About the guest you are on call with

Yeoh Chen Chow, or known as CC, is now offering advisory, consulting, executive/biz coaching, keynote speaking, fireside chat, workshops via One PerCent Advisory and Coaching (1% Advisory & Coaching). Clients engage CC for office/coffee hour.

CC has extensive experience building up startups (Fave, KFit) from scratch, till being acquired by Pine Labs for USD45mil. Through the process, raised fund from ~20 VCs, corporates & angel investors across the region, and acquired/acqui-hired 9 companies, including 3 subsidiaries of Groupon in MY, SG and ID. He has invested in 30+ startups/companies around the region too.

His experience from both sides of aisles, give him good perspectives across the whole process. He has worked at global consulting firm, mid-sized startups, multinational companies as well.

He is an Eisenhower Fellow and an alumnus of Cornell University. He is passionate and active in youth/student/entrepreneur empowerment, and he spent quite a bit of his free time in mentoring for various programs, including McKinsey’s Youth Leadership Academy since 2010. He started USAPPS, non profit initiative which has been running since 2006, helping Malaysians to achieve their dreams to study at top US universities.

Connect with CC on LinkedIn

He is also a mentor for Insignia Ventures Academy’s StartCXO program

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The content of this podcast is for informational purposes only, should not be taken as legal, tax, or business advice or be used to evaluate any investment or security, and is not directed at any investors or potential investors in any ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Insignia Ventures⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ fund. Any and all opinions shared in this episode are solely personal thoughts and reflections of the guest and the host.

Transcript 

Transcripts have been edited for concision and clarity.

Part 1

Timestamps

(00:00) Highlights;

(02:03) Chen Chow’s career from consulting to tech;

(03:47) Exposure to the entrepreneurial mindset and early influences;

(08:06) How Chen Chow was called to start a company;

(13:29) Part 2 Sneak Peek;

Meet Chen Chow Yeoh

Paulo: We have none other than Chen Chow Yeoh with us here on call. Another special thing about this call is that Chen Chow is quite literally on call with us—holding his phone as we’re talking. So, he’s really taking our podcast theme to heart.

So, yeah, thank you, Chen Chow, for coming on Academy On Call. It’s great to have you join us for the show. Where are you dialing from?

Chen Chow: Hi, Paulo, and hi, everyone. Thanks a lot for having me. I’m honored to be here on Academy On Call for Insignia Ventures Academy.

I’m dialing in from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. I’m currently at Royal Lake Club, which is a 135-year-old historic location in Kuala Lumpur. The surroundings here are a bit old, but it has a nice ambience.

Chen Chow: Maybe I’ll just do a quick intro of myself. I’m Chen Chow, also known as CC, the founder of 1% Advisory & Coaching. I focus on bite-sized management advisory, executive coaching, and speaking.

I’m also a venture partner at Insignia Ventures Partners, where I support the firm’s activities in the Malaysian market.

Prior to this, I co-founded Fave Group, a startup that we built over the years before we exited to Pine Labs, a fintech unicorn from India.

Before Fave, I was the Regional Operations Director for Groupon Asia Pacific, a Product Manager for JobStreet.com, and a Consultant for Accenture.

Paulo: I was going to introduce you myself, but thanks for doing it as well!

What I will say, though, is that thanks to you being a venture partner at Insignia Ventures Partners, that’s how we got to meet. We were on a trip in Hanoi and were able to spend a little time outside of work.

I got to know more about you and the many stories you’ve shared. Hopefully, we’ll get to go through some of these stories in this call so our audience can leave with great insights.

If anyone wants to reach out to Chen Chow after hearing what he has to say, I’ll leave his LinkedIn in the podcast description below—you can send him a DM.

For this conversation, I really want to go through your entire journey as an entrepreneur and start from the very beginning.

Entrepreneurial Mindset and Early Influences

Paulo: There’s a common saying that entrepreneurs are not born but made. Looking back, is there a particular childhood memory or experience that shaped who you are today as an entrepreneur and leader?

Chen Chow: Yeah, thanks for the question. I’d say I was actually a late bloomer in entrepreneurship.

I grew up in a small town in the state of Penang, which is even smaller than Penang itself.

If you had asked me back then whether I would become an entrepreneur, I would have said no. My parents were civil servants, so I never really considered going down this path.

