Qin En Looi On Co-Founding One Of Southeast Asia’s Largest Recruitment Platforms And Now Co-Leading A $150 Million AUM Fund To Support Startups

Qin En Looi is an inspiring founder turned investor with a remarkable journey, full of unexpected turns and packed with insights on transitioning from founding a successful startup to becoming a venture capitalist.

Qin En co-leads the $150M AUM fund, Saison Capital, which has funded prestigious projects like Fego.ai, Redacted Coin, Jia, and Origins Analytics.

In this episode, you will learn:

• Qin En Looi, born and raised in Singapore, began his journey under strict academic expectations.
• At 18, he co-founded Glints during his military service, transforming it into a leading recruitment platform in Southeast Asia.
• Glints’ initial success was driven by its ability to connect startups with young, eager interns during Singapore’s nascent startup scene.
• A pivotal moment for Glints was shifting from self-serve SaaS to a service-based recruitment model, significantly boosting revenue.
• Despite early struggles with fundraising, mentorship from strategic investors helped shape Glints’ growth and narrative.
• Qin En Looi transitioned to Boston Consulting Group to build ventures for large corporations before moving into venture capital.
• As an investor with Saison Capital, he leverages his entrepreneurial experiences to support and guide early-stage startups, particularly in emerging markets.

 

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About Qin En Looi:

Qin En Looi is a Principal at Saison Capital, where he actively leads pre-seed and seed investments in web3 startups globally, with a focus on Southeast Asia and India.

To date, he has invested in more than 30+ Web3 companies and actively supports them in community building, branding, and recruiting.

Qin En was previously the co-founder and COO of Glints, the leading talent ecosystem in Southeast Asia. During his tenure, he was recognized by Forbes 30 Under 30 and Entrepreneurs 27 Under 27 for being one of the youngest founders to have raised venture capital in Southeast Asia.

In his personal time, Qin En is also the creator and host of Parents in Tech, a podcast for parents in Southeast Asia that has topped charts in Singapore, Indonesia, and the Philippines.

Connect with Qin En Looi:

• LinkedIn
• F6S
• Crunchbase
• PitchBook

Read the Full Transcription of the Interview:

Alejandro Cremades: Alrighty, hello everyone and welcome to the Deal Maker Show. So today we have a very exciting founder turned investor. you know We’re going to be talking about his journey, which is quite remarkable. And again, some of the things you know that they come you know along as part of the journey, you know whether that is his transition into venture, you know what happened with his last company too, and then also the realities of venture capital, venture funds, and some of that misalignment that we see with with LPs now. So again, a really inspiring and exciting conversation that we have in front of us. So without further ado, let’s welcome our guest today, Chin and Loi. Welcome to the show.

Qin En Looi: Thank you so much Alejandro, really excited to be on.

Alejandro Cremades: So originally born and raised in Singapore. Give us a walk through memory lane. How was life growing up?

Qin En Looi: Yeah, absolutely. I think I always consider myself very fortunate to be born and raised in Singapore. I grew up under, I would say, what people called a tiger parenting construct. um So both my parents went academia. My dad was and still is a university professor. ah My mom taught Mandarin in middle school pretty much for her entire life. So as you can imagine, since young academics doing well in school, getting the A’s, super important, right? And kind of like that was pretty much the be all and and all of the first, I would say, 15, 16 years of my life. um As with all Singaporean students at 16, no, 18 years old, um the Singapore government has came up with this pretty wonderful scheme of providing full rights scholarships

Qin En Looi: for Singapore students, ah regardless of your background, to go over overseas to pursue your education. like So it was an entirely meritocratic process. And for me, this was exciting at a point because it was a way to get out of Singapore and also escape from my parents, to be fair. Just got tired of studying, got tired chasing after exam, after exam. And so really sort of but put my heart into it. Got admitted into Stanford. um Got full government scholarship. But as all Singaporeans have to do, we have to serve military service. So I did that for two years and during military service was when I got together with two friends to start what was then just a fun side project and today it’s a series D company that has raised more than 80 million dollars.

