Cheryl Yeoh on her MaGIC legacy

Right before 2015 came to a close, the region’s startup community got a big surprise: Cheryl Yeoh was stepping down as chief of the government-funded Malaysian Global Innovation and Creativity Center (MaGIC).

Her contract ended on January 14, so this is the first week that MaGIC has officially been without a CEO. Many are closely watching the appointment of a replacement. We’ve heard the government is still looking, although a former executive director, Afiq Johar, has stepped up as acting CEO.

There’s no indication as to when her replacement will be named, but whoever it is will have big shoes to fill.

Probably the most important legacy that Cheryl leaves after her time at MaGIC is that she helped put Malaysia and its startups on the world map.

In previous years, Malaysia has seen the biggest exits in Southeast Asia, dominating the tech IPO scene, and we’ve seen huge success stories like Jobstreet, iProperty, and GrabTaxi coming out of the country. Yet VCs largely overlooked the nation, ploughing money into Singapore and Indonesia instead.

But following the initiatives that Cheryl’s team rolled out at MaGIC in the past two years, more and more investors are setting their sights on Malaysia. Remember those 150 investors who gathered in one room during the MaGIC Accelerator Program’s huge Demo Day last year? If that isn’t a sign that investors are now taking notice, then I don’t know what it is.

So we prodded Cheryl to talk about her journey, the challenges of running MaGIC, and her hopes for it now that she’s no longer at the helm. Here’s a portion of our interview.

Tech in Asia: When you were invited to come back to Malaysia and told that the goal was to turn the country into a startup hub in Southeast Asia, what was the first thought in your head?

Cheryl Yeoh: It was actually a vision I created for MaGIC myself, as I was told to do: to make Malaysia the startup capital of Southeast Asia. I wanted to put Malaysia on the map. [As] someone who has had international exposure, I wanted to bring that element of exposure to Malaysian entrepreneurs and saw the benefit of leveraging the region for this purpose. It’s not a zero-sum game. In fact, if we help other entrepreneurs in the region, we gain from them too, so it’s win-win.

I’ve always been a person who loves challenges and aims for something bigger and bolder than the average. This is the only way I can push boundaries. If I don’t aim higher, I would never know the limits of what I’m capable of achieving. It takes a lot of grit and courage to do this, but I’ve always had this philosophy that I’d rather regret trying, than regret not trying at all.

At least if I fail, I can say I’ve tried my hardest and my best, rather than not attempting at all. Another one of my biggest philosophies in life is to “be comfortable with the uncomfortable” and “be familiar with the unfamiliar.”

Plus, for me to move back from Silicon Valley, my mandate had to be interesting and compelling enough for it to be worth what I’d given up there to return.

Did you think it was a hard task?