Three years and 60 team members later, this is Tech in Asia today

After the Tech in Asia team wrapped up the Startup Asia Singapore conference in the summer, there were many things left to do. But the most immediate was to take a group photo. 22 people shuffled and giggled into place for our newest crew snap (above).

Just three years earlier, the Tech in Asia team photo was made up of about half a dozen people. The size of the troop – as well as the scale of the latest event – shows that this startup-that-writes-about-startups has changed a lot in the past few years.

It’s not just about growth in numbers for the site. It’s also about diversity – across more countries, embracing more topics, producing offline events as well as online content.

For Tech in Asia founder Willis Wee, the past few years have been an entrepreneurial journey of personal growth. “In one sentence, I learned to be a better person. Having to meet and work with so many people, it quickly grew me into a better person, entrepreneur, leader, and follower,” he says.

A change in direction

DeNA’s Tomoko Namba (left) talks to one of our bloggers onstage at Startup Asia Tokyo last month.

Before the blog took the current name, it was called Penn Olson. At that time, it was mostly Wee and a few occasional contributors who were mostly writing about marketing. “We had a vision to turn it into a marketing agency after I graduated,” Wee explains. But one stint as an intern caused a change in direction. He adds:

I did an internship at DDB – one of the largest ad agencies – and quickly learned that I didn’t like the advertising business. It killed my passion for marketing and the ad industry, unfortunately. Having blogged so much about social media, it got me introduced to the world of tech. Fused with my love for entrepreneurship, I quickly turned Penn Olson into a tech blog that covers startups and tech across Asia.

Back then, there were just a few blogs covering tech and startups in Asia – on a part-time basis. No one was really giving their all to the growing ecosystem. Reporting was casual and very selective. I thought tech in Asia was severely under reported despite the continent having so many tech giants. I decided that I could play a part in the growing startup ecosystem in Asia so I just plunged in.

Whilst still a student, Wee took on Rick Martin, a blogger in Japan as a full-time writer focused on tech news and startups. I then joined in the summer of 2012 from my base in China. Supported by a couple of people on the business development side, it was mostly Wee, Martin, and myself using IRC like a bunch of hackers as we dug into Asia’s largely overlooked web giants whilst scouting for good startups to write about in the region.

Gwendolyn Regina Tan, co-founder of SGE (right) and Terence Lee, SGE’s main editor, joined the Tech in Asia team in 2013.

Another turning point for the startup was its merger in September 2013 with SGE – another blog that was working on building events. SGE was co-founded by Gwendolyn Regina Tan and Terence Lee, who both came onboard Tech in Asia once the deal was done. In Tan’s view, the coming-together made a lot of sense in the long-run: “It was obvious that SGE and TiA had much synergy in our editorial coverage, and that combining both assets to work on one larger company made much more sense for us all in the long term. The merger was a result of both SGE and TiA seeing this fit, having aligned vision and values, and most importantly wanting to work together on the bigger picture.” Tan is now the business development head.

“Since the merger, this vision of serving and growing the community across Asia hasn’t changed and I’ve been having an amazing ride with the rest of the TiA team,” Tan adds.

Event-full

Big in Japan?