From e-commerce and laundromats to coffee, Venon Tian’s entrepreneurial journey is grounded by perseverance, adaptability, and a vision to bring Southeast Asian coffee to the world
It’s tempting to think of entrepreneurial success as some inevitable outcome of a well-planned trajectory—like dominos, carefully aligned, toppling in elegant sequence. But for Venon Tian, born and raised in Kuala Lumpur, the path to success has been anything but linear.
As a young boy, Tian was the sort of precocious, argumentative child who draws knowing nods from aunties and uncles as they predict, “Lawyer, for sure.” As it turns out, family and friends weren’t wrong about the lawyer bit. He pursued a law degree at Northumbria University in the UK, not so much out of passion but as a sort of compliance with the hierarchy of approved professions in most Asian families: doctor, lawyer, engineer.
His parents were thrilled, but it turned out that law school wasn’t the golden ticket Tian had hoped for. Though he appreciated the degree’s prestige and networking opportunities, practicing law never factored into his plans. Still, the experience—studying in the UK, working odd jobs during the 2008 financial crisis—taught him resilience.
A world of retail and reinvention
Tian’s early career was a masterclass in adaptability. The year 2008 was not, as economists back then will tell you, a great time to graduate. Especially not in the UK, where jobs were scarce, even for locals, but Tian found work in retail, and then, later on, rising to a supervisory role in digital marketing.
But by the time he returned to Malaysia, the global crisis had cemented his interest in exploring entrepreneurial ventures closer to home. “I thought coming back to Malaysia was a good option, a good choice,” Tian says. “There’s a lot more opportunities, especially for starting up businesses.”
E-commerce was his first foray—selling items online from reject shops and flipping them on platforms like eBay UK. “It was the easiest way to make money during that time,” he recalls. Then came a coin-laundromat business, another lesson in operational management. “We had about 50 to 60 stores. I was doing everything—hands-on, running operations, managing people.”
These experiences—piecemeal, unglamorous—became the foundation for something much larger.