Alvin Foo is a business and technology leader, thought leader and influential digital, marketing technology executive and serial entrepreneur. Alvin Foo is the co-founder of DAOventures, a smart multi-chain asset manager which provides a wide range of automated DeFi investment strategies and helps people manage their DeFi assets.
Alvin Foo has more than 25 years of experience in Asia Pacific across startups, fortune 500, innovative companies, marketing agencies and tech companies. Alvin in the last 15 years has been in China leading startups and having held senior leadership roles in major global organisations like Nokia, Omnicom, Interpublic Group and Google.
Alvin Foo expertise and experience comprehends digital transformation, social media influencer marketing, blockchain technology, DeFI, DAO, smart cities, autonomous cars, and major tech and social trends.
Alvin Foo Interview Focus
1. An introduction from you - background, overview, education...
2. You were in China during the explosion of economic, innovation and tech growth. Can you tell us how you saw this happening
3. Career highlights
4. Working with Nokia, Google, etc
5. Can you tell us about your work as a social media influencer
6. Can you tell us about DAOventures, how are you trying to revolutionize venture capital using DeFi?
7. How do you manage the regulatory and decentralised systems of the DAO and DeFi ways of operating?
8. Can you tell us more about NASDEX?
9. How do you see decentralised systems versus centralised systems?
10. You are a member of the Board Of Advisors SXSW??South By Southwest. Can you tell us about the project and your role?
11. With Covid-19 what ways do you envision to redesign our society with technology and social impact?
12. What are your visions for the immediate present and future?
13. How do you envision the present challenges with geopolitics and technology innovation when it comes to south east Asia and all happening in the world?
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Alvin Foo - Biography
Alvin Foo's professional career started in 1993 after he graduated in Law from Brunel University London. He took up the role of Director at Swift Advertising until 1995.
Starting off from the right foot, Alvin went on a successful career in the areas of marketing and technology, eventually turning into serial entrepreneur. Alving has worked, nonetheless, with major multinational companies in their Asian branches.
In 2007, that opportunity came with Nokia, where he became Head of China in the Advertising Business Unit. He left one year later for a Vice President position at leading provider of innovative mobile-centric marketing, customer retention and content based solutions Velti. A position he held until 2011.
In 2011, the Google phone call arrived and offered him the role of Head of its Mobile division for the Greater China region. Among his main responsibilities, he was in charge of mobile advertising sales and business development for Greater China.
Other important roles in his career includes his 4 year tenure as Head of Mobility & Innovation at global media group Omnicom Media Group, China.
After other roles, mainly as advisor in companies such as stock trading social platform TradeHero, crypto company NASDEX, SXSW and AI+blockchain ad exchange network NOIZ, he co-founded DAOventures in 2020.
With DAOventures, Alvin is building a decentralized finance (DeFI) pooled asset manager on blockchain. DAOventures is a smart money manager and robo-advisory on blockchain. “Imagine VC in DeFI. We aim to democratise DeFI investments through smart contract on Ethereum blockchain and generate returns for LP,” Alvin said.
Besides his professional career as entrepreneur and executive, Alvin is also a mentor working with Korean-based global accelerator SparkLabs since 2012 and mentorship-driven program Chinaccelerator ???? since 2015.
Vision
About DAOventures and how are you trying to revolutionize venture capital via DeFi
“I’ll share with you a story so at least you know how DAOVentures came about. Sometime in the middle of last year during covid, sometime during covid, prior to starting this company I was actually the managing director of IPG China. I was talking with my partner at the time who is now a co-founder at DAOVentures. Now, I actually invested into a crypto analytics company, a start-up, for about two years. And sometime in the middle of last year, the start-up that I invested in, right? This is not very good, we’ve actually seeded the company in 2 rounds, and we were actually running out of money already. So what happened, my co-founder came up to me and said, Alvin, I just started a business and it’s actually, you know, it’s actually growing very rapidly. And he said: decentralized finance. Now, I’ve heard of blockchain, I’ve heard of a lot, I’ve even heard of decentralized finance, but for a person who was not working in the finance world, decentralized finance, decentralized is already a big word. Now, decentralized finance is an even bigger word to me. So I started to research, I actually started to, a lot of people who ask me thought I worked in decentralized finance for a long time, probably even have a finance background. I don’t have a finance background, I know sufficient about finance, but not enough to advise people”.
What do you think about Asia’s rapid tech growth?
“If I was to answer that question in very simple terms right now, if you see China as one of the most forward in terms of technology development, from smart city to infrastructure, even when we talk about money, right? e-commerce and so forth. Now, if this was the future, I would assume Malaysia, Singapore, Vietnam, and countries around the region in time to come, you would see a lot of these technologies being exported to those countries. Obviously, it would be at a different stage, because most of these countries are also progressing at different stages, but I would assume that in Asia, especially in South-East Asia, we will see a version of China in the next 5-10 years”.
About DAOventures
DAOventures is a DeFi robo-advisor and automated money manager for decentralized finance (DeFi). With smart contracts and automated robo-traders, DAOventures invest in the best performing DeFi assets for most optimized return.
Imagine a fund manager (VC) on DeFi. Pooled investment fund based on Ethereum’s smart-contract that automatically invests in decentralized finance protocols and generates returns for liquidity providers (LP).
Alvin Foo Links And Sources
https://www.linkedin.com/in/alvinfsc/
https://www.crunchbase.com/person/alvin-foo
https://www.mwcshanghai.com/speaker/alvin-foo/
https://chinaccelerator.com/mentors/alvin-foo/
https://onalytica.com/blog/posts/interview-alvin-foo/
https://www.mmaglobal.com/speakers/alvin-foo
https://www.daoventures.co/about
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