Sylvia Y.

Founder | Startup Operations | Investor

Singapore

About

Career founder and former startup COO. My entrepreneurial journey started right out of university with two venture backed retail tech startups, helping fashion brands make smarter decisions with data analytics. Later, I used my experience as a founder and joined an early-stage VC as Director of Portfolio Support, where I worked with over 200+ early-stage tech founders. Now I'm back to building while investing through a family office. My areas of specialty: Early-stage startups, post-sales customer success, revenue enablement & ops, bizops, user research, people & culture and B2B SaaS. Read my latest Substack post here ⬇️ https://yinsylvia.substack.com/

Experience

  • Investments at Marama
    Oct 2024 - Present · 1 yr 8 mos

    Family office investing in tech startups and SMEs. We're sector agnostic, partnering with founders who tackle challenges and opportunities aligned with our interests. Right now, we’re especially keen on opportunities in the pet space—whether you’re a venture-style startup or an SME. If you’re building in this area, reach out. We’d love to connect.

  • Iterative (Singapore)
    • Visiting Partner
      Feb 2023 - Present · 3 yrs 4 mos

      As Visiting Partner, I use my experience as a founder to coach portfolio companies through their most pressing problems and prepare for demo day.

    • Director, Founders Team
      Apr 2023 - Jul 2024 · 1 yr 4 mos

      Building a startup is tough - it takes skills, timing and luck. As the Director of the Founders Team, I approach my work of supporting our growing portfolio of founders through my experience as a Founder & Customer Success professional. I focus on what we can control to minimise the success gap for our founders. Being a founder is mostly pain but we do it anyway because we have seen a vision of a different future in our minds that we can't ignore. We feel compelled to realize it against all odds. To me, this is what makes entrepreneurship so precious and explains why I do what I do at Iterative.

  • Advisor at r y e
    Aug 2022 - Dec 2022 · 5 mos

  • Omnilytics (Full-time · 3 yrs 6 mos)
    • Co-Founder & VP, Customer Success
      Jan 2021 - Jan 2022 · 1 yr 1 mo

      As the company grew, I took on the Customer Success portfolio and built a revenue-generating Customer Success team of 12 professionals from scratch. As a team, we achieved a >100% net revenue retention rate, serving global brands such as Uniqlo, Lenzing, Lidl, and more. We also exceeded industry benchmarks for customer satisfaction, earning a rating of 9.6/10 from our customers on G2.

    • Co-Founder & COO
      Aug 2018 - Jan 2021 · 2 yrs 6 mos

      Omnilytics sets retailers ahead of the competition with deep and actionable market insights that power decision-making. As co-founder, I took on the role of translating strategies into operational roadmaps and driving alignment company-wide to ensure that we were a well-oiled machine. During that time, I led and managed the People, Culture & Operations function while overseeing the development of our core product from MVP to product-market fit. The core product went on to be ranked #2 on G2's Retail Intelligence Software list and #12 for Best Commerce Product in 2022, alongside Shopify.

  • Co-Founder & COO at Shoppr
    Aug 2014 - Dec 2017 · 3 yrs 5 mos

    Shoppr is a paradise for fashion lovers. Shoppr's mission is to empower every woman to be confident through fashion, by recommending and personalising you clothes that suit your body type, lifestyle and price preference. I jumped headfirst into learning by doing. I learned how to validate ideas, develop MVPs, manage products, and build teams and culture from scratch.