Pirate Ship: My Quartermaster Shang Koo
Join the pirate ship and you’ll never be able to get off… until I disembark
I first connected with Shang mid 2014 when he cold pinged me on LinkedIn. Shang was then the CFO of Jiayuan, which was one of the leading dating companies in China listed in the US, and I was running Paktor an online dating company I founded for less than a year at that time.
We worked on a fundraising round in 3Q2014 and discussed it with Jiayuan but ultimately raised our round with Vertex.
We reconnected every few months after, but never worked on anything together.
Pirate Ship Part I — The meeting and partnership
I traveled to Shanghai for some meetings and met Shang at a coffee shop to catch up just before returning to Singapore. Chat bots were raging in China at that time, Shang and I talked about potentially working together on a dating chat bot for fun. When I got back to Singapore, I tasked a team member on this to work with Shang on developing it. It never went anywhere but it cemented the beginning of more frequent communications between us.
So when I merged Paktor with 17LIVE in 2016 to form M17 Entertainment, I called Shang to let him know I was feeling out of depth and needed him to come over to join me — I told him that livestreaming was going to be big and that it’s now or never, that he needs to join a pirate ship, my pirate ship. I remember promising him ESOP and guaranteeing him that whatever the outcome of this pirate ship, his ESOP will be worth at least US$1m when he’s done, and if it’s not he can come after me. It was a big amount at that time, I wasn’t sure how we were going to do it, but I was so confident.
Shang advised me on the merger, and after he joined me full-time as my first (and only CFO till date), worked on closing out the deal and immediately proceeded to raise our next round. Within 1 year post merger, M17 Entertainment had scaled from US$5m to US$90m in annual revenues. This insane growth caused major scaling pains on the finance department; Shang had to rebuild the team from scratch.
I’m quite sure he wasn’t ready for what was to come next
Pirate Ship Part II — The ambition
9 months after the merger, we were pitched by an investment bank who wanted to take us public and after discussing with the board, we decided to go ahead.
The company barely had a finance department to begin with a few months back, and had just scaled its financial performance by close to 20x in less than a year, now was planning to go public because I thought we could and the board gave me their support.
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It was Shang who had to clean up after my ambition — push forward with the listing, put together the team, work with the underwriters to build an equity story, prepare investor pitches, prepare the company to be ready to be a public company, and the list goes on… I don’t think he slept very much
Pirate Ship Part III — The almost miracle
And he actually almost pulled it off. He got the company, an infant of sorts, ready for roadshow within 6 months and listing within 8 months in 2018. If not for a series of unfortunate mistakes coupled with my inexperience at that time, he would have completed the impossible.
If you know Shang, you’ll know he’s soft spoken and non-confrontational. He takes a lot of my bad temper with ease, and tries to appeal to my rational side (doesn’t work most of the time). I remember my biggest blow-up was on the trading floor of the NYSE, where he suggested that we delay the listing for the day, regroup back at the board room, and come back again the next day. I remember shouting in response to his comment, so loud I think the whole trading floor heard it, with all the bankers around us, and yet he took it in stride, and continued his role as the adult in the room to calm me down and work through the issues with the bankers.
Pirate Ship Part IV — The pessimist
2019 came, and the company hunkered down to prepare for the winter. One of our investors said the winter was coming, and I thought we’d better scale down our non-performing operations and drive profitability across board. This is where Shang excels. Finding every penny to save, cutting costs wherever possible, and very quickly we turned a profit, with significant amount (relative) of cash in our bank.
Shang is the adult in this partnership, the permanent pessimist and the one who always pours cold water on every idea I have. Through the years, I find myself always going to him when I feel too exuberant about any idea, because I know I need his thoughts to ground myself.
Pirate Ship Part V — The final scene
I decided to step down in 2020 while Shang continued on as CFO of Hiro my successor. In the last year, there have been many changes in the company and the company has scaled immensely under Hiro’s strong leadership — Media reported based on non-company sources that the company “…sitting on piles of cash, highly profitable expecting US$150m in profits…”.
As non-executive Chairman, I facilitate board matters and as Shang reported to both Hiro and the board, I continued to work with him over the last year though to a much lesser extent.
So when Shang decided to retire from his position, I was one of the first to know, and I was very supportive. Shang had gotten married, and welcomed a baby boy into his family recently. Being based out of Shanghai for the last year due to COVID, with 17LIVE now headquartered in Tokyo, it was a matter of time this transition occurred.
(Also a huge welcome to Carlos our new CFO!! Excited to have you onboard)
To my dear friend Shang:
I apologize for my constant outbursts, outlandish demands and impossible ambitions. Thank you for everything you’ve done for the company, for me, for our shareholders, for our team members over the last few years, especially cleaning up after all of us. Have fun with your son, all the best with your next adventure. I am certain we will work together again, we just don’t know when or how yet.
