Rare Candy Lab
Former VC turned founder advisor. Independent perspective on your fundraise, business model, and the big decisions
I spent a decade investing across Southeast Asia and India. Now I write, teach, and build simulations that make potential founders and students feel how startups actually work, not how they look on a slide.
Learn
Two paper-based simulations game, built and run by me, that make potential founders and students feel what usually just gets explained. One puts you inside a startup's cash reality for five quarters until you understand what burn rate actually costs. The other puts you inside a founding team's first fifteen minutes and stress-tests every promise you made to your cofounder. Built for classrooms, cohorts, and corporate programmes.
Read
A decade in Southeast Asian and Indian venture, written up as I make sense of it. Biweekly, I dig into why the obvious story about a deal, a policy, or a market move is usually wrong. This is where the actual thinking happens.
Startup Case Studies
Each founder thought they were ready. Turns out, ready means something different once you look closer
Contact Me
Fund List
An actual list of who's actually writing cheques right now in SEA. Sectors, ticket sizes, and how to reach them.Updated regularly.
I spent about 10 years in the startup ecosystem across Southeast Asia and India. Saw a lot of founders stuck making bad calls, and honestly, everyone around them had something to gain from it. VCs wanted the valuation up. Lawyers just wanted the hours. Existing investors looked out for themselves first, founder second.These days that decade shows up in three places.I write biweekly, mostly me trying to figure out why the obvious story about a deal or a market move is usually wrong. I also built two paper based simulations, one on startup cash and burn, one on founding teams and cofounder dynamics, currently running at SUSS across three cohorts. And if someone wants a straight read on their own situation, cap table, investor fit, deal mechanics, whether the business actually works, that's what they get from me.
Case Studies
Each founder thought they were ready. Turns out, ready means something different once you look closer
Services
Diagnostic
Call(30 minutes)
Is your business ready to fundraise? What needs to change first? Get a clear-eyed assessment.
Fundraise Advisory Calls(3 x 45 minutes)
Strategy, debrief, recalibration. Support during your actual raise conversations.
Fundraise Preparation(10 hours)
Data room review, pitch practice (2 rounds). Everything before you pitch.
Founding Team Simulation
A paper-based simulation where students play the founding team of Vela AI, a fictional B2B AI company in Southeast Asia, surviving five events across two years. Two paths run at once, solo founders and founding teams, so the debrief becomes a live comparison of what a cofounder actually costs and actually provides. Every team negotiates a founders agreement in the first fifteen minutes. Every choice in that agreement gets tested by the events that follow.
Pairs with:
Lectures or modules on founding teams, cofounder dynamics, or equity and vesting. Best run alongside a session that introduces the theory, so the game becomes the stress test.
Format and timing
90 minutes to play, 30 minutes to debrief, run in person by me. Three printed documents per table plus a card set, provided.
Startup Finance Simulation
A paper-based simulation where teams of 4 to 5 run a fictional Singapore tuition company, through five quarters of real decisions and real cash consequences. No spreadsheets, no accounting background needed going in. By the end, burn rate and runway stop being definitions and start being something the room actually felt happen to them.
Pairs with:
Lectures or modules on startup finance, unit economics, or fundraising fundamentals. Works as the practical counterpart to any session where the concepts risk staying theoretical.
Format and timing
3 hours total, run in person by me. Teams get event decks, decision menus, and a take-home model-building sheet so the learning doesn't stop when the session ends.