At 23, most people are still figuring out their first job. Theodoric Chew was building his second startup—and raising over $30 million from Tiger Global and Y Combinator.
The co-founder and CEO of Intellect, Asia's leading mental health platform, never went to college. Instead, he chose what he calls "learning by doing"—a path that led him from a bootstrapped media platform at 19 to building a company now serving millions across Asia Pacific.
In this conversation, Theodoric reveals how naivety became his superpower, why he believes mental health was "not an if but a when," and the counterintuitive strategy that helped him build market demand in a space that barely existed.
Watch the full interview now on EO's YouTube channel! Below is the complete transcription of the interview. Minor edits have been made for clarity and readability.
Key Highlights:
"I think the trade-off, if anything, for sure would be, you know, what one goes through in college. I thought I learned equally if not more, in terms of what I wanted to acquire, exposure to a fast-growing startup, looking at how a venture builder, a VC thinks."
"I think having a huge amount of ambition and a good amount of naivety is what helps entrepreneurs get started and having that dreamer within you helps you do things that are bolder."
"I think having a huge amount of ambition and a good amount of naivety is what helps entrepreneurs get started and having that dreamer within you helps you do things that are bolder."
The Unconventional Path: Choosing Startups Over College
You made the bold decision to skip university and dive straight into entrepreneurship. Tell us about that choice and your first company.
Theodoric: I'll say growing up, I always had an inkling that I wanted to be an entrepreneur. My parents aren't entrepreneurs themselves, but I've always been quite inspired by people who have built things that they believe in themselves. I studied in Raffles Institution—the leading secondary high school in Singapore where many of our greatest Singaporeans have been to.
But as I went through my years studying, what I found out for myself is that I had a clear want to build, to do things and not necessarily go through the career path that most of us set out to do. I was quite clear that I wanted to build something that I actually care about, that I believed in, and hence why I decided against pursuing university or college, and rather chose to learn by doing.
My first company started back then was a digital media platform, where we actually gathered thought leaders, experts, CEOs, doctors to contribute thought leadership pieces, expert articles to help people learn and grow. At that point itself, I was huge on personal growth—think of your Tony Robbins—that actually helps you grow and develop who you are. I believed that many others would benefit from consuming such pieces of information as well.
But as I went through my years studying, what I found out for myself is that I had a clear want to build, to do things and not necessarily go through the career path that most of us set out to do. I was quite clear that I wanted to build something that I actually care about, that I believed in, and hence why I decided against pursuing university or college, and rather chose to learn by doing.
My first company started back then was a digital media platform, where we actually gathered thought leaders, experts, CEOs, doctors to contribute thought leadership pieces, expert articles to help people learn and grow. At that point itself, I was huge on personal growth—think of your Tony Robbins—that actually helps you grow and develop who you are. I believed that many others would benefit from consuming such pieces of information as well.
What were the biggest challenges you faced with that first venture, especially being so young and inexperienced?
Theodoric: That company back then was very, very lean, it was entirely bootstrapped. We had a whole network of anything from volunteers to part-timers to guest writers that all contributed to build that network. I ran the first company for about 2+ years, but at that point in time, the biggest challenge was that I really didn't know what I was doing. Very candidly, I didn't even call it a startup—it was a website, a platform that I was kind of doing.
The challenges was the fact that I didn't really know what I was going about doing. What I took was very logical steps on finding the right people to work with, the right content to create, the right audience that we wanted to reach, and then things followed through from there as well.
One of the core things I believe in is simply doing. I do believe that one does not have and would not have all of the knowledge and all the skill sets at any point in time. You can be more experienced, but by doing and trying, one gets there.
The challenges was the fact that I didn't really know what I was going about doing. What I took was very logical steps on finding the right people to work with, the right content to create, the right audience that we wanted to reach, and then things followed through from there as well.
One of the core things I believe in is simply doing. I do believe that one does not have and would not have all of the knowledge and all the skill sets at any point in time. You can be more experienced, but by doing and trying, one gets there.
The Learning Years: From Startup Employee to Venture Builder
After your first company, you chose to work for other startups rather than immediately starting another venture. What was the strategy behind that?
Theodoric: After exiting my first company, I actually spent a few years working for other very exciting firms. I spent time at startups, I spent time at venture builders. The high-level intent then was, I was quite aware that I was a very young individual—I was about 19, 20 or so—and I had very little skill sets. I had gotten lucky to have done something interesting. I didn't have the experience nor the skills to actually build something at a large scale if I really wanted to.
So I decided to spend time to go and find startups that were growing faster, I could learn from that excited me. Following the years that I had doing my first company, I joined a Japanese travel tech startup called Voyagin and actually led a component of the marketing team as well. The company got acquired by Rakuten, which is a huge Japanese conglomerate. That was very eye-opening as well.
What happened next was I actually moved towards a venture builder, sort of a VC venture builder firm. That was the next chapter of my own journey as well.
