Risk as a Daily Caffeine — Dinner with Henek Lo, CEO and Co-founder of Hypeasia.co

Sometimes the most meaningful and inspiring conversations happen over casual meals. The Time Auction Blog is a snippet of our meetings with people who have found passion in their life and career.

When we talk about startups, we usually talk about the glam of the hustle and the dream of building the next unicorn. But a topic people tend to avoid when talking about startups? Risk.

Just ask Henek Lo who runs Hypeasia.co, a venture builder that helps startups expand in Asia. Despite being only less than a year old, the company has already helped the likes of Carousell, Snapask and Homage pair up with mega VCs such as Sequoia and Rakuten Ventures.

“I love CEOs who generally admit they’ve made mistakes.”

Over dinner with him, we got to talk all things gut and energy.

Who is Henek Lo?

Henek started off in consulting at Bear Stearns, JP Morgan and Macquarie. In 2012, he became the first person to represent Airbnb in Asia (after 18 rounds of interviews). Going from its Head of Sales to General Manager for Greater China, he helped the company through its hyper-growth stage.

By 2015, Henek had lead Greater China till 2016 just after Airbnb had raised series E from Asian investors. If that wasn’t enough, Henek brought WeWork to the APAC region, where he launched 5 locations in Australia, Hong Kong, and South Korea for the premium co-working space provider.

With a strong background of expanding operations and finding investments in Asia, he decided to start HYPE — where he utilises his market expertise and networks to help businesses in a region brimming with opportunity.

A man of organization, timing and goals

When we asked Henek about his daily routine, he emphasized how important his schedule was.

“I live by my calendar. If it’s not on my calendar, it didn’t happen. I have a 1.5 year old daughter, so I try to get home.”

Every morning, he talks to his associate — coming up with 3 things that he wants to crush that day. He times ALL of his meetings. And every night, he plans for the next day.

“I generally get up at 06:00, but after 21:30 when my daughter goes to sleep, I’m usually working from 22:00 to 02:00.”

Henek generally gets about 4 hours of sleep every day and catches up on his z’s while flying around the world. Talk about a busy day!

Embrace the venture

His experience, coupled with his newborn daughter taught him a great lesson about luck and opportunity: Taking risk is a luxury.

“I really do mean it. If there’s that opportunity, you are in the right place to take it and you feel like that’s the right thing to do, I think you discover so much more about yourself. “

He recalled his feelings during his taxi ride to the airport when he was making his way to the Airbnb office for the first time.

“ I felt really lucky that I’m doing something completely different… I went with my gut and I took the risk.”

Now, he loves what he does. So much so that his team is constantly surprised that he’s bursting with energy even in the early hours of the workday — earning him the question “Just how many coffees did you have?” frequently from his colleagues.

Loving your work can really change how you view your day to day routine. Because we are lucky enough to be where we are today, we owe it to ourselves to take some risk and take the first step towards something new. You never know if it’s something you’ll end up loving.

Always moving forward!

The meeting wasn’t just about values. Henek also talked a lot about the importance of being observant and looking at what’s happening.

When asked about a superpower he would like to have, his answer was: Time Travel. While some may go back to their past to rewrite parts of their history, he was fixated on having foresight into the future.

“We all talk about trends — AI, data, deep learning and quantum computing, etc. I just wanna fast forward and see what wins.”

Thank you so much to Henek for raising 53 volunteer hours and all the volunteers who dedicated their hours for the greater good! We would also like to thank photographer Steve Hung from Kachick and our venue sponsor WeWork Wanchai!

To see our upcoming experiences, head over to the Time Auction website!