Don’t Let Growth Break You: How Founders Hire, Scale, and Build Culture
Scaling a startup is messy. Processes that once worked start slowing you down. The culture you built in the early days begins to shift. Hiring gets harder, and suddenly, the wrong hire can set you back months.
This event brings together Southeast Asian founders who’ve lived through these challenges and come out the other side. In a candid, founder-to-founder conversation, they’ll share the lessons, mistakes, and wins that shaped how they scaled their organisations without breaking them.
What You’ll Learn:
Processes – How to avoid the pitfalls of creating processes that slow growth while you scale.
Scaling with Direction – Balancing founder vision with operational discipline.
Culture at Scale – How to prevent culture shifts as teams expand significantly, and often quickly.
Talent as a Growth Lever – How to build an organisational structure that supports your startup's growth, not just fill roles.
The Panel
This session will be moderated and led by four founders who have each scaled organisations across Southeast Asia. They’ll speak openly about what worked, what didn’t, and what they wish they knew before heading into rapid growth.
What you’ll get out of this session
Practical, no-fluff insights from founders who’ve actually done it.
Real examples of how to manage hiring, culture, and processes at the pre-Series A stage.
Guidance on spotting early warning signs before growth bottlenecks your organisation.
Who should join this event?
This event is designed to cover growth at the post-seed, pre-Series A stage. Founders who are preparing to scale their startups, are hiring their first leadership team, or expanding their organisations while trying to reduce chaos, this conversation will give you the perspective and tools to scale with confidence.
Format
6.30pm-7.00pm: Registration & networking
7.00pm - 8.00pm: Panel topic: Don’t Let Growth Break You: How Founders Hire, Scale, and Build Culture with Q&A
8.00pm - 9.00pm: Refreshments and networking
About Speakers
Benjamin Croc, founder of BrioHR
Benjamin Croc is a seasoned leader in ASEAN’s business and HR tech landscape, with nearly two decades of experience driving growth and transformation across the region. Having first arrived in Malaysia 17 years ago, he has since held leadership roles at CMA CGM, McKinsey, and Lazada before co-founding BrioHR in 2018.
Under his leadership, BrioHR has grown into a full HR solutions partner, offering software and payroll outsourcing service; serving 1,000+ clients and over 100,000 users worldwide. Backed by leading investors such as Openspace and Hive Ventures, the company has doubled in size since Series A, building a strong, people-focused team.
Benjamin brings rare ground-level insights from engaging personally with thousands of HR professionals, CEOs, and business leaders. Known for clarity and actionable perspectives, he has spoken at events including Unicorn Day Malaysia and the National Human Resources Leadership Forum.
Elton Chan, co-founder of Second Talent
Elton Chan is a serial entrepreneur with over 15 years of experience in e-commerce, digital transformation, and global talent. He is the Co-Founder of Second Talent, which connects global enterprises with Asia’s top pre-vetted developers, and his previous company is a YC-backed e-commerce technology enabler serving brands like Lululemon and Clarks. Elton previously founded and chaired the Hong Kong E-Commerce Business Association (HKEBA), held leadership roles at Lazada Group, and began his career at Accenture. He brings deep expertise in scaling technology ventures and building cross-border digital ecosystems.
Nathaniel Yim, founder of Nila Studios
Nathaniel Yim is currently the founder of Nila Studios, a marketing consultancy built to help B2B companies cut through the noise with strategies that drive real growth. Before that, he co-founded Janio, a regional logistics brand, where he ran marketing, sales and operations, scaling the company across Southeast Asia.
As a Visiting Partner at Iterative, Nathaniel has worked closely with dozens of founders, helping them tackle the messy challenges of scaling and marketing. Known for his no-fluff, execution-first approach, he shares hard-earned lessons from years in the trenches and is a trusted voice for startups navigating their most critical growth stages.
Moderated by Wen Chen, founder of Screened
Wen started out as an engineer but somehow got lost and never found her way out of recruiting. 10+ years later, she’s still here - having gone from executive search to building scrappy 0→1 teams at companies like Revolut and BCG X. Her love for recruiting and obsession with optimisation led her to co-found Screened (Iterative W25), an AI recruiter that now cheekily does the very job she once did herself.
About BrioHR
Every day, over 100,000 people rely on BrioHR to manage performance, request leave, and handle HR tasks with ease. Trusted by 1,000+ organizations, BrioHR helps companies move beyond outdated admin-heavy systems and leap into the future of work, one that facilitates both performance and engagement.
Our mission is simple: empower every company to build fulfilled, engaged, and high-performing teams by streamlining HR and enabling leaders to focus on what matters most: their people and business performance.
From startups to global enterprises, we believe HR should be simple, transparent, and impactful. By keeping overheads low, improving retention, and fostering thriving workplace cultures, we help businesses succeed.
At BrioHR, we combine efficiency with warmth, because technology should be human, and humans can do more with technology.
About Iterative
Iterative was founded for founders, by founders. We are a YC-style program focused exclusively on Southeast Asia. No fees, an upfront investment of up to USD $500K and 3 months of targeted growth and fundraising support, which culminates in a Demo Day to a network of 400+ investors. Apply for the program.
Since we’ve been founded in 2020, we’ve invested in 150+ companies and 300+ founders. These companies have gone on to raise $168M and are collectively worth over $1.2B.
Our mission is to increase the GDP of Southeast Asia through entrepreneurship. To do that, we need to (1) make entrepreneurship more accessible to more people and (2) give founders the tools and support to be successful. As part of this mission, we run events like this to help founders solve their biggest problems.
About Second Talent
Second Talent provides onshore and offshore contracting, recruitment, and payroll services across Asia. We are locally established and fully compliant in 8 locations: Singapore, Hong Kong, Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Taiwan, and China.
Clients share a job description—we handle sourcing, screening, and placement. If a local entity is not in place, we employ the candidate under ours and manage payroll in full compliance with local labor laws.
Our clients include Mocaverse (US$50M raised), Terminal3 (US$13M), Buyandship (US$10M), and Imbee (US$5M).