Soon-Aik Chiew - Chief Product Officer of Softinn Solutions & Startup Melaka leader

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Welcome back to the Tacos and Tech Podcast. I'm your host here, Neal Bloom, and I am sitting with the Neil Bloom of Malaysia, Sunak Chu. Thanks for being on the podcast.

Yeah, thanks for having me here, Neil.

So suneg, or SA as we call them, has been in San Diego for a month on a fellowship program.

Yes.

Embedded with the San Diego startup community. And we're really excited to hear what that month's been like, what Malaysia is like. But why don't we go dive a little bit back deeper? Like, where'd you grow up?

Yeah, sure. I'm growing up from a place called Malacca and is actually the historical city of Malaysia. And I think 10 years ago it received the UNESCO heritage status. So it is now a very famous tourist city.

Yeah, yeah.

So that's the place that I grew up. It's pretty much quite similar to San Diego because San Diego is a historical city and coastal city as well.

Yeah.

So I feel like home here in San Diego.

That's great.

I visited Malacca five years ago. Saw the floating mosque. I saw the old Chinese area of the city.

Yes.

Did a Chinese tea ceremony. I really liked it. It was a very bikeable city.

Thank you.

Yeah.

And pretty cool to have you now, five years out here. I'd love to know we're going to talk about this. Know what's changed in five years in Malacca, what's changed in Malaysia over time. But we'll get there. So you grew up in Malacca, you went to university in Malacca too, or where'd you go to school?

Yeah, so I went to the university in Malacca as well. It's called Multimedia University. It's actually the very first private university in Malaysia.

Oh, cool.

What did you study?

So I was majoring in international business.

Okay.

Do you have foresight to know you were going to go into technology, tech and startups at the time or what? Were you thinking you were going to go do?

Not really. Not at all. I think back then I was thinking about maybe I'll be someone holding a managerial position in an NMC multinational corporations company like IBM.

Okay.

I actually did my internship in IBM.

Okay.

While you're in school.

Yes.

Okay.

What's IBM's? What is most of their business unit doing in Malaysia? Engineering or what's the kind of most of the makeup.

Okay. So I think mainly it is doing outsourcing. It's a global delivery center, so they're doing a lot of outsourcing. So not so much on the technical side of things, but they do have a lot of consultants.

Oh, okay.

Who are consulting for local companies in.

Malaysia and government as well.

Oh, okay.

Yeah.

Interesting.

Yeah.

Okay.

So you interned at IBM, graduated. And where did you get your first, first role after graduating?

So after I graduated I actually joined a tech startup company in Malaysia. It's called netizentesting.com. so it's actually like the Asia version of usertesting.com here. Yeah, that's my very first like full time position after graduated from university.

Okay, and what was your role at Netizen?

All right, sure. Being a early employee for a startup companies, it's like you're doing almost everything. Yeah, I do have a title in my name card as a user experience consultant, but behind the scene basically we do everything like product management, marketing, hr, recruitment. Yeah, everything.

Yeah, for sure. How many people were at the company when you started?

At that point of time we have only, we have three co founders and also two more person. So I'm the employee number two. So it's only just five of us.

Wow.

And how, what did it grow to while you were there?

So by the time I left like three years ago, the team, I think they have around 15 to 20, something like that. Yeah, 15, 20, that's fun to go around. Two timers.

So certain tasks got pulled off your plate.

Yeah, exactly.

As they hired people, which is a good feeling to feel the growth of.

The company around that you really feel excited because you're not just joining a company, you are part of the growing journey. And yeah, it's very different from what I had before in IBM because I think IBM is very big. It's like one of the largest company in the world. It's just very different when you're working for a startup company.

Yeah, definitely. And you get that bug too, right? You're like, wow, I can take on a lot.

Exactly.

How could I ever go back to a big multinational?

Yeah.

It's like no return.

Yeah.

So that was in Kuala Lumpur or that was in Malaysia.

That's in Kuala Lumpur.

Okay, so you moved to a bigger city. Yes, after graduating, which is that pretty typical for people to do from.

Typical? Yeah, yeah, that's a. That's actually a problem for small place like Malacca as well. Especially Malacca. We are situated between Kuala Lumpur, the capital city of Malaysia, and also Singapore.

Right.

Which is, you know, Singapore is like the only developed country in Southeast Asia. So you get very high pay there compared to the rest of Southeast Asia. So a lot of people just move out of Melaka to either Kuala Lumpur or Singapore. Got it.

