He began buying and selling Pokemon playing cards at 10 Y/O & has now launched 5 companies on his personal
What counts as entrepreneurship? Is it inventing a mind-blowing thought, or simply merely refusing to sit down nonetheless—dabbling, experimenting, and beginning over time and again?
For Then Zhi Wei, it’s undoubtedly the latter. From promoting Pokemon playing cards to baking cookies, designing t-shirts and operating podcasts, he has spent years exploring completely different ventures and testing concepts.
Now the founder and advertising director of selling company Futurx Creatives, we spoke to the 28-year-old about how he turned childhood hustles right into a lifelong entrepreneurial drive.
The place all of it started
Zhi Wei’s entrepreneurial streak started at simply 10 years previous. Drawn to the cardboard store beneath his condominium after college, he shortly realised that classmates had been determined for Pokemon, Yu-Gi-Oh! and Duel Masters playing cards they couldn’t discover elsewhere.
Pooling his pocket cash, he started reselling playing cards for a revenue, incomes as much as S$7 per piece, which felt like a fortune on the time. He additionally struck a take care of the aged store proprietor: tagging objects in alternate for packs of buying and selling playing cards he might flip.
Even at that age, Zhi Wei was studying the fundamentals of provide and demand and found how small alternatives may very well be changed into one thing significant. This early enterprise marked the beginning of his entrepreneurial journey, and by secondary college, he was channeling that curiosity into larger experiments.
Transferring on to larger ventures
Throughout his teenage years, Zhi Wei taught himself Photoshop by YouTube tutorials and launched OkieWear, a t-shirt model with its personal web site.
Dissatisfied with the web site, he paused the mission, nonetheless, it gave him worthwhile insights on presentation, branding, and person expertise.
On the similar time, he additionally ran a blogshop with a associate on Carousell, importing objects from Chinese language suppliers, together with tech equipment and garments.
By driving on-line traits, he made constant gross sales and realized the significance of timing and understanding buyer demand. Small earnings validated his intuition to check himself in a fast-paced setting, giving him confidence that any enterprise may very well be made worthwhile.
Alternatives, experiments, and classes realized
By the point he entered polytechnic, Zhi Wei was able to deal with extra advanced initiatives.
One alternative got here after recognizing a Fb put up about PRYNT, a Kickstarter mission for a transportable picture printer with augmented actuality (AR) expertise, priced at over S$200. After conducting in depth analysis, together with cellphone compatibility and the product founder’s background, Zhi Wei and his buddies pooled their financial savings to import items into Singapore.
They bought the printers on Carousell, managing orders, returns, and logistics themselves, and earned just a few thousand {dollars} in revenue. At one level, they even thought-about turning into sole distributors—till an area distributor secured the rights. The PRYNT hustle taught him that alternatives have home windows, and shifting shortly might be essential earlier than larger gamers step in.
However Zhi Wei didn’t cease there. At school, he joined Samsung Resolve For Tomorrow, a contest for college kids to make use of robotics and expertise to unravel native issues. There, he designed a stress mat with a lightweight sensor to remind individuals to not go away valuables in public bathrooms. The mission gained second place, although he didn’t pursue it additional.
Following that, Zhi Wei interned at Mobike in China, the nation’s largest bicycle sharing firm, the place he gained firsthand startup expertise.
Throughout his time in China, he noticed how expertise enabled providers like supply platform 回家吃饭 (hui jia chi fan) benefitted companies and customers, which impressed him to briefly contemplate creating Singapore’s first reservation app and a home-based meals supply service.
Friends discouraged him, calling it unimaginable, so he put the thought apart. In hindsight, he mirrored that the expertise taught him the significance of filtering outdoors noise and trusting his instincts—a lesson bolstered as supply platforms finally took off in Singapore.
Reviving his father’s enterprise
Throughout Nationwide Service (2018 to 2020), Zhi Wei determined to revive his father’s home-based festive cookie enterprise as Baba’s Whisk, constructing a small following by Instagram and a self-made web site.
