The Hard Truths Most Fintech Founders Learn Too Late | Conversation with Kelvin Teo

This week on Asia Tech Lens, we unpack one of Southeast Asia’s most instructive fintech stories: how Kelvin Teo built Funding Societies | Modalku into the region’s largest SME digital lender — and the painful lessons most founders only learn the hard way.

The spark was unexpected. During his time at Harvard Business School, Kelvin heard Peter Thiel argue that Asia didn’t need “more innovation,” it needed better execution. That provocation pushed Kelvin and his co-founder, Reynold Wijaya, to confront a structural financing gap no one wanted to touch.

What followed was a decade of difficult, often unglamorous work: building credit models with barely any data, engaging regulators before frameworks existed, surviving liquidity crunches and layoffs, expanding across markets with wildly different risk profiles, and learning how founder alignment becomes the decisive ingredient for long-term resilience.

Hosted by Miro Lu, this episode goes deep into what it actually takes to build a regional fintech serving millions of SMEs — not the glossy narrative, but the real operational, cultural, and emotional load behind the scenes.

💡What You’ll Learn

* How “execution over innovation” became the founding insight

* Why SME financing in SEA was chronically underserved

* Building credit models in data-scarce environments

* Surviving early shocks: liquidity crunches, layoffs, and tough calls

* How founder alignment shapes resilience

* Expanding across SG, ID, MY, TH, VN — the real operational cost

* Balancing aggressive scaling with responsible risk management

* Navigating regulators and investors across multiple jurisdictions

* What fintech founders consistently underestimate in SEA

* What the next decade of SME financing looks like

⏱️ In This Episode

00:00 – Opening provocation & Peter Thiel’s comment00:34 – Why they aligned early as founders01:41 – Entering the origin story02:19 – The comment that sparked Funding Societies03:10 – Studying US innovation models & scanning opportunities04:09 – Narrowing down the fintech ideas07:49 – Kevin’s early career and what shaped him09:41 – Forming the co-founder relationship11:49 – Harvard as a launching pad12:54 – Running a startup from Boston13:58 – Sequoia’s early engagement & the term-sheet saga17:34 – Building credit models with limited data21:22 – Hyper-local risk, experimentation & mitigations22:27 – How microloans were pioneered25:59 – Microloans, property-backed lending and product evolution28:10 – First major shocks: bank partnerships & credibility29:47 – Surviving the early bank relationship winter31:24 – How the fintech landscape matured33:11 – Profitability by country33:43 – Lessons from M&A through CardUp acquisition37:50 – Regional expansions: Singapore, Indonesia and Beyond40:55 – Balancing group discipline with local autonomy41:32 – Mission, vision & preventing Southeast Asia’s “middle-income trap”42:45 – Surviving early shocks and hard lessons47:25 – Retaining sanity & emotional management49:21 – How Southeast Asian founders build support infrastructure50:33 – Scaling responsibly vs scaling fast52:38 – The AI frenzy & distinguishing real from “fake AI”54:19 – Looking ahead: the next decade of SME financing58:48 – Leadership, culture and founder resilience01:02:21 – Advice to his younger self01:03:48 – If Kelvin weren’t building FS01:05:08 – The future of SME financing in Southeast Asia01:06:58 – IPO vs trade sale01:08:14 – Outside of work01:09:20 – Book recommendation01:10:15 – Closing

📚 References

People & Founders

* Kelvin Teo — Co-Founder & Group CEO, Funding Societies | Modalku — https://www.linkedin.com/in/tkelvin/

* Reynold Wijaya — Co-Founder, Funding Societies | Modalku — https://www.linkedin.com/in/reynoldwijaya/

* Peter Thiel — Entrepreneur & investor; HBS talk that sparked the “execution over innovation” idea — https://thielfoundation.org

* Aaron Tan — Co-Founder & CEO, Carro — https://www.linkedin.com/in/aarontan/

* Piyush Gupta — CEO, DBS Bank — https://www.linkedin.com/in/piyushguptasingapore/

Companies, Platforms & Brands

* Funding Societies | Modalku — Southeast Asia’s largest SME digital finance platform — https://fundingsocieties.com

* Carro — Online used-car marketplace in Southeast Asia — https://carro.co

* ShopBack — Rewards & cashback platform founded by NUS Overseas Colleges alumni — https://www.shopback.com

* Lego — Global toy company; referenced via an SME distributor client — https://www.lego.com

Consulting, Finance & Tech Firms (Kelvin’s Background & M&A)

* Accenture — https://www.accenture.com

* McKinsey & Company — https://www.mckinsey.com

* KKR (incl. KKR Capstone) — https://www.kkr.com

Universities & Entrepreneurship Programs

* Harvard Business School — https://www.hbs.edu

* National University of Singapore (NUS) — https://www.nus.edu.sg

* NUS Overseas Colleges (NOC) — Entrepreneurship program where many SEA founders emerged — https://enterprise.nus.edu.sg/education-programmes/nus-overseas-colleges

* University of Pennsylvania — https://www.upenn.edu

Fintech, Banking & Ecosystem Players

* Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) — Regulator backing early fintech and SFF — https://www.mas.gov.sg

* Singapore FinTech Festival — Flagship regional fintech event — https://www.fintechfestival.sg

* DBS Bank — First major bank partner for Funding Societies — https://www.dbs.com

* SMBC (Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation) — Strategic investor from Japan — https://www.smbc.co.jp

* Maybank (Malayan Banking Berhad) — Strategic investor from Malaysia — https://www.maybank.com

* Bank Rakyat Indonesia (BRI / BRI Ventures) — Indonesian banking group & investor — https://bri.co.id

Investors, VCs & Impact Capital

* Alpha JWC Ventures — Early seed investor — https://www.alphajwc.com

* Sequoia Capital / Peak XV Partners — Series A backer — https://www.peakxv.com

* Cool Japan Fund (CJF) — Japan sovereign wealth fund investing in Funding Societies — https://www.cj-fund.co.jp/en

* Norfund — Norwegian development finance institution — https://www.norfund.no

Tools, Hiring & Ops Mentioned

* Startup Jobs Asia — Early hiring platform Kelvin used — http://www.startupjobs.asia

Books & Ideas Referenced

* The Hard Thing About Hard Things — Ben Horowitz (on the brutality of startup decisions)

* The Philosophy of Money — Classic work on money and human behaviour (title referenced)

* “Radical Candor” & Netflix-style feedback cultures — referenced when discussing performance, culture, and how Western management ideas translate (or fail) in Southeast Asia

🎙️ About Asia Tech Lens

Produced by Perspective Media (Singapore), Asia Tech Lens explores the technology, trends, and people shaping Asia’s innovation landscape — and its global impact.

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