Billion Dollar Moves™ with Sarah Chen-Spellings | Global Venture Capital Sarah Chen-Spellings

“As long as you're open to what's next, as long as you're open to the unknown, then there's an opportunity for you to improve yourself.” - Kimberly Yao, Co-Founder & CEO of CloudEats.
From selling booze online and working in Philippine F&B to creating a revolutionary cloud kitchen concept, Kimberly Yao’s entrepreneurial journey has not been a walk in the park, to say the least.
Fueled by her passion and interest in food and e-commerce, Kim continues to evolve and adapt as the leader of CloudEats, which, simultaneously, is on a strong growth trajectory since its establishment.
How can you become the CEO that your company really needs? And what are the differences when you’re growing from 10 to 100, and then 100 to 1000?
Tune in now to learn more about Kim’s leadership at each stage of her entrepreneurial journey!

TIMESTAMPS / KEY TAKEAWAYS

0:00 - Intro
02:50 - Takeaway #1: Passion-fueled vision
05:45 - Takeaway #2: Each experience you have is building you up for the next
08:31 - Takeaway #3: You need to be ready to grow and evolve as a CEO.
10:56 - Takeaway #4: The power of the Time Machine theory, but don’t forget to adapt in building in other markets.
13:26 - Sub-takeaway: Be sure of your local advantages 
16:56 - Takeaway #5: Not taking a risk, is the biggest risk
19:26 - Closing remarks
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Full Episode | Becoming the CEO Your Company Actually Needs to Scale & The Future of Virtual Kitchens with Kim Yao, CloudEats
🌐 Website: https://www.billiondollarmoves.com/future-of-virtual-kitchens-kim-yao-cloudeats/
🎞️ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68-0ifhk3ZI

About Kim Yao
Co-founder and CEO, CloudEats

Kim is building the leading tech-powered food service ecosystem in Southeast Asia through digitally native restaurant brands and proprietary smart kitchen technology. By revolutionizing a massive yet traditional food service industry, her mission at CloudEats is to create the largest cloud restaurant group in the region, challenging brick and mortar heavyweights in F&B. With almost $14m in funding for CloudEats to date, Kim is known to have raised the largest amount of venture capital for a female Filipina led startup. She hopes to inspire female, underrepresented founders to keep dreaming big and work together to pave the way for more women entrepreneurs. 

Already a veteran in the food and beverage industry, Kimberly Yao opted to “evolve and futureproof” her career by going digital. CloudEats eschews physical restaurants and focuses its 50-plus in-house brands and customised kitchens on delivery. Established in May 2019, the company was recognised by Tech in Asia as one of Southeast Asia’s top 50 rising startups. CloudEats has thrived during Covid-19, opening a new kitchen and donating 55,000 meals to first responders.

FOLLOW KIM:
https://ph.linkedin.com/in/kimberlyyao
https://www.instagram.com/kimyaoza/
https://www.instagram.com/cloud.eats/

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PODCAST INFO:
Podcast website: https://billiondollarmoves.com
Watch on Youtube: https://tinyurl.com/sarahchenglobal
Join the community: https://sarah-chen.ck.page/billiondollarmoves

FOLLOW SARAH:
LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/sarahchenglobal
Instagram: https://instagram.com/sarahchenglobal
Twitter: https://twitter.com/sarahchenglobal

As of January 2024, Canva’s design platform attracted around 170 million monthly global users from 190 countries. BUT it was not too long ago that now 36-year-old Canva founder Melanie Perkins was rejected by 100 VCs. 
Just like some of the best companies today, Canva took awhile to get to an inflection point: between the first idea in 2006, to launching 2013, that was a span of 7 good years.
Today, Canva is a $26 billion design startup is ready to take on Microsoft and Google and compared to other behemoths; and people have created over 3 billion designs since.
This week, we are taking a deep dive into Melanie Perkin’s story of building the online designing empire Canva. 

TIMESTAMPS / KEY TAKEAWAYS
0:00 - Intro
02:13 - Canva: from being rejected by over 100 VCs to a $26 billion design startup
05:00 - Lesson #1: Solve the problem you know intimately first: don’t be afraid to niche down, in the beginning
07:34 - Lesson #2: Good things take time—stay grounded, lean and persistent
11:19 - Lesson #3: Focus on what you can change, not what you can’t
15:07 - LESSON #4: Get comfortable going against the grain
17:44 - Lesson #5: You can do it all, but not all at once
21:17 - 3 Actionable Questions for You

About Melanie Perkins
Melanie Perkins is an Australian billionaire technology entrepreneur, who is the CEO and co-founder of Canva. 
Perkins is one of the youngest female CEOs of a tech start-up valued over A$1 billion. As of May 2021, Perkins was one of Australia's richest women.

