FOCUS
The $tart-Up Millionaire
Darlings Are Going Fresh
By Farhan Shah
First, they disrupted the At the end of last year, Christopher
his older
way we searched for Chong, together withlong, hard look
brother, Karl, took a
the best deals around at the Groupon Singapore office, a
Singapore. Now, they space teeming with life and replete
want to change the with opportunities. The space
way you shop for fresh represented close to four years of
hard work and sweat, of realised
produce, seafood and dreams and secure futures, and they
meat. No more one were going to turn their backs on it
dollar coins and long for their next start-up fix.
queues. All you need is
INSTANT MILLIONAIRES
a mouse and a working Before it was Groupon Singapore, the
Internet connection. island’s largest e-commerce site was
Beeconomic, a lean start-up that, in
the beginning, relied on spotty food
court WiFi and a dodgy hostel in Little
India. The company’s meteoric rise, at
a time when group buying sites were
sprouting like mushrooms, caught the
eye of Groupon in America, who then
decided to acquire Beeconomic for a
reported US$24 million, as part of its
expansion plans in Asia.
Overnight, the Chong brothers
became millionaires and the darlings
of Singapore’s burgeoning dotcom
industry. They did their work from a
spanking new office, had a blazing fast
Internet connection and ended their
working day at 5 pm, just like in any
other corporate organisation.
Christopher, however, began to
miss the bootstrapping days of yore
and when Groupon Singapore finally
reached the stage where it could
function and expand independently,
Christopher and Karl decided that it
was time to move on. “We might be
looking back at that time with rosetinted glasses but we really missed the
whole adrenaline rush of cranking out
a new start-up, working at cafes, using
the free WiFi, the works,” says Chris.
meat produce directly to consumers
and bypassing the middlemen. He set
up a Facebook fan page specifically
for this purpose. His fans would
drop him a Facebook message with
their orders and mailing addresses
and Julian would go about fulfilling
their requests. It was, however, a
time-consuming and disorganised
process and Julian knew he needed to
rope in people with e-commerce and
marketing expertise. That was when
Karl and Christopher came into the
picture.
“Julian had already made so much
headway into the online seafood
shopping space but was trying to
find the right partners to propel
the business even further. It was
the perfect match – Julian had the
experience in se afood and meat,
which was what we needed, and we
had the experience in selling online,
which was what Julian needed,” says
Christopher.
GoFresh is
more than
A CHANCE ENCOUNTER
10 new
just an online The siblings wrote outwhich revolved
business plans, all of
supermarket.
around the topic they knew best –
It’s still early shopping. Unfortunately, all of them
A MATCH MADE
met the same fate – the bottom of
days but they
IN HEAVEN
their trashcans. They didn’t make
have a few
In any partnership, chemistry and
any headway until they had a casual
vision are two key characteristics
dinner with Julian Lee, a mutual
exciting plans
that can make or break a fledgling
friend of theirs. Julian supplies
simmering on restaurant-grade seafood and meat to business. The three of them, being
a variety of high-end eating joints like start-up veterans, knew this better
the stove and
and had sat down for a
about ready to Crystal Jade and Seafood Paradise. than mostto trash out any possible
pow-wow
be served.
differences in personalities and
At that time, he was flirting with the
idea of selling the same seafood and
12
Family & Life • Aug 2014
working styles. Karl is a self-
professed straight shooter, a quality
that Julian wholly welcomed. “He
told me that he can be very blunt
because he wanted it to work and I
was thinking: ‘That’s great because
that’s how I approach things as well!’”
remembers Julian.
Christopher, having worked with his
older brother for three years, already
knew what to expect from him. And
while he admits that it occasionally
gets a bit weird because “it’s hard
to keep family emotions out of the
business, no matter how much you
try”, there was no one else that
Christopher would rather work with
than Karl.
“My brother is a real inspiration to
me because he always takes the
time and the energy to cultivate me,”
says Christopher, alluding to the
earlier days of Beeconomic when he
was a brash, wet-behind-the-ears
entrepreneur with a lot of latent
but unfocused energy. Karl tapped
on Christopher’s enthusiasm and
channelled it in the right direction.
He gave Christopher pep talks
whenever the mountain of rejections
from potential clients got to him and
pushed Christopher whenever he
needed a slight nudge.
They even bonded over a shared
Boyzilian, the male variant of the
Brazilian wax, session! “So, before