Endowus co-founder says turning complexity into clarity is his craft
Gregory Van, CEO of a digital wealth platform in Asia, explains how he cuts through the noise to find and realign his focus
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Wealth platform CEO Gregory Van defines his craft as turning complexity into clarity
The world of finance is riddled with countless inputs from many different fund managers and investment strategies. Suffice to say, it can be baffling and overwhelming. Gregory Van was determined to simplify the system. “Finance is complex, but the way it serves our lives should be clear,” he says.
The craft of simplifying complexities is what drove Van to set up the digital wealth platform Endowus, which was founded in 2017 in Singapore and expanded to Hong Kong last year. The company’s mission, he says, is to make investing accessible and at a lower cost.
“I feel very fortunate I made some big mistakes in what I thought was investing very early on in my life. I now realise I was just speculating, which is actually very different from investing. They will lead to completely different outcomes,” Van says.
It could be said that the entrepreneurial path has always been laid out for Van. “Growing up in Hong Kong, surrounded by entrepreneurs, it sat with me for a long time that I also wanted to build something meaningful that would affect people’s lives in a positive way,” he says.
But starting a new idea from scratch is never easy. “Bootstrapping Endowus from the early days was very important in building the company the right way, because when you have very limited resources, it really requires you to focus and to stay on the path,” Van says. “You literally are starting from a blank slate.”
However, this gave Van the opportunity to define his craft. “There are hundreds of thousands of financial products out there. When you combine these products and securities into portfolios – we’re talking about millions and billions of permutations – we had to spend a lot of time curating and looking for clarity.”
“We do this by working with partners across the industry – banks, asset managers, hedge funds, private equity and so much more – and making the best of finance consumable and investible to all of us.”
And in order for the entrepreneur to continue refining his craft, he has to be able to maintain a clear mind in a complex world.
His solution has been to step away from the fray, even if just for a little while, before pressing on. Van says: “When you are out in nature, you can get away, cut through the noise, find out what is important and realign your focus to keep on driving that complexity into clarity.”
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