This entrepreneur founded a $100 million business called Patsnap

Jeffrey Tiong, founder and CEO of PatSnap.

Courtesy of Jeffrey Chang.

Many entrepreneurs would say that building a successful startup is expensive—both financially and emotionally.

Just ask Jeffrey Chang. The 40-year-old is the founder and CEO of Singapore-based IP and R&D startup Patsnap Unicorn companies own transcend Tiong said in a June statement that annual recurring revenue was $100 million.

Tiong’s journey to building Patsnap was anything but smooth. He started the company right out of college at age 24, and he’s been working on it ever since, for the past 17 years.

“Patsnap is my first and only job so far,” he told CNBC Make It. “Let me put it this way: There have been a lot of dark times (and) low times in the last 17 years of entrepreneurship. I wouldn’t want to go through it again, but I’m grateful for the experience.”

“I really (learned) that what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger,” Zhang said.

light bulb moment

Tiong was born and raised in Kota Kinabalu, a relaxed coastal city in East Malaysia. Growing up in a typical Southeast Asian family, he thought he would be a doctor, engineer, lawyer or accountant.

At 18, he moved to Singapore to attend the National University of Singapore and study bioengineering. While studying, Tiong was accepted into an overseas program by his university, which gave him the opportunity to study abroad in the United States for a year while working full-time.

Jeffrey Tiong with friends during an overseas project.

Courtesy of Jeffrey Chang.

As part of the program, Tiong moved to Philadelphia in 2005 to study business at the Wharton School while working at a local medical device startup. While at startups, he helped handle research and development as well as intellectual property due diligence.

That means digging into free public repositories for information on old patents, which contain the “secret sauce” of how inventors created their inventions, he said.

After months of researching the patent, Tiong realized the process was time-consuming and “messy,” making the research more difficult, he said. He wanted a better tool, so he thought: why not try making his own?

During one of his business courses, which included learning how to write a business plan, he decided to examine whether there was a market for a new patent library that was more streamlined and easier to use. As it turns out, there is.

“I really thought to myself, these patents are so useful. If I…learned how to read, decode, extract key information (and) make this patent information available to as many people as possible, I think it would be really useful. ,” he said.

So he took the idea and ran with it.

Self-doubt as an entrepreneur

In 2007, Tiong returned to Singapore and started Patsnap with the help of a government grant worth S$55,000 (approximately US$42,000) and some incubation support from the Singapore government. National University of Singapore.

However, in the process of starting a business, he encountered many challenges.

“I remember pitching to a lot of people, and imagine… someone like me, a recent graduate, with no track record — it’s impossible to raise,” Tiong said. He added that it didn’t help that he was an introvert trying to find investors during the height of the 2008 financial crisis.

It wasn’t until 2010 that Tiong raised the first $1 million for Patsnap. That year, he expanded the team from 15 to about 50 people. But due to a lack of experience in recruiting and leading a team, Mr. Zhang had to lay off two-thirds of the company’s employees within six months.

The founding team of Patsnap.

Courtesy of Jeffrey Chang.

“At the time, I didn’t know how to properly interview and hire someone…so a lot of things went wrong and the product fell apart,” he said. Within about six months, Tiong had spent about half of the money he raised ($500,000) and considered closing the company.

“I definitely had a lot of self-doubt,” he said. “I was thinking: Should I give the money back to our investors and call it a day?” But he was motivated to stay the course and keep raising money.

For about a month, Zhang and his investors traveled back and forth to major cities in Europe, Asia and the United States, trying to gain investor support, but to no avail.

“We didn’t get any interest, so I remember, we were in the conference room and he just banged on the table and said, ‘Hey, (you) are not qualified to be CEO,'” Tiong said. “So that was a big setback because I had a lot of respect for him and really, I didn’t have a lot of faith or confidence at the time.”

“That was my personal lowest point,” Zhang said.

Big lessons learned

After years of overcoming challenges and developing his leadership style, Mr. Zhang found that he felt more confident as a business owner.

He discovered that he wasn’t an extroverted, “rah rah” kind of leader, but “even if you’re an introvert, you can still lead a team,” Tiong said.

“Over the years… because I’ve been through a lot of dark times, low times, but still persevered — when I look back (and realize), I really had a lot of motivation,” he said. “I just wanted to create something great and leave something in the world.”

Today, Patsnap has more than 1,000 employees worldwide, supported Provided by companies including Tencent, Sequoia China and SoftBank Vision Fund 2. Some of their clients include Disney, NASA, Tesla, Adobe, and more.

Tiong’s biggest dream for the company is to help make it easier for the world to innovate.

“In short, I think what we’re doing by democratizing patent information is actually (helping) accelerate the process of making innovation easier and better in the world,” he said.

“To any aspiring entrepreneur, if you believe in something, give it a try. Just do it because we only live once.”

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