He experimented with flavours, designed packaging, and expanded into customized muffins, utilising his part-time baking expertise at Orchard Resort’s pastry kitchen again in his secondary college days.
The enterprise shortly took off, and buddies had been asking him to bake muffins for milestone birthdays. Studying from YouTube creators like Cupcake Jemma and Georgia’s Desserts, he practiced tirelessly, learning the science behind every ingredient. Even when his first makes an attempt failed, he persevered.
Aside from providing freshly baked items, throughout COVID-19, Zhi Wei launched DIY baking kits along with his personal recipes, video tutorials, and Zoom baking lessons, offering an important supply of earnings.
At its peak, Baba’s Whisk earned S$4,000 per thirty days and typically as much as S$60,000 in income in a 12 months. The help and suggestions from buddies and clients turned a pillar that he’ll all the time admire and worth.
That stated, the relentless baking and deliveries on weekdays and weekends typically left him remoted. He realised the significance of work-life stability—a lesson he has since taken to coronary heart and included into his life.
Returning to his advertising roots
A basketball damage in 2023 compelled Zhi Wei to decelerate, however he quickly returned to advertising his specialisation in Polytechnic, founding Futurx Creatives from scratch with a very good good friend.
He observed many Singaporean SMEs had been caught in conventional advertising whereas most businesses weren’t innovating. In the meantime, China had already embraced AI-driven livestream commerce and inventive advertising. Zhi Wei wished to bridge that hole, serving to companies use storytelling and generative AI successfully on social media.
At Futurx, Zhi Wei shared that the workforce “meticulously research” the science behind viewer engagement, analysing what makes individuals click on at every second in advertising movies.
Two years on, the technique seems to be paying off. Considered one of his most rewarding milestones was seeing shoppers like Concept Grading develop from five-figure month-to-month gross sales to 6 figures, a testomony to the effectiveness of their advertising method.
Managing an eight-person workforce, Zhi Wei takes an unconventional method to management: he believes in empowering his workforce quite than imposing inflexible buildings.
“It’ll attain some extent the place you shove hierarchy down individuals’s throats. I hate that. I’d quite assign duties and assist one another as a workforce.”
He values curiosity and drive above formal {qualifications}, explaining {that a} willingness to study is way extra vital than a college diploma. “Being a sponge is the last word high quality,” he provides. “A level doesn’t imply you’re prepared for the job—you’re solely prepared to start out studying the position.”
Spotlighting unconventional paths
Regardless of the expansion Futurx Creatives has seen, Zhi Wei isn’t sitting nonetheless. By the tip of 2025, Zhi Wei might be launching Off the Overwhelmed Path, a podcast spotlighting people who’ve chosen unconventional paths.
Not like a lot of his friends, Zhi Wei selected to not pursue college instantly, valuing hands-on expertise over formal training. The podcast displays that philosophy, aiming to point out his viewers that unconventional paths are legitimate.
Selecting curiosity over conformity, he shared, can open doorways and reveal elements of oneself that structured programs by no means can.
Zhi Wei famous that solely a small share of individuals take this route, significantly in a inflexible society like Singapore. “That’s why the outliers are often solely round 1%,” he stated, crediting his mother and father for the psychological help that allowed him to embrace this path.
He additionally encourages others to method entrepreneurship with braveness and resilience:
“Entrepreneurship doesn’t should be one massive thought,” he stated. “It’s about being courageous sufficient to start out—and relentless sufficient to fail and hold going. It’s additionally about making use of all the things you learnt into your future companies to assist serve your clients/shoppers higher.”
Zhi Wei’s aim is independence—not essentially wealth—however to realize monetary freedom, a precept he’s held since childhood: making his personal cash, even when he didn’t should. For him, the entrepreneurial itch by no means goes away, and that drive is what retains him shifting ahead.
- Learn different articles we’ve written on Singaporean companies here.
Featured Picture Credit score: Then Zhi Wei
