30 popular founders we profiled in 2016

At Tech in Asia, we get to speak with founders pretty much on a daily basis. There’s always an interesting story to be told – it’s not easy starting a company and it’s even harder building and scaling one.

Passion, grit, and fortitude sets these people apart – why else would they embark on a risky journey? In no particular order, here are 30 of the most inspirational stories we wrote this year.

1. From fleeing Vietnam on a refugee boat to becoming Uber’s CTO: the journey of Thuan Pham

In 1979, Thuan Pham left on a refugee boat from Vietnam, a country torn by a two-decade-long war. Through abysmal conditions and rickety boats, his family barely made it to Indonesia. An application for asylum to the US was approved, and they relocated to Maryland.

Thuan worked at a car wash station on weekends and wore donated clothes and shoes.

After graduating from MIT, the boy from Vietnam went on to work at HP Labs, Silicon Graphics, DoubleClick, and VMWare. He joined Uber in 2013, when the company was present in 60 cities and employed about 200 people. Now, he’s the CTO.

2. This guy created Tokyo’s Netflix for nightclubbing

Japanese musician Hiroyuki Asahara helped build Live3, an app to get people to attend live concerts and sell tickets for events, but had to endure the loss of his co-founder and other members of his team when the cash ran out.

After going without pay for three months, existing investors came to his rescue but he stubbornly refused to splurge on even an apartment for himself.

3. The true feelings of an entrepreneur who just sold for $14 million

4. Robbed and stranded on a beach in Thailand, this entrepreneur hustled his way back to Japan

5. He started his company in a basement. Now it’s worth over a hundred million dollars

6. The former Microsoft director who tossed a coin to decide if he should quit his startup

7. Chinese startup gets funding to help low-wage workers buy iPhones

8. Lesbian dating startup isn’t afraid of China’s new anti-gay censorship

9. His startup provides a vital service to Google and BMW. Here’s what he has to say.

10. How this pioneer built a SaaS hub in Chennai from scratch without VC money

11. This founder makes a daily 4-hour trip between Singapore and Malaysia – just to save money

12. This guy transformed an obscure forum into a tech blog with 15m monthly visitors

13. College dropout at 17, millionaire at 22, Ritesh Agarwal says he is in no hurry

14. In a small town in India, this startup has made millions

15. This guy used all he learned as a Rocket Internet exec to build his own startup

16. How serendipity took this shy founder’s bootstrapped startup into the big league

17. This guy hated his job so much he automated it. Now he’s taking the idea global

18. The Titan behind Singapore’s most successful crowdfunding campaigns

19. Millions still in the bank, GoZoomo shuts shop, returns VC money. The whole story.

20. She landed internships at Google and Square. Here’s how she got there.

21. How this language learning app got 110 million users without spending a dollar on marketing

22. The co-founder of Rocket Internet’s ‘Lazada for the Middle East’ shares her journey

23. This Singaporean entrepreneur made his own food alternative based on Soylent

24. He started up at 49 and soon made millions. Now he’s investing it all into startups.

25. They quit Foodpanda to revamp the way catering is done in Asia

26. He started his first business at 14 and served clients like Pepsi. Here’s what he learned.

27. How a medical device maker got $5 million seed funding

28. Paytm founder prepares for his next pivot, which could be the biggest yet

29. How Indonesia’s richest families run the ecommerce industry

30. Line’s CTO shares her secret to running a great engineering team