Game Over and Over: Lawrence Chan

Talk is cheap at leading Singapore telco, MyRepublic, and that’s exactly the way Managing Director Lawrence Chan wants it.

"Broadband has gotten cheaper. Prices are coming down and the bandwidth is increasing, and it’s about time," he tells The CEO Magazine. 

It’s the least the industry can do, he adds, given its less than stellar reputation with customers all around the world.

"Telcos would have to rank up there in the top two industries everybody needs, but everybody hates them," he admits.

"Singapore is the leader when it comes to fiber optic national rollout."

This situation was made even more frenetic by the entrance into the market of new players seeking to disrupt the old ways – players such as MyRepublic, the dream of Founder Malcolm Rodriguez, as a way of tapping into Singapore’s powerful fiber optic network.

"Singapore is the leader when it comes to fiber optic national rollout," says Chan, a former investment banker who saw MyRepublic as an opportunity.

"I’ve been a gamer from a very young age and I knew the incumbent telcos weren’t using the infrastructure to its fullest potential. There was so much more the internet could be."

An Underdog Story

Chan signed on to the MyRepublic dream as employee number five. "Everyone said we were nuts because we were going up against the big players. No-one associates the words telco and startup."

Originally a marketing manager, Chan’s passion for the industry drove his journey through the business.

"Early on, my focus was on building the first ever broadband service intended for low-latency gaming. That was an area telcos were ignoring entirely," he recalls. "We targeted the games, we measured the latencies, we rerouted things to make sure it was consistent and steady. As a product, it got a lot of traction."

In Singapore, one of the world’s biggest gaming hubs, customers took notice of what MyRepublic was offering.

"It was made by people who actually cared about that product, and it showed. This was a time before social media, but the word spread through forums," Chan says.

Inspired, Chan joined local forums to start engaging customers in real time and building products from feedback.

"People from throughout the company – senior guys, junior guys, CEOs, chief engineers – would come engage customers on what we could do better. Based on the response, we launched a 100-megabits-per-second and subsequently a 1,000-megabits-per-second package for US$50, and that drove the market crazy," he adds.

The Next Level

Having demonstrated the disruptive power of a clued-in startup within Singapore’s telco industry, Chan and MyRepublic embarked on a journey to create a company for the people, by the people. They haven’t stopped since.

"We broke the mold so many times. The next thing was Netflix, which wasn’t in Singapore at the time," he explains. "You had to have a virtual private network, so we built one into the network, taking all the pain away from the end user. They could pay for Netflix and it would just work.

"When we started offering one-gigabyte packages at a low price point, it drove the entire industry’s prices down again. People still tell me that if we hadn’t forced that, the other telcos wouldn’t have done it, and if they hadn’t, there wouldn’t be a business case for other countries to try it either."

"We broke the mold so many times."

Over time, MyRepublic expanded globally, including Indonesia, Australia and New Zealand. Chan had a stint as Indonesia’s Director of Retail before returning to Singapore in his current roles of Managing Director and Chief AI Officer.

"The COVID-19 pandemic brought some things to bear. Everyone’s now trying to call themselves an AI business, but a Chief AI Officer’s duty is to ensure the company doesn’t miss out on AI enablement opportunities," he reveals.

"AI will make us broader and leaner. If we don’t, we’ll be left behind in years to come and our plans will be eaten by others."

Indispensable Teammates

To this end, MyRepublic partners with industry experts such as TGN Technology to ensure it has the best tech on side.

"You pick vendors and partners that fit your profile, that are also disruptors," Chan advises. "If there’s a big difference between your hunger and that of your vendor, the relationship will fall apart easily."

"If you build your business around the people, the systems and the processes, you become more efficient and more scalable."

Internally, Chan seeks to surround himself with a diverse team that’s able to rise to any challenge in such a volatile industry.

"One bad decision can ruin a business, so what you want is a solid senior team and a skilled and efficient junior or mid-level team," he says.

"There’s no one-size-fits-all solution in this industry, but if you build your business around the people, the systems and the processes, you become more efficient and more scalable.

"We’ve done that at MyRepublic, and I’m very proud of what we’ve achieved."