This International Women’s Day, join us as we celebrate female founders with the first-ever CRIB x Launchpad Pitch Festival. Two of Singapore’s leading entrepreneur networking and support communities have come together to shine the light on funding for female-led impact startups.
Our theme for the Pitch Festival is ‘Business For Good’. Selected startups will get the chance to present their business to a curated group of investors and win exciting prizes.
Join us for an exciting event with awesome networking – we will have angel investors, VCs and inspiring entrepreneurs in the room. Buy your ticket today!
Are you a female-led impact entrepreneur looking for funding? Applications are now open! Scroll below for all the details.
Eligibility Criteria
– Registered company in Singapore, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia or Australia
– Team should have at least one female co-founder
– Early stage startup with less than USD 5 million in external funding
– Team size is below 50 employees
– Revenue generating or at least have a Minimum Valuable Product (MVP) ready for commercialisation
– Creates verifiable impact in accordance with 1 or more of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
Timeline
Applications open – 16 Jan – 13 Feb
Announcement of finalists – 20 Feb
Pitch training of finalists – 21 Feb – 03 Mar
Pitch event – 08 Mar
Prizes
– Exclusive Media Feature on Honeycombers worth SGD 5500
– 6 Months Unlimited Hot Desking at Trehaus worth SGD 3480
– Guest Feature on Launchpad Good Business Podcast
– 60-min Legal Session with Legally AF, a legal consultancy for small businesses worth USD 550
– 90-min Core Confidence Unlocking™ coaching session with Sophie Leung, Women’s Confidence & Transformation Coach worth USD 500
– 1-month Premium Productivity & Design membership with INTERLUNAR, a digital transformation and innovation consultancy, worth SGD 899
– 45-min, 10-image, Lifestyle Portrait session with international brand photographer Rebecca Downie worth SGD 995
– 3 months free access to all TINTED WATEVA social events and masterclasses, a growth platform for businesswomen, worth SGD 462
Programme Schedule
6:00 PM – Registration and networking
6:30 PM – Welcome note by Dr. Elaine Kim, co-founder, CRIB and CEO, Trehaus
6:35 PM – Welcome note by Chris Edwards, founder of Honeycombers and Launchpad
6:40 PM – Introduction to the pitch session by Megha Singh, Community Manager, Launchpad
6:45 PM – Pitch by Fundfluent
7:00 PM – Pitch by Milestone
7:15 PM – Pitch by Ollie
7:30 PM – Pitch by Retykle
7:45 PM – Pitch by Teorra
8:00 PM – A quick chat with Chris and Elaine
8:10 PM – Announcement of results and vote of thanks
8:15 PM – Networking and dinner & drinks
9:00 PM – End of programme
Dinner & drinks will be served.
Tickets
CRIB and Launchpad Members – $35
Non-members – $90
Note: These tickets are to attend the event as a guest and get the opportunity to network with investors. There is no fee to apply for the pitch competition or for the selected finalists who will pitch during the event.
Meet The Hosts
Dr. Elaine Kim
Co-founder of CRIB
Dr. Elaine Kim is a medical doctor and entrepreneur. She is the co-founder and CEO of Trehaus, an early education business behind the leading, premium Trehaus School preschool brand, powered by an AI- enabled ed-tech platform that delivers the proprietary Littles’ Programme curriculum and teacher training in the research-and project/play-based “Trehaus Method” pedagogical framework. The Trehaus flagship spaces brings together preschool, office space/ business club with creche, so professional parents do not need to choose between career and family. Prior to taking the helm at Trehaus, she was the CEO of CRIB, a social enterprise she co-founded to empower women to become successful entrepreneurs through networking, co-founder and investor/start-up matching and training and equipping of female founders. After a decade as a doctor caring for terminally ill patients, she continues her involvement in palliative care through her work with the Singapore Ministry of Health Ageing Planning Office and remains involved in various charitable causes, especially through the philanthropic arm CRIB Gives Back that she launched at the helm of CRIB. She is married to venture capitalist John Kim of Amasia VC and they have 3 young children.
Chris Edwards
Founder of Honeycombers and Launchpad
Chris is a serial entrepreneur having started her first business in 2008 – a lifestyle media platform: Honeycombers. It was designed to inspire Singapore residents to live better lives. Chris had only been living and working in Singapore for two years, and found that she (and her peers) were only reading international media. She felt that many expats were disengaged with the local Singapore culture, nightlife and entertainment scene, and that many people felt Singapore was “boring” because of this disconnection. With a background in marketing and publishing, Chris decided to fill the gap, and so she created a digital platform and a community that expats, as well as locals, would trust; that would engage and influence them, and unlock the best experiences in Singapore. Over the last 15 years, the Honeycombers platform has grown to become the leading digital brand in lifestyle content. In January 2022, Chris launched Launchpad – an entrepreneurial community business group, designed to help small businesses thrive through community, peer mentoring and coaching. Chris now runs five companies across four countries and spends her time split between Singapore and Australia.
