NICHOLAS (NICK) NASH Managing Partner & Co-founder, Asia Partners

Nick Nash is the co-founder and Managing Partner of Asia Partners, a private equity firm focused on the next generation of high-growth technology companies in Southeast Asia. Prior to Asia Partners, Nick was the Group President and a Board Member of Sea Ltd., where he led its landmark 2017 IPO on the New York Stock Exchange. Before Sea, he worked for a decade as a private equity investor with General Atlantic LLC, one of the world’s oldest and largest technology-focused investment firms and co-founded its Southeast Asia office.

Nick joined Garena in December 2014 after more than a decade with General Atlantic (GA), most recently as the Chief Executive Officer of GA’s Southeast Asia business. Nick is a member of the World Economic Forum’s Working Group on Local Capital Markets Integration, a Term Member of the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, a member of the Singapore Chapter of the Young Presidents’ Organization (YPO), a member of the sub-Committee on the Future Economy (CFE) and a member of the global Kauffman Society. He was also the former Honorary Secretary and a board member of the Singapore Venture Capital and Private Equity Association (SVCA), a former board member of the New York Private Equity Network (NYPEN) and a former board member of the U.S.-ASEAN Business Council.

Nick first joined GA in 2002 in New York and moved to Singapore in 2011 to co-found the firm’s ASEAN office. During his time at GA, Nick played a key role in many innovative investments for GA including the firm’s first investment in Southeast Asia (Garena), its most successful investment to-date in India (Genpact, NYSE: G), and its first investment in cloud computing (Quality Technology, NYSE: QTS).

Prior to GA, Nick was a management consultant with McKinsey & Company in New York. During college and graduate school, he also worked at Goldman Sachs, Microsoft, Lenovo, and IBM. He received an MBA from Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business in 2007, where he was an Arjay Miller Scholar and co-led the MBA exchange program with Tsinghua University in Beijing. He received his undergraduate degree from Harvard University in Chemistry and Physics, magna cum laude, in 2000. In 1996 he was named a United States Presidential Scholar, one of the nation’s highest academic honors for graduating secondary school students. He and his wife Phalgun are passionate about the power of the non-profit and social enterprise sector to transform society for the better.

They are the co-founders of the foundation Morph.org, whose first effort is the global Ramanujan Project to identify and nurture exceptional mathematics talent in emerging markets. He earlier launched an effort in partnership with Harvard University to identify and prioritize the world’s hardest still unsolved problems in the social sciences. He is also a board member of the Manudhane Foundation for Excellence, which is focused on improving the quality of life in India by nurturing the pursuit of individual and organizational excellence as a root cause of positive social change.

KIEN NGUYEN Co-founder & Vietnam Partner, Asia Partners

Kien is the Vietnam Country Partner of Asia Partners.

Kien has been operating in Vietnam since 2008 where he co-founded a boutique investment advisory firm based in HCMC, focusing on advising local and foreign institutions in M&A, corporate finance and capital raising activities in Vietnam. He has been active in the education sector in Vietnam where he was the Vietnam Chairman for Cognita and current Chairman of A-Star Education. Kien is also a member of the Young Presidents Organization, Vietnam Chapter.

He served as an independent member and then Head of Supervisory Board at Vinamilk for 9 years and is a current Board member at Phong Phu International,Vietnam’s leading denim garment manufacturer from 2013.

Prior to Vietnam, Kien worked with Credit Suisse First Boston (Singapore), Commonwealth Bank of Australia (New York), OCBC Bank and Temasek Holdings in his international career.

Kien graduated from Macquarie University, Sydney, with Bachelor of Applied Finance and Bachelor of Commerce (First Class Honors) and holds an MBA from the University of Chicago – Booth School of Business.

PHAM MINH TUAN Founder & CEO, Topica EdTech Group Endeavor Entrepreneur

Tuan Pham is Founder and CEO of Topica, a leading Edtech group in South East Asia with over 1,000 employees in Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam. To date, Topica has raised about 65 million USD from institutional investors. Topica also helps build the next generation of startups by running Topica Founder Institute, an accelerator whose alumni accounted for 30% of all early stage investment in Vietnam in 2016.

Pham served as Vice Dean and Dean at Hanoi University of Technology and Hanoi Open University, and Senior Visiting Scholar at University of California San Diego. He worked at McKinsey&Company (Budapest), Extramedia Ventures (Boston, Singapore) and Integra Software (Budapest). Pham was honored as an Endeavor Entrepreneur in 2019, a Young Global Leader by World Economic Forum in 2012. He has been serving as a judge of Global Teacher Prize since 2016, and a member of the Vietnam National Education and HR Development Council chaired by the Prime Minister since 2018.

LE HONG MINH Co-founder & Chairman & CEO, VNG Corporation

Holding a Bachelor of Business in Banking and Finance, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia, Mr. Le Hong Minh had worked for many companies such as PwC and had managed capital investment at VinaCapital before establishing VNG in 2004. Under Mr. Le Hong Minh’s leadership and strategic vision, VNG has developed from a game publishing start up to the leading Internet and Technology company in Vietnam, running a diverse ecosystem of online games, connected platforms, finance & payments, cloud & smart solutions. VNG has been recognized by World Economic Forum in the list of 20 selected Growth Companies in East Asia. In 2018, VNG became the top publisher in Southeast Asia. With more than 14 years of experience leading VNG and working in the Internet industry in Vietnam and abroad, Mr. Le Hong Minh has been known as a top speaker in the field of technology and start up. He is regularly invited to attend and share at several reputable conferences on international investment such as World Economic Forum, M&A Vietnam, etc. Mr. Minh was honored as one of the 10 most influential people on the Internet in Vietnam for the last decades (2017 – 2007).