Built 2nd Startup at 23, Execution was Everything | Intellect Theodoric Chew

Intro

00:00Uh I think the trade-off if anything for sure would be you know what one goes through in college. I I felt I learned equally if not more uh in terms of what I wanted to acquire. Exposure to a fast growing startup looking at how a venture builder a VC thinks.

00:12I think having a huge amount of ambition and a good amount of naivity is what helps entrepreneurs get started and having that dreamer within you helps you do things that are bolder one would not conventionally take as well. Hi, I'm Gdoric Chu, the co-founder and CEO of Intellect.

00:31We are a mental health care company serving and building for Asia-Pacific and eventually the world. We provide end-to-end mental health support from proactive care all the way towards coaching, clinical, and distress support. We've raised funding from the likes of Tiger Global, White Combinator, Insignia.

00:47To date, we've raised over $30 million in funding. Well poised to grow and scale in the next uh many years to come as well.

Chapter 1. Skipping college to start a business

01:01I would say growing up I always had an inkling that I wanted to be an entrepreneur. My parents aren't entrepreneurs themselves but I always been quite inspired by people who have built things that they believe in themselves. I studied in Raffles institution.

01:12It's uh I would say the leading secondary high school in Singapore where many of our greatest Singaporeans have been to. I got in from the benefit of a great educating system and having worked hard to get there as well. But as I went through my my years studying, what I found out uh for myself was that I had a clear want to to build to do things and not necessarily go through the career path that most of us set out to do.

01:36But I was quite clear that I wanted to build. I want to do something that actually I care about that I believed in and hence why I decided against pursuing you know going to to university or college and rather chose to uh learn by doing learn by joining companies that are have been that and learn by doing myself as well.

01:55First company I started back then was uh a digital media platform right where we actually gathered thought leaders experts CEOs doctors to contribute thought leadership pieces expert articles to help people learn and grow. At the point itself, I I was huge on personal growth.

02:09You know, think of your Tony Robbins, the like that actually helps you grow and and develop who you are. I was huge on this back then in my in my later teenage years and believe that many others would benefit from consuming such pieces of information as well versus just you know etiquette or your fun quiz type stuff as well.

02:24That company back then I would say was very very lean. It was entirely bootstrapped. We we had a whole network of anything from volunteers to part- timerrs to to guest writers that all contributed to build that network of what we had. In the end, I ran the first company for about two plus years.

02:41At the point in time, the biggest challenge was I really didn't know what I was doing at a point very candidly. I didn't even call it a startup. It was a a website platform that I was kind of doing. One of the core things I would say I I believe in it simply doing right.

02:53I do believe that one does not have and would not have all of the knowledge and all the skill sets at any point of time. you can be more experienced but sitting by doing and trying uh one gets there. The challenges was the fact that I didn't really know what I was going about doing.

03:06What I took was very logical steps on you know finding the right people to work with the right content to create the right audience that we wanted to reach and then things followed through from there as

Chapter 2. Learning on the ground and starting up

03:19well. After exiting my first company then I actually spent a few years working for other very exciting firms. I spent time at startups. I spent time at venture builders. the the high level intent then was I was quite aware that I was a very young individual right I was about 19 20 or so and I had very little skill sets I had gotten lucky to have done something interesting I didn't have the experience nor the skills to actually build something at a large scale if I really wanted to so I decided to spend time to go and endeavor and find startups that were growing faster I

03:51could learn from that excited me and and that's what I did so following the years that I had uh you know doing my first company uh I joined a a a Japanese travel tech startup called Voyagen that actually I led a component of their marketing team as well.

04:03The company got acquired by Rocket which is a huge Japanese conglomerate. So that was a very eye opening as well right what actually happened next after you know that have I actually moved towards a venture builder sort of a VC venture builder firm called that was the next chapter of my own journey as well I wouldn't say there was uh particularly regret or remorse you know going through trade journey I was very intentional about the choices I made and what I wanted to pursue and the way I looked at it was there were trade-offs in both paths right I do strongly believe in a

04:32good education country with a strong education system so I think it's fantastic that folks who go to path have their own journey there as well. Uh I think the trade-off if anything for sure would be you know what one goes through in college the experience and exposures that go with the college experience.

04:45At the same time I would say for myself I I felt I learned equally if not more uh in terms of what I wanted to acquire exposure to a fast growing startup looking at how a venture builder a VC thinks and actually doing right learning from actually practicing and doing on the job as I built my own experiences as well.

05:05You know after existing my first company it was quite clear to me that I was going to build something that could reach and help and impact more people as well. Uh on a personal level mental health has always been a very personal journey. So something that I went through in high school in secondary school was actually quite chronic ongoing anxiety.

