle me in. And I spent another six years there in Malaysia doing my very first startup. And I decided that since I'm going to be working in Malaysia, might as well I do a business out of it. After six years, I decided to come back to Singapore. I got married and I did a few other businesses.
Chief Change Officer
#221 Inheritance? No Thanks. Chris Quek’s Boldest Bet Yet – Part 1
I ran restaurants and I also ran education student care outlets. But one of the very interesting things that went through in my career was that at that moment in time, there were quite a number of fellow entrepreneurs, whether they were running traditional businesses, they were running what we call e-commerce, digital businesses at that time.
Chief Change Officer
#221 Inheritance? No Thanks. Chris Quek’s Boldest Bet Yet – Part 1
I noticed that they started coming to me and asking me for nuggets of information, advice on how they would look at things. And I just gave it. And soon be told, I guess that developed and evolved into something very interesting. I decided to start an incubator and it was supported by the Singapore government, where we gave out free government grants.
Chief Change Officer
#221 Inheritance? No Thanks. Chris Quek’s Boldest Bet Yet – Part 1
And it became a really fun journey, if I might call it, where I started to get involved very deeply in the startup ecosystem. In fact, over the last 10 years, when I was doing this incubator business, I think I advised easily over 1,500 startups. not just in Singapore, but all across Southeast Asia.
Chief Change Officer
#221 Inheritance? No Thanks. Chris Quek’s Boldest Bet Yet – Part 1
And soon after that, with going through that whole journey itself, it was really immense valuable experience learning from fellow founders and also giving them the advice that I learned from other founders. I realized that, hey, why not I just not just stop there? And in fact, running an incubator, you don't really make much money. And I was a little bit of a midlife crisis, if you call it.
Chief Change Officer
#221 Inheritance? No Thanks. Chris Quek’s Boldest Bet Yet – Part 1
At about 35 at that time, I was asking myself, what should I do next? And... I guess the next natural progression was to become a fund manager, a venture capitalist. And so what I did was that I sold my inheritance and I got a family friend to help me start some initial seed capital.
Chief Change Officer
#221 Inheritance? No Thanks. Chris Quek’s Boldest Bet Yet – Part 1
And today I'm living that vision that I went through, where I felt that I wanted to really, in the startup ecosystem, not only just advising startups, but investing into startups. And a lot of more things have actually evolved ever since, but I will leave Vince to ask me more about those aspects later on.
Chief Change Officer
#221 Inheritance? No Thanks. Chris Quek’s Boldest Bet Yet – Part 1
But I just wanted to give a little bit of background and up to today, now I'm a full-fledged venture capitalist. I don't do my incubator business anymore, but I'm very deeply involved with entrepreneurs, you know, trying to grow their companies. Whether is it a venture capital kind of business or whether it's a traditional business, I'm getting involved in quite a number of that.
Chief Change Officer
#221 Inheritance? No Thanks. Chris Quek’s Boldest Bet Yet – Part 1
Yeah, Vince, I think just now when you were just mentioning and asking me about that, suddenly there was this whole flash of memories that just came back to me. So yes, you're right. So one of the privileges of being part of a family business is that you tend to get involved in two ways. Number one, you get to experience and see the business for yourself.
Chief Change Officer
#221 Inheritance? No Thanks. Chris Quek’s Boldest Bet Yet – Part 1
In the past, my father was not involved only just in Southeast Asia, not only just in China, but also in Europe, and specifically Russia. And I was very young that time, I think I was about 11 years old, that is about 35 years ago, when I went into communist Russia.
Chief Change Officer
#221 Inheritance? No Thanks. Chris Quek’s Boldest Bet Yet – Part 1
And it was just, Russia was just going through a very interesting economic boom at that point, where we took for granted McDonald's, KFC, and all these restaurants were just a dime a dozen across in countries where we live in. But when you talk about Russia, KFC, the first KFC outlet, it was mad. And during those years, you could easily earn 5 to 8 US million net profit per outlet.
