Chris Quek could’ve stayed in the family business and lived comfortably. Instead, he chose a life of uncomfortable clarity. In this first of a two-part series, Chris shares how he rejected expectations, fled the legacy he was born into, and built an e-commerce business in Malaysia with nothing but grit and guidance from mentors. Now 46, he reflects on what identity really means when you’re not handed a playbook—and how each phase of reinvention brings you closer to your core. For Gen Xers rewriting their lives mid-game, this is the kind of conversation that sticks.When Legacy Isn’t Your Story“I didn’t want to be the son of Mr. Quek. I wanted to be me.”Chris explains why he left his family’s manufacturing empire and fled to Malaysia—where he started over, with no plan, no capital, and no title.Courage Is Quiet“I lasted three days in China. Then I left. I couldn’t do it.”He unpacks the emotional and ethical discomfort that made him walk away from his father’s factory—and the fear he had to face to forge his own path.Lessons from the Streets of Malaysia“My startup wasn’t sexy. It was survival.”Chris shares how he built a cross-border e-commerce business using payment hacks, logistics hustle, and gut instinct—long before VC buzzwords existed.Mentorship Over Money“I didn’t inherit wealth. I inherited wisdom.”Raised around entrepreneurs and sharp thinkers, Chris reflects on how informal mentoring—from car rides to restaurant napkins—shaped his business thinking.Every Decade, Rediscover Yourself“At every stage, I found a new part of me I didn’t know existed.”Chris traces his 20-year journey through reinvention—from entrepreneur to advisor to VC—and why he believes identity isn’t found. It’s built, season by season._____________________Connect with us:Host: Vince Chan | Guest: Christopher Quek --Chief Change Officer--Change Ambitiously. Outgrow Yourself.Open a World of Expansive Human Intelligencefor Transformation Gurus, Black Sheep,Unsung Visionaries & Bold Hearts.EdTech Leadership Awards 2025 Finalist.15 Million+ All-Time Downloads.80+ Countries Reached Daily.Global Top 3% Podcast.Top 10 US Business.Top 1 US Careers.>>>150,000+ are outgrowing. Act Today.<<<
Chapter 1: Who is Christopher Quek and what is his background?
Hi Vint, thank you for having me here today and hi everybody on the show.
Chris and I met a few years back through a common friend in Singapore. Since then, we've exchanged a lot of ideas about entrepreneurship, investment and more. Today, I invite Chris to come over to our show and share with us about his own journey into entrepreneurship and investment, as well as his vision for driving change in the Southeast Asian entrepreneurial ecosystem.
At the start, Chris, could you share with us about your background and personal career? Then we'll explore different parts of your journey.
Sure. Okay, so hi everyone again. I'm Christopher Kwak here, born and bred out of Singapore. I'm a third-generation serial entrepreneur from Mergent. I'd say a family that has been running family businesses. 46 years old this year, quite a few people ask, am I really that old? So I just normally tell people I buy a lot of cheap Korean face masks to make sure that I still retain my youth.
Chapter 2: Why did Chris leave his family business and move to Malaysia?
But in reality, about 20 years ago, I graduated from the University of Melbourne, where I was totally English speaking. And my father told me that once you graduate, off you go to our plant in China, manufacturing automotive parts. And when I went there, I had a massive culture shock, if I might say. Everybody spoke Mandarin, which is naturally expected, given the fact that it was in China.
And I was struggling. I couldn't stand the smoke. I couldn't stand all the pollution that the manufacturing plant was producing. And finally, after three days, I snuck back to Singapore. And my father saw me, he got angry, he shouted at me and he said, Off with you, go back to China. And I told him, I said, I'd rather not do that. And I fled over to neighboring Malaysia.
And I had a number of Melbourne University friends who were so kind to settle me in. And I spent another six years there in Malaysia doing my very first startup. And I decided that since I'm going to be working in Malaysia, might as well I do a business out of it. After six years, I decided to come back to Singapore. I got married and I did a few other businesses.
Chapter 3: How did Chris start and grow his first startup in Malaysia?
I ran restaurants and I also ran education student care outlets. But one of the very interesting things that went through in my career was that at that moment in time, there were quite a number of fellow entrepreneurs, whether they were running traditional businesses, they were running what we call e-commerce, digital businesses at that time.
I noticed that they started coming to me and asking me for nuggets of information, advice on how they would look at things. And I just gave it. And soon be told, I guess that developed and evolved into something very interesting. I decided to start an incubator and it was supported by the Singapore government, where we gave out free government grants.
And it became a really fun journey, if I might call it, where I started to get involved very deeply in the startup ecosystem. In fact, over the last 10 years, when I was doing this incubator business, I think I advised easily over 1,500 startups. not just in Singapore, but all across Southeast Asia.
And soon after that, with going through that whole journey itself, it was really immense valuable experience learning from fellow founders and also giving them the advice that I learned from other founders. I realized that, hey, why not I just not just stop there? And in fact, running an incubator, you don't really make much money. And I was a little bit of a midlife crisis, if you call it.
