Despite founder split and losing almost all employees, Vault Dragon rises again

Ching (center, carrying pink rabbit) has gone through a lot.

A messy co-founder divorce. A drastic pivot. Nearly all employees quitting. And all of it happening at the same time.

While these would’ve killed most startups, Singapore-based Vault Dragon somehow survived. And it’s thriving.

The startup, which sells a software suite to help healthcare providers manage their operations better, claims it’s on track to make US$1 million in revenue this year, based on its current contracts with customers.

That’s more than double last year’s figure.

Investors are hopping on board too. It has just raised a pre-series A round, co-led by Golden Equator Capital and Raging Bull. Both are first-time investors in the company.

Golden Equator is a private equity firm which has invested in noteworthy Singaporean startups like jobs site Glints and Tinder-clone-turned-social-entertainment-firm Paktor.

Raging Bull is the investment vehicle of Ivan Lee, a superstar food entrepreneur who sold restaurant chain Thai Express for a tidy US$70 million. He’s invested in a bunch of other startups too.

Their involvement speaks volumes about Vault Dragon, although previous investors Jungle Ventures, Golden Gate Ventures, and 500 Startups didn’t join this round. But all three basically said the same thing: they declined to invest for reasons that had nothing to do with the company.

“The round is oversubscribed. We wanted to ensure the new investors have enough allocation as we already have a decent position in the company,” Amit Anand, managing partner of Jungle Ventures, tells Tech in Asia.

Nonetheless, Tseng Ching-Tse, the remaining founder of the company, says that angel investors from the previous round have re-upped.

He’s thankful to have gotten this far. “Everything somehow fell into place,” he says.

The pivot

I’ve met Ching three times prior to this interview. The first was more than three years ago, when he was a fresh-faced entrepreneur who left his boring consultancy job to join the JFDI accelerator program.

Assets frozen

Resurrection

Radical transparency