So I decided to spend time to go and find startups that were growing faster, I could learn from that excited me. Following the years that I had doing my first company, I joined a Japanese travel tech startup called Voyagin and actually led a component of the marketing team as well. The company got acquired by Rakuten, which is a huge Japanese conglomerate. That was very eye-opening as well.
What happened next was I actually moved towards a venture builder, sort of a VC venture builder firm. That was the next chapter of my own journey as well.
Looking back, do you have any regrets about not pursuing higher education?
Theodoric: I wouldn't say there was a particularly regret or remorse going through that journey. I was very intentional about the choices I made and what I wanted to pursue. The way I looked at it was there were trade-offs in both paths. I do strongly believe in a good education, coming from a country with a strong education system. So, I think it's fantastic that folks who go that path have their own journey there as well.
The trade-off, if anything, for sure would be what one goes through in college, the experience and exposures that go with the college experience. At the same time, I would say for myself, I felt I learned equally if not more in terms of what I wanted to acquire—exposure to a fast-growing startup, looking at how a venture builder, a VC thinks and actually doing, learning from actually practicing and doing on the job as I built my own experiences as well.
The trade-off, if anything, for sure would be what one goes through in college, the experience and exposures that go with the college experience. At the same time, I would say for myself, I felt I learned equally if not more in terms of what I wanted to acquire—exposure to a fast-growing startup, looking at how a venture builder, a VC thinks and actually doing, learning from actually practicing and doing on the job as I built my own experiences as well.
The Personal Mission: When Mental Health Became Everything
What led you to focus specifically on mental health with Intellect?
Theodoric: After exiting the first company, it was quite clear to me that I was gonna build something that could reach and help and impact more people as well. On a personal level, mental health has always been a very personal journey. Something that I went through in high school, in secondary school was actually quite chronic ongoing anxiety. I struggled with anxiety in my teenage years and I actually started having panic attacks when I was 16. That's when I started to see a therapist.
What I remember quite clearly was my very first therapy session was one of the most cathartic experiences I had. If people knew how helpful therapy was, everybody will be actually doing it. There was a national survey actually done pre-pandemic in Singapore. One of the key stats that stand out quite scarily to me is that there is a 4 to 7 year treatment gap of mental health support and care. That means to say if someone's actually mentally unwell and needing care, they waited 4 to 7 years before they got the care—and that's for those that actually eventually got the care, which is a scary long and delayed period of time if you think about it from a physical health point of view.
What I remember quite clearly was my very first therapy session was one of the most cathartic experiences I had. If people knew how helpful therapy was, everybody will be actually doing it. There was a national survey actually done pre-pandemic in Singapore. One of the key stats that stand out quite scarily to me is that there is a 4 to 7 year treatment gap of mental health support and care. That means to say if someone's actually mentally unwell and needing care, they waited 4 to 7 years before they got the care—and that's for those that actually eventually got the care, which is a scary long and delayed period of time if you think about it from a physical health point of view.
How big is this problem really, both in terms of scale and market opportunity?
Theodoric: It's a huge, huge issue and if you look at it from an outcomes perspective as well, Asia, many of the fast moving cities have some of the highest suicide rates as well. So, the problem is extremely clear and extremely real. From a top-down perspective, the mental health market across the world and even in Asia is in the tens of billions of dollars. We believe this market, not even from our belief, but it is growing annually in double-digit percentage rates as well.
So, fast forward years later into 2019, mental health was something that I was quite clear was one of the key things I wanted to tackle and solve for. Having gone through many more lived experiences, having seen peers, friends, and friends of friends gone through much, much more troubling and darker things themselves, a very clear thing popped up was how do we actually change this? How do we make mental health care accessible as well as everyday, no matter how big or how small your issues may be.
So, fast forward years later into 2019, mental health was something that I was quite clear was one of the key things I wanted to tackle and solve for. Having gone through many more lived experiences, having seen peers, friends, and friends of friends gone through much, much more troubling and darker things themselves, a very clear thing popped up was how do we actually change this? How do we make mental health care accessible as well as everyday, no matter how big or how small your issues may be.
Building Intellect: Creating a Market That Didn't Exist
In the earliest days of Intellect, how did you approach understanding and solving the mental health problem?
Theodoric: In the earliest days of intellect, in a very, very lean setup, we actually went about to understand mental health. What is the problem around mental health, what was the thing that needed to be solved for as well. And we came to a very, very simple problem statement: People in Asia need help. They want help, but they don't know where to start.
So our initial hypothesis is, how do we bring care to them in a way that it's almost extremely simple—there's no reason why one couldn't access care. That was a simple initial hypothesis: bringing access to everyone, first, scaling access and then secondly, getting deeper and deeper in the care that we bring as well. And hence why what we do spans across different mediums. There is self-guided content that is anytime, anywhere, different languages. We have deeper live virtual care, we even have crisis support as well. And we've gone in that journey from scaled-up care towards deep immersive face to face support as well.
