About us

Our Founding Journey

United by the idea of building an ecosystem for founders in Southeast Asia, Peng T.Ong, So-Young Kang, and Roger Hamilton. They started the Founder Coaching Pause (FCP) in 2015. The 3-day program was built to provide founders with the necessary frameworks and tools to scale their companies facilitated by experienced startup coaches.

In 2017, Tomas Laboutka joined forces with the FCP team to launch SEA Founders. Two additional programs were introduced: the Masterclass Series (quarterly events) and the Local Forums. Today, SEA Founders runs as an independent, member-funded, not-for-profit organization.Our vision: Support growth-stage founders to scale in Southeast Asia, faster.

Founding Members

Peng T. Ong

Co-Founder & Managing Partner of Monk's Hill Ventures

Peng T. Ong is the Co-founder and Managing Partner of Monk’s Hill Ventures; he is also one of our esteemed founding members at the beginning. He has spent 25+ years in this space and made difficult decisions, can feel this pain strongly. He believes VCs’ roles are more than just capital support. VCs should understand and find a way to mentally assist founders before they go into the cycle of burnout and weariness.

So-Young Kang

CEO & Founder of Gnowbe

So-Young Kang is the Founder of Gnowbe, an Author and Blogger, and a Global Speaker; she is also our esteemed founding member at the beginning. With rising technology and AI, So-Young is concerned with questions about what it means to be human in the digital age. So-Young is passionate about addressing questions of ethics, values, and humanity in the age of AI. She does this through engaging with global leaders across multiple sectors including academic, government, technology, business, and social sectors as there are systemic challenges to be addressed.

Roger Hamilton

Founder of Genius Group, GeniusU

He is the Founder of Genius Group, GeniusU & Entrepreneur Resorts, a global Edtech and education company with over 2.7 million students in 200 countries. He is a social entrepreneur living in Bali, where I'm growing three businesses I founded. He believes that the entrepreneur movement - predicted to develop to 1 billion entrepreneurs globally by 2020 - is the best driver to solve our most significant global challenges.

Tomas Laboutka

Former co-founder & CEO of HotelQuickly Digital Expert Associate Partner @McKinsey

Tomas, a serial entrepreneur, and a seasoned executive, Tomas has built and scaled four ventures in Asia and Central Europe over the last decade. While making his own company HotelQuickly, he raised a total of $15M in funding and grew the company to $100M+ in revenues, with 120+ employees across offices in 12 countries.

Board of Directors

David Z Wang

Co-Founder & Group CEO of Helicap.com

David is the Co-founder and CEO of Helicap, an alternative lending platform and sustainable lender backed by leading financial institutions and venture capitalists. Before Helicap, David founded tech-focused investment firm 33 Capital, investing in Fintech and e-commerce startups in SEA.

Charles Lee

Co-founder & CEO - CoderSchool

Charles co-founded CoderSchool in Vietnam in 2015 after spending a decade in Silicon Valley consulting for Walmart Labs, designing courses for CodePath, and mentoring for Bloc. From teaching iOS classes for free, Charles has built CoderSchool into Vietnam’s largest Silicon Valley-style technical school with 2000 alumni to date. CoderSchool recently raised $2.6 million in pre-Series A funding in September 2021 to invest in its online coding platform.

Colin Mansell

Co-Founder & CEO Skills Union

Colin is with leading tech employers and universities to provide live online skills coaching and training to help bridge the tech skills gap. He is a tech enthusiast, and running multiple business including Drive, an award-winning digital agency that was sold to Major Tom in 2015 and RED, a leading design and technology school, growing to three campuses in Canada and the UK.