Okay.

But you went to Kuala Lumpur. How long were you in Kuala Lumpur?

Four years. Four years.

And you were at the same startup the whole time or did you move around a little bit?

I was with the same startup company.

Oh, cool.

Kuala Lumpur. Is there pretty much everything in a downtown kind of urban environment?

Like sort of.

Yeah, yeah.

Okay, so startups, everyone, are kind of all in like close proximity.

Yep.

And do you kind of run into them walking around town? Like, do you get to know the other startups around?

Not really. It's not really that small.

Okay.

Because a lot of time when we say Kuala Lumpur, we don't just mean the city area, Kuala Lumpur. We're actually talking about a biggest area, state of Selangor, State called Selangor.

Okay.

And the whole thing, I think it's just like Silicon Valley. Yeah, Silicon Valley is not just San Francisco, but it's like so big.

Yeah.

So it's pretty similar. We have Klang Valley in Malaysia.

Klang Valley, yeah, got it. Interesting. And you mentioned another town to me before Georgetown. Georgetown is another tech community near Kuala Lumpur.

Right?

Not near Kuala Lumpur. They are like the north, the north part of Malaysia.

Okay.

Yeah.

And it's more. For more multinationals.

Yes.

For example, I think big players, tech players like Motorola, intel actually set up their very first foreign plant outside of United States in Georgetown. Yeah.

Okay, so tell us a little bit about the state of startups in KL and in Malacca. Like our companies at really early stages. Like Netizen.

Right.

It's been four years since four years ago you joined or even longer?

Yeah, even longer.

Okay, so let's say what, six, seven years?

Six years, Something like that.

So what's the state of that company now? Six, seven years. How far have they grown or are they still around?

Yeah, they're still around, but they're pretty much like a. More like a consulting companies.

Okay.

Yes.

Because it's very different because they are focusing on the user experience feel. And we can see that over the years there are more and more people in this region, I mean in Asia talking about user experience, but it's still not widely adopted like what we see here in United States. Yeah, got it.

And are companies. So let's. Not them specifically, but startups in general. Do they follow a similar pattern in the United States where they need capital every one to two years to kind of keep growing?

Oh yes, certainly. Yeah, we can see some similarity there. I think in Southeast Asia a lot of the resources are mainly focusing on the capital cities like Kuala Lumpur.

Yeah.

So I remember that when we were based in. I'm currently with another startup company called Softin. It's a travel tech startup company. And when the investor of VC they know that we are based in Malacca. The first question is why are you based in Malacca? Why don't you move to Singapore or kl? It's easy to. It's easier to raise money there.

Okay.

Actually it's true. But thankfully we're still able to raise our funding.

Yeah, yeah.

From being placed in Malacca, which is very rare.

Yeah.

And is there local capital or you just know you have to fly to Singapore to go pitch VCs.

Okay. We actually managed to raise from a corporate VC. It's one of the largest telco company in Malaysia. So I think it's pretty much similar to any other place where we see that the local giants, companies like telecommunications and media companies, they are venturing into the VC field and trying to invest in startups.

Okay.

Yeah.

They don't want to get left behind.

Yeah, got it. So while you're in kl, working on a startup, you also started to get involved in just the startup ecosystem.

Yeah, correct. Right.

What was that like? I mean was it a bunch of meetups or what's the. What does an ecosystem look like in kl and then at a greater like Malaysia even.

All right, sure. Okay. I think we have to go back to maybe like six, seven years ago when I first joined the startup scene. It was quite exciting because like players around the world, like big players like Rakuten, which is a tech giant from Japan and then we have Roccat Internet. They actually try to venture into Southeast Asia region and they are the one who started to push the startup scene. And of course we have a lot of local tech startups as well who's doing very well. And then they, for example Rocket Internet, they actually run a, a few very big startups companies in Malaysia or even the whole Southeast Asia. Like Lazada which is a very big e commerce company, they recently got acquired by Alibaba. They received a majority stake investment from Alibaba and we have like Zalora is also a fashion e commerce. They are backed by Roccat Internet as well. And we have Food Panda. These are all backed by Roccat Internet. So it is a food delivery company. And they created a lot of technopreneurs as well. A lot of the people who join, who join these companies and then eventually they quit and try to start up by themselves as well.

Okay, yeah, got it.

Are there a lot of like the people who putting on events and meetups and offering mentoring, are they entrepreneurs themselves too or what are kind of the makeup of the ecosystem builders?

