From Research to Startup to Subsequent Exit
Entrepreneurship Series
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Synopsis
In this webinar cum fireside chat, Yen-Lu Chow, AIM’s founding executive chairman, will go one-on-one with Dr Geok Leng Tan, Chairman of Fourtitude.ai, Advisor of NovoHeal, Adjunct Faculty at SMU, Exit Founder and CEO of AIDA Technologies and a distinguished senior technology executive across industry and government sectors.
Dr. Tan chronicles the company’s evolution from an A*STAR research initiative into a successful commercial startup and its eventual exit. He will outline a strategic roadmap for deep-tech entrepreneurship, detailing critical phases such as transitioning from research to a scalable product, securing funding from Seed to Series A, and navigating the complexities of M&A. Dr. Tan emphasizes practical strategies for building market credibility through industry awards and events, such as the Singapore Fintech Festival, while offering advice on qualifying customers and selecting business models that maximize valuation.
Ultimately, the session serves as a guide for founders, balancing technical milestones with the necessary resilience and "belief" required to survive the startup journey.
Dr. Geok Leng Tan
Chairman, Fourtitude.ai | Advisor, NovoHeal | Exit Founder & CEO, AIDA Technologies
An industry veteran with over 30 years of experience, Dr. Tan held a wide variety of roles in industry and government, including at Motorola, Scientific Generics in Cambridge, UK, Chief Technology Officer at the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA), the Executive Director at the Institute for Infocomm Research (I2R) and founder & CEO at AIDA Technologies, an award-winning FinTech start-up with customers across 6 countries. AIDA was acquired by Amplify Health in Jan 2023.
Post the acquisition, Dr. Tan spends his time advising start-ups in the areas of start-up formation, go-to-market strategies and appropriate use of technologies to power your start-up. He is the Chairman of Fourtitude.ai and an advisor to NovoHeal.
Dr Tan obtained his PhD from Cambridge University in 1990. He attended the Advanced Management Programme at Wharton in 2007 and the Executive Programme at the Singularity University in 2011.
Yen-Lu Chow
Founding Executive Chairman, WholeTree Limited; Over-The-Rainbow; Asia Institute of Mentoring | Founding Partner, Fatfish MediaLab | Executive Mentor, YSI SEA | Founder, Deep Human Movement
A former Apple Distinguished Technologist, Yen-Lu is an award-winning entrepreneur, technologist, venture catalyst & angel investor, mentor & advisor turned author and keynote speaker, mental wellbeing champion, social innovator & change-maker, ecosystem builder, philanthropist and humanist.
As an angel investor and venture catalyst in the tech ecosystem, Yen-Lu has mentored young entrepreneurs and businesses for many years. He has made significant contributions to the Singapore tech and entrepreneurship ecosystem, serving on countless startup business plan competitions internationally, government panels on innovation and entrepreneurship, and as mentor and advisor to the major universities. He co-founded a business angel fund in partnership with the Singapore government, served as a director of Business Angel Network SEA, executive mentor and adjunct professor to NUS Enterprise, mentor to INSEAD, plus numerous panels on entrepreneurship and innovation internationally. As an expert and practitioner in speech recognition and language processing (with 6 international patents and having worked in the field for over 20 years since early 1980’s while leading Apple’s initiative in this area in the early 1990’s), he was an early pioneer in the application of AI with a strong base in the tech space.
He is on a life mission to help bring about a kinder, gentler, more inclusive, more just, and sustainable world.