2021T2 VirtualTSM/Participant Information/Austin Woon Quan

About Me

SMU email: austinwoon.2017@sis.smu.edu.sg
Academic Year: 4
Degree: Information Systems, Major in Software Development
LinkedIn: Austin

This is me!

Why Virtual TSM?

• What motivates you to join TSM?
  

I aspire to be an entrepreneur in the future and one of my goals would be to start a business outside of Singapore.

At the moment, I still lack a clear understanding of business environments abroad and would like to seize this chance to learn about how other businesses have managed to thrive in their different environments. It'll also be exciting to work together with my peers on an idea and, if possible, come up with a viable business start-up by the end of the term :)

• Where would you like to visit virtually?
  

Indonesia, China, USA, India

Starting a business

• What types of business interest you?

Any businesses which use technology to transform their industries. Some Examples Include:

1. Freight: Flexport: Single source of truth for management of shipment of goods. Transformed the entire shipping industry by creating a digital marketplace.
2. Workspace Collaboration Software: Lark: Single source of truth for anything work related. Seamless integration and great to use (have personally used software before)
3. Artificial Intelligence: Scale.AI: Enabling Businesses to adopt machine learning by solving the huge pain-point of tagging data

• What plan do you have in starting a business? (list existing business)

Recently, my friends and I participated in the SMU PAK Challenge by Eagles pitching an idea in the EdTech Space. Our idea was a product called LearnWire which aimed to bridge the gap caused by virtual learning. Our idea managed to get us the semi-finals, with a top 16 placing among over 100+ teams. You can view our pitch deck here: LeanWire Pitch Deck We managed to win prizes to offset our product development costs and are looking towards continue building our product.

I have also participated in an entrepreneurship module where my team had to see through the ideation, creation of an MVP, market validation and doing pitches do a panel of experienced start-up founders / venture capitalists. Our idea, Traverse, aimed to eliminate the frustrations students felt when going overseas to study by linking such students with local guides who would help them settle into their new environment. Some ways these local guides would help foreign students can be by recommending places to stay, food to eat, places to visit. The MVP was a telegram channel of separate countries where foreign students can join and ask for help from local guides who we hired. Link to MVP here (pls excuse rushed and ugly code): MVP
Lastly, I had the privilege to join an early-stage venture as an intern where I dabbled in various roles of marketing, ui/ux design, sales and business development of the company.

Past Experiences

Past Internship Experiences
Software Developer at Goldman Sachs
Data Analyst (Regional Business Development) at Shopee
Associate Technology Consultant at ZenComputes

Entrepreneurship Related Experiences
PAK Challenge 2020 Semifinalist
Ideated, pitched and created MVP for a business idea
Early-employee at bootstraped startup in 2017

What keeps you ticking?

Overcoming the challenges life throws at me with like-minded friends excites me