About
Founded in 2017, we are a team of crypto enthusiasts with complementary backgrounds and interdisciplinary perspectives. We believe that the crypto natives are the engine of innovation, and what they build will spillover to the mainstream via cross-pollination with other domains. The Signum team is ready to assist the founders to deploy their ideas, and to facilitate the adoption of their products both inside and outside the crypto community.
By empowering companies with specialized expertise and unique insights, we’re committed to driving the dynamic growth of high-quality infrastructure. Whether launching new initiatives or optimizing existing systems, our diverse team and network of partners offer valuable support and knowledge, enabling the successful kickstart of a variety of infrastructure endeavors.
Fueling innovation and strategy for our invested companies, we excel in ideation and hackathon coordination, breaking geographical barriers. Our commitment is global empowerment, driving mindshare, developer activity, and product enhancement. By fostering seamless collaboration, we accelerate exploration in ideation and execution.
We are a licensed Capital market services (Fund management) company with the Monetary Authority of Singapore(MAS). We are currently managing two active funds, one of them co-manage with UOB Venture Management:
› Signum Capital Investment fund
› UOB-Signum Blockchain fund (USB Fund)
TEAM
John Ng Pangilinan
John Ng Pangilinan
John was the founder of Signum Capital Pte Ltd, a personal investment holding company which specialized in crypto startups with a realized IRR of 122%. He holds advisor roles in Kyber Network and Ren Protocol, Sentinel Protocol, Sparrow Exchange, Oasis Labs, and is a founding member of the Aelf Innovation Alliance.
John started his education in Mechatronics and later switched to a degree in business, with his first job as a banker with Standard Chartered Bank. After leaving the bank, John started various companies at the age of 23. The most recent venture was the creation of Makan Bus, Singapore’s first hop on and off food tour.
John’s passion in venturing into businesses is fueled by the success in growing a business and its staff.
YY Lai
YY Lai
YY has spent more than 10 years in the startup industry to help to grow promising startups. He was previously the Lead of PayPal Fintech Incubator which invests and incubates Fintech startups including blockchain startups. He was head of Incubation in NTU Ventures which help to identify and grow high tech startups. Having founded and worked in different tech startups before, he is an engineer by training and has a MBA from NTU.
YY has been influential in supporting several high growth startups with their strategy in the region. His network of investors and founders spans across Asia and he leverages his insights in technology and growth.
Ian Lee
Ian Lee
Joining OvenBaked Ideas in September 2014, Ian was in charge of all operational aspects of the businesses and arms, evaluating business ideas, and forecasting revenue and expenses. For the investment arm of OvenBaked Ideas, Ian often gives critical point of view when evaluating business risk especially for start-ups and companies in their early-stages.
As a principal with Signum Capital, Ian performs due diligence and analyses the project concepts. He has been providing valuable inputs as well as strategic plans. A number cruncher at heart, he is tasked to keep track of the company’s portfolio.
Ash Liew
Ash Liew
Ash is an investment director at Signum Capital where he helps the investment team across the DeFi and Gaming sectors.
Prior to Signum, Ash was an analyst at Dialectic which is a Swiss-based family office. In a previous life before discovering crypto, Ash also worked in the Advisory department at KPMG Singapore.
Ash graduated from the University of Nottingham, where he majored in Economics and Management. He is a self-proclaimed foodie and is interested in all things fitness, having represented Malaysia’s national team in powerlifting
Yang Yang
Yang Yang
Yang Yang is Investment Lead at Signum Capital, leading the investments in technical and Infrastructure level projects. Yang also advances our research efforts in multiple topics.
Dived into blockchain in 2017, Yang has been researching on the technical development of blockchain ever since. He is passionate about the technical aspects and constantly envisioning how these solutions will empower blockchain and inspire new applications. He is an early investor in multiple Layer 1, Layer 2 networks and DeFi protocols.
Yang holds a Ph.D and a B.Eng from NTU, where he received his engineering as well as business training.
Nikos Karamangiolis
Nikos Karamangiolis
Nikos is an investment lead at Signum Capital with enthusiasm about the use of blockchain and the application of this technology in different industries.
