Just marking 1 year since incorporation.

• 14 August 2025 - LY

We relaunched straight into a fire. What a wondrous feeling it was. Well not really... 

We expected the turnout to be <500 pax, due to the past 8 months being silent, and also we did not spend any money on marketing our relaunch. Hence, we left the tap fully open without limits, and subsequently got hosed by it. Over 7,500 people created their accounts and started trading today. That completely crashed our website at times, causing it to lag and de-host due to the massive spike in traffic and packet calls.

We also had many abusers that we had to fight and even 'soft hackers' that found a way to keep creating accounts even after we void new creations. Our risk engine also could not take the volume of data coming in, as we had made it stream data instead of calling. That led to it rejecting most trades due to the large volume squeezing in. We also made a mistake in our trading connections and connected points wrongly, and points that were not meant to be live were not shut off, causing trades to not be handled right. We got margin called but did not lose all our funds, as we hadn't packed all the capital in.

This showcased more work to be done, but the data gathered is priceless, and also we now have an idea instantly about the upper limits of our software and how much returns we can actually achieve based on the data gathered. Overall, this was well spent tuition money!

• 12 August 2025 - LY

Finally.   We.   Begin   , is what I would have liked to say, but we have a final (I hope) unexpected connectivity issue with associated tags as certain deployments can only be issued on specific terminals instead of others that we were initially told could be done. Issue is not on our end ... well if we take accountability that all problems are our problems, then it would mean that our fog of war in lack of experience allowed this to happen in the first time we do this setup. Also shows that few to none in this world do what we do.

• 31 July 2025 - LY

Finally. Our commitments came from a mix of warm and hot leads - a mixture of friends and acquaintances. 

I love this Chinese artist because she doesn't have strong backing but an incredible willpower and sense of self to demand right by her. Though this is admirable, it also clashes with the natural world order at times as there is a lack of tact on her part. Her latest album shows her learning to balance both the tact and ambition. 

Fundraising was not easy. Whilst we are confident in ourselves, how to show and instill this in others was a monumental task as they have not seen what we have gone through, nor 'concrete results' to decide upon. 

We do not take our initial backers for granted. We intend to reward them heavily down the road, as they should be.

• 25 July 2025 - LY

Clement our CEO came up with a revolutionary idea, that of balancing a single nett position at all times. 

This would not only cut costs a lot via reducing middleman fees, increase profits and also potentially increase our sharp ratio (which is currently not ideal from institutional standpoint, but you have to know what this number is actually saying). 

Also might improve our VAR too given our exposure is reduced due to a delicate algorithm balance of an index of positions or an overall portfolio.

• 17 July 2025 - LY

Today, we took masterclasses from Centroid specialists. It was 3 hour long classes each day. With ample time for QnA, plus the fact that our Operations guy Jared read the manual fully before the class, we were able to make best use of the time to sort out questions on the spot, or get answers for it the following day before the class started. This 1-1 facilitating was great to massively shorten the timeframe to learn the essentials.

• 2,3 July 2025 - LY

Today, our Centriod Bridge is fully setup and operationally ready. In total, took about a month to get all the paperwork done and processes setup. Now just a standard SOP tutorial to teach ourselves how to use it, and settings to be aware of to tweak. Other than that, the backend connections have all been linked up and running.

Amazing to say this, but the 'control panel' is in place. We are able to operate centrally from this panel and control our entire workstation spaceship from here. Cool!

• 23 June 2025 - LY

Met with QCP Capital, primarily dealing in the crypto markets. But they also have their own hedge fund arm. This was a superb meeting overall, we learnt a lot speaking to CEO of QCP Capital, Melvin, and had a lot of homework to do as well.  One of the more unique points of the meeting was that it felt like someone with large institutional experience marking our homework ("yes this is correct", "yup that's right"). Also one of the smartest people we have met so far. In 20min, he understood what we do, could ask qns in the gaps and play ping-pong with us to test the assumption, validation and operation behind the model.

What was great was that they are cautiously impressed with what we have built, because to institutional level like them, we are but a 'sweatshop' which against the odds, managed to find our own unique alpha layer. This is a testament to what we have achieved thus far.

• 19 June 2025 - LY

Completed signing the corporate account to be onboarded with Raze Markets. This gives us access to institutional level of liquidity, much lower spreads and commission figures, and a reliable partner that is aligned with us and not against us (iykyk). 

