One Sneak Peek Into the Merger of Entrepreneurship, Community Work and Education

Venture capital, incubating startups, community work, lecturing at universities, is there anything that this guy can’t do? 

Farhan is most often known as a Partner at Meet Ventures, a business consultancy and early-stage investment firm.  

But I bet you wouldn’t guess that his career path originated with his studies at ITE,

During which his father had a stroke, leaving his mother as the sole breadwinner and the family saddled with debts. 

Because of this, he had to work part-time to support himself through his studies. 

Thankfully, the Singapore government granted him scholarships to tide him through his education in ITE and supported his pursuit of a diploma at a local polytechnic. 

Throughout his career, Farhan has served in a variety of roles. 

While studying his bachelors at SMU, he took on various projects on a part-time basis for the Ministry of Culture, Community and Youth. 

Subsequently, he started his career as a Campus Manager, by cultivating social enterprises in Singapore under the Singapore National Co-operative Federation. 

After spending almost a year, he was invited to be the Chief Operating Officer of a healthcare startup, where a Series B round was raised. 

Said startup, Oracare, is currently the biggest startup in the dental sphere within the SEA region. 

Outside of his corporate career, Farhan spends much of his time volunteering with the community.

He has served the community for 15 years, viewing it as a way of giving back to the nation. 

Not only that, he has lectured at Nanyang Technological University, National University of Singapore, Singapore Institute of Technology and the Singapore Management University. 

Perhaps the question we should ask is, what can’t this man do indeed?

1. Career before joining venture capital

“I actually got into startups not knowing anything. I think, when I was in tertiary education, the first sign of interest in the startup space was that I happened to join clubs and societies that were either dying or were very small. I would take interest in these things and come in and fix them, then pass them on to the next person. My dad was a corporate guy who worked for IT companies. On my mother’s side, my ancestors were traders. So there has always been an interest in the business world.

Then, I entered SMU and graduated with a degree in Political Science. For my first job, I cultivated social enterprises in Singapore under Singapore National Co-operative Federation. I was then invited to join a startup in the healthcare space and was with this startup for two-and-a-half years, as their Chief Operating Officer. Together, we grew the business to a Series B startup. After which, I left and now, that startup is now SEA’s biggest startup in the dental sphere. 

Subsequently, I joined Agrivo International as the Head of Venture Building, and was also the Head of Affairs for its parent company, Seristine Group, which built one of the tallest buildings in Cambodia. After this experience, I was offered a scholarship by Dr Chua Thian Poh for a joint masters’ programme at Nanyang Technological University and University of California, Berkeley, in Technopreneurship and Innovation. During the first two weeks of my studies, I started Meet Ventures with John Lim, my partner. We began as an innovation consultancy, and only recently entered venture capital. We have been working on this for two years, and just raised a 10 million USD fund for it.”

2. His motivation

“ I like being able to be part of an organisation, or a group of companies. Especially big companies, but I am not there yet. That would hopefully happen in ten years. It’s a shared vision, between myself and John, my partner. From the beginning, I have always wanted to build a business of my own. An organisation that extends beyond ourselves, where every single one of my early employees will be able to lead something. 

I hope to create more opportunities for my employees to prosper. While we definitely have a profit-driven motive, for me personally, my group of companies have to do good for society. So I guess the motivation is more intrinsic than extrinsic.” 

3. Community Service

“There are not a lot of people who choose to volunteer in my industry, the VC space. In fact, it doesn’t add value to my organisation. My industry won’t look at Meet Ventures any better simply because I choose to do charity. Why does Meet Ventures want to do social activities? We actually do support charities in Indonesia, our key market. 

Many people in the industry think I am crazy. Luckily, my partner allows me to do these, because I know that, for me, my condition for being in any organisation is that they must allow me to do community work. The stakeholders that take interest in the community work that I do are greatly appreciated. And my staff are generally quite happy to know about the community work that we do. Our mentors are also very happy that we do good. But our mentors themselves come from corporate backgrounds. As investment people, this is not part of their work.

Personally, this interest goes back all the way to 2011, 15 years ago. To me, it’s a way of giving back. I came from ITE, went to Poly, then university, before gaining my masters degree. For me, the ITE time was a very difficult period. My father had a stroke, leaving my mother as the sole breadwinner. 20 years ago my siblings were also young. They were not even in primary school. So I had to work part-time. Our family had debts because of my father’s condition. Luckily, the government gave me scholarships to tide me through my education in ITE, while my diploma was paid by the Lee Kuan Yew scholarship. For university, I could use my mother’s CPF to pay. Doing community work is my way of saying thank you to the government and to Singapore. 

As a guest lecturer, I’m not paid too. But I see it as my duty to give back to society by educating the future generations. Professors in universities usually like industry people to contribute to the learning of their students. And I personally feel that it’s always good to expose the young people to industry earlier rather than later. I think everyone in the industry can play their part by being guest speakers. It will definitely enrich the learning of the students, and encourage them to become better contributors to industry, rather than just learning from textbooks. If I can offer internships to any and every student in secondary school, I would. But I don’t have the bandwidth. So I hope to expose them to the industry through this method.”

4. Advice for youths

“My advice to youths would be to do more internships and get more exposure. For example, for an arts or social science student, you can do your first internship at a NGO in Southeast Asia. Then the second in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Ministries and NGOs are different. For your third internship, you can perhaps try a private company that deals with international business. This is called exposure. 

If your school offers exchange, go for it. But the problem is that when students go on exchange, they tend to just go there and just enjoy themselves. For the last 13 years, every time I go on exchange, I would make friends all over the world. I still keep in contact with these friends. That’s the power of exchange. Don’t discount SEA. If there is an opportunity. A really good one would be the Asia Exposure Programme (AEP), which I think most are eligible for as long as you have graduated from university within the last 3 years. Exploit the exchange programmes in university. Alternatively, try the government programmes. An example would be YEP, where the government subsidies half of your travel costs. This is for the ACI (ASEAN-China-India) region. Similarly, for AEP, you would also be exposed to the ACI region and industries, with a 70-percent subsidy from the government.” 

Connect with Farhan here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/farhanfirdaus/

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And that is all for today’s One Sneak Peek Into.

Stay tuned for more insights from our interview series as we continue to explore the stories of trailblazers breaking barriers and redefining success.