It wasn’t until university, when I went to Cornell, that I was exposed to entrepreneurship. But even then, I wasn’t thinking, one day, I’m going to be an entrepreneur. It just wasn’t in my plans.

For some people, entrepreneurship is something they’re exposed to early on. But for others—like me—it comes later. If you’re someone who hasn’t been exposed to it yet, don’t feel bad. Everyone starts somewhere.

The fact that you’re listening to this podcast or have joined Insignia Ventures Academy means you’re already picking up valuable skills and experiences.

One thing about entrepreneurs is that they’re very open to sharing. What they often lack is time. But if you catch them at the right moment, they’re willing to share insights.

From the outside, entrepreneurship might seem glamorous—like entrepreneurs just get to chill and relax. But in reality, their minds never shut off.

As an entrepreneur, everything stops with you.

No task is too small—if something isn’t getting done, it’s your problem to solve. When we first set up our office, no one wanted to clean the toilet, so I did it. If a lightbulb needed changing, I’d change it.

Many successful entrepreneurs are extremely hands-on. You see people like Aaron Tan (Carro) or Anthony Tan (Grab) getting involved in the nitty-gritty—whether it’s talking to customers or even doing deliveries themselves.

Even someone like Yinglan Tan of Insignia Ventures Partners—I’d consider him an entrepreneur in his own right. He built Insignia from the ground up. If you ask Paulo, I’m sure he gets messages from Yinglan at all hours of the day.

Entrepreneurship isn’t just about startups. You can be entrepreneurial in anything—whether it’s in your home, your friend group, or your career. It’s about taking ownership and responsibility.

Paulo: Thanks for sharing that and for framing entrepreneurship as a mindset rather than just a career path.

Starting a Company: The Turning Point

Paulo: You mentioned earlier that starting your own business wasn’t always in the cards for you. At what point did it become front and center as an idea?

Chen Chow: It actually happened in 2015.

From 2011 to 2015, I was at Groupon, first in Malaysia, then overseeing operations across Asia Pacific.

In early 2015, I got two job offers—one in telecom and another in ride-hailing.

I told my boss at the time, Joel Neoh, that I was thinking of leaving to join one of these companies.

A few hours later, he called me back and said, Why don’t we start a company together?

That’s how it happened—I wasn’t actively planning to start a business. But after working with Joel for four years, he convinced me to take the leap.

Every entrepreneur’s journey is different.

If you look at Sea Group (Shopee, Garena), its founder Forrest Li is very introverted. Meanwhile, Aaron Tan of Carro is much more extroverted.

There’s no single mold for success. The key is to be yourself and lean into your strengths.

For me, I knew I wasn’t the most visionary person—that was Joel. My role was to complement him.

When we were fundraising, Joel would be the one pitching investors—people like Yinglan Tan, who backed us in our seed round before Insignia Ventures Partners even existed.

My job was to take those verbal commitments and make sure the money actually landed in our bank account.

It was the same with acquisitions—whether it was acquiring Groupon’s subsidiaries or selling Fave to Pine Labs.

Joel would negotiate the deal, and I’d make sure everything from paperwork to integration was executed smoothly.

Part 2

Timestamps

(00:00) Highlights;

(01:09) Lessons from Nine Acquisitions;

(06:13) Post-Acquisition Integration;

(16:00) Being Acquired by Pine Labs;

(20:20) Part 3 Sneak Peek;

Paulo: I am curious to dig a little bit deeper into your superpower, as you and you specifically. You know, I’ll talk about kind of really going through the nitty-gritty of ensuring that the acquisitions of subsidiaries of Groupon in Malaysia were done and completed. And then later on, when you sold to Pine Labs, that deal went through.

Lessons from Acquisitions and Integrations

Paulo: What are some of the lessons that you’ve taken from handling not one, but several of these, even within the life of Fave?

Chen Chow: Yeah. Yeah. So I think at Fave, we did nine acquisitions, big or small. Three of them were the Groupon subsidiaries in Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia, a couple of table-ordering platforms. 

When we were doing KFit, we acquired a few entrepreneurs—one, two, three people—through micro-acquisitions. Some of them may not even be fully considered acquisitions. We basically brought in entrepreneurs who then joined us as entrepreneurs-in-residence, intrapreneurs, and built it up from there because they had started something with a small team, but it didn’t fully take off.