Credit/Source:
Canva makes staff instant millionaires after $3.6b share sale
https://thenightly.com.au/business/canva-makes-staff-instant-millionaires-after-36b-share-sale-c-14205704
Guy Kawasaki's Remarkable People: Melanie Perkins: CEO of Canva
https://guykawasaki.com/melanie-perkins-canva-ceo/
Carmine Gallo and Canva CEO, Melanie Perkins
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xysjW_wZgxM
Sunrise Australia Day 1 - Melanie Perkins Keynote
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FXtGE811GCw
Melanie Perkins of Canva on Dealing with Rejection
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e31uR1WhrEQ
Melanie Perkins - Canva - Founder stories from The Sunrise
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h1uyh2IRWWM
How Canva CEO Melanie Perkins turned her small Australian college startup into global unicorn | E939
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8TBSg79Gf0M

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PODCAST INFO:
Podcast website: https://billiondollarmoves.com
Watch on Youtube: https://tinyurl.com/sarahchenglobal
Join the community: https://sarah-chen.ck.page/billiondollarmoves

FOLLOW SARAH:
LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/sarahchenglobal
Instagram: https://instagram.com/sarahchenglobal
Twitter: https://twitter.com/sarahchenglobal

You may have heard the news: as of January 2nd, 2024, Bumble founder Whitney Wolfe Herd has stepped down as chief executive after nearly a decade leading the dating app company.
Despite challenges ahead - a more conservative revenue forecast highlighting the need for a dating-app revamp - let’s not overlook the journey that brought Whitney and Bumble to this point.
Not to down play that Whitney Wolfe Herd is a recognizable name, at 31 years old becoming the youngest female CEO who had taken a company public in 2021.
To call her career trajectory a “comeback” is an understatement and this is why, Whitney makes first on the list of Billion Dollar Moves CEO Series - enjoy!

TIMESTAMPS / KEY TAKEAWAYS
0:00 - Intro
2:18 - Whitney Wolfe Herd stepped down from Bumble CEO position; her exit from Tinder and then becoming the youngest women ever to take a company public
5:40 - Lesson #1 Don’t be afraid to make radical bets, especially on yourself
9:15 - Lesson #2 Success can be built on personal setbacks and challenges
10:27 - Lesson #3 Building and upholding a purpose-driven brand identity
14:11 - 3 actionable questions you can ask yourself to think like Whitney

About Whitney Wolfe Herd
Whitney Wolfe Herd is the founder, executive chair, and former CEO of publicly traded Bumble, an online dating platform, launched in 2014. Co-founded with Russian billionaire Andrey Andreev, Bumble, the dating app, was known for women making the first move. Whitney who owns a 17% stake in Bumble, became the youngest self-made woman billionaire after it went public in February 2021 for ten months.
Prior to Bumble, she was the co-founder of Tinder and was previously its Vice President of Marketing. 

Read More:
Calling out inappropriate user behavior on Bumble:
“An Open Letter to Conner” 
Whitney's journey from Tinder to Bumble, then IPO:
“She sued Tinder, founded Bumble and now, at 30, is the CEO of a $3 billion dating empire”
“How Whitney Wolfe Herd Turned a Vision of a Better Internet Into a Billion-Dollar Brand”
Stepping down from CEO position as of January 2024: “Whitney Wolfe Herd Is Stepping Down as Bumble’s C.E.O. After a Decade”

Credits:
Bumble Founder's Business Lessons For Entrepreneurs | Forbes
Bumble's Whitney Wolfe Herd: The Story of Bumble
Former Billionaire Whitney Wolfe Herd Out As Bumble CEO
Rewriting the Rules of Business and Life With Whitney Wolfe Herd - Official Trailer - MasterClass
Bumble Founder: The Truth About My Explosive Tinder Exit
Secrets To Dating And Making A Billion By 31 From Bumble’s Whitney Wolfe Herd | MSNBC Summit Series

Revisiting a clip from the LP Summit co-hosted by Beyond the Billion and Arctic15 in Helsinki in 2023, we have curated this brief but insightful episode for GPs, LPs, or even founders.
This week’s guests are two European LP veterans - Marko Hara, formerly the director of Elo, one of Finland's largest employee pensions, and Tomi Viia, currently the head of investments at OP Financial Group, managing assets totaling €14.2 billion.
Our conversation delved into the trends and opportunities in private equity and highlighted the winning strategies for LPs during uncertain times. Let’s get started!

Timestamps/Key Takeaways
0:00 - Intro
03:57 - Takes on current market conditions; advice for LPs during venture slumps
07:48 - The shifts in portfolio diversity; the weighing in private equity
12:28 - Opportunities in US market for European LPs
15:14 - Advice for LPs and portfolio construction during uncertain times
17:25 - The winning factors in investment opportunities
20:22 - Huge platform shift with the explosion of AI; emerging managers are not off the table
23:02 - Q&A: Where are the best soft skills and hard skills that you are looking for in GPs in this environment?
24:53 - Key takeaway for LPs and GPs
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PODCAST INFO:
Podcast website: https://billiondollarmoves.com
Watch on Youtube: https://tinyurl.com/sarahchenglobal
Join the community: https://sarah-chen.ck.page/billiondollarmoves

FOLLOW SARAH:
LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/sarahchenglobal
Instagram: https://instagram.com/sarahchenglobal
Twitter: https://twitter.com/sarahchenglobal

"Goodwill should mean a whole lot more than accounting concept, is earned and cannot be bought; but if done correctly, can be worth a whole lot."
As we step into Q2, there's no better time to pause, reflect, and realign our goals for the year ahead.
This week, we revisit an episode that continues to inspire, which talks about creating real value with kindness and math, as advocated by James Rhee and his new book red helicopter.
In this conversation, we talked about money, reality, true alpha and transformation -- leveraging kindness. This as he saw in his tenure as the unlikely “least qualified CEO” of Ashley Stewart, where he reinvented the company from the brink of bankruptcy.
Ahead of your full read, here are some key takeaways from our conversation last year. Enjoy!