Nikos is motivated to explore the exciting potential at the crossroads of artificial intelligence and blockchain technology. He is eager to identify the synergies and areas where these two groundbreaking fields overlap, with focus on understanding the infrastructure requirements to realize their combined potential. In addition to this intersection, Nikos is fueled to discover innovative applications that have the potential to revolutionize human behaviour and reshape the current landscape of applications. Showing strong passion on his interests, Nikos has represented the German Taekwondo National team for several years.
Melvin Tan
Melvin Tan
Melvin joined Signum Capital from F10, a leading global incubator and accelerator focusing on fintech and blockchain startups where he played an instrumental role in launching a pioneer crypto incubation program. Melvin is no stranger to the startup ecosystem as he was an entrepreneur himself, having launched a social networking app in 2015 which is now still used by many in Singapore.
He has extensive experience working with early-stage startups helping to validate MVPs and understand their pain points, assisting founders with growth strategies and most importantly, working with them on their fundraising needs.
Before his entrepreneurial journey, Melvin was an institutional equity execution trader for 8 years in a bank-backed brokerage firm. He started crypto investing in 2017 and has since been an advocate of blockchain technology. Melvin holds a Bachelor of Commerce from University of Queensland and a Masters of Applied Finance from Macquarie University.
Shuyin Ong
Shuyin Ong
Shuyin is the Head of Compliance at Signum Capital. Where commercial law has been an area of interest, she has moved onto the future of the blockchain economy and focuses on legal questions in the ambit of financial technology sector. She holds a LLM. from Singapore Management University and LLB. from the University of London.
Victor Xu
Victor Xu
Victor has been supporting the web3 and decentralized network for the last 5 years. He actively involves in new decentralized networks by participating in their validation network activities, especially in the testnet phase and launch of mainnet.
He has participated in the validation for the following projects in very early stage: Harmony, Elrond, Kusama, Polkdot, Oasis Labs, Near, Avalanche, Solana, Mina protocol, and was an early miner on Arweave and Kadena.
He holds a degree in electrical and electronic engineering from National University of Singapore (NUS).
Adna Purnomo
Adna Purnomo
Adna joined Signum Capital in 2021 as an Administrative Manager. Prior to joining Signum Capital, she was an experienced Market Researcher and an Educator.
Passionate in the utility of Blockchain that is transforming industries, she focuses on the operational tasks and streamlining of Signum Capital’s business initiatives.
Adna grew up in Jakarta, Indonesia and holds a Postgraduate Degree in Marketing Management.
ADVISORS
Dr Loi Luu
Dr Loi Luu
Loi is founder of Kyber Network, an early decentralized exchange launched on Ethereum. Loi is a researcher working on cryptocurrencies, smart contract security, and distributed consensus algorithms. He is also a regular invited speaker at Bitcoin and Ethereum workshops such as DevCon2, EDCON. Loi believes in the force of the Ethereum and Blockchain technologies and much of his work revolves around this community. He developed Oyente, the first open-source security analyzer for Ethereum smart contracts. Loi also cofounded SmartPool, another open-source project which embraces the decentralization of mining pools in existing cryptocurrency. He continues to champion decentralization and trustless properties of the Blockchain with Kyber Network, taking inspiration and developing value for the community.
Suji Yan
Suji Yan
Suji Yan is the founder of Mask Network. He studied computer engineering at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). Dropping out of university at the age of 20, Suji in 2017 founded the decentralized social network Mask Network, which has become a leader in the vibrant decentralized social network ecosystem. In 2022, Suji founded Bonfire Union as a venture arm to strategically invest in decentralized social networks, infrastructure, and creative contents with the goal of making Web3 more accessible to all. Suji is also a firm believer in supporting communities. He has made sizable donations to universities and NGOs such as UIUC and RadicalxChange to support related research and events.
TN
TN
TN is the co-founder & CEO of Pendle, an on-chain yield trading protocol. Prior to founding Pendle, he was the Head of Business at Kyber.
