Recently, I wrote two emails to raiSE, a social enterprise funding platform by the Singapore government, and NTU’s Office of Student Community Engagement, which operates the NTU CoLab4Good Fund, a grant fund for students and alumni to apply for to start/run their social enterprises.

Even as a college student, having went through some storms in life, I have seen some things when I go on with my investing and entrepreneurship journey. One thing, that Jeremy, my good friend and partner in The Precession Effect, pointed out on his post (which I strongly agree), is what we truly stand for, to inspire value creation across the globe through business, investment and education. Such a beautiful vision.

I discovered the game of value investing in September 2017, and this is one of the games that changed how I do things. In the past, my game was only dividends, blue chips and all that sorta stuff. However, today, I am vested in about 8 businesses that has been generating me good returns because of the fundamentals I have learnt. The beauty of the stock market is its liquidity and its transparency (though for me, the first isn’t my concern as I plan to hold it for the long term).

I got interested in the game of private equity in March 2018, and decided to do some investment in the field using value investing principles through equity crowdfunding and friends-and-family-fund (meaning I give them the money for an equity stake because I know them personally). Now, I am processing my membership with Angels Central, which is a business angel network in Singapore (though I will still be using value investing principles there).

Then, Angels of Impact came into my life. This is a group of angel investors who invest in social enterprises for poverty eradication. Then it came back to my mind during my first meeting with Jeremy at NUS (after attending a PhD defense there), where he shared with me his vision of inspiring value creation across the globe, which is in line to mine – to globally inspire people in living privileged lives through creating value (maybe there’s some quantum mechanics at work). He shared with me his story of “Can Brands be Good?”, which then sparked me at this point that I wanted to go into the impact investing space (I know my value investing friends will ask me ‘are you nuts?’). An irony to my belief in value investing, isn’t it? Well, not really, in my opinion.

I strongly believe that when we invest in a company, there is unforseen side effects into the future. It is more than making money, it’s a vote on the future course of mankind. This sparked me to start my own social venture capital firm (which I am still in the process of talks with them). People ask me “Are you crazy? Throwing money just like that?” Of course I won’t throw my money just like that, for I determine who is deserving of my money from both the social and financial standpoint. Sometimes, we have to be a little crazy to achieve great things.

I like what billionaire Mark Cuban said in his speech to students in Mount Lebanon High School. And I would like to pose the same question and advise to all the young people out there: “Who here has a business idea?…I want you all to think, who’s next? And what are you going to do to get there? Try different things, because there is absolutely nothing that can possibly stop you guys!”

If you ever want to start to learn how to understand businesses and invest but unsure of how and where to begin – you can reach out to me through direct message on Instagram @kirayamato149_2. A whole new world undiscovered awaits.

So why do all these? For a simple reason: To inspire value creation in the younger people around the world.

Peace.

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