At about 35 at that time, I was asking myself, what should I do next? And... I guess the next natural progression was to become a fund manager, a venture capitalist. And so what I did was that I sold my inheritance and I got a family friend to help me start some initial seed capital.
And today I'm living that vision that I went through, where I felt that I wanted to really, in the startup ecosystem, not only just advising startups, but investing into startups. And a lot of more things have actually evolved ever since, but I will leave Vince to ask me more about those aspects later on.
But I just wanted to give a little bit of background and up to today, now I'm a full-fledged venture capitalist. I don't do my incubator business anymore, but I'm very deeply involved with entrepreneurs, you know, trying to grow their companies, whether is it a venture capital kind of business or whether it's a traditional business. I'm getting involved in quite a number of that.
You mentioned you were raised in a fairly established family business. You could have taken the easy route, taken over the family business, scale it up, and continued making money. But instead, you chose to be more entrepreneurial and take risks.
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Chapter 4: What entrepreneurial experiences shaped Chris's mindset?
I'm curious, was there anything in your childhood, in your family education, or the environment you grew up in that helped shape your entrepreneurial spirit and mindset?
Yeah, Vince, I think just now when you were just mentioning and asking me about that, suddenly there was this whole flash of memories that just came back to me. So yes, you're right. So one of the privileges of being part of a family business is that you tend to get involved in two ways. Number one, you get to experience and see the business for yourself.
In the past, my father was not involved only just in Southeast Asia, not only just in China, but also in Europe, and specifically Russia. And I was very young that time, I think I was about 11 years old, that is about 35 years ago, when I went into communist Russia.
And it was just, Russia was just going through a very interesting economic boom at that point, where we took for granted McDonald's, KFC, and all these restaurants were just a dime a dozen across in countries where we live in. But when you talk about Russia, KFC, the first KFC outlet, it was mad. And during those years, you could easily earn 5 to 8 US million net profit per outlet.
It's because Russians were just so excited. And I guess that also sparked the whole interest about not just looking at food for food. My father was a very interesting man. He would take me out to restaurants. He would sit me down and he would tell me, how much money do you think they make in a month? And he forced me to start calculating out the revenues.
He would start telling me, what do you think is the expenses behind this? And I had to start learning a profit and loss statement just by that very visible conversation itself. And I think that is only just one element. I was very fortunate to tell the audience that I'm a product of my mentors in my life. So the number two and number three mentors were also very successful businessmen.
One was my father's best friend. who was a strategist, and I had opportunities to take car rides with him, and he would actually explain how does he do his strategy, and how do you actually look at expanding a particular business. He started his very own family business doing agri-chemical fertilizers, and he grew it into a public-listed company.
There was a lot of very interesting nuggets of information I got out of it, And I also had another very great mentor. He has passed on now, but someone that I respected a lot was when I was in Malaysia, he was my best friend's father.
And my best friend's father was just the encouraging man who taught me so much about how do you look at rejection, particularly because when you are an entrepreneur, you have to do a lot of sales. He was really encouraging and he told me how do I overcome that rejection, feelings, and to just keep moving on.
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Chapter 5: How did mentorship influence Chris’s entrepreneurial journey?
And that's something I can surely relate to in your experience, even though we come from different family backgrounds.
Yes, I totally say the words resonate with you. And I wanted to actually point out that Mr. Lee Ka Shing, if I remember, did say clearly to advise to people who were looking to upgrade their career. He always says, every month, try to get a meal out with somebody who is more senior, who has a little bit more experience than you or more experience than you are. and go and learn, go and network.
And I feel that is really important. I think you and I are personifying that, what the wisdom of Mr. Lee Ka Shing. And so I'm just actually putting it out there to any of the audience. One of the best things that you can learn today, don't feel embarrassed reaching out to people on LinkedIn and just asking for advice.
You'll be very surprised by the amount of kind-hearted people that's out there who's willing to give you opinion or two to help you on your journey.
It's interesting that you brought up Li Ka-shing because as you were sharing how your father trained you during your childhood, it reminded me of a well-known story about Li Ka-shing himself. For the listeners who may not know who Li Ka-shing is, Originally from Hong Kong, he is the founder of a multi-billion dollar business conglomerate with a global footprint.
He famously brought his eldest son, Victor Lee, into the boardroom at the age of eight to immerse him in the boardroom dynamics. Clearly, he was preparing him as the heir to the business. Back to you, Chris. Your father obviously had high expectations for you to take over the family business. Yet, you only stayed in China for three days and then headed off to Malaysia.
Where did you find the courage or the guts to make that decision? And can you share more about your e-commerce business in Malaysia? What did you learn during those six years there?
Sure. So I guess it's just about the lesser of the two evils. Was I going to go into Malaysia that was unknown or will I go back to China where I can't even speak very good Mandarin to start off with? And was I going to continue to manufacture automotive parts? Now, the family business was actually a supplier of plastic tooling and injection molds for automotives.