Alejandro Cremades: That’s amazing. So how do you guys say get going with the company? How did that thing all happen? How did that come together?

Qin En Looi: Yeah. You know, sometimes when people ask that, I wish that, you know, I had to say that, you know, i bore I was born knowing that I would do it. But but that couldn’t be further from the truth, right? It was accidental by many counts. So first and foremost, you know, me and the two other friends, we we’ve felt frustrated during military service, right? Sure, we were serving our nation, but we felt like we weren’t mentally challenged. And so what we figured out we had to do is to figure out ways to mentally challenge ourselves. Now, who would hire people like 18, 19-year-old folks, zero work experience, and they can’t even work office hours, right? They can maybe only work weekday evenings or weekends. As we very quickly turned out and learned, it was startups, right? At that point, the startup scene in Singapore was just taking off, like the what we call Generation 1 of startups. so And look, these startups at that point weren’t able to raise large amounts of funding,

Qin En Looi: Um, and they were happy to take us on, right? They were happy to kind of help get any help that they could. So really the three of us embarked on startup internships, um, during military service. And we very quickly realized, Hey, there’s actually quite a lot of startups out there. So we started to connect our friends who were also serving military, uh, with those startups. And that’s really how Glenn started literally serving the two arguably smallest market sizes. one is startups and other it’s I would say young, fresh, hungry interns looking to do that.

Qin En Looi: And so that’s really sort of Glintz, right?

Alejandro Cremades: you

Qin En Looi: um In fact, the name itself um has an interesting story. Of course, the word Glintz has the connotation of like a a star, a shining star, right? And that’s sort of what we, um why why we chose it. But the reality of it was Glintz was actually also a mashup of global internships. So GL from the global and then INT from the internship spot, right? So really sort of even the name today pays heritage to how how we came about. And really this was just meant to be a project. ah We weren’t really thinking about building this as a company because like I said, myself and my two other friends, we actually were full-ride scholarships ready to go to the US to some of the top universities to study, right?

Qin En Looi: So it was really sort of almost as a fun thing. And then That was when, once again, something coincidental totally unplanned happened, right? A friend of a friend met us for the first time and said, hey, would you like some money to turn this into a business? And as you can imagine, when you are 18 years old, if someone offers you money, you don’t say no, right? And so we we took it back. We figured, okay, we need 50K. And then the following week, the angel said, sure, let’s get started. And I vividly remember the first question I asked was, how do you incorporate our company? Because that was absolutely like, we just had no idea right on how to do all of these things. But that was really sort of how Glintz came about.

Alejandro Cremades: so What ended up being the business model of Glintz? How are you guys making money there?

Qin En Looi: Yeah, so so look, we went through kind of a lot of pivots and all the ups and downs. But I think today sort of where Glintz is at, it’s one of the largest, if not the largest, recruitment platform in Southeast Asia. ah The primary revenue source is really true that the the traditional I would say, recruit employment models. A lot of it is a contingency basis. So you give me an available job vacancy. If you fill it, you get paid. Another business that has taken off very well is what we call employer on record. um So being able to set up offices all across Southeast Asia so that companies don’t have to. but Let’s say today you want to hire someone from Indonesia. You can do so right away and we’ll take care of everything right from payroll to tax to Social Security. So really, sort of these are the two key drivers of of the business.

Alejandro Cremades: and how was At what point do you guys realize that they you guys were turning around a corner?

