TEO Swee Ann has the nickname “007” for working 00.00 to 00.00 seven days a week at times.
The moniker for the chief executive of Espressif Systems – the chip company he founded – was coined by his staff.
Espressif is headquartered in China, where the locals at startups are known to work “996”, or 9 am to 9 pm six days a week.
Although the staff at Espressif do not work such crazy hours, Teo, a Singaporean, has a nice sofa in his Shanghai office that becomes a bed when he pulls an all-nighter.
Asked about the frequency that he sleeps over, the 47-year-old roared with laughter, then quipped: “I’d rather not talk about it.”
The newly minted Outstanding Overseas Executive at this year’s Singapore Business Awards does not really need to work so hard these days.
GET BT IN YOUR INBOX DAILY
Start and end each day with the latest news stories and analyses delivered straight to your inbox.
After all, Espressif has established itself with its cutting-edge Wi-Fi- and Bluetooth-integrated devices and solutions. In particular, it has two flagship Internet of Things (IoT) microchips to its name.
The two semiconductors, known as ESP8266 and ESP32, have taken the world by storm. The company has tens of thousands of clients globally, including manufacturers of everyday products such as coffee machines and light bulbs, as well as providers of smart-city and automation solutions.
Espressif’s products are also used by do-it-yourself tech hobbyists or “makers”. Its microchips have spawned a community, with books and online tutorials on building smart devices and systems that range from simple temperature and air-humidity monitors to complex wireless Web servers and even Wi-Fi-controlled robots.
Vivian Balakrishnan, Singapore’s Foreign Affairs Minister and formerly the Minister-in-charge of the Smart Nation Initiative, is a fan who has described the ESP8266 as “legendary” in a Facebook post in 2016.
Espressif may have found success, but Teo is not slowing down, simply because the father of four enjoys working and immersing himself in the engineering world.
The self-made multi-millionaire, who was among Forbes’ 50 richest Singaporeans in 2021, walks for an hour to get home from his office in Fusionopolis on most days he is in Singapore. In Shanghai, he walks or cycles to work. These workouts enable Teo, who took gymnastics in school, to get both physical and mental exercise, as he uses the time to think through the problems that he wants to solve.
Espressif, so named because it was to be an exercise in expressing, or defining a problem and its solutions, was set up as Teo’s test bed for his ideas.
“I’m ready to accept failure,” he said of his entrepreneurial endeavour.
Not one who is bothered by the loss of “face” that is usually associated with failure, he said: “I don’t care what people think… I just do what I want (to do). I don’t even usually socialise.”
But the National University of Singapore graduate with a master’s degree in electrical engineering knew he would survive the daunting journey – with the will and the skills he has.
High on confidence but low on capital, the alumnus of Chinese High School and Hwa Chong Junior College (now Hwa Chong Institution after a merger) started his entrepreneurship journey in China in 2008. The irony does not escape him that he had failed Chinese in school.
His wife (a former university classmate) and two young daughters, one of whom was then only six months old, stayed behind in Singapore, but joined him a year later.
Espressif began life as a one-man consulting firm, but soon became an outfit with two to three people. Still, the quantity of chips the fabless company commissioned was so small that it was spurned by several foundries.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), the world’s largest and most technologically advanced foundry, heard about his work when he was an engineering director at integrated circuit design firm Montage Technology. TSMC gave Espressif a vote of confidence and remains its supplier to this day.
Today, Espressif is a nearly 600-strong company with offices in Singapore, India, Brazil, the Czech Republic and China. The Shanghai-listed company, with a market value of about 10.8 billion yuan (S$2 billion) as at Jul 10, posted 11.6 per cent year-on-year higher earnings of 31.1 million yuan and a 10.1 per cent year-on-year higher top line of 318.1 million yuan for the first quarter to March. Teo has a 42 per cent stake in the company.
It has been profitable all these years, even as a startup. The financial sense he picked up as a young boy helping his father do simple accounting for the senior’s hardware business drilled into him the importance of never spending more than what he has made.
But Teo believes that making money should not be the motivation for one to jump into entrepreneurship. Hence, he has been giving some of his money away. In fact, he donated five million yuan to China’s Covid relief programme in 2020.
He said: “Companies are a form of a social-engineering experiment vehicle interacting with the world, trying to change the world.”
The CEO believes that organisations should aspire to do good for the world and harness the strength of the masses, like the way Espressif chips are used by the community to create new products, ideas and technologies.
Still, he is conscious about competitiveness and commercial viability. He and his team spend a lot of time thinking about what the world would need and whether Espressif’s designs are competitive. “It’s very common for some companies to start projects to make products that don’t sell, but all our products sell. For all of our engineering efforts that are invested, they have a certain return.”
The way Espressif designs its chips is “very, very cost effective”, and the secret lies in its design process. “We have probably the smallest die size for Wi-Fi (chips) in the whole world.”
He does not like to buy existing solutions, although this is a common practice in the chip industry. “That’s not a good way to build great products. There’s no sense of ownership... I believe that we have a better model by emphasising our own engineering.”
He likens leading Espressif to conducting an orchestra: getting everyone to play in harmony. “My job is to not interfere and, when needed, I try to improve things a little.”
Espressif’s managers and directors are expected to do coding in addition to their managerial duties. “We are known for being … the hardcore technical guys. They tend to want to join our company because they know that this is where people are more serious about technology. Talents want to be working with people who understand what they do.”
Talent acquisition has been a perennial problem for many tech companies, including Espressif. The 80 engineering openings it has planned for Singapore since 2020 are far from filled; only about 30 positions have been taken. Still, Teo does not want to compromise on the calibre he seeks: engineers who are passionate about creating.
“There’s less interest in engineering now. I had many brilliant classmates. They went into the finance sector, which I think is such a waste,” he lamented. An engineering fanatic since he was young, he was so adamant about making it his profession that he passed on scholarship opportunities that did not lead to careers in engineering.
Even his way of de-stressing is engineering-related: he writes code. He has used the programming language Python to reproduce a music score from a tune he found on YouTube.
Focus might be his middle name – there was a time he was so “obsessed” with playing the classical guitar that his fingers turned green from contact with the copper strings.
Teo said he might write about engineering design, that is, the secrets behind Espressif’s cost competitiveness, in his retirement. That would happen only when he thinks he is not good any more and should step down.
The entrepreneur, who punctuated the interview with his hearty laugh, said that being Singaporean has helped him in running a company overseas.
Singapore’s bilingual education gave the engineer an adequate command of Chinese; he played translator for his Chinese and non-Chinese speaking staff in meetings during Espressif’s early days.
And the time he spent in national service with the Singapore Armed Forces taught him the importance of being in the front line, of knowing the ground well.
The CEO believes that entrepreneurship cannot be taught. One needs to have a head for risk-taking, creativity, a big-picture perspective, and to be prepared to fail.
And passion, of course.
He has a nugget of wisdom for those who have yet to find theirs: “There are two things that drive people... One is passion, the other is fear... If you lose that fear, you might find your passion.”
Keyword added to your list