Neil is a seasoned startup operator who transitioned into entrepreneurial development programmes, venture education, and community building—accumulating nearly 10 years of experience supporting entrepreneurship growth and bridging operational knowledge and network gaps across Southeast Asia. As the Founding Managing Director of GUIDE, he oversees learning experience design and materials development across all venture programmes and ecosystem initiatives led by GUIDE and its partners.
Neil has served as a mentor and judge for several innovation programmes, including Malaysia’s sovereign wealth fund initiative—the Khazanah Innovation Impact Challenge—for which he led the design of the inaugural programme in 2021. He is also the founder of a regionally based venture studio and one of the creators of the Chief of Staff School. Previously, Neil founded a boutique digital marketing agency and held turnaround leadership roles in two local startups before joining the global entrepreneurial network Endeavor, and subsequently establishing GUIDE.
A startup operator. Alvin led the finance and strategy function in his previous tenure in GoQuo - B2B travel-tech venture-backed startup GoQuo (backed by Gobi Partners and Monk’s Hill Ventures) and engineered an exit for the shareholders.
He spent his early working career with KPMG and PwC in Assurance services involving in various business industries such as hospitality and casino gaming, manufacturing, FMCG and oil and gas clients. Experienced in consumer travel industry, Alvin spent 4 years with Tune Hotels, heading the finance operations before joining GoQuo.
Alvin co-founded SEA-based venture studio Ignition Chamber Academy with Neil in nurturing new startups. He also serves as director and advisor of several companies in Malaysia, Singapore, Hong Kong, and the UK. At GUIDE, Alvin leads the venture advisory unit where he bridges business needs with specialised services for venture growth continuity.
This section outlines our eligibility criteria, requirements, and important timeline related to the programme.
contactSEA+ Accelerator is a regional early-growth programme designed for Seed to Series A technology companies with cross-border ambitions in Southeast Asia. It is a consortium-based, practitioner-led accelerator focused on revenue clarity, capital efficiency, and disciplined regional expansion — not demo-day exposure.
The programme combines a 3-day in-person Revenue & Regional Expansion Bootcamp, 1-month hybrid group and 1:1 coaching and mentoring, corporate and financing solution matchmaking, product deployment support, and a Graduation & Community Mixer.
The programme is designed for:
Both SEA-domiciled and international companies may apply. SEA-based companies are prioritised, but the programme is open to companies from China, Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, and beyond.
The “+” reflects the programme’s openness beyond Southeast Asia. While SEA-based companies are prioritised, international technology enterprises seeking structured soft-landing into Southeast Asia are encouraged to apply. The programme supports opportunity sizing, purchase intent validation, and expansion feasibility assessment before significant capital deployment.
Participating companies will work toward:
The selection process is multi-stage and merit-based:
Cohort size is limited to 5–12 companies to preserve depth of engagement.
SEA+ is practitioner-built and revenue-first. It is structured around revenue opportunity mapping, capital requirement analysis, and real customer validation — not early-stage incubation or demo-day theatrics.
It is also consortium-backed, bringing together operators, corporates, and capital providers to create structured relationship rails for sustainable expansion.
All official communications related to your application, shortlisting, and participation in the programme will be conducted exclusively through our official email: program@guide.works. Please reach out to us if you have any questions.
Please ensure you check this email address regularly for updates, requests for additional information, and important notifications. We strongly advise applicants to whitelist this address or check your spam/junk folders to avoid missing any critical communications. Any communication from other channels or unofficial emails should be disregarded unless otherwise stated on our official website or by a verified team member.
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