Qin En Looi: Yeah, I think it was really you know that did that it’s really interesting. right And also that kind of shaped a lot on how I view at least emerging market venture ecosystems. I think the biggest lesson we learned is distribution of a product. In the first few years, we were very obsessed with the idea of product-like growth. ah We were obsessed with building SaaS, the obsessed with the idea of selfs self-serve, right? The idea that someone would pick up a credit card, key in their information, and bam, we will build them a couple hundred bucks a month. I think we were trying different ways, different value propositions, but fundamentally, just that behavior didn’t work. And I would hazard, I’ll go as so far as to say that 10 years down the road,

Qin En Looi: that hasn’t actually changed much, right? In a sense that um the models that we see that work well in a bit more mature markets, Western markets like the US and Europe, where SaaS is a lot more common for folks who who once again take a credit card and make payments, doesn’t really happen, right? So it’s it’s a lot more of a sell-in approach where you need to actively build up your distribution. You need to build up your sales, your marketing channels that actively sort of canvas um potential customers. And really at the end of the day, people also want to be served. people don’t want to self-serve. I think that’s sort of one key behavior difference that we have noticed broadly in terms of markets, right? so so So case in point for us at Glens, when we were charging a couple of hundred bucks for people to access our platform, search for candidates, ah post their jobs, it was so difficult, right? Like it was really like rolling a rock up a hill. But then the moment we tell them, hey, give me the job,

Qin En Looi: I’ll use those tools myself to find you the talent. But if I’m successful, you pay me 20-25% of annual salary. Like boom! They were like, sure, take it. And then that was when it was like the aha moment, right? Here I am struggling to get 2-300 bucks from you. And here, there you are willing to give me a pretty substantial sum of money if I’m able to use those same tools. But the difference is I do it for you. So really sort of that that whole thinking was the big turning point for us in terms of the business.

Alejandro Cremades: And what about fundraising? Because obviously the company has raised quite a bit already, but how has it been that the journey for the company, especially while while you were there you know for close to five years?

Qin En Looi: Yeah.

Alejandro Cremades: How how was that like?

Qin En Looi: Yeah, I mean, I would say it’s ah very much an up and down journey, right? And and I think that has also shaped a lot on how I view my current job now as an investor. Look, fundraising was very difficult, right? There was just so many co-starts. We were co-emailing, we went to pitch events, we went to conferences to set up booths, just trying to get the right sort of investors to believe in us. And and when when when we raised sort of our first few rounds, it was very much narrative driven, right? And the narrative was even less about the business. It was really about the founders. What we had going for at that point was we were early in the ecosystem. So we were one of the first in Southeast Asia to to to raise venture at such a young age. And so that got us sort of a lot of I would say it helped us right to gain the attention of other investors. ah But even then, the business model was tough, exactly for the reasons that I shared. Many people felt like, oh, this is not like a like Amazon, like a social media, like a SaaS platform that could scale 100X. Many people felt like, oh, this is a recruitment business at the end of the day.

Qin En Looi: so So finding believers who believed in us, the team, the idea ah was challenging, but really at the end of the day, it’s it’s it’s almost like the the law of large numbers, right? When you put in enough effort, you canvas enough ah people and the sincerity comes through, eventually we manage to find our supporters.

Alejandro Cremades: What was the turning point there with the supporters?

Qin En Looi: I think the turning point was really finding people who first believe in us and then they in turn help us coach us on how to shape the story so that other investors would come on board. right And I think to the extent some of our CVC investors were instrumental in the process, because they were just more, they were so much more investors. They were coaches, right? They saw us as these young, hungry, but foolish um founders. And they really took the effort to spend time with us, walk us through um you know the pitch deck, walk us through how how do you build even a data room? How do you build a financial forecast, right? These are things that we really work together with investors, ah some of our investors um due to to build out. So I think really sort of finding those one or two early champions ah who then really supported us was was critical.

Alejandro Cremades: So then in terms of the um the actual um you know ah growth of the business, you know like how how were you guys going from like one cycle to the next? How was that how was that journey like, too?

Qin En Looi: Yeah, I think the nice thing about at least our industry was yes, right. Like exactly. It’s not, it’s not a hundred X thing, right? It doesn’t, doesn’t go hundred X overnight. Uh, but I think one thing it’s quite clear, um, recruitment is one of those things that you just need on an ongoing basis. Of course, in bull markets, so people expand their hiring needs, so there’s a lot more sort of volume in that. But even in sort of challenging markets, there’s still attrition, right? and And people need to find opportunities. So I think generally the the business itself is is quite resilient against macroeconomic conditions.