So, a lot of it was thinking with the end in mind. When we bought Groupon Singapore, I still remember setting a goal: in 60 days, we wanted to move fully onto our own platform. 

We decided that as we went into that deal. We also made the decision that we would not want to buy the Groupon brand, trademarks, or technology. We were going to build our own technology because we wanted flexibility. 

I set the 60-day deadline. Did I know exactly how to do it in 60 days? No. But by setting that deadline, we prompted ourselves, convinced our team, and built a plan to achieve it. Everything had to be done within that constraint, and having limited resources forces you to think creatively.

The Value of Seeing the Forest, the Trees, the Leaves

Chen Chow: This approach applies beyond acquisitions.

I was advising a startup founder recently who had spent months fixing bugs on their platform, but the problems just kept piling up.

I asked them, If you were building your product from scratch today, knowing everything you know now, how would you design it differently?

Instead of just patching things up with band-aid solutions, sometimes you need to zoom out and consider a completely new approach.

This applies to business strategy as well. Entrepreneurs need to be able to see the forest, the trees, the leaves, and sometimes even the roots.

At different times, you need different perspectives.

When talking to regulators, you need to discuss the big picture.

When working with engineers, you might need to focus on specific technical details.

When leading your team, you have to communicate in a way that’s simple, clear, and actionable.

One of my key beliefs is: “Without data, it’s just an opinion.” At Fave, we built a culture around data-driven decision-making. But at the same time, it’s important not to overanalyze. You have to balance hypothesis-setting, trend-spotting, and execution.

Post-Acquisition Integration

Paulo: Any particular learnings from post-acquisition? Because I think there’s a lot of talk sometimes about how to exactly integrate an acquired company into the core business.

Chen Chow: Yeah. So I think a few parts. The first part is people and culture. Do people from both the old and new teams believe they are part of this new thing? From day one, the first few days are crucial. It’s not just about executing a checklist—it’s about making people feel that this is their new home.

When we did the Groupon acquisitions, we made sure that within two or three days, people knew if they were part of the new team or not. There was no ambiguity. People knew whether they had a place so they could focus on moving forward rather than worrying about job security.

When making tough decisions, I follow two principles:

– Decisions should be made with logic.

– Execution should be done with empathy.

If you have to let people go, imagine you’re the one being let go. How would you want to be treated? That’s how you should execute.

Chen Chow: After addressing people and culture, we focused on prioritization and execution. Identify must-have tasks and bottlenecks. Plan using a Gantt chart—what needs to happen before something else can move forward? Prioritize high-impact actions first. This is where the 80-20 rule comes in—80% of the impact comes from 20% of the efforts. 

For example, when we migrated 10,000 merchants during the Groupon Singapore transition, we didn’t move everyone at once. First, we migrated a mid-tier group of customers—neither the smallest nor the largest. Then, we refined the process before onboarding high-value customers. We tracked progress not just by number of customers moved, but by percentage of revenue migrated.

Our goal was to migrate 60-80% of revenue before shutting down the old system.

Thinking out of the box for GTM marketing campaigns

Chen Chow: When we rebranded Groupon Singapore to Fave, we had a limited budget for mass marketing. Instead of running expensive ads, we found an unconventional solution.

At the time, Singapore’s MRT train arrival signs were still using analog text displays—no ads. We negotiated a deal to insert a message there:

🚆 “Train arriving in 2 minutes. Groupon is now Fave.”

It was the cheapest way to get exposure at every train station in Singapore.

In Malaysia, we partnered with 40+ startups to announce our migration on the same day. Each startup sent an email or in-app notification to their users, creating a viral network effect. By gamifying the campaign, we encouraged startups to compete on who could drive the most conversions.

This type of scrappy, creative thinking is key for entrepreneurs—especially when working with limited resources.

Being Acquired

Paulo: You’ve been on both sides—acquiring companies and being acquired. What was it like when Pine Labs acquired Fave?

Chen Chow: It was a coincidental acquisition during COVID. Our business was hit hard—restaurants, spas, and travel experiences weren’t operating. We had to decide: 

– Do we double down and push through?

– Or do we sell and move forward in a different direction?

Ultimately, the acquisition made sense. Would I make the same decision again? Yes. 

We never have perfect visibility into the future, but at that moment, it was the best choice.

Acquisitions should create win-win synergies—not just financially, but in terms of strategy, growth, and execution.

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