Honestbee: The inside story of what went wrong and what’s next

“What we are really trying to do is uplift the little guys,” Honestbee co-founder Joel Sng told me back in 2014, after I interviewed him for a story.

His resume stood out. After graduating from Harvard University in 2008, he had invested in illustrious tech companies like Airbnb, Razer, Coursera, Facebook, Uber, and Foursquare. (He has consistently declined to say how he came to back those firms.)

Sng then returned to Singapore to run his family office.

He set off on the entrepreneurial path in 2013 by starting LifeOpp, the company that would become Honestbee. Sng’s journey would turn out to be a dramatic one from start to finish.

With big-name investors joining its ranks, the Singapore-headquartered startup became a leading contender for Southeast Asia’s online groceries crown.

However, mismanagement over the years has led to high turnover rates, cash flow issues, layoffs, and ultimately Sng’s departure as CEO.

Through interviews with Honestbee’s former and current executives as well as people who interacted with the startup, Tech in Asia has pieced together its intriguing history and how it got to its current state. We also learned where it hopes to go from here.

“We acknowledge that we have some gaps on the maturity of our financial processes and management, and we’ve always worked on improving it while balancing growth,” said Honestbee co-founder Jonathan Low in a statement sent to Tech in Asia.

From investor to entrepreneur

Sng’s transition to Honestbee was put under scrutiny. For a time, he held two jobs – running his startup while serving as a general partner at Silicon Valley venture capital firm Formation 8. He was in privileged company: the fund was started by Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale, ex-Khosla Ventures general partner Jim Kim, and LG Electronics scion Brian Koo.

Soon after, Sng’s supposed connection to Sun Yat-sen – a revolutionary leader revered in both China and Taiwan – entered mainstream media.

In March 2015 and again three months later, Bloomberg reported that Sng was the great-grandson of Sun. That factoid was also repeated across various media outlets, including Tech in Asia.

Then in October of the same year, Formation 8 announced that it would lead Honestbee’s US$15 million series A round, bringing Koo into the Honestbee fold.

Speeding ahead

Internal issues

Honestbee’s big bet

Lifeline

A new vision