As we pack our bags and gear up for next week’s SaaStock Asia (our first conference on the continent), we wanted to tell you about 12 attendees you should take the time to meet. They are part of an exceptional group of SaaS founders, executives and investors that we are bringing together. They come from all corners of SouthEast Asia and each of them has their unique SaaS journey. The conversations you can have with them could be as important as the presentations from speakers. 

Nivas Ravichandran, Product Marketing Manager, Freshworks

A product marketer at Freshworks, Nivas is incredibly active in the startup scene in India and beyond. He has been a regular contributor in our SaaS Revolutionaries Facebook group since the start and has recently become our SaaStock Local leader in Chennai. Nivas also volunteers with IEEE (430,000+ members) as the Vice Chair of IEEE Young Professionals Global and previously lead the Young Professionals Community for IEEE Asia Pacific.

Matthias Knobloch, Managing Director, Betatron

After spending a year-long sabbatical taking a round-the-world trip, Matthias returned to Hong Kong in the summer of 2016. It was at another conference there that he was immediately drawn to the energy and the drive of the startup community. Matthias instantly knew he had to get involved, although at that point he wasn’t sure exactly in which capacity. He joined Betatron first as investor and mentor and then went on to become Managing Director. When he isn’t helping startups, he loves long-distance running and being outdoors. Chances are, you’ll bump into Matthias trail-running on one of the many gorgeous trails that Hong Kong has to offer.

Carman Chan, Founder and Managing Partner, Click Ventures

The inspiring entrepreneurial journey of Carman Chan started in her teen years with an extraordinary fondness of mathematics. Fast forward, in the late 90s, she rejected a Ph.D. scholarship in mathematics at Imperial College London. She thought that building a startup is simply much more fun. Today, Carman is the Founder and Managing Partner of Click Ventures, the globally renowned Hong Kong venture capital firm. At Click Ventures, Carman uses her impressive skills to lead companies on the right path, with an unheard of failure rate of funded businesses – below 10%.

Roland Yau, Managing Partner, CoCoon Ventures

Roland Yau worked in Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer before joining CoCoon Ignite Ventures. As a lawyer, Roland focused on fundraising for large conglomerates, working on the largest  mergers and acquisitions in Hong Kong, including Cheung Kong, Hutchison, HKT and HKBN. One of his key focuses at CoCoon Ignite Ventures is to oversee deal execution and growth opportunities for Hong Kong.

Patricia Cisneros, Project Manager, FinFabrik

Patricia has been a project manager with FinFabrik for a little over a year. FinFabrik is a financial technology company connecting asset owners and investors to make investment opportunity accessible to anyone. Leveraging blockchain technology on their our platform, we are renewing the infrastructure of capital markets. Before her time there, Patricia spent a few years raising in the ranks of Deloitte. 

Julian Low, Co-Founder, Zopim.com

If you have ever used Zendesk chat, you probably encountered the company Julian founded in 2007 – Zopim, which was acquired by Zendesk in 2012. After that successful exit, he has mainly been on the VC side of things. Still, he managed to find the time for social good, as he is the director of FastFast, a profit-driven but socially conscious enterprise that assists low-income and disadvantaged individuals in society earn a living in a scalable for the organisation manner.

Yue Kim, Marketing Consultant, Asset Management Advisors

Coming from Japan, Yue recently joined Asset Management Advisors. Prior to that career move, Yue worked for Single Grain. She took care of Eric Siu’s two successful podcasts 0 Growth Everywhere and Marketing School. In addition, she initiated and executed content partnerships for YouTube, podcasts, newsletters, webinars, events and aided the 3X website traffic YOY growth by applying key statistical data from Ahrefs and Google Analytics. Yue is a bilingual digital and social media marketer with a cross-cultural background driven by the curiosity for knowledge and a desire for continuous growth.

Kan Kunimura, Director of SMB, APAC, Zendesk

Another attendee from Tokyo, Japan, Ken has spent the last 7 years with Zendesk in various roles.  As the Director of SMB, APAC at Zendesk, Kan leads all SMB and startup-focused initiatives in the region. Kan is credited with launching Zendesk in Japan in 2012, and building it from the ground up. This began with opening the office, establishing the team, scaling operations and developing a stable customer base. What excites him most about his present role is the opportunity to work with a diverse and talented team of people who are genuinely passionate about what they do – not just his fellow Zendesk colleagues, but also with his customers.

Alana Smith, VP Global Accounts, Talkpush

Alana heads the global accounts division at Talkpush. This is an important role as Talkpush’s tremendous growth trajectory has been fueled by following existing customers into additional markets where they are present. As the Sales and Customer Success leader, Alana has a demonstrated history of exceeding sales quotas and successfully scaling teams.

Jake Xie, VC Investor, China Growth Capital

Jake is a VC investor at China Growth Capital, where he started his research-driven VC career in early 2015. With a focus in Enterprise Software & Services, Jake has made 10+ venture capital investments toward top startups in SaaS / Cloud-Native infrastructure software / AI / CyberSecurity / IoT / Blockchain. Before joining China Growth Capital, Jake had years of experience as a Senior Product Manager at top Internet companies such as Weibo and Rocket Internet in Beijing. Earlier, he was a founding team member of two startups. Jake holds a bachelor’s degree in Software Engineering from National Pilot School of Software, Yunnan University and worked at Michigan State University as a visiting researcher in 2008.

Anna Trybocka, CEO, CrescoData

Anna is an accomplished global product and technology commercial leader, with 20 years in B2C and B2B technology, media, telecoms, publishing, and monetization. She is the Founding Partner and CEO of CrescoData, a Platform-as-a-Service business with a focus on the commerce space. CrescoData works with a range of enterprise customers across the globe to help automate their commerce businesses using a range of innovative technology including machine learning. Anna is another true globetrotter having lived between London, Sydney, and Singapore.

Masaru Ikeda, Co-Founder, The Bridge

Masaru is a true techpreneur, credited with producing a variety of web services alongside contributing to reputable tech blogs and publications. He started his career as a writer for IT publications when he was only 12 years old (mostly for programming). When Masaru was just shy of 20, he started doing surveys on the IT industry in Asia and Silicon Valley. Ever since, he has been visiting those places to uncover new technologies and services by interviewing critical players based there. Nine years ago Masuru co-founded The Bridge, which organizes meetups to connect entrepreneurs and system engineers.

These are only 12 of 200 attendees we will be welcoming on May 14-15th.