Meet The Judges
Andrew Lee
Mr. Lee most recently was at Sequoia where he led the digital and growth marketing efforts in the India and Southeast Asia region. Prior to joining Sequoia, Mr Lee was a seasoned Marketing executive with 15+ years of Silicon Valley experience primarily at Google’s Marketing team where he served as a global lead hyper scaling the Enterprise product suite. He has worked on a variety of core Google products including Gmail, Docs, Drive, Hangouts, Google Maps, Earth Pro, GCP and Chromebooks. He has deep Enterprise SaaS experience serving on the direct staff of the CMO at Salesforce.com where he worked across Sales, Operations, and Product teams to design go to market strategies and build businesses into billion dollar product lines. His first job out of college was on the trading floor of Merrill Lynch. Andrew holds a MBA from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.
Christine Amour-Levar
Christine Amour-Levar is a French-Swiss-Filipina philanthropist, record-breaking adventurer, best-selling author and human rights & sustainability advisor. She started her professional journey working for Nike across the world and went on to build a global career as a marketing and communications expert and social entrepreneur intent on solving some of the world’s most pressing issues. Christine is a Board Member of Investible’s Singapore-based Funds, helping provide strategic support to Investible and its portfolio in Asia and beyond. She is also a Board Member and Advisor to several purpose-led organisations in the Social Impact and Sustainability spaces – with a particular focus on CSR, Impact Investing and Cellular Agriculture.
Jeremy Au
Jeremy Au is a VC at Monk’s Hill Ventures who invests in fellow founders who will transform millions of lives. He also spearheads MHV’s key initiatives from venture scouts to thought leadership. Jeremy hosts BRAVE Southeast Asia Tech, a global top 10% podcast interviewing trailblazing founders, investors and rising stars. His mission is to inspire thousands to build the future, learn from our past and stay human in between. He is an angel investor in over twenty startups across USA and Southeast Asia.
JinA Bae
JinA is passionate about supporting entrepreneurs and maximising positive impact of capital in Asia’s emerging markets. She has built her career as an investor and entrepreneur in the US, Europe, and Asia over the last decade. She is a Co-founder and Managing Partner of Abound Capital, a venture debt firm established in Singapore with a mission to expand access to alternative capital for entrepreneurs in Southeast Asia. Abound Capital provides non-dilutive, flexible source of growth funding in the form of venture debt to early/growth stage companies across the region.
Laina Greene
Laina Greene is CEO and Founder of Angels of Impact, and Senior Adjunct Lecturer at the National University of Singapore, School of Business. She worked in the telecom, clean tech and impact investing space for over 30 years and has worked, lived and travelled in over 52 countries around the world, She considers herself a Global Citizen. She has helped raise hundreds of millions of dollars for organisations of all sizes and previously served as Senior Advisor to Ashoka, Advisor to Unltd Indonesia, Associate Director of the Asia Center for Social Entrepreneurship & Philanthropy at the NUS Business School, and as Advisor to Plus Acumen chapter in Singapore. She is also the co-author of a book “Sustainable Impact: How women are key to ending poverty” (2017) and two recent reports written for Angels of Impact funded by Oxfam and Sasakawa Peace Foundation.
Leanne Robers
Leanne Robers is an entrepreneur, startup advisor and community builder. She is the Co-Founder of She Loves Tech, the world’s largest startup competition and accelerator program for women-led and women-impact tech startups. Now operating in 72 countries, She Loves Tech is committed to building an ecosystem for technology, entrepreneurship and innovation that creates opportunities for women and closes the gender gap in startup funding. Since its founding in 2015, more than 13,000 startups have joined and have gone on to raise more than USD$300M. Together with Microsoft, She Loves Tech is committed to unlocking USD1 Billion in funding for women entrepreneurs across Asia by 2030.
Leon Toh
Leon Toh is the Managing Partner of Damson Capital, an impact investment firm in Singapore. Founded in 2015 and based in Singapore, Damson seeks to advance the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) through enterprise based solutions, with Asia as our primary focus. Leon sits on numerous boards in industries such as logistics, technology, biotechnology and renewable energy. Previously, Leon was a management consultant with Accenture, the Vice President of Business Development of a Singapore FinTech company, a petrochemical price reporter with the Independent Chemical Information Service (ICIS) and conducted econometrics research in East Timor to study Seasonal Famine with Coffee Farming households. Notably, Leon is the co-founder of Eden + Elie, employing autistic adults to be highly skilled artisans.