All right. See I think the government has put in a lot of efforts in this entrepreneurs. We are seeing some of them, but not a lot. It's getting more. I mean back then we see a lot of things from. There are a few key government agencies in Malaysia. I try to name it here. Like one is called Magic Malaysia Global Innovation and Creativity Center. It's quite amazing because it was launched by President Obama and our ex prime minister. And then they have been very helpful in helping the different local startup community to run their event as well. For example, they help us to run Startup Weekend in Malacca.

So they fund it or what's usually the way that they help.

So there are a few ways. First they provide monetary support and then sometimes they send in mentors and also in kind sponsorship.

Okay.

And then venues and other things like that.

Yeah, possibly. Yeah, something like that.

Yeah.

And the first, the first CEO of Magic is actually an entrepreneur. She's a Malaysian. She started up in maybe New York.

Okay.

Yeah.

And then got her startup acquired by Walmart. And there are another two more key agency in Malaysia. One is called Cradle Fund. They actually invested not investors already. They provided grant support to I think close to 1,000 tech startups in Malaysia.

Wow.

One of them is Grab Grab is the Uber of Southeast Asia.

Yeah, yeah.

And they did a lot of support in that. So.

And the grant funding you said so non dilutive funding.

Exactly.

Even better.

Yes.

And then there's one called mdac. Mdec. It stands for Malaysia Digital Economy Corporation.

Okay.

So they're trying to do everything they can to push the Malaysia digital economy as well. And I think that's one thing that I'd like to share is a very good thing that we are proud of. Currently all the three CEOs of these three government agencies, they are all female.

Oh wow. Yeah.

That's really cool.

And that really surprised a lot of people.

Yeah, yeah.

Especially when I heard from people from Japan. It's like what you have like a bunch of women running all these key government agency to push the tech startup ecosystem. Yeah, we're pretty proud of it.

And they're entrepreneurs it sounds. Or at least one of them.

Right.

She sold her startup to Walmart. So entrepreneur too and working to. As an ecosystem builder.

Yeah, yeah, Pretty incredible. And the one from mdac, I think she's, she was from United States as well. She spends a long time in United States as well.

Interesting.

Very cool.

So this entire time you've been growing up, you've obviously heard of Silicon Valley.

Yeah.

Have you ever heard of San Diego before recently?

Not really, to be honest. In fact, before I came over here, I tried to ask around some of my friends in the startup ecosystem who are quite well connected with Silicon Valley, people like vc. So I asked them the same question. Hey, do you know anything about San Diego? Everyone's like, nope, not really.

Yeah, I'd be curious to know if you asked them to point on a map where, if they even knew where to point. Probably not.

Yeah, I didn't ask about that.

Yeah, yeah.

Did you even know where it was?

No.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And so you, how did you even hear about the Diplomacy Council's Fellows program?

All right, sure. So I actually applied for this program. It's called Yseali Professional Fellows. And YSEALI stands for Young Southeast Asian Leaders Initiative. So it is a program by the State Department and the American Council. So they selected 25 of us from 11 Southeast Asian countries to come over to United States for a month to learn about economic empowerment. And I actually learned about Startup San Diego during the interview with one of the interviewer. After I told her about the things that I do with Startup Melaka, then she responded to me and said, you know what, there's actually someone doing something very similar to what you are currently doing. It's called Startup San Diego. Then I went back and searched about Startup San Diego. Wow, these guys are crazy.

Crazy. Why are we crazy?

I mean like it's really rare to see that there's a non profit organization like Startup San Diego that is organically powered by volunteers. You have like more than 100 volunteers to run events like startup events that you manage to attract like thousands of attendees. And you are not only doing that for just San Diego City itself, you extended that kind of impact to a greater range and include like Tijuana and things like that. So that's really amazing.

Yeah.

It's so rare.

Yeah, yeah.

And you felt like this was similar to what you're, what you're doing in Malacca. So tell us a little bit what, what your kind of day to day is as a volunteer organizer in Malacca.

Okay. Basically the initial idea is just to get everyone come together so that we can provide a support network. Because I myself, I told you that I went to Kuala Lumpur to join a startup company. Initially I wanted to join a startup company in Malacca, but I couldn't even find one. I tried to Google search about it, Startup Malacca, blah blah blah. I couldn't get any result. Eventually there's a few startups but they don't know each other. So that's the reason why I think three years, a few years back I started the community group called Startup Malacca so that we can gather everyone who is currently in Malaysia and currently in Malacca, as well as people from Malacca to come together.

