​What truly defines startup success beyond product and fundraising?

​Join us for an insightful evening with operators, investors, and ecosystem leaders as they share hard-earned lessons on how startups can grow with clarity, structure, and the right strategic support. This edition of Kopi Under the BLOCK, organised by BLOCK71 in collaboration with Aspire, will uncover what it takes to scale sustainably—from early hiring to refining your business model, managing investor expectations, and knowing when to bring in leadership support.

​🟧 This event is organised as part of the BLOCK71 Summer Cohort Special Growth Track: Deep SAGE, our milestone-driven growth initiative for Seed to Pre-Series A startups.

​Agenda

​5.30pm: Registration

​6.00PM: Introductions + Panel Discussion

​7.15PM: Dinner + Networking

​8:00PM: End

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​Speakers

​Eric Koh – Co-Founder and CEO of Gen Capital Partners; Fractional Chief Operating Officer
With over a decade of operational leadership across Web3, SaaS, adtech, and payments, Eric has transformed underperforming startups into profitable ventures—achieving shifts from -80% to +30% margins and raising over US$10M from Seed to Series B. Formerly with NUS Overseas Colleges in Silicon Valley, he now advises companies across sectors including AI, IT, and biomedical tech. His expertise spans fundraising strategy, cross-border team leadership, and full P&L management. With experience guiding a startup to successful acquisition by a European multinational corporation, Eric now leverages his expertise through GenCap to preserve and scale Southeast Asian SMEs.

​Tiang Lim Foo – Co-founder and Partner, Forge Ventures
Tiang Lim Foo is the Co-founder and Partner of Forge Ventures. Forge Ventures is a seed venture capital firm looking to partner with founders in Southeast Asia at the pre-seed or seed stage.Tiang had spent the past decade working at the intersection of technology, entrepreneurship and venture in Southeast Asia. He was a partner at SeedPlus, a seed fund in Southeast Asia backed by SGInnovate, Jungle Ventures, Cisco, and IFC. Previously, he launched and managed Evernote's operations in Asia, and was an early founding team of a SingTel Innov8 backed payments start-up in Singapore.

​Tiang has invested in, advised and worked with category leading startups in the region such as Envisso, Mito Health, Baskit, Fazz, Qoala, Rukita, Geniebook, amongst others.

​Alyssa Nicole Ng – Regional Partnerships Manager, Aspire
Alyssa has spent her career building the startup ecosystem—from helping companies scale internationally at Enterprise Singapore to managing fundraising at Entrepreneur First. She has supported over 200 startups in raising capital and currently leads Regional Partnerships for Startups and VCs at Aspire, driving ecosystem enablement across the region.

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​✅ Key Takeaways:

​✔ Strategic inflection points: how to prepare for and navigate them
✔ Building the operational and financial backbone for scale
✔ Hiring and leadership alignment for early-stage growth
✔ What founders often overlook before raising Series A

​Organisers

​BLOCK71

​​BLOCK71 is a global network of innovation hubs and startup communities, backed by National University of Singapore (NUS Enterprise). Across 11 cities in 6 countries—Singapore, Jakarta, Bandung, Yogyakarta, Saigon, Nagoya, Tokyo, Suzhou, Chongqing, Guangzhou, and Silicon Valley—BLOCK71 supports entrepreneurs with the space, resources, and connections they need to succeed. Learn more at block71.co.

​Aspire

​​Aspire is the all-in-one finance platform for modern businesses, helping over 50,000 companies across Asia save time and money with international payments, expense management, payable management, and receivable management solutions -  accessible via a single, user-friendly account.

Headquartered in Singapore, Aspire has over 600+ employees across five countries and is backed by global top tier VCs, including Sequoia, Lightspeed, Y-Combinator, Tencent and Paypal. In 2023, Aspire closed an oversubscribed US$100M Series C round and announced that it has achieved profitability. Learn more about them here.