Revealed: Tech in Asia’s early investor pitch decks – and its biggest mistake

Tech in Asia then and now.

Willis Wee, founder and CEO of Tech in Asia (then Penn Olson), secured his first investment in 2011 without a business plan. Still a college student and new to the startup world, he nonetheless came up with one in three hours.

It was raw, but convincing enough to raise a small amount.

Here’s the spreadsheet of the financial projections.*

By 2012, Willis had built a core team of 11, and tripled the site’s monthly pageviews. To grow further, he had to raise another round of funding.

This time around, his slide deck wouldn’t look out of place in today’s startup world.

Glimpse of the future

Investor pitch decks are about promoting not just the company’s current strengths, but also what it can become. They sell the beautiful story of the constant upward climb into rapid user growth and abundant moolah.

Real life is far more complicated though, and you can see this when you compare where Tech in Asia is today with what was pitched in those presentations.

Many of our plans died. Our expansion into China failed as we couldn’t find product-market fit.

We tried building a wiki of startups and investors, but were let down by an outsourcing firm we engaged. Willis eventually ditched the idea as he felt building a product wasn’t his cup of tea.

The lack of a startup database also meant that the idea for a jobs board couldn’t take off.

A lot of people complained that the ads were very annoying. So we decided not to do it.

What went right