With this, the entire end to end infrastructure is completed. We will begin final round of tests, and ultimately begin shortly after. Our community of 10,000+ retail traders are getting hyped for the restarting of the operations, now that we effectively have a V12 engine running, than the 2-cylinder before. 

• 16 June 2025 - LY

Met Integra Partners' Joshia Kwa (Principal). This was by far our best VC meeting, for the following reason.

Being a spinoff from Dymon Asia Capital, Singapore's big 5 hedge fund, these people are actually smart. Having spoken to many people, this was the first time that someone actually out of the gate understood a large part of what we are doing and even areas that are foreign, a smart person like him could connect the dots, make inferences and highly accurate assumptions and give pointers. 

The best part? Even though they could not invest due to the fact that their seed fund LP (USAID) was banned by Trump, he said this is guaranteed to work and was impressed with what we have came up with. 

Honestly, that alone gave us so much comfort in our hearts!

• 10 June 2025 - LY

After 3 months of pitching to VC's, along the way, we were lost in finding our way and identity. This had also taken some time as on one hand we wanted to raise funds that would alleviate alot of the pressure whilst sharing the upside with investors. Yet, as the process dragged on, we started to find our footing - 

1. Only talking to Partners in VC firms.

2. Slowly reducing equity willing to be given as we got more breakthroughs.

3. Slowly reducing the funds we wanted to raise as projections became sharper.

In essence, we got tired of trying to fit the VC checkbox and felt that we should stop pandering to them too.  Now we just pitch exactly who we are in a light hearted way, and those that connect naturally step forward.

• 01 June 2025 - LY

Finally after 4 months of hard work, Demo Day came around. We had to present to 8 different investors across  Angels, VCs, Accelerators. 5 minutes were all we had, followed by 7 minutes of grueling questions. Clement & I would be the presenters for the pitch today, and we had the jitters at the start.

Overall we performed well, though the1st panel here had a judge that was highly critical of our product, believing it had no value to hedge funds (including their parent company - asset management plus  HF arm). We do not blame the lack of understanding as it was only 5mins. Though such a blanket statement showed a fatal flaw as their response can be translated as "I believe making money is not important to a fund manager". And that to me was a wild statement ~

• 29 May 2025 - LY

Out of curiousity, Clement & LY went to TWSE event. What we did not know was that this time of the year is the promotional period for stock exhanges regionally. Meaning that the Asian nations stock exchanges are gathered in Singapore to pitch for listings by companies.

We just stumbled onto this event . But it was great - good food, bubble tea - and even met many in the PE, trading space as well! It was really interesting to hear from them on the cost of IPO, their advantages like flat fee structure, rigorous admin, high liquidity and even met with another accelator Appworks that we would sign up with just to be in the network and make new friends.

• 14 May 2025 - LY

We may want to change the fundraising angles and factors moving forward. 

We now have 2 angles that we are pitching - to different parties of course. The VC route remains unchanged, though the biggest change there is that we are increasingly less interested in VC funding as our progress has surged after fixing our core issues, and we are getting closer and closer to the light. 

The next path is getting promissory notes from 1-3 HNWI as a bridging loan to power us through the last mile. This serves to protect our dilution and also gives good ROI to lenders. We are now actively reaching out to our circle of friends and connections to see what can be done.

• 09 May 2025 - LY

Today, after a 1 week delay on our end... yes it was us as we wanted to discuss the inclusion of something else that was previously brought up. We didn't need it back then, but we decided that there was no harm in asking, as their software/introduction/cost could have been much cheaper than what we already had and working on.

But finally, we went with the initial agreement, and we are very happy with the outcome of this partnership. We are excited to show our potential fully soon, and bring this partnership to the next level as well. We work hard to show that our supporters and believers are not let down. This is of utmost importance to us - values.

• 05 May 2025 - LY

April ends today... we have been increasing our pitching to many more VC's as we are now fundraising in earnest as well. We hope that new funds will alleviate a lot of the infrastructure pressures and also to give us more breathing room to execute on more ideas that would serve us best in the long run.

We have also been getting a lot of feedback regarding our deck and pitch, and have taken them in stride to make improvements. We really value them and can see our deck changing over time for the best. Though some comments we ignore (as it's trash), mainly from entry level associates at VC firms.

On that note, we have also slowly seen positive response to our outreach style (& perhaps deck), whereby we are getting more meetings with Partners rather than their Associates. Many rejections too, but that is expected. Does not hurt anymore after a month.

• 30 April 2025 - LY

We made it into the 1st cohort of Aspire Ignite. This programme over the course of 2 months would teach us how to better position our company, startup fundraising fundamentals, and concluding in a demo day. 

