One Sneak Peek Into The Quest Towards Genuine Connections

Entrepreneurship can be a very lonely journey.

Without a “boss” to tell you whether you are right or wrong, the path ahead can look scary and confusing.

That’s why many founders attend networking events to meet like minded individuals.

But for myself at least, I have sometimes found such gatherings to be a letdown.

People meet, say hi or bye, exchange LinkedIn profiles,

and…. never speak again.

It’s as though no actual connections were made, and that we were just there to expand our social media following.

So I was very happy to have spoken to Sean, a Year 4 NUS Information Systems student, who at that time had just come back from San Francisco.

He is trying to change this phenomenon at networking events through an initiative that he started with 2 other friends of his, Joseph and Jonas.

This initiative, 100 Club, is a private community

for talented entrepreneurs to meet potential fellow founder friends.

Read on to find out more about what inspired Sean and his co-founders!

1. How he got his inspiration

I have always enjoyed building things.

In fact, before entering university, I was freelancing as a web developer and working  closely with founders from overseas high growth startups, helping them build their products and websites. They inspired me to begin launching my own small business projects. When I joined NUS, I was hoping to find other passionate builders, but I had a tough time, with most individuals still looking to build resumes and explore corporate life. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that.

But I started talking to other founders in Singapore, and they shared that the Singapore ecosystem for founders is quite fragmented. There’s very little continuity when you meet founders through events, and it’s normally just hi, bye and some sort of transactional relationship. So this led me and my team to start The 100 Club,  a private founders community for 1:1 connections in Southeast Asia.

We have 5 Pillars of benefits at The 100 Club. They refer to Founder 1:1 Matching (every month, we match you 1:1 with another founder within the community), a Private Community (access to a telegram group of highly engaged founders who provide helpful advice, and share exciting progress updates), a Dedicated Concierge (an assistant to connect you with others in the community based on your requests), Mentors (a list of expersts you can book time for 1:1 chats), Members Directory (a membership portal where you will be able to learn about other members and contact them)

We wanted the culture to be more modern, casual and friendly. Examples of how that translates to tangible benefits would be events like  SAFRA-sponsored bowling, board game meetups and tapas nights (where everyone brings a dish) - all founder exclusive. My co-founders and myself are all quite introverted so we wanted to build an ecosystem where everyone would be comfortable with joining.

We are currently very focused on the Southeast Asian market. We feel there’s a lack of an ecosystem in Southeast Asia. For example, if I just came to Singapore and wanted to be a part of a founders’ ecosystem, what platform immediately comes to mind (that does not take any equity)?

No one name stands out very strongly. That’s the name we hope The 100 Club can fill one day. “

2. The Jobless Club’s ambition

My co-founders, Jonas and Joseph, and I call ourselves ‘The Jobless Club’. We want to be collectively making $60,000 monthly in recurring revenue by the age of 35 so that we can retire in the mountains of Thailand. We’re a long way from that goal. But the way we’re hoping to achieve that is through an Indie Hacking mentality where we develop small bootstrapped companies in a lean and efficient manner, with just the 3 of us.

The 100 Club is only one of our child companies. We are also building / running the Sharp Knife Club - a professional pick-up knife sharpening service for chefs and home-cooks in Singapore, the Teh Peng Club - where we help telegram communities engage members by matching them for 1:1 chats every month without a fee, and Donna - where we help business owners outsource their work.

If you’d like to follow our journey, feel free to check out our IG, where we share shorts on what goes on behind the scenes.”

3. Difficulties faced by his team

“The 100 Club is a people business. As a team of 2 engineers and 1 designer, we are more comfortable with software products. There’s this boundary of software between us and the customer.

But The 100 club doesn't work like that. The product that we offer is really the people that are inside our club. So we need to ensure their dynamic is good and make sure people are happy.

Of course, there are lots more intangible benefits in building our community, compared to software engineering, that make our work worthwhile.”

4. Time management as a student entrepreneur

“There are a lot of micro optimisations you can do, to make your life more efficient. I can go in depth into some of the systems I use, but perhaps that’s for another time. Ultimately, it boils down to priorities.For example, I would pre-read notes instead of attending lectures* so that I get multiple days freed up.

When I was on exchange in the United States in San Francisco, I would start my day earlier to wrap up work at my full-time job, and block out a certain number of hours after that to work on The 100 Club / The Jobless Club. I would schedule out my day, blocking out time  for deep, focused work. This allows you to do more than you think you can.

*We at One Sneak Peek Into do not recommend this. Follow at your own peril.

Connect with Sean here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/seantanyurong/

100 Club’s Instagram account:https://www.instagram.com/thejoblessclub/

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.