Okay.

Yeah, very cool. And trying to provide support and at least someone, at least people know that if they want to start up in Malacca, they don't know where to seek help. They can come to us and do things together.

Got it.

And so do you put on like semi regular events that bring people together? Is it monthly, quarterly or so?

Last year we ran a lot of monthly events. Basically we tried to get entrepreneurs in Malacca or from Malacca to come back to Melaka and do some sharing about their startup journey.

Okay, got it. Do you do any kind of paired networking where you kind of match people together or is it really just like everyone get together and meet?

Yeah, it's basically just everyone get together and listen to a speaker and just a small networking session.

Okay.

And you also do startup weekend in Malacca too, right? How often is that?

So before that we do it like it's like an annual event. We have it once a year.

Once a year? How many people usually come together for a startup weekend?

All right, so before that I think we have around 50, but last year we have a very big attendance. We have close to 80.

80 of them. Yeah.

That's great. Have you tracked at all, if any actual startups have spun out of that weekend together?

Unfortunately, I mean we try to, but it seems like we have yet to see a very successful case from that.

Yet.

But what I'm happy to see is that of course we know that the end goal is we always want to see someone literally starting out after joining a startup weekend, but it seems like we are able to see some other result from it. For example, one of the Very first digital marketing guy that my company is hired is actually someone that we met from Startup Weekend.

Oh, that's great.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, something like that.

Okay. Okay.

So you hadn't heard of San Diego, but then you did during the recruiting process.

Yeah.

You're told you're in San Diego. What'd you. I mean, I don't know. You got here a month ago. What's it been like over that last month of being in San Diego? What have you learned?

It has been super amazing. I mean, San Diego itself, the city itself is wonderful. If we don't talk about the living cost, the rest of things is really good. And not just the city itself, but the people over here, especially the people from Startup community to the neighborhood, everyone is super friendly and always ready to help. Yeah, that's something that I really love. And I can still remember that the first day I arrived here when I met with Heidi from the Diplomacy Council, she told me that the startup community here is very helpful and it's very strong. In a way we can say that it's almost like everyone knows everyone in Santiago. And yeah, I started to recognize that fact and I think that is very important. That is what you get to see in a thriving community. And that's like probably the first step that every local community should strive to achieve. And you guys have done a really good job on that.

Thank you. I think what's interesting about San Diego is how small a town it is network wise, but how big geographically it is.

Yeah, right.

You've traveled by bus, by everything possible in San Diego. You've probably seen more of it than a lot of other people have. It's far.

Right.

Somehow we all congregate and get to know each other, which has been pretty cool, I'm guessing, for you to see.

Yes, it is.

Tell us any other kind of takeaways that have reminded you of I gotta do this when I get back home.

Sure. Something that I learned from Startup Santiago is not only that you're able to get the local entrepreneurs to come together, but also many other stakeholders like universities and big companies. I think it's really amazing that you have a very strong partner, supporters like Cox, they have been doing very well to support all the events and things like that, and especially university. Like recently I went to SDSU with Julius, the director of Convergence.

Yeah.

So I think actually through this question to you before I was talking to you, that yes, we want to work with universities, but what if the university, they don't really like care so much about this. Let's say some of the management team. They are not doing very well. So I finally got the answer. Sometimes we can work directly with the students if we are able to identify some key leaders from there. And. Yeah, that's a good way to start.

Yeah. Yeah.

You never know. There's eager students everywhere.

Yes.

May have started an entrepreneurship club.

Yep.

Which I know you met. Or they're just in pockets elsewhere.

Right.

They're in some labs somewhere. You got to go find them and you got to say, hey, you know, we're just like you, but we're off campus. How do we connect and show you that a group like us exists, that we want you to come off campus and see what we're doing and we want you bring friends so that there's a better chance you stay in. In Malacca or San Diego after school because you feel connected to the community. It took a big effort and for sure. I know on our part, we thought if we just tell the university, they're going to tell their students. That is not a guarantee whatsoever.

Yeah.

Right.

There's so many students who purposely don't listen to their university.

Right.

Because it feels like their parents are telling them what to do. And then there's a subset that are just to going completely checked out, you know, so it's like really hard to get to students. You have to just, in a sense, treat them just like any other member of the community. You have to go find them where they are and say, come, come over to us. Come, come see what we're doing.