Qin En Looi: um sort of the biggest unlock for us was geographical expansion. right We started in Singapore simply because that was where we’re all from and we are all based, but also very quickly realized that Singapore is such a saturated market, such a small market. The inflection point that came was expanding to Indonesia, but which is the largest economy in Southeast Asia, 230 million people. So I think really sort of unlocking the market, understanding how it works and myself, my co-founders would spend more than half of our time in the market to just understand and speak with customers. I think that really was kind of um the big the big unlock for us. And that subsequently, right, even though I had left in 2017, riding the the tech boom from 2017 all the way to 2021 definitely helped to catalyze the business.

Alejandro Cremades: So well what happened there? you know Because eventually you know the chapter comes to an end, and and you decide to transition out of the business. So so what what what what led what led that decision?

Qin En Looi: Yeah, I mean, honestly, that was that was a tough right tough moment and and still probably is the lowest moment of my life. I think it came to a point where in terms of the direction which we want to take the business, there was too much creative friction, there was too much disagreement ah with my co-founders in terms of how we wanted to to to grow, how we wanted to run the business. um to the point that I think we all mutually agreed that it would be better for for for me to step down, right? And as you can imagine, something that I gave up a lot on, gave up school, gave up scholarship, and know and I think more importantly also to deal with sort of the precious back from family ah around that was was quite a lot, right? But you know I think that was really sort of a huge learning lesson I had. I think looking back, there’s many things I would do differently, I think to really,

Qin En Looi: be less, I would say, individualistic, to to to be a lot more collaborative and open. But look, it was a lesson, a painful one, definitely, but one that I have taken. and yeah i think that’ So so it wasn it wasn’t easy at all, right to to basically co-founder disagreement, co-founder separation. But I think you know having gone through that, ah definitely sort of what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.

Alejandro Cremades: So I guess for the people that are listening and also for the some of the companies that you are advising and investing in, what advice do you typically have for them when it comes to co-founder arrangements, co-founder structures, you know, that kind of relationship?

Qin En Looi: Yeah. Well, I think it’s important to be intentional. I think that’s really the number one thing, right? um Often in the excitement of starting a business, especially if there’s a funding offer on the table, it’s just tempting to sort of grab whoever who is available, whoever who is most convenient or whoever you know best, right? To kind of work on this. But I think what what is very clear, it’s just the ability to to get to know your founders better, to make sure you’re with the right people, Because it’s truly like a marriage, right? I think there’s no better sort of way way of putting it, the amount of time you spend together and all of that. And even now as an investor, I’ve seen so many, I mean, I’ve seen situations where the chemistry is awesome between two or three founders and and when the chemistry just doesn’t work, right? So I think taking time to sort of

Qin En Looi: Find out whether there is that chemistry between the founders, especially before you take funding. I think that’s going to be like the biggest advice, right? Because once you take funding, it becomes a lot more complex, a lot more tricky. There’s a lot more voices in the room, sometimes not necessarily best suited for individuals. um So really sort of figuring out and and taking time to understand who you’re working with. I think that’s ah that that’s the biggest takeaway.

Alejandro Cremades: So then after Glitz, basically you joined BCG, ah their digital ventures arm, and you were there for about two years and a half before you decided that it was time to make the move to the other side of the table.

Qin En Looi: Yeah. Yes.

Qin En Looi: Yeah.

Alejandro Cremades: So so walk us through through, because it sounds like it was people a pivotal moment for you, so walk us through that transition from BCG to then all of a sudden becoming an investor.

Qin En Looi: Yeah.

