Future Alumni Trends: Alumni Angel Investing with Nanyang Angelz

In this special blog series, I will highlight some innovative trends in alumni engagement. No better place to start then to dive in with Nanyang Angelz. This is an  interview with Co-Founders Ivan Wei Kit Yong and Sam Lee. I had the pleasure to meet Ivan and Sam a few years ago and from there our online conversations turned to collaborations including with Corporate Disruptors Forum events - most recently the Academics-Corporate Innovation Festival in 2022.  In 2021, I was honoured that Ivan offered a positive early review of my book featured in the first few pages of the The Alumni Way!

Q: What is Nanyang Angelz?

A: Nanyang Angelz (NAZ) believes that startup founders are the catalysts to change & innovation and it's our job as investor/mentor to unlock and unleash their potential.  NAZ invests in startups with business models that impact society/environment.

Nanyang Angelz (NAZ) is a community of private investors and mentors to startups.  The profile of the community is mainly corporate professionals driven by entrepreneurial spirits.

Since 2016, we have profiled, analysed, and mentored hundreds of startup founders.  We look for the founder's character, focusing on resilience, critical thinking, and innovation.

Q: What’s the special alumni connection of Nanyang Angelz?

A: Both NAZ co-founders, Ivan Yong and Sam Lee, are Nanyang Technological University (NTU) alumni.  The co-founders met in Hong Kong circa 2014 at an NTU Alumni Association Hong Kong Chapter event.  The alumni are mostly corporate professionals with expertise in their respective fields in a wide spectrum of industries.

Aligned with the belief that one of the more sustainable and meaningful ways to 'give back' to NTU is to leverage our marketplace experience to angel invest in and provide mentorship to NTU alumni/student startups, we co-founded NAZ. The 'Nanyang' in our company's name is a tribute to our alma mater.

Q: Why did you call The Alumni Way a strategic disruption for your work?

A: The Alumni Way provides NAZ with a roadmap to grow our community!   NAZ's objective is Investing in People, Ideas, and Innovation.  A key success factor is to grow and harness the strength of the NAZ network of marketplace professionals from different regions and countries. The Alumni Way motivates the alumni, and shows the way for our network to unite with clarity of purpose.

Q: How does Nanyang Angelz align to The Alumni Way traits- reflection, curiosity, passion, generosity?

Reflection

At Nanyang Angelz, we encourage our angel investors to reflect on their alumni citizenship, especially how their identity as fellow alumni is connected to our purpose and shared values in impact investment.

While there is a need to turn a profit in investment, our primary goal is to serve these startup founders, especially those from our alma mater, who drive meaningful, positive disruptions in our world today.

It is imperative for our fellow investors to share our belief system.

Curiosity

We invite our fellow alumni to be curious about how they can leverage their alumni capital to help jumpstart the startups that they have invested in. This includes looking into the flow of resources, the flow of people, and the flow of resources from the university.

By being curious about the work of fellow alumni, faculty members, and the universities, we can assume the role of ‘smart money”; an investor with not just the money but the means, knowledge, and know-how to help the startup grow to the next stage.

Passion

Nanyang Angelz’s mission is to invite our fellow members who share our passion for positively impacting the world through startups.

We sincerely believe that startups possess the potential to innovate and solve the world’s environmental, social, and governance (ESG) problems that we face today. Hence, we are passionate about helping them succeed through the exponential prowess of a university alumni group.

Generosity

Through Nanyang Angelz, we aim to allow fellow alumni to be generous beyond financial giving but one that would promote their active participation by giving their time, talent, and especially the experiences they have accumulated.

Also, generosity as an investment, which promises a potential financial gain, allows the giving to be sustainable and expansive over the long term.

Furthermore, through the positive disruptive innovation by these startups, the alumni’s giving could potentially be the answer to the many societal problems that we are facing today.

Q: Why is an alumni group of investors well placed to support alumni startups?

A: First of all, there's already a natural affinity for alumni for their alma mater, and with fellow alumni.  This helps to lower communication barriers; the culture of their alma mater being the common ground.

The other key factor is their experience in the industries.  Alumni are from different industries, and well-informed about industrial trends, supply chains, challenges, and networks of markeplace professionals. These factors are invaluable for alumni startups.

Q: Why did you call The Alumni Way a strategic disruption for your work?

A: The Alumni Way provides NAZ with a roadmap to grow our community!   NAZ's objective is Investing in People, Ideas, and Innovation.  A key success factor is to grow and harness the strength of the NAZ network of marketplace professionals from different regions and countries. The Alumni Way motivates the alumni, and shows the way for our network to unite with clarity of purpose

Q: What can universities and alumni groups learn from Nanyang Angelz?

A: We had the privileged to be in the vibrant Hong Kong marketplace, in contact with alumni, coupled with the active startup scenes in Hong Kong and the regions (Mainland China, and South East Asia),  that we took the opportunity to form NAZ.   And we believe that 'giving back' to our alma mater is both fulfilling professionally and rewarding when we are doing something that we enjoy!

Why fulfilling professionally?  We capitalise on our current industrial and marketplace experience, to access startups - the business models, IP/technologies, market entries, government/industrial regulations, supply chains, etc.

Why rewarding?  We have the opportunity to angel invest in startups, with potential returns.  Also to mentor or coach the startup founders/team.

Q: What advice would you give someone thinking of starting an investing angels group of alumni?

A: We reckon there aren't any secrets to starting an investing angels group of alumni.  Having a clear purpose is key.  Firstly, some questions to deliberate on:

• Why are you starting this group? Is the purpose to support alumni startups
• What will be the legal status of the group?  An informal 'Interest Group'?  An 'angel fund'?  What's its legal entity
• How and who (a team) will run the group operations
• How to keep the group sustainable?

Sharing some of our experiences of NAZ:NAZ is a private company incorporated in Hong Kong, keeping ourselves nimble and fast, in the spirit of a startup. We believe in - 'Not to do different things, but do them differently.'  Illustrating this; we once organized a collaborative event with Volkswagen in their downtown showroom on a weekday evening, with two female startup founders sharing their journey with our alumni.  It was a win-win collaboration with some of our alumni doing test drives of Volkswagen's newly launched GTi and we had a free venue and good co-branding with a big corporate company.  NAZ collaborates with varied partners such as business schools, entertainment establishments,  science parks, startup accelerators, and many other corporate companies.The 'golden rule' that we adhere to in NAZ is, to focus on identifying the right startups to angel invest in.  For this, we put the emphasis on the character and competencies of the startup founders.Are you interested in learning more about engaging alumni in an angel investment?

The Nanyang Angelz are considering an online event in late 2023 or early 2024 to showcase in more detail the formula of setting up an alumni angel investment group. Signal your interest with this very short online form here and The Alumni Way will contact you directly about the event by e-mail.

Please note: The Alumni Way, KITE Limited and Maria Gallo are not affiliates of Nanyang Angelz nor do we derive any benefit from this feature - except to inspire more to think about alumni angel investing!