05:20I struggled with anxiety in my teenage years and I actually started having panic attacks when I was 16. That's when I started to see a therapist. So and what I remember quite clearly was my very first therapy session was one of the most cathartic experiences I had.

05:34If people knew how helpful therapy was, everybody would be actually doing it. There was a national survey actually done pre- pandemic in Singapore. One of the key stats that stand out quite scarily to me is that there is a 4 to 7year treatment gap of mental health support and care.

05:48That means to say if someone's actually mentally unwell and needing care, they waited 4 to 7 years before they got that care. And that's for those that actually eventually got the care, which is a scary long and and and delayed period of time if you think about it from a physical health point of view.

06:02So it's a huge huge issue and and if you look at it from a outcomes perspective as well. Asia many of the fastmoving cities have some of the highest suicide rates as well. So the problem is extremely clear and extremely real. I mean from a from a top down perspective the mental health market across the world and even Asia is in the tens of billions of dollars.

06:19We believe this market not from our belief but it is growing annually in double digit percentage rates as well. So fast forward years later into 2019, mental health was something that I I was quite clear was one of the key things I wanted to to tackle and solve for.

06:32And having gone through many more lived experiences, uh having seen peers, friends and friends of friends gone through much much more troubling and darker things themselves, a very clear thing popped up was how do we actually change this? How do you make mental health care accessible as well as everyday no matter how big or how small your issues may be?

06:49In the earliest days of intellect I in a very very lean setup we we actually went about to understand mental health what is the problem around mental what was the thing that needed to be solved for as well and we came to a very very simple problem statement people in Asia need help they want help but they don't know where to start so our initial hypothesis is how do we bring care to them in a way that it's almost extremely uh too simple like there there's no reason why one couldn't access care that was a simple initial hypothesis bringing access to everyone

07:21first scaling access and then secondly getting deeper and deeper in the care that we bring as well and hence why and like what we do spans across different mediums there is self-guided content that is anytime anywhere different languages we have deeper live virtual care we even have crisis support as well and we've gone in that journey from scaled up care towards deep immersive facetoface support as well firstly anyone starting at a company is hard no matter how I believe how experienced or how inexperienced one is there are so many uncertainties, so many variables

07:51that never guarantees anyone's puff. For us in particular, mental health, you know, when we started the company back in 2019, it was a very very nent topic particularly so in Asia. Most clients, bias, investors were not seeing this as a priority for them at a point in time as so for us it was really stemming from a strong conviction, a belief that mental health was not an if but a when.

08:12Mental health is as important as physical health. In many ways, even more important sometimes because of how it affects all that we do as well. So for us the challenge then was how do we build the cali? How do we build the market? It was a nent space.

08:22How could we actually convince our first investors, users, customers? It was hard to convince people to actually meet you firstly or even you know want to do a pilot and trial review rather as well. So much less finding customers for us. The early days were really speaking with a lot of individuals anyone from HR professionals, clinicians, folks on the streets even as well to try and very clearly understand what was the problem we're trying to solve for.

08:46the first 10 customers a small small pool of people to validate and these were early stage startup that were happy to actually test out and let us know if it worked or not. So I would say what worked out well for us was actually starting small knowing quite clearly the broader vision and mission was but starting in smaller steps that we could chip away towards that larger goal eventually as

Chapter 3. Advice for first-time entrepreneurs

09:08well. It's been quite a journey. It's been it's been not been uh relative towards the bigger scheme of things not been a huge amount of time but a time that a lot has happened at least in in my life. So I'll say one of the biggest learnings I've had that that I find useful and I I keep reminding myself time and again is that it helps to have a bit of naive in terms of what one one has right in terms of what I think is my my superpower if I could say it's huge ambitiousness in terms of what I believe one can actually achieve and that has actually for better or for worse guided

09:39me into taking the steps I have taken from you know not going to pursue higher education starting a startup and and doing what we have today as well. I think having a huge amount of ambition and a good amount of naivity is what helps entrepreneurs get started and having that dreamer within you helps you do things that are bolder that one would not conventionally take as well.

10:00So I would say in terms of what my advice is for people aspiring to be entrepreneurs young or old as well definitely possible right I'll encourage those who are interested to try to definitely give it a shot. I I I do fundamentally believe that there is no better time in our history for one to actually start a company to have the amount of access to information and reach of audiences than than ever before with the internet and with with all that's happening.

10:25Definitely try but definitely expect that outcomes may differ from people to people. I don't I don't think that everyone is born or meant to be an entrepreneur but I think everyone definitely can try cuz if anything one learns massively from this experience in many cases one can actually impact a lot more people as well.

10:40So I do believe fundamentally there's many paths towards one defines as fulfillment or or even success as well. And this is the path that I've taken but there will be many more that people can actually take on to to achieve what they want to do as well.

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