“I was the only child in an Asian family that sort of lives and breathes music.”
Both of Yat Siu’s parents were professional musicians; it was assumed he would become one too, but his passion for entrepreneurship started early.
“I must have been eight or nine? I don’t really remember. I only remember this because it was so ridiculous. […] My mom had all these shoes she was going to throw away.” In the pile, a colorful pair caught his eye. “Being a boy, it was gold, and it looked new. I had no idea what was good or bad fashion but I thought, somebody else might want this.”
“I basically went on a bicycle and I rode through my neighborhood in Austria shouting out to sell these shoes.” It would be his first big failure. “I don’t think I ever sold those shoes,” he laughs, “but I understood the difference between new and old.”
Yat Siu at Tech in Asia Singapore 2015.
Although Yat has a music degree from the Vienna Konservatorium in Austria, his hobby of computers brought him to Atari in the early 1990s.
He later went to the US to start his first company before moving to Hong Kong where he founded Cybercity, considered the first free web page and email provider in Asia. His next company Outblaze weathered the dot-com crash, and its messaging assets were sold to IBM in 2009.
Yat continues to be a leader in games and content publishing, but also finds time to support the arts as a board member of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts as well as the Asian Youth Orchestra.
Always one to build off experiences, Yat’s next venture is inspired by parenting.
The hills are alive
“When my son was born, everyone would say it’s good to play music for your kids.” Yat bought a piano and began to perform for his children, for the first time in over a decade. While his son didn’t take to the piano, Yat’s daughter was a natural.
She started to see a teacher, but something changed. Lessons weren’t going well, so Yat would try to help at home. Progress stopped and Yat became frustrated. That’s when he realized, “This is all the kind of shit I hated to do, and I am basically having my daughter do it.”
How would the world look like if everyone knew how to play an instrument?
Plastic inspiration
We’re jammin’
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