Luke Janssen
Luke Janssen is the exited founder of Tigerspike, a mobile technology company with over 300 people across offices in San Francisco, New York, London, Dubai, Singapore, Tokyo, Melbourne and Sydney, Luke also founded Bambu, a technology company disrupting the wealth sector, Lucy, a digital bank for underbanked women, and Betaracbon, tokenising carbon credits. Luke now runs Mangosteen, a Venture Studio creating and investing in purpose-driven sustainable companies run by women.
Marie Cheong
Marie Cheong is a Founding Partner of Wavemaker Impact, the first VC backed climate tech venture builder in SouthEast Asia. Wavemaker Impact co-founds start ups with experienced entreprenuers with the aim of building a portfolio of scaleable companies that can abate 10% of the global carbon budget. Marie has worked with over 20 entrepreneurs to help them build their businesses. In the last two years, Marie has focused exclusively on launching climate tech startups in Southeast Asia and is passionate about increasing the pipeline of women founders in the sector.
Michael Blakey
Michael’s entrepreneurial journey started when he was young. He supported his way through college in the US by running some of the best music events in the city. Michael loves building things – including companies. Since becoming an angel investor in 2000 through Avonmore Developments which he co-founded with his brother, Michael has invested in over 25 companies in the UK and achieved 7 successful exits. He’s also invested in 8 start-ups in Southeast Asia including Anchanto, PlusMargin and Nugit under the name of Cub Capital since 2013. Most recently, Michael has co-founded Cocoon Capital, an early stage fund, which is looking to invest in companies throughout SE Asia. As is his want the structure of Cocoon is very different than your typical fund, as his entrepreneurial spirit always wants him to challenge the status quo.
Rebekah Woo
Born and raised in Singapore, Rebekah has more than 20 years of investing and business experience, spanning across government, investment institutions and family offices. Rebekah graduated from the London School of Economics and Yale University and also has the CFA and CAIA professional designations. Rebekah is currently the CEO & CIO of a multi-billion single family office. With her education and experience, Rebekah also actively contributes to the broader investment and business community by volunteering at various organisations, such as Singapore Institute of Directors (SID), BANSEA and is passionate about supporting women professionals and diversity in companies.
Sophia Fang
Sophia is currently the Head of Ventures at GSG, a leading Crypto Asset Management firm based in Singapore with over $200m AUM. In this role, she oversees the firm’s early-stage venture investment and advisory services. With a strong background in technology, Sophia has spent over a decade working in business digitalisation and new venture building. She is driven by a passion for supporting aspiring entrepreneurs and empowering underrepresented groups. In her free time, Sophia enjoys giving back to her community and supporting causes that are important to her. She is an active mentor and advisor to aspiring entrepreneurs, and she is committed to using her skills and expertise to empower others to achieve their goals. Sophia’s education includes an undergraduate degree from the National University of Singapore (NUS), and an MBA from Columbia Business School. Her combined technical and business expertise has enabled her to excel in the field of crypto investment, where she is highly regarded for her strategic insights and investment acumen.
Tianna Nguyen
Tianna Nguyen is a Director at Rigel Capital and founder of Alensia. She is an investment professional who has lived in the USA, Dubai, London, and Singapore and worked at global reputable firms such as PricewaterhouseCoopers, Credit Suisse AG Singapore, Invesco, and J.P. Morgan & Co. Though she has worked across several industries on international deals, geographically her primary focus is on Southeast Asian markets; aside from Singapore, Tianna has also worked in Vietnam and Myanmar. Her work included Corporate Finance, M&A, and capital raising advisory, which has extended to several fundraising negotiations and projects with technology companies involving ESG, including impact investments. She studied at The Ohio State University for her Biology and Finance degrees. Tianna also received her Master’s Degrees from Harvard University and Hult International Business School; she is currently active with Harvard Alumni Entrepreneurs as well as Harvard Global Women’s Empowerment.
Virginia Tan
Virginia Tan is founding partner of Teja Ventures, a VC backing thenext-generation of category leaders shaping the future of consumption for the emerging middle class in South East Asia, investing in seed to Series A tech driven companies in core verticals of food, retail and health and wellness. Virginia’s background was in law and banking at two magic circle firms, Allen and Overy and Clifford Chance, focusing on investments in emerging markets and corporate restructuring. She moved to China in 2013 to work on strategic investments related to China’s One Belt One Road policy. Virginia is the founder of Lean In China, which became one of China’s leading grassroot organisations for women with more than 100,000 members. She also founded She Loves Tech, a global startup platform which houses the world ‘s largest startup competition for women and technology, held across 70 countries in 2022. Virginia is an Asia 21 Leader at the Asia Society and was also named as one of Singapore 100 Women in Tech’s inaugural list in 2020.