James
James
James has more than 15 years of experience in technology, AI, product development, and strategy consulting. He holds certifications as a PMP, PBA, and Facebook Marketing Science Professional. James lectures on the innovation ecosystem at NUS and NTU, and has co-founded several startups and technopreneurship communities. Currently, he leads new business and innovation alliances at a top cloud company.
Varun Mittal
Varun Mittal
Varun Mittal is experienced at the cross-section of digital business building and financial services in South East Asia and global emerging markets. He undertook his MBA at the National University of Singapore and graduated with computer science engineering as his undergraduate major.
Currently he leads digital for Singlife, and is a founding member of Fintech Choupal ASEAN, the largest and most active fintech community in South East Asia.
As a pioneer backer for decentralized financial solutions in Singapore, Varun has been associated with the first crypto debit card, crypto payment gateway and crypto robo advisor in Singapore, helping founders navigate regulator landscape in the region.
Stephen Phua
Stephen Phua
Stephen Phua teaches Income Tax, Goods and Services Tax, Corporate Taxation, International Tax and Business & Finance for Lawyers in the Faculty of Law, NUS where he also serves as Tax Director, EW Barker Centre for Law and Business. He was a visiting scholar/professor to several leading universities in Australia, Canada, China, Japan, Switzerland and the USA. He served as a member for more than a decade on each one of the three tax tribunals in Singapore (Income Tax Board of Review, Goods and Services Tax Board of Review and Valuation Review Board).
Michael Arrington
Michael Arrington
Founder of TechCrunch and Arrington Capital
Wu Jihan
Wu Jihan
Founder of Bitmain and MatrixPort
VENTURE PARTNER
GC Jia
GC Jia
Jia is based out of Shanghai, was previously an analyst in a tier 1 Chinese Security & Investment firm. He graduated with a Ph.D. from NTU (Singapore). He is an early blockchain enthusiast with extensive experience in blockchain technology development and digital asset investment. Jia is an early investor of a broad spectrum of blockchain companies and projects, such as ETH, QTUM, Kyber, EOS, Zilliqa, Polkadot, Cosmos, Filecoin. He is also a good coordinator for the Chinese blockchain community. Jia is helping Signum Capital on technical whitepapers and inputs his thoughts after carefully inspecting the technology implementation.
De Ming (DM)
De Ming (DM)
Deming is founder and managing partner of SUSY Labs, a boutique advisory firm shaping the blockchain venture ecosystem in China since 2017. He started his VC career in New Access Capital as VP in 2009 where he led multiple successful early stage investments in consumer internet companies. He’s deeply involved in cross-border innovations and serves as advisor to European Institute of Innovation and Technology in China for its climate tech initiative. Before his venture capital roles, Deming was an investment banker with Bank of China International in Hong Kong. He was also product manager in Alibaba Group in 1999 as its very early employee. Deming graduated with an MBA degree from University of Oxford and was a Global Leadership Fellow with the World Economic Forum.
TEAM
John Ng Pangilinan
John was the founder of Signum Capital Pte Ltd, a personal investment holding company which specialized in crypto startups with a realized IRR of 122%. He holds advisor roles in Kyber Network and Ren Protocol, Sentinel Protocol, Sparrow Exchange, Oasis Labs, and is a founding member of the Aelf Innovation Alliance.
John started his education in Mechatronics and later switched to a degree in business, with his first job as a banker with Standard Chartered Bank. After leaving the bank, John started various companies at the age of 23. The most recent venture was the creation of Makan Bus, Singapore’s first hop on and off food tour.
John’s passion in venturing into businesses is fueled by the success in growing a business and its staff.
YY Lai
YY has spent more than 10 years in the startup industry to help to grow promising startups. He was previously the Lead of PayPal Fintech Incubator which invests and incubates Fintech startups including blockchain startups. He was head of Incubation in NTU Ventures which help to identify and grow high tech startups. Having founded and worked in different tech startups before, he is an engineer by training and has a MBA from NTU.
YY has been influential in supporting several high growth startups with their strategy in the region. His network of investors and founders spans across Asia and he leverages his insights in technology and growth.
