Yaohong Ch’ng is the Head of Data and Engineering at January Capital, a venture capital (VC) firm based in Singapore. He is responsible for building data-driven solutions that will complement January Capital’s investment process. Before that, he was the Head of Data at StashAway, a digital wealth manager that has assets of more than USD $1 billion under management. As employee #2, he helped build the company’s flagship product since day one as team lead and later on, as an engineering manager.

In this episode, you will learn how Yaohong transitioned his career from $700 / month to joining a VC, why having transferable skills and being a “cockroach” is important and why you should look at yourself internally first when considering career switch.

This podcast episode was recorded in Sep 2022. Subscribe to email newsletter for bonus content.

Timestamps:
(00:00) Intro
(11:45) Robo-Advisor
(18:23) Risk of joining early stage startup
(21:02) Why skills are important
(23:43) Switching from finance to tech
(41:14) Building transferable skills
(45:26) Advice for career switch
(49:23) Career optionalities
(58:34) Framework for hiring
(01:09:00) What does success look like

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About the host John Lim:

John Lim has had an unconventional career by Singapore / Asian standards - with several career switches. He started his career in banking before co-founding a laser tag events company. After building the business from ground-up, growing the team to 20+ and running Singapore's largest indoor laser tag center, he joined an early-stage tech startup to lead business development across Southeast Asia. In 2019, he took a leap of faith to join the e-commerce industry, seemingly unknown sector, until a few months later when Covid-19 pandemic brought the world to its knees.

While John finds himself lucky to have 'survived' the career switches relatively unscathed, he has never forgotten how it feels like to be at the crossroads of your career and life. Now, he has started this podcast - to provide the resources and perspectives he wished he had - and to help you make the most of your career to live your best life.

Join him as he speaks with unconventional career changers and risk-takers, taps into their experiences and perspectives and discusses all things career. Together, they will provide you nuggets of wisdom, inspiration and actionable insights to start living life on your own terms.