Jeremy Ko

Author: Jeremy

  • The Joy of Entrepreneurship

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    Jeremy
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    A lot has been said about entrepreneurship, and most of it tends to fall into one of two camps. Either people warn you away from it — because it is uncertain, difficult, and the odds are low — or they romanticise it too much, as though it is some glamorous act of self-invention, full of…

  • The Silent Benefit of Delayed Founder Compensation

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    Jeremy
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    One of the less discussed parts of building a business is that society and business often speak in entirely different languages when it comes to success, and because of that, a founder can spend years doing what is rational in one domain while appearing irrational, unimpressive, or even suspect in the other. Society, understandably, relies…

  • 9 Books That Shaped How I Think

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    Jeremy
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    I have always been a bookworm. Not because anyone made me, but because I was curious and restless and looking for answers that school was not designed to give. By the time I entered university, I had already started and failed my first business. By the time I graduated, I had started my third. Today,…

  • The Asymmetry of Starting Young

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    Jeremy
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    The best time to start a business is while you are still a student, because the opportunity cost is lower than it will ever be again. You have more room to explore, more room to think, and more room to fail before the consequences become truly expensive. Business ideas rarely arrive polished. More often, they…

  • The Condo Question Is Not Really About Property

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    There comes a phase in adult life, somewhere in one’s thirties and doing well in their career, when property ceases to be merely shelter and begins to masquerade as judgment. It becomes a referendum on whether one is progressing at the correct pace, whether one is becoming the sort of person Singapore expects him to…

  • Why So Many High Achievers Feel Lost After School

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    TL;DR: Awards are not evil, and most teachers mean well, but when recognition becomes a scarce, ranked, public currency, children learn to chase approval first and purpose later, and that trade-off shows up years down the road as anxiety, passivity, and an inability to self-direct once the system stops handing out rubrics.   Every year,…

  • Ark Bloc in the news!

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    Sometimes it takes the market a few years before they recognize a gem.  We built Ark Bloc in 2022, but in the last few weeks we have coverage in the news suddenly. Here are the videos for posterity.  Ark Bloc on Mothership Ark Bloc on Channel News Asia

  • My First Podcast

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    Here’s the transcript for those who prefer to read.  Gerald: Welcome to another episode of Work It Podcast. I’m Gerald. Nat: And I’m Nat. We’re your hosts. We’re bringing you fresh perspectives on the world of hustling. And Gerald, speaking of hustling, it’s been a hustling and bustling week for me. I cannot get a…

  • 2025 | Perspectives from Burn out

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    Jeremy
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    This year, the people closest to me—and the people closest to our businesses—know we’ve been on an absolute tear. In May, we pivoted our café business. We revamped Stoked.sg into Pastaaah!, hoping a refreshed menu with more affordable options would revitalise things. That meant menu changes, cooking at home, recording recipes, and teaching our team…

  • Four Hours of Sleep and a Van: My Early Founder Years

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    TL;DR for founders:The early years of my business looked like four hours of sleep, a beat-up van, and doing school, internship and startup all at once — with zero guarantee it would work.If you want to be a founder, don’t just romanticise “freedom”; be ready for years of hard, lonely, uncertain work powered only by…