Ian Lee
Joining OvenBaked Ideas in September 2014, Ian was in charge of all operational aspects of the businesses and arms, evaluating business ideas, and forecasting revenue and expenses. For the investment arm of OvenBaked Ideas, Ian often gives critical point of view when evaluating business risk especially for start-ups and companies in their early-stages.
As a principal with Signum Capital, Ian performs due diligence and analyses the project concepts. He has been providing valuable inputs as well as strategic plans. A number cruncher at heart, he is tasked to keep track of the company’s portfolio.
Ash Liew
Ash is an investment director at Signum Capital where he helps the investment team across the DeFi and Gaming sectors.
Prior to Signum, Ash was an analyst at Dialectic which is a Swiss-based family office. In a previous life before discovering crypto, Ash also worked in the Advisory department at KPMG Singapore.
Ash graduated from the University of Nottingham, where he majored in Economics and Management. He is a self-proclaimed foodie and is interested in all things fitness, having represented Malaysia’s national team in powerlifting
Yang Yang
Yang Yang is Investment Lead at Signum Capital, leading the investments in technical and Infrastructure level projects. Yang also advances our research efforts in multiple topics.
Dived into blockchain in 2017, Yang has been researching on the technical development of blockchain ever since. He is passionate about the technical aspects and constantly envisioning how these solutions will empower blockchain and inspire new applications. He is an early investor in multiple Layer 1, Layer 2 networks and DeFi protocols.
Yang holds a Ph.D and a B.Eng from NTU, where he received his engineering as well as business training.
Nikos Karamangiolis
Nikos is an investment lead at Signum Capital with enthusiasm about the use of blockchain and the application of this technology in different industries.
Nikos is motivated to explore the exciting potential at the crossroads of artificial intelligence and blockchain technology. He is eager to identify the synergies and areas where these two groundbreaking fields overlap, with focus on understanding the infrastructure requirements to realize their combined potential. In addition to this intersection, Nikos is fueled to discover innovative applications that have the potential to revolutionize human behaviour and reshape the current landscape of applications. Showing strong passion on his interests, Nikos has represented the German Taekwondo National team for several years.
Melvin Tan
Melvin joined Signum Capital from F10, a leading global incubator and accelerator focusing on fintech and blockchain startups where he played an instrumental role in launching a pioneer crypto incubation program. Melvin is no stranger to the startup ecosystem as he was an entrepreneur himself, having launched a social networking app in 2015 which is now still used by many in Singapore.
He has extensive experience working with early-stage startups helping to validate MVPs and understand their pain points, assisting founders with growth strategies and most importantly, working with them on their fundraising needs.
Before his entrepreneurial journey, Melvin was an institutional equity execution trader for 8 years in a bank-backed brokerage firm. He started crypto investing in 2017 and has since been an advocate of blockchain technology. Melvin holds a Bachelor of Commerce from University of Queensland and a Masters of Applied Finance from Macquarie University.
Shuyin Ong
Shuyin is the Head of Compliance at Signum Capital. Where commercial law has been an area of interest, she has moved onto the future of the blockchain economy and focuses on legal questions in the ambit of financial technology sector. She holds a LLM. from Singapore Management University and LLB. from the University of London.
Victor Xu
Victor has been supporting the web3 and decentralized network for the last 5 years. He actively involves in new decentralized networks by participating in their validation network activities, especially in the testnet phase and launch of mainnet.
He has participated in the validation for the following projects in very early stage: Harmony, Elrond, Kusama, Polkdot, Oasis Labs, Near, Avalanche, Solana, Mina protocol, and was an early miner on Arweave and Kadena.
He holds a degree in electrical and electronic engineering from National University of Singapore (NUS).
Adna Purnomo
Adna joined Signum Capital in 2021 as an Administrative Manager. Prior to joining Signum Capital, she was an experienced Market Researcher and an Educator.
Passionate in the utility of Blockchain that is transforming industries, she focuses on the operational tasks and streamlining of Signum Capital’s business initiatives.
