Co-Founder and Social Engineer, JFDI.Asia
Wong Meng Weng recently returned to Singapore after three years in Silicon Valley, ten years in Philadelphia, and three years in Vancouver. During this time, he founded two Internet dot-coms, led the SPF opensource standard to successful worldwide rollout, and learned several painful lessons about the operational aspects of early-stage entrepreneurship. His two previous ventures, pobox.com and karmasphere.com, explored the email security industry and developed reputation systems.
As a third-generation Singapore entrepreneur, he is keenly interested in the expansion of the creative class in Singapore; to this end, he organizes Barcamps, SuperHappyDevHouse, and invite-only Foocamp events here, spanning infocomm technology, energy, biotech, media, and next-generation investment sectors.
Meng recognizes that several cultural factors militate against Valley-style entrepreneurship in Singapore but is optimistic that the younger generation of locals, plus a dose of fearless immigrants, will overcome them. He is Deputy Chairman of Business Angels’ Network South East Asia and is a volunteer contributor to Singapore Management University, A*Star, and INSEAD.
As an angel investor, Meng’s investment strategy focuses on Internet start-ups in the Asian region based on deeply original technologies. These start-ups must exploit or answer a fundamental human need. He believes that after Web 2.0, energy, and biotech, the next rich wave of investment will be in the area of secular ethics.
Meng Weng earned a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science at the University of Pennsylvania (SEAS ’97), and attended MBA school at the National University of Singapore (2000) while simultaneously taking classes toward a Master of Knowledge Engineering. Prior to that he passed through the GEP at Raffles Institution and Anglo-Chinese Primary School. He programs in Perl, edits in emacs, totes a MacBook, sketches with a Wacom in Adobe Illustrator, and typesets with InDesign. He enjoys his iPhone but dreams of an Android and covets a Kindle. He does not commute in a car but bicycles on a Brompton.
His hobbies include precision housekeeping, psychometric typology, visual design, recreational cooking, bicycle touring, and historical costumery. He enjoys eating bacon. Lots of bacon.
He is also an enthusiastic amateur photographer, with over 10,000 images available online.
For more, check:
[...] co-founders Meng and Hugh are both mentors at the Founder Institute Singapore. Last night was a veritable Penn [...]