TIMESTAMPS
0:00 - Intro
02:30 - Takeaway #1: You don't make money with just zeros and ones.
06:07 - Takeaway #2: Kindness is one of the things you never have to hedge. It's never wrong to be kind.
10:14 - Takeaway #3: Don’t underestimate the power of appreciating the quiet leaders.
12:00 Takeaway #4: “I'm more proud of the way we did it than what the result was.”
13:44 - Takeaway #5: The scarcity mindset and why the richest aren’t always the happiest
17:23 - Closing remarks: the red helicopter

Full Episode:
Leading with Kindness | James Rhee
🎙️Podcast: https://link.chtbl.com/bdm-jamesrhee 
🎞️ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YYr6ZRQPdI

red helicopter - James Rhee
Imagine, a clear path forward told as a deeply felt human story. A poignant and uplifting celebration of humanity, red helicopter—a parable for our times is a tale of struggle and triumph, compelling for its honesty and relatability as much as for the instructions we can all use to balance the books of our lives.
Grab your copy here!
Learn more about James Rhee and red helicopter: 
https://www.redhelicopter.com/

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PODCAST INFO:
Podcast website: https://billiondollarmoves.com
Watch on Youtube: https://tinyurl.com/sarahchenglobal
Join the community: https://sarah-chen.ck.page/billiondollarmoves

FOLLOW SARAH:
LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/sarahchenglobal
Instagram: https://instagram.com/sarahchenglobal
Twitter: https://twitter.com/sarahchenglobal

Muslims are projected to constitute more than 25% of the world's total population this year. To many in the industry, this isn't just a statistic; it represents a vast array of opportunities for the markets.
This week, we had the pleasure of speaking with Fara Abdullah, CEO of Bitsmedia, the brains behind the immensely popular Muslim lifestyle app, Muslim Pro. 
With a fresh injection of $20 million from its recent Series A funding round, featuring participation from Gobi Partners, alongside continued backing from existing investors CMI Capital Partners and Bintang Capital Partners, Bitsmedia is poised to enhance the faith experience through cutting-edge technologies. 
Our discussion today delves into various aspects, including the business landscape, the potential in faith-driven markets, and the interception of faith, finance, and technology. 

TIMESTAMPS / KEY TAKEAWAYS
0:00 - Intro
02:52 - Market opportunities in the Muslim community; Bitsmedia’s business model
07:39 - Challenging the misconceptions and templatization of Muslims
10:49 - Thesis behind the 160 million annual downloads of Muslim Pro: faith in challenging times and the modern Muslim lifestyle
15:13 - Bitsmedia’s ideal consumer profile and the growth of user base
20:30 - Business models and the biggest revenue drive for Bitsmedia
24:11 - Decision making and resource distribution as the CEO
26:52 - The role of technology in shaping faith and vice versa
30:31 - The idea of moderation and ethical interpretations with use of technologies
32:41 - Bitsmedia’s role in the interception of faith, finance and technology
34:35 - Observed trends of religious behaviors and attitudes; the socialization of faith
37:01 - Fundraising and choosing the right partners
39:46 - Billion dollar questions

ABOUT BITSMEDIA
Bitsmedia is a Singapore-based, technology company known globally as the developer and publisher of the Muslim Pro app – a highly-rated and comprehensive Muslim lifestyle app with more than 150 million downloads globally to date.
The company is also the publisher of Qalbox, a global subscription video on demand (SVoD) entertainment streaming service aimed at the global Muslim community.
About Muslim Pro
Muslim Pro's journey started with its inception as a utility app dedicated to fulfilling the daily spiritual and practical needs of Muslims worldwide. Under Fara's guidance, Muslim Pro has undergone a significant transformation, evolving from its original utility focus to become a pioneering platform catering to the diverse facets of the Muslim community.
Fara's strategic foresight has been vital to transitioning Muslim Pro into a holistic ecosystem for Muslims. Beyond spiritual and religious guidance, the platform now encompasses educational resources, AI-driven tools, and robust partnerships with key enablers, brands, and organizations within the Muslim sector.
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PODCAST INFO:
Podcast website: https://billiondollarmoves.com
Watch on Youtube: https://tinyurl.com/sarahchenglobal
Join the community: https://sarah-chen.ck.page/billiondollarmoves

FOLLOW SARAH:
LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/sarahchenglobal
Instagram: https://instagram.com/sarahchenglobal
Twitter: https://twitter.com/sarahchenglobal