Story map
Read this like a founder: problem, early product, first customers, then the moments that changed everything.
The problem they noticed
Alaric Choo and Ian Ang met through the StarCraft II community. Their experience of long computer sessions led them to ask whether a chair could better support people who used computers for many hours.
From MVP to product
They founded Secretlab in 2014 and introduced its first chair in 2015. The first release gave the team a concrete way to learn whether their shared observation mattered to customers beyond their own community.
First customers
A community can help founders understand a problem, but it is not the whole market. The team had to turn a gamer-focused observation into a product proposition that other computer users could evaluate too.
Key moments
Experiments, pivots, and surprises. Look for what changed their thinking.
- 1Pivot
What happened: A shared experience in a gaming community became a question about product design.
Lesson: Communities can reveal useful problems when founders listen for patterns rather than assuming their own experience is universal.
- 2Pivot
What happened: The founders tested the idea through a first chair release.
Lesson: A real product can reveal more than an idea alone because customers can respond to something tangible.
Impact
Every product creates value, and every decision has a trade-off. Good founders stay honest about both.
Positive
- +Helped turn a community insight into a Singapore-founded product business.
- +Illustrates how collaborators can use a shared interest to spot a practical problem.
Trade-offs
- ±A community insight must still be tested with people outside that community.
- ±Product partnerships and expansion require clear choices about where a small team should focus.
What to remember
If you had to explain this story to a friend, what would you want them to remember?
- Shared interests can be a useful place to notice unmet needs.
- A co-founder relationship needs more than a common hobby; it needs a clear problem to work on.
- Testing with real customers helps separate a promising idea from an assumption.
Continue learning
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Sources & further reading
- Secretlab - https://blog.secretlab.co/stories/ask-me-anything/
- Enterprise Singapore - https://www.enterprisesg.gov.sg/resources/inspiring-stories/secretlab