In the startup scene, it is common knowledge that nine out of ten startups will fail – so what does it take to be that ten percent? Find out from the founders of Reddit, ConneXionsAsia (CXA) and Razer this May 17 & 18 at Tech in Asia Singapore 2017. They have all emerged victorious from the startup battlefield – here’s what you need to know about these three founders.
Reddit, Alexis Ohanian’s social news site from out of this world
Reddit co-founder, Alexis Ohanian
The Reddit icon—an alien mascot named Snoo—has become rather well-known with today’s internet population. The social news aggregation site was co-founded by (then college students) Alexis Ohanian and Steve Huffman in 2005. What started out as a simple site built out of Web links and user-submitted texts, quickly grew into a massively popular online community with a sweeping userbase of millions, and is now ranked ninth in terms of global traffic.
After Reddit’s acquisition in 2006, Alexis stayed on for five years before eventually leaving to pursue other endeavours, including starting Initialized Capital, an early-stage venture capital firm, with former Y Combinator partner, Garry Tan. Since its inception in 2011, they’ve invested in over a hundred early-stage tech startups. Just last year, they raised USD115 million for its third fund, continuing their conquest to help startup founders build meaningful businesses.
ConneXionsAsia (CXA), Rosaline Koo’s answer to employees’ unused insurance
Rosaline Koo. Photo credit: CXA.
While working at Mercer, Rosaline spotted a golden opportunity to disrupt employees benefits in Asia. She observed that employers waste a noticeable sum of funds on unnecessary employee benefits, which in turn led to the birth of ConneXionsAsia (CXA), one of the fastest-growing startups in Asia.
In its first year alone, CXA took a 6 percent slice of Singapore’s USD605 million employee benefits brokerage market. Earlier this year, CXA also became a USD100 million company following a USD25 million series B investment co-led by Facebook’s co-founder Eduardo Saverin’s B Capital Group, and locally-based EDBI.
However, it wasn’t always a smooth road. Back in 2014, Rosaline had to fork out over USD4 million of her life savings, on top of bank loans to acquire Pan Group, Singapore’s third-largest homegrown insurance brokerage. In retrospect, it was a worthy deal—CXA’s extensive pool of corporate clients now includes 45 Fortune 500 companies.
Min-Liang Tan conquers of the gaming hardware industry with Razer
Razer co-founder and CEO Min-Liang Tan. Photo credit: Razer.
Known as the Tony Stark of gaming, Min-Liang Tan’s unconventional—bordering on controversial—thinking has contributed to his out-of-the-box ideas, carrying his company to success. Razer now makes up around 30 percent of the global video game mouse and keyboard industry.
The Razer Boomslang mouse was the first brainchild of founders Min-Liang Tan and Robert Krakoff. Through online chats and gaming matches, they came up with the idea of creating a mouse fast enough to accurately keep up in-game with gamers’ actions in real life. They knew they’d succeeded when the server flagged them out for cheating.
Since Razer’s humble start in a small office located in Carlsbad, California, it has grown exponentially with the motto “For Gamers. By Gamers”.
Want to hear about how they did it?
Alexis Ohanian, Rosaline Koo and Min-Liang Tan will all be present at Tech in Asia Singapore 2017, happening just next week! They will be holding fireside chats at the Main Stage, sharing their entrepreneurial journeys, as well as their analysis and projections of upcoming trends shaking up the tech industry.
If you haven’t already, grab your conference passes today and come join these superstars at #tiasg2017 this May 17 and 18!
This post From Reddit to Razer: 3 founders you can’t miss at #tiasg2017 appeared first on Tech in Asia.
from Tech in Asia https://www.techinasia.com/reddit-razer-3-founders-tiasg2017
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