Founders Friday – Sng Khai Lin
This Friday, we are excited to feature Sng Khai Lin, CFO and Co-founder of Fundnel.
About Khai Lin
Khai Lin first started her career at a top investment bank as an associate. While working there, she witnessed the inefficiencies of the markets and came to realise how SMEs often had insufficient access to growth capital. This was not ideal given how startups were sprouting all over Southeast Asia.
To address this underserved market, Khai Lin and her partner, Kelvin, came up with the idea of a private investment platform that uses technology to facilitate transactions so that everything is more transparent, efficient and effective. After further research and discussions, Khai Lin did what most people in their twenties wouldn’t – resign from a top investment bank to launch a startup.
For her, this decision was easy – nobody in Southeast Asia had a similar model at the time, and launching Fundnel would mean having the first-mover advantage. Thus Fundnel, Southeast Asia’s largest private investment platform, was born.
About Fundnel
Fundnel is one of the first Fintech firms in Singapore to provide a private investment platform that offers private equity and equity-related investment opportunities. The platform enables private investors to co-invest alongside financial powerhouses and makes private investing a simple, accessible and transparent process.
By leveraging Fundnel’s proprietary A.I. driven deal screening process, investors (buy-side) will benefit from access to better qualified deals while SMEs (sell-side) can raise funds within shorter time and at a cost effective rate.
What has been the most satisfying aspect of entrepreneurship for you and why?
KL: When I left the corporate world alongside my co-founders to establish Fundnel, we had a big, hairy, audacious goal – to enable the efficient distribution of capital that will create jobs, spur economic growth and build nations. We are adamant on evoking change in the archaic system and creating access to capital for deserving businesses of our generation and the next.
Over the years, we have seen multiple companies that we facilitated flourish and go on to impact the communities they operate in. In 2019 alone, we amassed a transaction value of USD120m — our best year yet! Imagine what our entrepreneurs can do with that money! On the other side, we assist investors in achieving their investment goals. Bridging the gap in the private capital markets between investors and fundraisers brings unparalleled satisfaction to me.
Drawing on your personal experiences, what traits do you think are essential for startup founders and why?
KL: I’ve come to learn, through observations and personal encounters, that empathy is a non-negotiable trait.
The two most important groups of stakeholders to a business are its customers and employees. You need empathy to understand the pain points faced by existing and prospective customers in order to develop solutions that can both help them function more effectively and efficiently and are also superior to your competitors’ solutions.
Empathy is also required for one to stay attuned to what happens on the ground. While some founders may be multi-talented, it is nearly impossible to be good at everything or to possess the same amount of domain knowledge as your department heads. Learning to empathise with your colleagues, especially when cross-team collaborations are commonplace, helps everyone in the company work better together.
What was the biggest challenge you faced in scaling your sales and why?
KL: Securing a pool of qualified job applicants, regardless of rank and function, is fairly easy. However, identifying that candidate with the right skill set who would also fit in the company culture is the utmost challenge.
More often than not, you come across folks who check all the boxes on paper, but you still get a nagging feeling that he or she may face issues fitting in. To counter this scenario, we made it mandatory for candidates who are above the managerial level to meet key personnel. Taking our Corporate Communications Manager for example – given the nature of her role, she was invited to meet seven people in the team over four meetings.
Outsiders who learn about our process would lament the considerably large amount of time spent on interviews, which arguably impacts the speed at which we scale. But I stand by our method; the cost of a bad hire is far more detrimental.
How did you acquire your first customers?
KL: As with any client relationship, start by establishing trust, listening intently and sincerely to their needs, then go on to rapid testing and iterating for success.
Drawing on your personal experiences, what traits do you think are essential for startup founders and why?
KL: I’ve come to learn, through observations and personal encounters, that empathy is a non-negotiable trait.
The two most important groups of stakeholders to a business are its customers and employees. You need empathy to understand the pain points faced by existing and prospective customers in order to develop solutions that can both help them function more effectively and efficiently and are also superior to your competitors’ solutions.
Empathy is also required for one to stay attuned to what happens on the ground. While some founders may be multi-talented, it is nearly impossible to be good at everything or to possess the same amount of domain knowledge as your department heads. Learning to empathise with your colleagues, especially when cross-team collaborations are commonplace, helps everyone in the company work better together.
What aspects were most important when you were first building your team and why?
KL: A family culture is an ethos I hold dear to my heart. This was especially important in the first two years because everyone is required to wear multiple hats in a startup. When your company is a 10-man show, you can’t afford to have an Office or HR Manager to assist the team, so everyone must pull their weight to help the business flourish.
On hindsight, if you to build your team again, is there anything you would do differently?
KL: No, I wouldn’t change a thing! I’ve learnt to accept the good, the bad and the ugly (if I may) that come my way. I am where I am today because of a cumulation of experiences.
What are the top 3 tips you have for investor pitching?
1)Know the business through and through to demonstrate accountability — have the financials on hand and understand the strategies of each department, from Growth to Product Development.
2)Be articulate and make minimal references to notes or slides to inspire confidence.
3)Practise with a trusted external party, if possible, to ensure that you are able to get the pertinent points across accurately; being too close to the subject matter renders you myopic.
What sets you apart from other startups?
KL: Traditional financial institutions rely heavily on labour. Coming from an investment bank myself, I have the full picture of the number of people and amount of time required to execute one deal.
In contrast, our proprietary Artificial Intelligence-driven deal screening process requires just a fraction of the resources traditionally required to accomplish this. This is because our process analyses >1,500,000 data points, across >50 parameters and sub-parameters, per company. It empowers our investment team to efficiently evaluate and distribute deals that best fit our investors.
Any other words of wisdom that you would like to share?
Stay tuned for next week's episode of Founders Friday
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