David Chan Email & Phone Number

Hi! I'm from Penang, Malaysia and came to Australia to study Aerospace Engineering at Monash. In my final year I realised I didn't want to be a traditional engineer – I wanted to work in a more dynamic industry with more impact. My first startup role was Listings Associate at STAX Exchange – the first platform in APAC to let people take a stake in IPOs and equity crowdfunding with crypto. It was pretty cool. You got tokenised shares on the blockchain rather than share certificates. I learnt a lot here but decided that I wanted to invest in tech, full time.I wanted to be at the forefront of technological adoption and partner with companies doing the most useful stuff. So I started managing my family's account.What I realised was that many of the best companies were listing late in their journeys – Spotify, Coinbase, Palantir, Roblox. Your Afterpay, Square, Upstart are exceptions rather than the norm. So I realised – the partnership has to begin earlier than IPO. It has to start in the private markets.Hence my current interest in angel/ VC investing. I think I have some way to go in building a network and requisite knowledge, and it would be great to be mentored in this area.The past 2, 3 years have been a real-life MBA. I've learnt so much about technology, businesses, economics, risk. I've read 20, 30 books a year and connected to global investors. Studying for my CFA and attending RWRI16 – an intense risk-taking course by Nassim Taleb and friends. Spoken to the smartest people in VC and on Twitter. It's exciting.In public markets my loyalty is to my capital and my capital only; in private investing it's loyalty to both my capital and my founders – the journey is more permanent (which can be great!).I count myself incredibly lucky talking to people smarter than me, reading hungrily, and speaking to fellow investors and founders about cool things they're doing. I love that as an investor I'm exposed to so many different domains and get to take bets on the best problem-solvers in the world.Technology meets capital meets people – that's where I belong.

Listed skills include Microsoft Office, Aerospace, Microsoft Excel, Engineering, and 16 others.