A who’s who of SEA’s top MBA-wielding leaders

This is the latest version of the article that was previously published on January 17, 2025.

Is an MBA worth it?

Tech in Asia scanned the educational backgrounds of founders and CEOs of the region’s top startups to find out.

We learned that of the 122 founders and executives from the 60 unicorns we studied, 41 individuals hold MBAs. Of these, three pursued eMBAs, which are typically part-time programs designed for people who hold top positions in their companies.

Among those with the degree, 32 are founders of 23 startups, which means that nearly 40% of unicorns have founders with MBAs.

More than half of those founders also serve as their startups’ CEOs. That said, not all of the CEOs in our list are founders.

If you want to be a CEO but are not an entrepreneur, getting an MBA might be a step in that process. Of the 14 non-founder CEOs in our data, nine pursued the degree.

One country emerged as a hotspot for MBAs – 64% of degree holders in our list took up their studies in the US. This figure corresponds to global rankings of top business schools, where US universities often dominate the lists.

Harvard and Stanford are the most popular among Southeast Asian unicorn leaders, having seen eleven and five alumni, respectively.

However, attending a US business school, especially Harvard, has become riskier for foreign students, after the Trump administration recently banned the university from accepting enrollees outside of the US. The government has also suspended its review of visa applications on international students looking to study anywhere in the country.

A big benefit of getting an MBA is the network it opens up, so alumni often launch startups together.

Examples include Grab’s Anthony Tan and Hooi Ling Tan, who are graduates of Harvard Business School; Ajaib’s Anderson Sumarli and Yada Piyajomkwan, who both attended Stanford; and Xendit’s Moses Lo and Vivek Ahuja, who were classmates at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley.

Another UC Berkeley alumnus is Sutanto Hartono, CEO of Vidio, the Indonesia streaming site that reportedly surpassed a valuation of US$1 billion in May.