One Sneak Peek Into The Intersection of AI, Social Impact and Youth Leadership

In a world obsessed with commercial tech, he chose to focus on healthcare because of the impact that it can potentially allow for. 

Kazel started his startup journey by founding Cyberlife AI, which builds mobile platforms with Triage with AI-assisted data collection. 

Afterwards, he dabbled in tech investments by joining Protege Ventures, Southeast Asia’s first student-run venture capital fund as an investment analyst, as he thought that he would be able to benefit the world in more diverse ways on the investments side. 

Subsequently, he joined the Masayoshi Son Foundation, which recruits members all over the world for its research efforts. They funded his patents and offer scholarships to researchers under the age of 25. 

Apart from this, he helps the National Youth Council with the curation of grants, particularly the Young Changemakers’ Grant, as he thought that this would allow him to give back directly to the ground-up community in Singapore. 

The National Youth Council has also sent him on The Singapore-Indonesia Youth Leaders Exchange (SIYLEP), where he realised that tech alone cannot alleviate societal issues. 

You have to enter the policy side to actually make meaningful change. 

Read today’s article to learn more about his learnings on the trip, his startup journey, and his experiences as an investor and as a student. 

1. What got him to found his first startup

“In school, we could study well as long as we could memorise content. But I wanted to do something that felt really impactful and challenging, that made me felt like I was constantly pushing boundaries. So I joined the technological field, where I did bug bounties, where companies pay me to find problems in their systems. 

I realised that in software, I can build things for free, so I went towards the software side. 

For my startup Cyberlife AI, we started off doing the general kind of AI, before moving on to automation. We did a trial with red cross as well, and then went on to the optomologist side of the house — How can we automate follow-ups from the surgery room to the patient’s home, after a cataract surgery? This part was done by my co-founder, while I handled the Red Cross part of the project and focused more on operations. 

Back in 2016 or 2017, we talked to a couple of patients in a hospice kind of setting, and they thought we should deploy more human talents, which of course includes tech talents to the healthcare space. When we were in it, though, we found out the exact reason why not a lot of people were willing to delve into the healthcare space — there was a lot of red tape around everything. Luckily, I had a strong team that delivered and tried their best. They are still doing clinical trials, and just hired a MBA candidate to replace my role.”

2. Working in investments

“I thought that it was an obligation for me to give back to the startup ecosystem. Ecosystem work felt a lot more impactful to me personally, as in startups, your impact is confined to your product and startup, while in investments, the impact can be of a larger scale. I feel like investments is more of my style as I prefer talking with people and developing relationships more than I enjoy developing technology. Some people, when they look at code, it looks like a work of art. To me, code just looks like a lot of errors. My interests lie in the business/operations side. I enjoy the international aspect of investments as well. Through my work, I managed to talk to many founders in Japan, in various sectors. This feels way more dynamic to me.” 

3. Trip to Indonesia with the National Youth Council

“On the trip, I spoke to the Indonesian delegates. A controversial topic to them would be that there’s this province where they have one of the largest gold mines in the world, but yet they are still one of the poorest provinces in Indonesia. Because most of the gold has been extracted by foreign conglomerates that force locals to work in unjust conditions while bribing the government to turn the other eye. 

That made me realise that you can’t change structural issues like economic colonialism by dabbling in tech or creating an application. You have to touch on policy and figure out how to allocate resources and utilise influence and money wisely to alleviate such societal issues.” 

4. Advice to youths who are interested in entrepreneurship

“My advice to youths who want to start something would be to just do it. Take it slow, but don’t be cocky. Don’t get too arrogant over any initial success that you might experience. You will find a community along the way. 

As long as you are working on something, you will be ahead of 99% of the population who don’t do anything.”

Connect with Kazel here: linkedin.com/in/kazel-koh-en-yang-811172186

Follow our telegram channel: https://t.me/onesneakpeekinto

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.