So our initial hypothesis is, how do we bring care to them in a way that it's almost extremely simple—there's no reason why one couldn't access care. That was a simple initial hypothesis: bringing access to everyone, first, scaling access and then secondly, getting deeper and deeper in the care that we bring as well. And hence why what we do spans across different mediums. There is self-guided content that is anytime, anywhere, different languages. We have deeper live virtual care, we even have crisis support as well. And we've gone in that journey from scaled-up care towards deep immersive face to face support as well.
What were the biggest challenges in building Intellect, especially in a nascent market?
Theodoric: Anyone starting a company is hard, no matter how experienced or how inexperienced one is, there are so many uncertainties, so many variables that never guarantees anyone's path. For us in particular, mental health, when we started the company back in 2019, it was a very, very nascent topic, particularly so in Asia. Most clients, buyers, investors were not seeing this as a priority for them at a point in time.
So for us, it was really stemming from a strong conviction and belief that mental health was not an if but a when. Mental health is as important as physical health, in many ways even more important sometimes because of how it affects all that we do as well. So, for us, the challenge then was how do we build the category, how to build the market. It was a nascent space. How could we actually convince our first investors, users, customers. It was hard to convince people to actually meet you firstly or even want to do a pilot and trial with you rather as well.
So for us, it was really stemming from a strong conviction and belief that mental health was not an if but a when. Mental health is as important as physical health, in many ways even more important sometimes because of how it affects all that we do as well. So, for us, the challenge then was how do we build the category, how to build the market. It was a nascent space. How could we actually convince our first investors, users, customers. It was hard to convince people to actually meet you firstly or even want to do a pilot and trial with you rather as well.
How did you overcome those early customer acquisition challenges?
Theodoric: For us, the early days were speaking with a lot of individuals, anyone from HR professionals, clinicians, folks on the streets, even as well, to try and very clearly understand what was the problem we're trying to solve for. The first 10 customers, a small, small pool of people to validate and these were early stage startups that were happy to actually test out and let us know if it worked or not.
I'll say what worked out well for us was actually starting small, knowing quite clearly the broader vision and mission was, but starting in smaller steps that we could chip away towards the larger goal eventually as well.
I'll say what worked out well for us was actually starting small, knowing quite clearly the broader vision and mission was, but starting in smaller steps that we could chip away towards the larger goal eventually as well.
The Entrepreneur's Paradox: Naivety as a Superpower
Looking back at your journey, what have been your biggest learnings as an entrepreneur?
Theodoric: It's been quite a journey. It's been, relative towards the bigger scheme of things, not been a huge amount of time, but a time that a lot is happening at least in my life. I'll say one of the biggest learnings I've had that I find useful and I keep reminding myself time and again is that it helps to have a bit of naivety in terms of what one has.
In terms of what I think is my superpower, if I could say it's huge ambitiousness in terms of what I believe one can actually achieve and that is a key, for better or for worse, guided me into taking the steps I have taken from not going to pursue higher education, starting a startup and doing what we have today as well. I think having a huge amount of ambition and a good amount of naivety is what helps entrepreneurs get started and having that dreamer within you helps you do things that are bolder, that one would not conventionally take as well.
In terms of what I think is my superpower, if I could say it's huge ambitiousness in terms of what I believe one can actually achieve and that is a key, for better or for worse, guided me into taking the steps I have taken from not going to pursue higher education, starting a startup and doing what we have today as well. I think having a huge amount of ambition and a good amount of naivety is what helps entrepreneurs get started and having that dreamer within you helps you do things that are bolder, that one would not conventionally take as well.
What advice would you give to aspiring entrepreneurs, particularly young ones?
Theodoric: In terms of what my advice is for people aspiring to be entrepreneurs, young or old as well, definitely possible. I'll encourage those who are interested to try to definitely give it a shot. I do fundamentally believe that there is no better time in our history for one to actually start a company, to have the amount of access to information and reach of audiences than ever before with the internet and with all that's happening.
Definitely try, but definitely expect that outcomes may differ from people to people. I don't think that everyone is born or meant to be an entrepreneur, but I think everyone definitely can try because if anything, one learns massively from this experience. In many cases, one can actually impact a lot more people as well. So I do believe fundamentally there are as many paths towards one defines as fulfillment or even success as well. And this is the path I've taken, but there will be many more that people can actually take on to achieve what they want to do as well.
Definitely try, but definitely expect that outcomes may differ from people to people. I don't think that everyone is born or meant to be an entrepreneur, but I think everyone definitely can try because if anything, one learns massively from this experience. In many cases, one can actually impact a lot more people as well. So I do believe fundamentally there are as many paths towards one defines as fulfillment or even success as well. And this is the path I've taken, but there will be many more that people can actually take on to achieve what they want to do as well.
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