So usually when you are manufacturing plastics, it gives us a very accurate kind of smell and I didn't feel good. And in fact, there was already a trigger point in my value system that was I going to continue as the next generation of business owners to continue polluting, to continue doing the same mold just to make money for the sake of money.
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Chapter 6: What lessons did Chris learn from his family and mentors?
In fact, one of them was just telling me about the immense economic prosperity that Malaysia will go through and this kind of potential opportunities that you can work on. At that time, I created an e-commerce business that was very similar to Amazon. But what I did was an arbitrage advantage where Amazon couldn't actually enter Malaysia at that point in time.
That was in the early 2000s because Malaysians couldn't use their credit cards overseas. And so what I did was that I established a very localized payment system. Malaysians were happy to purchase books, beauty products, and I shipped them via Singapore. So I think this was just a little bit of creativity that I discovered.
I discovered the demand, and then I discovered the supply line that I could go for. And it was fantastic for those six years. I guess the reason what actually changed significantly was that regulations went down. That means credit cards in Malaysia were becoming much easier to purchase overseas. So I was starting to lose my advantage.
And the second one was like you having the likes of Lazada, Q10, all arriving and they were gladly throwing money to lose money. And I realised that my game is up and I decided that maybe this is a part of my phase of journey that I decided that it's time to actually move on.
And at that moment in time, coming back to Singapore and meeting my fiancé, I realised that life is becoming more deeply back-rooted into Singapore. So just to give you a little bit of context, what really transpired during that point in time in Malaysia.
And I also wanted to highlight to the audience, it's really interesting that sometimes when you've been to a place, it doesn't mean that it's the end in your life journey. In fact, this year, my venture capitalist company, we have actually gone full circle and I'm back in Malaysia very often is because half my team is in Malaysia.
My startup portfolio companies have built a huge regional ops HQs, not just one, but I think three or four of them have done that as well. So it's coming back to full circle and I do understand the Malaysian psyche and I feel that I'm not coming back as someone who is unknown to the Malaysian sea. I know it for the last 20 years.
So I think it's just to give a little bit of context when, you know, some people when they go overseas to another country, does not mean that's the end. You may actually end up going back there once again. So it's just a little bit very interesting about life experiences, how it comes back to you.
It's like planting a seed. Along the way, you nurture it. And eventually, it bears fruit. Life has a way of bringing things back to you at the right time if you go with the flow.
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Chapter 7: How does Vince Chan relate to Chris's experiences with mentorship?
But I feel that is the most biggest takeaway that I got out of it was I found myself. I found my identity. I found myself going through a phase of learning and growing because I'm trying to put it into context with another friend, a very wealthy second-gen family. Family maybe has about $300-400 billion worth of net wealth all across the world.
And when you want to talk about his life, his lifestyle is just outrageous, extravagant. But he did tell me one time that he feels that he doesn't know who he is. And I think this was just something that if you ask me to reflect back, was there a common theme? Yes, it's about every season. It's about discovering a new part about yourself that... you did not realize.
And not only every season, I will set a very high bar or a very high vision for myself. Like when I started off running the incubator, at a point in time, Southeast Asia and Singapore were a cowboy town when it comes to the startup ecosystem. And I decided that I wanted to change all of that.
I wanted to say, let's just pay it forward, give free advice, build this ecosystem up so that we get fantastic entrepreneurs that start to grow out of this ecosystem and make real change for Southeast Asia. And I think that was my personal goal at that time. And it's changed. I will feel free to ask me, but how has it changed? But I think it's just to give you a little bit of the element of...
What at every stage is about really discovering yourself, which is really an exciting journey. You don't realize that you have actually a lot of things about yourself that you haven't discovered.
As I was listening, two words came to mind, self-discovery and self-fulfillment. It seems that your life and career have been about discovering, identifying, and fulfilling your identities. While you've mentioned roles like entrepreneur and now investor, these are more like perspectives you take or roles you play. But I believe that identity is something essential or central to everyone's life.
Not just for those with privileged backgrounds, but for anyone and everyone. I know some really successful people who, by the time they retire or near the end of their life journey, regret that they followed the standard playbook and never gave themselves a chance to do more. To do something different, for example.
So I appreciate your boldness, your adventurous attitude, and the actions you've taken so far. I recall you wrote an article titled, Is Singapore Still Relevant After 50 Years? Here's an Entrepreneurial View. So you returned to Singapore after Malaysia. built up the startup ecosystem and founded your venture capital house. Could you share with us your experience during this time?
Yeah, so it was quite an interesting season in 2015 where Singapore celebrated its 50th birthday as a nation and it somehow triggered me a lot about how Singapore was evolving itself. Singapore evolved itself out of necessity where it built a whole nation, a workforce of engineers, scientists, bankers, lawyers, doctors, specialists, if you want to call it, you name it, they are there.
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