Qin En Looi: Yeah, absolutely. So so I joined BCG because I think at Glens, a lot of our customers back then were small and medium companies, right? And I felt like I had a pretty good grasp on, you know, if you put me in front of a small, medium ah company owner, I could sell, I could i could understand them, ah but I had no experience sort of working with the the Fortune 500s and large corporations. So BCG was a great place to do that plus combine sort of my my founder experience um and apply it in a corporate setting.

Alejandro Cremades: you

Qin En Looi: um I think that was also right when the bull market was this full swing, 2019 to 2021, where there were plenty of corporates that were hungry to build ventures. um and And look, I think it was pretty interesting right to kind of go through the zero to one process. ah So this opportunity to move to the investor side of the table actually came up unintentionally. ah Once again, a friend of a friend reached out because he was leaving to do his Harvard MBA, um asked whether I was interested to join. I was like, why not, right? Let’s chat.

Qin En Looi: And honestly, I was very skeptical at the start because it’s not just a venture capital fund, it’s a Japanese

Alejandro Cremades: you

Qin En Looi: corporate venture capital fund. right And sort of having been a founder before, like certain stereotypes come about. right Firstly, CVCs are generally known to be slow, bureaucratic, and they force partnerships. And then if you add the Japanese layer to it, it feels almost like the worst. I remember the first question I asked in my chat with them was, are you going to take six months to write a 100k check? Because having been a founder, if that happens, absolutely, you just lose competitiveness. um Thankfully, the the answer is not.

Qin En Looi: It’s one of those, I think, better set up CBCs, which I’m happy to go into more detail, which is why I’m still around. ah But I think really sort of figuring out that this would be a great platform for me to come back into the ecosystem, um support and and partner with founders, especially at the pre-seed and seed.

Alejandro Cremades: you

Qin En Looi: I think that’s sort of where my heart is at, because sort of having been through the journey, being through the heart pains of, you know, almost the company almost failing, almost running our runway. I feel like the experience comes in potentially useful, less from a purely how to run your company perspective. Because I think also, once again, many VCs think that they know how to run companies, which even I don’t dare to claim that. But I think really just from a support perspective, I want to be the investor I never had.

Alejandro Cremades: I hear you. So then so then that transition to becoming an investor now.

Qin En Looi: yeah

Alejandro Cremades: Now, obviously, that’s what you’re up to. You know, that’s saying what you have been doing now for about close to three years with Saison Capital. So how did the opportunity of Saison Capital you know come about knocking?

Qin En Looi: Yeah.

Alejandro Cremades: and And what are you guys doing there?

Qin En Looi: Yeah. So look, I think it’s really sort of pretty interesting, right? um so So a bit of background was ah it’s the parent company is Credit Cason, which is the second largest credit card company in Japan. One might wonder what is a Japanese credit card company doing outside, right? ah Long story short, 10 years ago, the company expanded out in emerging markets, India, Southeast Asia, and most recently, Latin, on the debt and equity front. On the equity front, this fund was set up in 2019 to do sort of early stage, right, precedes seed investments. um And it’s set up to be financially focused, which I think is a very important difference, right? that We were set up to make money instead of purely sort of like the strategic alignment is optional.

Qin En Looi: um so So when I heard all of that, I was like, yeah, that they makes sense. um I think being a financial focus CVC also allows you to move a lot quicker, allows you to take bets that might not necessarily make sense. um And that leads to the next question, the answer right to the next question, what are we doing? um When I joined, that was when I had the first hand opportunity of setting up our web tree, our digital asset, the early stage fund. And that was a lot of fun for me, right? Because once again, Previously, I had only bought Bitcoin as purely as an investment thing. um Never thought that there’s this whole world of web tree applications, use cases and all. um So since then, over the past few years, I’ve been ah deep diving down the rabbit hole, of course, alongside the non-web tree side of things. But really, sort of a lot of my time resources has been just to understand right the whole the whole world of DeFi, of NFTs, of gaming.

Qin En Looi: So yeah, it’s been ah it’s been exciting, right? I don’t think we’re anywhere close to done, but that’s something that we’re up to.

