Adrien Barthel, Sleek - The startups' plumber: going from an idea to an operating company in hours (S2E49)

In this episode, we talk about Sleek, the SMEs’ all-in-one digital platform, helping over 6000+ entrepreneurs to start and manage their businesses. Sleek effectively operates as the SMEs’ co-pilot for all back-office processing, so that the entrepreneurs can focus on growing their business. Sleek is registered with the company registry and tax authorities of Singapore, Hong Kong, Australia and the United Kingdom. They are also regulated by the Monetary Authority of Singapore under the Payment Services Act, and have recently been issued a Major Payment Institution (MPI) license. Sleek has raised a USD 25m Series A in December 2021 from investors White Star Capital, Jungle Ventures, and EDBI.  Adrien Barthel is a co-founder of Sleek, and the Chief Growth Officer. In addition to covering the company from its origins in Singapore through the expansion in different markets, and the building of a FinTech stack by obtaining the MPI license, we also talk to Adrien about the business intelligence generated on its platform, in comparing the Singapore and Hong Kong ecosystems, and some on-the-ground intelligence how the HK has reacted in the face of security laws and the pandemic (spoiler alert: Cathay Pacific's layoffs during the pandemic led to a spike in new entity formation). Produced in collaboration with Tokyo FinTech. If you have an interesting story to share with our audience, and would like to appear on the podcast, please contact us via [email protected] You can also find us on.... Home Page: https://tokyofintech.com/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/tokyofintech/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/TokyoFinTech Medium: https://medium.com/tokyo-fintech YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/tokyofintech Meetup: https://www.meetup.com/tokyofintech/