Interview with Eat My News: Brian Wong - Scaling Startups, Investing, and Empowering Founders (Founder at Kiip, ASCII.vc, United States)
I recently did an interview about my view on startups, founder life, and my future pursuits with Eat My News.
Here’s a small excerpt below. To read the entire interview, click here.
"Wellness of the mind and body are critical for a long journey—sometimes 10 years plus—that founders go through to get their companies to the next level."
1. You’ve transitioned from founding Kiip to leading BW Growth Ventures and launching Ascii.vc. What inspired this shift, and how do these ventures reflect your current vision for supporting startups?
After the sale of Kiip to Ninthdecimal/InMarket, I was inclined to take some time to myself to really recharge and recuperate from the 9+ year journey of scaling my first startup. Lo and behold, the world had other plans - the pandemic hit, and it was clear to me that rest was certainly in the books. During this time, I worked on how I could reverse the mental and physical toll that startup life had taken on me - I spent a few years on my mental health through therapy and meditation, and physical health through pilates, yoga, through regular physical rehabilitation and training. As cliche as all of these things sound - it gave me the full realization that wellness of the mind and body are critical for a long journey - sometimes 10 years plus - that founders go through to get their companies to the next level.
BW Growth Ventures became the holding company for my angel investments and my advising work. During my time off, I made 28 angel investments and sat on several advisory boards. This allowed me to to stay close to the community I held near and dear to my heart (the early-stage startup community) and to work on problems that really gave me a lot of excitement. I spent time with companies across the spectrum - in adtech/martech, data, proptech, e-commerce enablement, fintech, and more. The concept of BW Growth Ventures was to also mobilize my network of “founders in remission” - founders like me with a breadth of experience and knowledge in our respective fields but with cycles to put on companies that need that expertise. I had a very strict filter on other founders I worked with to bring into the network - you had to have operated on companies of a certain size, achieved certain revenue and growth metrics, achieved some kind of an exit, or had been directly involved in some atmospheric level growth companies.