Theodoric Chew is the Co-founder and CEO of Intellect, a Singapore-based startup that makes mental health and wellbeing services more accessible for Asia Pacific. 

Intellect raised a $10M Series A in early January last year, which got extended with an additional $10M led by Tiger Global. 

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👋🏼 How would you explain your job to someone outside of Tech?

I run a mental health company that is built to support anyone who requires any level of mental health support across Asia Pacific, from very preventative care all the way through clinical and crisis care, we’re built to support in the most accessible and local way possible.

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🧐 What's something about you, your personal life,  or your job that would surprise us?

Once upon a time back in secondary/high school, I used to be a pole vaulter! It was a very niche and difficult sport to pick up, but great fun.

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🏆 What would you say has been the biggest highlight of your career so far?

I'd say definitely building Intellect and having the chance to not just build a business but to build something that is really able to impact a lot of people's daily lives in small and big ways.

We’ve managed to support people during their real times of crisis and need and also in their everyday lives, and continue to do so in bigger ways today.

I can't see myself having a bigger impact elsewhere than what I'm doing right now, so that's something that I take really great joy and fulfillment in.

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🧑‍🤝‍🧑 How did you manage change when COVID hit? How did you manage it within the organization?

We started Intellect pre-COVID with the vision that mental health care was an essential need and relevant to everyone, although time was needed to build awareness and literacy around it.

We started just before the pandemic happened, and in a good way if anything, the team was extremely small, just myself and Anurag my Co-founder, and a few interns after in the first few months of business. 

Hence there weren’t a lot of major transitions that were needed because we were very small and nimble, so that worked well for us.

But quite quickly as we went into COVID, mental health became a top-of-mind subject for everyone. So for us, the important thing was how could we rise to the occasion and really plug the gap and demand around mental healthcare. We strived hard to ensure we did just that.

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💻 How are you pivoting your strategies, products, or focus now that we're coming out of COVID-19?

Our goal has always simply been to support anyone who needs mental healthcare or support, in whatever form or severity it may be.

So be it as an individual, as an employee, or as an insurance policy holder, our goal is to serve you in any approach you require.

So there’s been no change in our vision, however, our solution and suite of mental health and wellbeing services have expanded massively since to reach and support many more lives.

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💳 You started Intellect in your early twenties and then you mentioned that you were a pole vaulter before. So when did it hit you wanted to start a  mental health startup? 

I've always wanted to be an entrepreneur since I was young, didn't know what exactly I wanted to do per se but knew I had a lot of things that interested me when I was young. 

That was why I dabbled a lot with online businesses in secondary school during my teenage years. Most didn't work out unfortunately but I learned a lot about how to do and build things on the internet. 

Intellect very specifically is one that is right close to my heart, stemming from a personal lived experience going through mental health struggles growing up.

I struggled with chronic anxiety in my teenage years and started having panic attacks when I turned 16. So I started seeing a therapist at that age and really found a massive amount of help and benefit. Quite literally, it changed my life for the better and I also realized how misunderstood therapy was. 

Many years later when I had more experience learning about how the world works, and how tech can enable a lot of access, that's when I started to tackle this by building Intellect.

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💌 What have been some of your biggest challenges as a founder, either professionally or personally?

A very clear one I can share is the fact that I'm a young founder, and a lot of what I’m doing is a first for me. I had the opportunity in the past to work with some really great companies and people where I've learned a lot, but in many ways, it's a lot of learning and growing as quickly as I can as many things are new as we grow.

Being a manager and being a CEO, from running an idea-stage company to a venture-backed and fast-growing one, all this poses new challenges at every juncture. So for me, the big challenge is making sure that I grow fast enough, as fast, if not faster than the company's pace of growth.

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🔍 As you’re watching the mental health landscape grow, is there any other startup trend or space that you’re interested in? 

A lot of stuff is happening in the AI space for sure. A bit cliche but we are closely monitoring and exploring emerging AI tech and how it can support our users as well as how it can support the work that we do internally.

So I think using gen AI is one that we see a lot of very helpful use cases for healthcare. Some now already applicable, and some we expect will be a lot more visible in the coming years and months even.

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💼 What advice would you give someone starting out in your industry as a young founder?

I think that the cliche one that really is true is that you get a lot of rejections and failures, no matter how many times you go at it. 

That’s part of the founder's journey to not just hope to get past rejections but to expect rejections as part of the process and to move and grow from that.

Another piece of advice I’d give is based on the context that some people tend to fixate on the most remarkable billionaire founders and inventors in the world and I think that’s fantastic but I also believe strongly that you don’t need to be a genius to be a successful founder.

You need to be smart enough to know what you want to work on, what problem areas you’re aiming to solve for, and I believe critically to be persistent enough to keep pursuing something.

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🗣 What's one thing you can keep talking about for hours? 

I love discussing and learning about the different political systems across the world and the pros and cons of them. That’s something that I do enjoy discussing in good fun.

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🎥 What's your favorite movie/TV show?  

Right now I’m quite enjoying Young Sheldon. I love comedies and sitcoms and this is a great one.

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 🍨 What's your go-to ice cream flavor?‍

Macadamia nut (from Haagen-Daazs). 

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FYI. We’ve edited this interview for clarity.