Chief Change Officer
#221 Inheritance? No Thanks. Chris Quek’s Boldest Bet Yet – Part 1
It's because Russians were just so excited. And I guess that also sparked the whole interest about not just looking at food for food. My father was a very interesting man. He would take me out to restaurants. He would sit me down and he would tell me, how much money do you think they make in a month? And he forced me to start calculating out the revenues.
Chief Change Officer
#221 Inheritance? No Thanks. Chris Quek’s Boldest Bet Yet – Part 1
He would start telling me, what do you think is the expenses behind this? And I had to start learning a profit and loss statement just by that very visible conversation itself. And I think that is only just one element. I was very fortunate to tell the audience that I'm a product of my mentors in my life. So the number two and number three mentors were also very successful businessmen.
Chief Change Officer
#221 Inheritance? No Thanks. Chris Quek’s Boldest Bet Yet – Part 1
One was my father's best friend. who was a strategist, and I had opportunities to take car rides with him, and he would actually explain how does he do his strategy, and how do you actually look at expanding a particular business. He started his very own family business doing agri-chemical fertilizers, and he grew it into a public-listed company.
Chief Change Officer
#221 Inheritance? No Thanks. Chris Quek’s Boldest Bet Yet – Part 1
There was a lot of very interesting nuggets of information I got out of it, And I also had another very great mentor. He has passed on now, but someone that I respected a lot was when I was in Malaysia, he was my best friend's father.
Chief Change Officer
#221 Inheritance? No Thanks. Chris Quek’s Boldest Bet Yet – Part 1
And my best friend's father was just the encouraging man who taught me so much about how do you look at rejection, particularly because when you are an entrepreneur, you have to do a lot of sales. He was really encouraging and he told me how do I overcome that rejection, feelings, and to just keep moving on.
Chief Change Officer
#221 Inheritance? No Thanks. Chris Quek’s Boldest Bet Yet – Part 1
I think it's one of the very interesting takeaways that I was very blessed from young to my early 20s that I had this privilege of having very strong mentors in my life who came in and they taught me the entrepreneurial stuff that got my mind thinking and that actually ignited my spirit because they were so passionate about what they did that I caught on to that fire as well.
Chief Change Officer
#221 Inheritance? No Thanks. Chris Quek’s Boldest Bet Yet – Part 1
Yes, I would say that the privilege wasn't really on the resources that I've got, but it's more towards the exposure and the opportunity of finding the right kind-hearted people who were willing. These mentors all had children of their own, but they were so willing to have a conversation with me. They were willing to care for me and they were willing to give me advice.
Chief Change Officer
#221 Inheritance? No Thanks. Chris Quek’s Boldest Bet Yet – Part 1
It sometimes could be specific, it could be general. But I think that what really evolved me to the way I am today and how I actually do a pay it forward by passing that knowledge and the kind of mindsets down to other entrepreneurs.
Chief Change Officer
#221 Inheritance? No Thanks. Chris Quek’s Boldest Bet Yet – Part 1
Yes, I totally say the words resonate with you. And I wanted to actually point out that Mr. Lee Ka Shing, if I remember, did say clearly to advise to people who were looking to upgrade their career. He always says, every month, try to get a meal out with somebody who is more senior, who has a little bit more experience than you or more experience than you are. and go and learn, go and network.
Chief Change Officer
#221 Inheritance? No Thanks. Chris Quek’s Boldest Bet Yet – Part 1
And I feel that is really important. I think you and I are personifying that, what the wisdom of Mr. Lee Ka Shing. And so I'm just actually putting it out there to any of the audience. One of the best things that you can learn today, don't feel embarrassed reaching out to people on LinkedIn and just asking for advice.
Chief Change Officer
#221 Inheritance? No Thanks. Chris Quek’s Boldest Bet Yet – Part 1
You'll be very surprised by the amount of kind-hearted people that's out there who's willing to give you opinion or two to help you on your journey.