[Founder Feature@TC] August 2020
Name: Gustavo Liu, Founder & CEO, 40yo, Singaporean
Technopreneur Circle member: Since October 2019
Company: Eat Launchpad
Website: www.eatlaunchpad.com
Fun facts about me:
I am an ex-private banker having spent over 12 years managing private wealth in Singapore Banks (ie Citibank, HSBC, UOB) and setting up family office structures for ultra high networth families in Asia. I left banking in 2016 and for the past 4 years to build, run and invest in startups. The part that I enjoy the most about the startup process is getting my hands dirty transforming potential ideas into deep-tech startups.
I started EAT Launchpad as a service business, looking for ways to monetize advisory in the startup ecosystem. Today my role includes being a consultant to leadership teams and incubation ecosystems in various South-East Asia based organisations, such as Unilever, National University of Singapore (NUS) and Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD). I am also an angel investor and judge at various startup competitions, such as the K-Start Accelerator by the Korean Government, StartBiz in Malaysia, SUTD Incubator and Temasek Poly Incubator to name a few. My educational background includes Bachelor of Science degrees in Computer Science and Mathematics, as well as a Master in Business Administration.
The company under 20 words:
A one-stop digital platform powered by artificial intelligence for business stakeholders to reduce productivity wastage through continuous, reliable, measurable data.
What my company name & logo means:
We spent a lot of energy and effort to encapsulate our vision and mission in our logo. In short, it depicts Drive, People and Resiliency:
Drive
The symbol ‘S’ comprises inverted pyramids, illustrating gravity-defying acts of every entrepreneur’s journey – overcoming pivots and failures in search of a point of balance. The red sand completes the hourglass, a reminder to everyone who is racing against time, lack of resources and passion, all of which are limited and temporal.
People
“S” shape is the 6 profile of users who would benefit the most at the EAT Launchpad: Students, Startups, Scientists, SME’s, Social Impacts, and Second Chances. Furthermore, we strive to harness growth and resiliency in each individual, also represented by the colour green.
Resiliency
Finally, the hexagon is the perfect shape for structures in nature (i.e. honeycomb, flower of life, snowflake, etc) symbolising adaptability, sustainability and continuity, which should be the sustainable aim of every individual in life and business formation. The non-serif font represents the EAT Launchpad’s direct, authentic and zero-bullshit approach to achieving these goals.
Why I started the company & my journey so far:
I left my last corporate job as a VP of a Singapore based Private Bank back in 2017 at the peak of my career, many of my closest friends thought I was going through some sort of personal crisis. In reality, I was frustrated by the rat race and wanted to achieve a personal breakthrough. I spent the first year couchsurfing across various parts of North-America with the intention of learning and discovering business ventures, while making small investments in the few that I found interesting. As I accumulated venture knowledge and risk tolerance, mostly through trying and failing, I found that on average founders used at least 5 different softwares to take care of basic business needs, and spent up to 2/3 of their working hours preparing for fund raise rather than actual business building.
Investors (in particular angel investors) and advisors at large relied mostly on financial records and trust towards the founders, limited by visual decks, guesses and projections provided to them. In short, the entire fund-raising process between investors and startups is still mostly dependent on human relationship and traditional financial accounting records. As much as investors strive and aim for tech innovation, venture building support as a business is still highly dependent on human capital.
In 2018, I brought in a friend with 15 years of software programming to join the company as CTO, hired and trained our own developers with the help of some initial grants provided by the Singapore government, and personally generated close to $150K revenue through business consulting to corporates and venture institutions to bootstrap the expense gap. We spent most of that money in the span of one year validating platform features, refining the user experience, revamping aesthetic interface and acquiring users.
2019 saw us starting as a team of 2, almost running out of cash three times, splitting from my initial co-founder and getting rejected by over 36 investors throughout the year. With all the scars and failures there were many wins and lessons learnt. In 2020, we have grown to 3 co-founders, a portfolio of 3 institutional customers under paid retainer, 16 letters of intent including one from an incubator in Canada, angel fundings, and a team of 10 full-time staff in tech and operations.
My lightbulb advice:
If you are breathing, you are fine. Just keep walking forward.
I am looking for:
Investors, Mentors / Advisors, Partners, Talents (team members).
You can reach me @
gus@eatlaunchpad.com
** This article first appeared on TechCircle’s Medium page **