4 lessons over the period. Great that each session came with alot of free food from famous cafe's in Singapore. Along the way, we also really learnt alot from the speakers, other company participants and the content delivered by Thomas, who works in Aspire and is a venture scout too. Thanks Thomas! (for your insights and tough comments on our pitching to help us level up faster)

• 14 April 2025 - LY

Quiet month to come - because one of our members had to go to the Army to serve his National Service (NS) for 2 weeks. This is a national duty of every Singaporean son. This is called reservist, and lasts for a total of 10 years, with 1-3 weeks of reporting each year.

Also, many of our technologies broke down and needed fixing - partially to upgrade - and there was also software that we used which faced regulatory changes multiple times this month that resulted in a negative outcome for us. Hence we were forced to leave it for future stability reasons, though this set us back alot. 

Giving our co-founder Clement and our engineering team alot of stress, as core components were taken from us. But we'll get through.

• 08 April 2025 - LY

2 members of the team embarked on a trip to Jakarta, Indonesia to meet with the Partners at Cocoon Capital. This was to pitch our company directly to Partner level individuals instead of going from the bottom up route of Associates. It was an insightful session to see and hear how partners think in a fund, and get their insights as to how we can better structure our deck and pitch to target and align with VC's. 10/10 experience, worth the funds deployed to fly down.

• 26 Mar 2025 - LY

Today, SMU has signed off on all the documents for us to apply for the government's SSGF grant. We are going for the highest amount of S$50,000 as we work towards our goals. This equity free grant is great for us, especially with the change in terms that allows us to include our 2nd time founder Lee Yang and strengthen our application. 

We look forward to its expedited process, and seek to utilize the 1st tranche on our ASEAN staff as we start contract negotiations to fix our burn rate.

• 14 Mar 2025 - LY

With 25 years of experience in Visa, holding various senior positions such as CFO, COO & President of APAC region, and currently a Board Member of Maybank, David Lee boasts the industry expertise in finance and fintech. We are delighted to welcome David onboard as our Advisor, giving us insights, recommendations and pointers on how we can navigate the waters as a young fintech company.

• 10 Mar 2025 - LY

Half the team... well 2 pax... Clement and Jared, made their way up to Malaysia. This was to meet up with some of our partners, brokerages and liquidity providers. Most of them are based abroad and mainly in the West but have offshore offices in Malaysia. The 2 day trip up was really fruitful in setting up F2F meetings to discuss working partnerships moving forward. 

We are always in motion, though we are sometimes slow to update on our socials.

• 25 Feb 2025 - LY

Images from last week's commemoration ceremony is out. 20% acceptance rate. But more than that, we are this cohort's KPI startup. This is not a burden to us, and actually really motivates us alot. Because we move fast, and break things fast, hence seeing that we are being pushed to go as fast if not faster is really flattering.

Let us make the best use of the next 4 months in this programme ~

• 15 Feb 2025 - LY

SMU BIG's kick off briefing + networking ceremony took place today. Mr. G here learnt of what we are doing, and he actually offered $1M trading capital on the spot. A young lady beside us had her jaw drop to the ground when we did not take it up immediately but told him we would have consider, and that it slightly diverged from our mandate.

Overall, it was a pleasant chat, and when we left to speak with other investors, Mr. G kindly extended the validity of his offer for the next 6 months (till June/July). We are grateful for the interest shown in us ~

• 07 Feb 2025 - LY

Today a Venture Capital firm reached out to us. Established in 2020, they are a subsidiary spin-off from another major fund originating from China. We are surprised at the timing. We had just planed to kickstart fundraising our 1st round, and started looking for investors to pitch too as well.  

• 01 Feb 2025 - LY

Today our LinkedIn page was set up. Our maiden post went up  highlighting our transition from Stealth Startup to a fully fledged entity. We are ready to break barriers! 

• 31 Jan 2025 - LY

On this day, we got accepted into SMU IIE BIG's programme as the 2025 January cohort.

After a 2hr physical interview and 5+10min pitching & QnA, we finally made it.

Previously we were rejected twice by another university programme labelling what we were doing as rather vague. Despite the setbacks, we continued building and found someone else that could see what we were looking at and made more effort to sit down and hear us out.

I know that people say that you should be able to pitch your business in a 1 min elevator pitch, but really, if someone is not from your industry, and you are doing something novel, how can you expect someone to get it in 1, 5, 10 or even 60 minutes?

• 16 Jan 2025 - LY