So, yeah, that's.

That's taken us a while to learn that as well.

Yeah.

But in the end, just like we learned from Brad Feld over and over again, it's about the entrepreneur.

Yes.

Right.

You can't expect that you can go to someone who then will tell the entrepreneur. You got to go directly to the entrepreneur. And the entrepreneur needs to want to find value in it. And that's just fundamental.

Exactly.

And we have to constantly remember that. It's tough to remember that, though.

Yeah.

Right.

It's very easy to be like, oh, let's go to the. Let's talk to our partners, let's talk to universities, and then the world will trickle down.

Yeah.

It's never like that.

True, though. Yeah.

That's what we try to instill, at least in syrup San Diego, we got a frog in the background. We're just hanging out in our backyard. In my backyard here. We're in nature out here. So tell us about some favorite things you did in San Diego. Even just for fun.

So I went for a hike yesterday that was really nice. And I realized that there's actually a lot of place to hike here in San Diego. So. Yeah, we went to Mountain Laguna. It was a pretty good place to hike.

Super high up.

Yeah.

Did you get to. Was it clear? Was it, like a really nice day?

Okay. Yep.

So you're able to see down to the desert floor.

Yeah.

I know you're a big San Antonio spurs fan, so a dream of yours happened.

Yes.

You got to see them.

Yes.

Tell us about that, finally. So I actually caught a game in NBA game in San Francisco in Chase Center. So it was a match. The match was.

Sorry, Warriors.

Warriors versus Spurs. And spurs is like my favorite team of all time. Although I'm a bit sad that all my favorite players are no longer there. But it's really cool. It's really. It's really awesome to finally see your favorite team, like, live actions.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Super big deal. I mean, this is your first time in the United States in general, right?

Yeah.

And to actually see a game of your favorite team is pretty cool.

Yeah. Yeah.

That's awesome. What else have you enjoyed about San Diego? How about the food?

Oh, yes. Mexican food, of course.

First time ever having Mexican food.

I had Mexican foods before, but of course it's not as good as what we have here.

Yeah.

I mean, San Diego is so close to Mexico.

Yeah.

So, yeah, I remember there's a very good restaurant, but I can't remember the name. It's in Old Town.

Okay.

Yeah.

Your favorite thing. Try burritos, tacos, enchiladas.

Yeah, yeah.

Things like that.

Anything specific as your favorite taco?

Okay.

Yeah, taco is my favorite.

Cool.

What about. I know you're not as much into the beer scene, which is a San Diego thing, but that's just because. Don't drink as much in Malaysia.

Yes, right.

Unfortunately.

Yeah.

Any other favorites that kind of jump out about the San Diego community?

Well, okay. I think that I have to talk about the weather. The weather over here is. Some people might think that. Oh, it's very. My thought that this is very similar to what I have back in Malaysia, but not really because. Okay, here you have a very warm weather and you have cold winds, but in Malaysia, it's hot wind. It's only hot wind and hot weather all the time. So it's very different.

Yeah.

So it's very comfortable here in San Diego.

Oh, yeah.

We're like in the backyard. It's like mid November. You're in shorts and a T shirt. You know, today was a hot day. It was 90 degrees out here today, mid November. It was. This is unusual for us. It's hot and it still is super nice for you.

So I have to agree with the, the sentence that San Diegos are proud of. This is truly the America's finest city.

It's true. Yeah, it really is. Whether we want to get the word out or not, I don't know. Still, the jury's out if everyone wants the world to know how good it is here. We do on the Tacos and Tech podcast, that's for sure. Well, essay, it's been a blast to get to know you over the last month. Thanks for what you've been doing in helping our community, helping startup San Diego kind of get organized from an eyes out perspective, telling us, hey, you know, you have a lot more in front of you than you think you do and I look forward to seeing you in Malaysia sometime soon.

Yeah, happy to have you here. Happy Dairy Malaysia.

Yeah.

Awesome. Well, thanks, S.F. appreciate it. Thanks for being on the podcast.

Yeah, thank you.

Thanks for joining us on the Tacos and Tech podcast with Neil Blum. Thanks again to Cox Business for helping make this possible by expanding the reach of the San Diego tech ecosystem. This has been a partnership with the San Diego Venture Group and the San Diego Regional Economic Development Corporation's SD Life Chang campaign. You can find Neil Bloom on Twitter @neilbloom and on LinkedIn.