Alejandro Cremades: So then now, in terms of the types of companies that you look at, you know what what do they look like? How would you break down the investment thesis that you guys have?

Qin En Looi: Yeah, so what’s unique once again is we do both direct investments, free seed to I would say pre-aid, but we also do final funds. And I think that’s one of the the the good things that actually I saw, right? Because look, I mean, direct investments is, it is what it is, right? I think yeah there’s so many VCs out there that have spoken about it, but I think for us, the interesting piece is actually doing final fund investments because it gives me a firsthand understanding of what good great and maybe not so good look like. right ah So to date, we have reviewed like more than 300 over funds, Web2, Web3, all across the globe. And really sort of helps me to understand, OK, this is how some of the leading venture capitalists think. great So I think having the access, having that knowledge, having that exposure, it’s something that I appreciate a lot. To date, Saison Capital has invested in 15 funds globally, a couple more in the pipeline. So yeah, I think that’s that’s one of the things that

Qin En Looi: I also have some interesting insights on.

Alejandro Cremades: So talk to us about the misalignments there with LPs, you know founders, you know all of the all of that stuff. How how how does how does that come together?

Qin En Looi: Yeah. Look, I think the biggest thing when I came into this space is remembering once again my founder days, you know, every founder has their own internal ranking and tier, right? Of, you know, which, where VC stack up, right? ah Just like how watchers have brands, handbags have different ah brands that rank differently. I think all startups founders have have their own list, right? And often that list of who is tier one, top tier, is somewhat related to fun size, right? More often than not, we would at least for me in my experience right as a founder, I would greatly admire the largest funds. right You’re talking about your billion dollar global funds or perhaps in Southeast Asia your multi-million like triple digit million funds. right

Qin En Looi: And so kind of when we when I was at Saison, there was with some funds we invested in, some funds we invested after I joined. And we invested in a whole broad range of funds. right We invested in, like I said, billion dollar funds. We also invested in micro funds that are like 10, 20 mil. And what I quickly realized is that brand does not necessarily correlate to performance. Right. It was, and then that was shocking to me, right? Because one would think that, okay, with a brand, you would be able to attract, you unfairly attract the best founders. And therefore you should have the best performance.

Alejandro Cremades: you

Qin En Looi: But what it really quickly kind of, I realized it’s that that’s not always the case. In fact, it often leads to the opposite outcomes. So what I mean by that, right? It’s really about For these GPs out there, what exactly are you banking on to grow your wealth? To put it bluntly, right? Are you relying on a 2% management fee or are you relying on a 20% carry? And more often than not, what we see is quite a few fund managers that raise outsized funds

Qin En Looi: especially in Southeast Asia, where like we know for sure there’s no way that you know such an outcome can be generated. right so So let’s just say, for example, ah any fund that raises above, let’s say, $500 million in Southeast Asia will probably need at least eight or 10 unicorns to kind of return that fund. And the idea of 8 to 10 unicorns in Southeast Asia, it’s it’s quite quite challenging. right and We haven’t talked about dilution, the challenge on capital markets and all of that. so And then the question is, if you are raising 500 mil, ah you are making 2% fees every year. Maybe that’s split about a couple of partners. And that’s done over 10 years, mind you. It’s like, by the time people realize that perhaps your returns aren’t great,

Qin En Looi: you’ll be fine, you’ll be set as a GP, right? And so that was something that was such a huge realization and such a huge, I guess to some extent yeah awakening for for me, right? As compared to the smaller fund managers who are hungry, who are valuation sensitive, right? And because they can’t, I mean, they’re barely surviving on their 2% fee, right? Let’s say you raise a 10 mil, a 20 mil fund that barely covers your OPEX, So you really kind of optimize for the exits, you optimize for the carry, which in turn works well for LPs. So, I mean, of course, I know this is generalization. There are of course large funds that also have that, but I think broadly this pattern of sort of what are your incentives, miss a light incentive really comes out, right?

