Asian Australians Entrepreneurs on the AFR Young Rich List
With the rise of Asian American entrepreneurship over the last decade or so – with the likes of Eric Yuan (Founder of Zoom), Jensen Huang (Founder of NVIDIA), Jerry Yang (founder of Yahoo), Steve Chen (co-founder of YouTube), Justin Kan (co-founder of Twitch) and 100s of others – it made me wonder… who are the notable Asian-Australian entrepreneurs of today?
Entrepreneurship requires a unique blend of drive, passion, hard work and personality to ensure a young business can survive the ups & downs. Although Australia is such a small market when it comes to business, there are quite a few great examples of young Asian-Australians (under the age of 40) who decided to take the path less travelled.
*added an additional table for the 2022 list. Some have fallen off the list (age, decline in valuation, etc) whereas there are also some newcomers (denoted with an asterisk).
Young Rich List 2020
| Name | Wealth | Company | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| Melanie Perkins | $3.43b (combined with Cliff Obrecht) | Canva | Graphic Design Platform |
| Jack Zhang | $410m | Airwallex | Cross-border payments and foreign exchange conversion |
| Fung Lam & Werner Liu | $273m | New Aim | Importer and online retail (ecommerce) and wholesale business |
| Max Li | $201m | Airwallex | Cross-border payments and foreign exchange conversion |
| Jacob Dai | $158m | Airwallex | Cross-border payments and foreign exchange conversion |
| Selvam Sinnappan & Winston Wijeyeratne | $150m | Sleeping Duck | Mattress E-tailer |
| Ashik Ahmed | $148m | Deputy | Shift Rostering Software |
| Anson Zhang | $59m | One Stop Warehouse | Solar Panels & Batteries Wholesaler |
| Jane Lu | $37m | Showpo | Online Fashion Retailer |
| Jeff Yu | $37m | One Stop Warehouse | Solar Panels & Batteries Wholesaler |
| Tim Fung | $30m | Airtasker | Odd-jobs Marketplace Platform |
Young Rich List 2022 (Update)
| Name | Wealth | Company | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| Melanie Perkins | $13.7b (combined with Cliff Obrecht) | Canva | Graphic Design Platform |
| Jack Zhang | $957m | Airwallex | Cross-border payments and foreign exchange conversion |
| Max Li | $453m | Airwallex | Cross-border payments and foreign exchange conversion |
| Jacob Dai | $360m | Airwallex | Cross-border payments and foreign exchange conversion |
| Jack Lu, Sidney Zhang & Zedd Yin* | $200m | Magic Eden | NFT Marketplace |
| Werner Liu | $120m (no longer combined with Fung Lam after split) | New Aim | Importer and online retail (ecommerce) and wholesale business |
| Vu Tran* | $110m (combined with 3 other Go1 founders)* | Go1 | Corporate training platform |
| Anson Zhang | $71m | One Stop Warehouse | Solar Panels & Batteries Wholesaler |
| Jane Lu | $53m | Showpo | Online Fashion Retailer |
| Rayn Ong* | $35m | Archangel Ventures | Startup Investor |
I hope we get to see more Asian-Australians not only achieve entrepreneurial success but rather than following the money, that they prioritise happiness, company culture and purpose over profits. Money should ideally be a by-product of one’s passion – you don’t need a billion dollars to be happy (I’ve covered several small business stories in Australia).
Hopefully, we won’t see any of these Asian-Australian entrepreneurs & founders get caught up in any unethical behaviour and craziness that engulfs the Silicon Valley ecosystem (don’t be like Stefan Qin). Watch this space.