Adna grew up in Jakarta, Indonesia and holds a Postgraduate Degree in Marketing Management.
ADVISORS
Dr Loi Luu
Loi is founder of Kyber Network, an early decentralized exchange launched on Ethereum. Loi is a researcher working on cryptocurrencies, smart contract security, and distributed consensus algorithms. He is also a regular invited speaker at Bitcoin and Ethereum workshops such as DevCon2, EDCON. Loi believes in the force of the Ethereum and Blockchain technologies and much of his work revolves around this community. He developed Oyente, the first open-source security analyzer for Ethereum smart contracts. Loi also cofounded SmartPool, another open-source project which embraces the decentralization of mining pools in existing cryptocurrency. He continues to champion decentralization and trustless properties of the Blockchain with Kyber Network, taking inspiration and developing value for the community.
Suji Yan
Suji Yan is the founder of Mask Network. He studied computer engineering at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). Dropping out of university at the age of 20, Suji in 2017 founded the decentralized social network Mask Network, which has become a leader in the vibrant decentralized social network ecosystem. In 2022, Suji founded Bonfire Union as a venture arm to strategically invest in decentralized social networks, infrastructure, and creative contents with the goal of making Web3 more accessible to all. Suji is also a firm believer in supporting communities. He has made sizable donations to universities and NGOs such as UIUC and RadicalxChange to support related research and events.
James
James has more than 15 years of experience in technology, AI, product development, and strategy consulting. He holds certifications as a PMP, PBA, and Facebook Marketing Science Professional. James lectures on the innovation ecosystem at NUS and NTU, and has co-founded several startups and technopreneurship communities. Currently, he leads new business and innovation alliances at a top cloud company.
Varun Mittal
Varun Mittal is experienced at the cross-section of digital business building and financial services in South East Asia and global emerging markets. He undertook his MBA at the National University of Singapore and graduated with computer science engineering as his undergraduate major.
Currently he leads digital for Singlife, and is a founding member of Fintech Choupal ASEAN, the largest and most active fintech community in South East Asia.
As a pioneer backer for decentralized financial solutions in Singapore, Varun has been associated with the first crypto debit card, crypto payment gateway and crypto robo advisor in Singapore, helping founders navigate regulator landscape in the region.
Stephen Phua
Stephen Phua teaches Income Tax, Goods and Services Tax, Corporate Taxation, International Tax and Business & Finance for Lawyers in the Faculty of Law, NUS where he also serves as Tax Director, EW Barker Centre for Law and Business. He was a visiting scholar/professor to several leading universities in Australia, Canada, China, Japan, Switzerland and the USA. He served as a member for more than a decade on each one of the three tax tribunals in Singapore (Income Tax Board of Review, Goods and Services Tax Board of Review and Valuation Review Board).
VENTURE PARTNER
GC Jia
Jia is based out of Shanghai, was previously an analyst in a tier 1 Chinese Security & Investment firm. He graduated with a Ph.D. from NTU (Singapore). He is an early blockchain enthusiast with extensive experience in blockchain technology development and digital asset investment. Jia is an early investor of a broad spectrum of blockchain companies and projects, such as ETH, QTUM, Kyber, EOS, Zilliqa, Polkadot, Cosmos, Filecoin. He is also a good coordinator for the Chinese blockchain community. Jia is helping Signum Capital on technical whitepapers and inputs his thoughts after carefully inspecting the technology implementation.
De Ming (DM)
Deming is founder and managing partner of SUSY Labs, a boutique advisory firm shaping the blockchain venture ecosystem in China since 2017. He started his VC career in New Access Capital as VP in 2009 where he led multiple successful early stage investments in consumer internet companies. He’s deeply involved in cross-border innovations and serves as advisor to European Institute of Innovation and Technology in China for its climate tech initiative. Before his venture capital roles, Deming was an investment banker with Bank of China International in Hong Kong. He was also product manager in Alibaba Group in 1999 as its very early employee. Deming graduated with an MBA degree from University of Oxford and was a Global Leadership Fellow with the World Economic Forum.