Qin En Looi: So really, and and what happens if you raise two large funds? It’s firstly, you don’t deliver returns for your LPs. And secondly, you go to founders. And because you have a large fund, if you run a 500 mil fund, look, you can’t be writing a 100k check, right? You’ve got to write something larger. You write larger checks, you offer higher prices. And then those companies are forced to grow into those prices. And then in bad markets like this, they struggle. So yeah, like I know I’ve spoken a lot on this, but I think that’s sort of really one of the things that being an LP as well as sort of a, I would say I’m not a GP, right? Because we are CVC, ah but doing both direct and doing both LP as sort of one of the biggest realizations that we have.

Alejandro Cremades: So just real quick here, how many investments have you guys done and how big is the the amount i mean the assets under management that you guys have right now?

Qin En Looi: Yeah, it’s evergreen fund, but we’re slightly more than 150 mil AUM, USD, and we have done slightly more than 100 direct investments um anywhere from 100k check all the way to single digit million, and then 15 funnel funds also.

Alejandro Cremades: So if I could bring you back in time and bring you back to that moment where you were now finishing the military service and you know you were thinking about like doing something of your own, you know i’m becoming an entrepreneur, if you could have a chat with that younger self and give that younger self one piece of advice before launching a business, what would that be and why, given what you know now?

Qin En Looi: Yeah. learn to sell and don’t be afraid of selling. I think that’s the biggest advice I have learned and I unashamedly share with all the founders I work with. um At the point when I started the company, there was a lot of ego, right? And it didn’t help that getting all that press, getting all that funding helped inflate that ego. And I think that ego came around to look,

Qin En Looi: I don’t need to sell. right My ah product should sell for itself. ah People should come in and and use it because I built such an awesome product. And and I think that was, and I refused to sell. And that was when an investor came in um to sit the three of us down and say, look, pick up the phone. and call the customers. Because if you can’t even convince your customers, how are you going to train your team to but sell? And I will remember picking up the phone very vividly, dialing those, and just praying that the other person on the line wouldn’t pick it up. Because I don’t want to talk. I don’t want to sell. I don’t want to do the cocoa. I don’t want to face rejection. right

Qin En Looi: And so sort of really going through the hurdle, I still remember it very vividly, right? um And that that that state investor would actually sit us down at the end of the day and say, how many calls did you do? And then but I would say like five. And I said, like you had eight hours in the day. Why do you only do five calls? So like yes, I know it sounds a bit micro, but it really sort of woke us up in terms of building the discipline, building that confidence and the courage to do Sips. So today, kind of like even when I work with founders, um and even in the different things that I do, right like building an events platform, building a digital asset fund, but I’m not afraid to call cold call, cold DM, cold message. right like To me, that’s that’s just a discipline that has been built. I’m not afraid for people to say, no, it’s fine. It’s just a numbers game. So sort of really, that’s the biggest

Qin En Looi: thing that I would say changed our company’s trajectory, because personal growth also for me, right, to sort of put put aside an ego. um Because at that point, I was like, you know, I dropped out of Stanford. I didn’t drop out of Stanford to make cocons. Yeah, I mean, of course, I didn’t say that out. But that was really sort of what I was thinking, right. But being able to put that aside was truly sort of like the removing that barrier.

Alejandro Cremades: So for the people that are listening that would love to reach out and say hi, what is the best way for them to do so?

Qin En Looi: On LinkedIn, yeah LinkedIn is the best and I respond to most messages there.

Alejandro Cremades: Amazing. Well, hey, well, Chin, it has been an absolute honor to have you with us. So thank you so much for taking the time to be on the dealmaker show with us and to really, really appreciate every minute.

Qin En Looi: Thank you so much, Alejandro. Really appreciate the time and the work that you’re doing. And for founders out there who are keen to connect, especially if you are in India, Southeast Asia, Latin, please do hit me up on LinkedIn.

*****

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