RateS was a Singapore-born, Indonesia-focused social commerce platform that let anyone - housewives, students, small shop owners - start an online business with no inventory and no upfront capital. The app sourced products directly from suppliers and handled warehousing, logistics, payments and financing, while its network of micro-entrepreneurs handled sales through their social networks. Spun out of the foreign-exchange startup RateX, RateS grew to more than 500,000 resellers across Indonesia's tier-2 and tier-3 cities before being acquired by e-commerce enabler SIRCLO in 2023.
a.k.a. Brands is a portfolio operator of next-generation, digitally native fashion brands, including Princess Polly, Culture Kings, Petal & Pup and mnml. Founded in 2018 and headquartered in San Francisco, it reaches Gen Z and millennial shoppers who discover fashion on social media and primarily buy online. A data-driven 'test and repeat' merchandising model lets its brands launch fresh, exclusive styles weekly. The company trades on the NYSE under the ticker AKA and reported net sales of $600.2 million in fiscal 2025.
Sean (Hyun Wook) Park is Vice President and Head of Marketing for YouTube Asia Pacific and Global Shopping at Google, based in Singapore. With over 18 years at Google across Seoul, Tokyo, San Bruno, and Singapore, he has been a foundational architect of the creator economy - co-creating VidCon, launching the YouTube Creator Awards (the iconic gold and silver play buttons), and building the YouTube FanFest franchise across 60+ events in 15+ countries. He oversees YouTube's marketing strategy across Asia Pacific and leads global shopping initiatives for one of the world's largest video platforms.
Larry Liu is the Founder and CEO of Weee!, North America's largest and fastest-growing Asian online grocery platform. Born in Wuhan, China, he came to the US via an Intel engineering role in 2003, earned an MBA from UC Davis in 2008, and launched Weee! in 2015 after noticing Chinese immigrants using WeChat to organize group grocery buys. He built the company from a Bay Area WeChat group into a $4.1 billion unicorn with $1 billion in annual revenue, delivering 1 million orders per month across 40+ states and serving seven ethnic cuisines including Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Filipino, Indian, and Hispanic communities.
Masahiro 'Masa' Shimizu is the Founder & CEO of ZEALS Co., Ltd. and Omakase.ai, the Japanese pioneer of Chat Commerce. He started ZEALS as a Meiji University freshman in 2014 with robots and a mission to 'elevate Japan,' pivoted to chatbots within one month of Facebook opening its Messenger API in 2016, built Japan's #1 social chat commerce platform with 300+ employees and $69M+ raised, and is now taking that same hospitality-first philosophy — what he calls 'Omotenashi' — into voice-powered AI agents for global e-commerce through Omakase.ai.
Yash Kewalramani is the co-founder of Cherry App, a Bengaluru-based social commerce startup that pays Instagram creators cashback for shopping and sharing. Backed by All In Capital, Cherry lets users earn 30-70% cashback by posting about brands on social media - turning everyday shoppers into micro-marketers. A Swarthmore College mathematics and economics graduate, Yash previously worked as a product manager at Jupiter and at Adappt Intelligence before launching Cherry in 2024 with co-founders Sharnam Singhwal and Samarth Mahapatra.
Anya Cheng is the Founder & CEO of Taelor, an AI-powered men's clothing rental and styling subscription service that raised $5M+ and ranked #1 in U.S. menswear rentals by GQ. A Taiwanese-American first-generation immigrant who spent 15+ years at Target, McDonald's, eBay, and Meta (where she helped launch Facebook Shopping), she pivoted to entrepreneurship to solve a problem she saw everywhere: busy professional men who needed to look sharp but hated shopping. Taelor combines AI trend forecasting with human stylists to deliver curated wardrobes to subscribers, tackling fashion's 30% waste problem along the way. Cheng also teaches at Northwestern's Medill School and mentors at 500 Startups.
Jerry Qian is the Co-Founder and CEO of Reacher, an AI-powered creator marketing platform headquartered in San Francisco. After stints at Meta and NASA and graduating from UC Berkeley, Qian co-founded Reacher in 2024 with Bora Mutluoglu to automate influencer discovery, outreach, and campaign management for brands on TikTok Shop, Instagram, YouTube Shopping, and Amazon. The company is a Y Combinator S25 alum, holds the #1 spot on the TikTok Shop App Store, serves 1,000+ brands including Under Armour and Logitech, and has crossed seven figures in ARR.
Sherwin Xia is the co-founder and CEO of Trendsi, a San Francisco-based e-commerce supply chain infrastructure company that raised $30M total including a $25M Series A led by Lightspeed Venture Partners. Before Trendsi, he was one of the first employees at Lime and an analyst at Andreessen Horowitz (a16z). A Stanford postgraduate, Xia co-founded Trendsi in late 2020 after spotting an opportunity to bring Asian S2B2C supply chain models to Western markets, targeting a demographic of small boutique sellers and stay-at-home moms building online fashion businesses. Trendsi's platform automates inventory forecasting, dropshipping, and custom branding for thousands of independent sellers.
Connie Chan is a venture capitalist and technology writer who spent 12 years at Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), becoming the firm's first-ever internally promoted General Partner in 2018. Known as 'Silicon Valley's China Whisperer,' she made her mark by translating Asian tech trends - super apps, social commerce, livestream shopping - into investment theses before Western founders even knew the terms. Her 2015 WeChat essay won the New York Times Sidney Award and predicted the app-consolidation wave that would reshape mobile over the following decade. She backed Pinterest early, championed Lime before scooters were cool, and holds board seats at Whatnot, KoBold Metals, and Cider. In January 2024, after 12 years at a16z, she stepped back from GP duties to pursue a new Asia-focused venture.
Alex Garcia is the Austin-based founder of Marketing Examined, a growth marketing newsletter he bootstrapped into a 7-figure media company with 200,000+ subscribers across 5 newsletters. A former CMO and agency founder, he built a social commerce agency that generated $100M in TikTok Shop attributable revenue in 18 months, co-founded the short-form video course Cut30, and hosts the Sweat Equity podcast. He's aiming to build a 9-figure media empire to rival Harvard Business Review.