ACF June 2026 Gathering

What we're really building

The Asia Companion Fund (ACF) community gathered in Singapore in late June. Our entrepreneurs, investors, and close advisors came together over shared meals, volunteer service, a leadership retreat, and even a basketball game. It meant a great deal to me that some of our community members flew in from Kuala Lumpur, Hong Kong, Jakarta, Seoul, and California to spend the weekend together.

Throughout the weekend, I found myself reflecting on what we're ultimately trying to build.

Yes, ACF exists to invest in ventures that seek to bless others across Asia. But beneath that mission lies an even deeper longing: that our entrepreneurs would increasingly experience more love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

Our founders have demonstrated extraordinary perseverance and sacrifice. They carry burdens that most people never see. We long for them not only to build meaningful companies, but to flourish as people.  If entrepreneurs are barely surviving, it feels unfair to ask them to pour themselves out for others. Human flourishing isn't a luxury—it is what enables leaders to love, serve, and lead redemptively.

But flourishing doesn't happen by accident.

The deepest battles are often invisible—the fears, bitterness, disappointments, loneliness, pride, temptations, and doubts carried quietly in the hearts and minds of entrepreneurs. Left to fight those battles alone, they can become overwhelming.

This weekend reminded me that our entrepreneurs were never meant to carry those burdens by themselves.

They need a community that knows them, walks alongside them, prays for them, and reminds them that they are valued not only for what they build, but for who they are. More than anything else, that is the kind of community we hope ACF becomes.

But communities like this cannot simply be engineered. We can organize dinners, retreats, volunteer projects, and leadership discussions. We can create opportunities for people to connect with one another. Yet we cannot manufacture vulnerability, trust, or transformation.

Those are ultimately God's work.

Our responsibility is much simpler: to faithfully steward what God has placed in front of us. To love the people in front of us, create spaces where our entrepreneurs and investors can be fully known, pray with and for one another, and surrender every outcome to God.

That truth gives me tremendous hope. It reminds me that while we are called to faithfully cultivate this community, God is the one who causes people to flourish.

Our entrepreneurs and investors in small group discussions

God's faithfulness gives us boldness

Throughout the weekend, I witnessed vulnerable conversations, genuine encouragement, and people celebrating one another without agenda. Our entrepreneurs shared that the weekend prompted them to reflect on restoring broken relationships, confronting pride, and choosing patience.

These were exactly the kinds of experiences we had hoped for—but they weren't experiences we could have created ourselves.

We planned the activities. God did something much deeper.

As I reflected afterward, I realized this has been the story of ACF from the very beginning.

When we first started this journey, I never imagined that God would surround us with investors and advisors who care so deeply about our mission and consistently choose relationships over transactions. We may have fallen short of our fundraising target, but by the time we reached our final close, I no longer felt that we lacked anything.

God had already provided exactly who we needed.

Thirty-one investors across Singapore, Malaysia, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and the United States—each bringing not only capital, but also generosity, wisdom, relationships, experience, and a genuine desire to serve our entrepreneurs.

That realization has fundamentally changed the way I think about this work.

We still work hard. We still design carefully. We still pursue excellence. Yet we’ve found tremendous freedom and boldness in knowing that God will provide what we need when we need it.  We can rest, even while there remains a significant gap between today's reality and the future we hope to see.

Group lunch after volunteer work (NGO representatives, investors, entrepreneurs, leaders from a portfolio company)

Blessed to be a blessing

Throughout the weekend, one question stayed with me:

God, why have you blessed us so abundantly?

A few days earlier, I had looked out across Singapore's shore and noticed countless container ships anchored offshore. Some were waiting to enter the port. Others were waiting to leave. As I watched them, I couldn't shake the feeling that God was showing me something.

There are so many people waiting.

Across Asia, many entrepreneurs are quietly carrying the tension between scaling companies at all costs and building companies marked by trust, generosity, service, and love. Many are longing for a community that will simply walk alongside them.

More and more, I also meet investors who are asking, "How do I steward capital in a way that reflects my values and heart?" They, too, are searching for a place where values, relationships, and investing can come together.

Perhaps these blessings were never meant to stop with ACF.

Perhaps they were always meant to flow through us.

That realization filled me with both gratitude and urgency. It has also given our team remarkable clarity for the months ahead.

Our first priority is to deepen the relationships within our own community. We'll create more opportunities for our entrepreneurs, investors, and advisors to genuinely know one another. We'll spend more time in the cities where our entrepreneurs live and work—currently Singapore, Jakarta, and Seoul. We'll continue our culture clinics, leadership roundtables, shared meals, and small-group discussions.

There is still much we cannot see. Many of our entrepreneurs and investors continue to carry burdens they cannot yet share. The work of healing and restoration is still unfolding, and I look forward to seeing what God continues to do in the months ahead.

Yet our vision goes beyond the ACF community.

Our hope is that every entrepreneur, investor, and advisor in our community would become an agent of love and a conduit of blessing in the cities where they live and work.

The reality is that our community members interact every day with entrepreneurs, investors, employees, and friends who are not part of ACF. If this community can encourage and strengthen each of us to love those people more deeply, then the blessings we've received will naturally extend beyond our own community.

Because there are still so many people waiting.

When entrepreneurs flourish, their companies flourish. When companies flourish, employees, customers, and partners experience those blessings. Over time, industries begin to notice. Culture begins to shift.

We believe that caring deeply for entrepreneurs is the first step in pursuing redemptive transformation in the venture ecosystem across Asia.

For me, that's worth the long and patient journey.