Ren Jean (or RJ as she’s known to the CoFounder Retreat team) is the implementor, the one who gets shit done. She likes being around highly effective people who can get things done efficiently too. This is her story. 

Ever since I was a student, I knew that I wanted to start my own business.

I was the president of the Enterprise Club, I participated in local entrepreneurship events. I even tried starting up multiple small ventures through my schooling life.

However there was one problem I constantly faced… finding the right cofounder.

My cofounders would always show so much enthusiasm at the start. But the moment things got tough, they would suddenly become uncontactable.

Finding cofounders was pretty limited to my immediate social circle. To top things off, my home country of Singapore wasn’t exactly known for cultivating an entrepreneurial spirit into students.

After a few start-up attempts, I decided to work on myself first by working with small companies and learning from their operations.

Boy did I learn lots.

I learnt that my forte was actually in supporting others rather than trying to be the star of the show. I learnt how to leverage on existing tools to streamline operations – an extremely important hack for start-ups where resources were often limited. Most importantly, I learnt how to identify the right team members to build a strong organisational culture where every person felt motivated to do great work.

An opportunity to attend a global personal growth programme came by some time in 2018.

The programme was so beneficial for me. When given the space to focus on myself, I managed to accomplish all the things I told myself I’d do ‘one day‘.

The other participants on the programme too stimulated me in ways I’d never experienced before, in comparison to staying in Singapore and being surrounded by people of similar backgrounds.

This programme focused on each individual’s personal growth, which meant different things to different people – social growth, spiritual growth, emotional growth and so on. Only certain individuals showed a strong interest in entrepreneurship, and these people really helped push each other in their entrepreneurial pursuits.

I started to wonder:

What if the entire community was geared towards entrepreneurship? What if every individual was selected based on the diverse qualities they possess contributing towards building an ideal startup team?

We’ve created the CoFounders Retreat combining the best of all worlds – adventure, growth, and a strong community with a thirst for entrepreneurship.