Sequoia’s Surge leads $1.3m round of Singapore mentorship platform

ADPList, a Singapore-based mentorship platform, has raised US$1.3 million in funding led by Surge, Sequoia Capital India’s accelerator program.

The funding round also saw participation from several angel investors, including ex-Gojek executive Crystal Widjaja, Carousell co-founder and CEO Quek Siu Rui, GetGo co-founder Ting Feng Toh, Rainforest CEO JJ Chai, and Zopim founders Royston Tay, Wen Xiang Wu, and Yang Bin Kwok.

Launched in 2020, ADPList aims to make mentorship accessible through a community platform where people can search, book, and meet mentors from across the world.

ADPList co-founders Felix Lee (left) and James Baduor / Photo credit: ADPList

The platform features a shared calendar where mentors can indicate their availability and where mentees can select and schedule sessions. Besides one-on-one mentoring, it also offers mentoring for small groups mentoring, town hall-like talks, and other formats.

ADPList mentors work at global companies such as Spotify, Apple, Twitter, LinkedIn, Nike, Netflix, Twitch, and Coinbase, among others. Since its launch, the company says it has served more than 20,500 mentees, onboarded 2,500 mentors, and has had 5,000 booked sessions per month.

“The evolution of ADPList today continues to build on the belief that every mentors’ voice can transform people’s career anxiety to agency, and our platform provides them with an entirely new, accessible, and engaging way to do so,” ADPList co-founder Felix Lee said in a statement.

ADPList is also part of Surge’s fifth cohort of 23 companies that was announced in June this year.

Update (August 17, 2021 1:33pm SGT): This article was updated after additional information about ADPList’s investors was provided by the company.