Michael Yap is the Founder of The Co-Foundry, a startups venturc-accelerator, and Chairman of Skyvest Ltd, a venture investment company. He is also Advisor to the President’s Office of NanyangTechnological University, and the Professor (Adjunct) at National University of Singapore.
Prior, he was the Deputy CEO at Media Development Authority (MDA) of Singapore where he had oversight of all regulatory, licensing and policy matters related to media. Concurrently, he was the Executive Director of the national Interactive Digital Media (IDM) Program Office chartered to develop the new media sector in Singapore. He managed a $500 million development fund to help ignite and develop this new sector.
Before MDA, he was the Managing Director of the world’s leading enterprise software company. He was responsible for the company’s activities in Singapore and business development across the Asia Pacific region.
Michael was the founder and CEO of a software product company. Michael started and built up a presence in more than 30 countries in Asia. He led its successful divestment to public listed companies in India and Singapore.
He has been involved with the venture capital industry as a Venture Partner at one of Singapore’s most established VC firms. He was also Chairman of a mid-size government-backed VC fund.
Michael was the CEO of National Computer Board (NCB), the national authority responsible for Singapore’s overall IT policies and implementations, and a pre-cursor to the present-day Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA). At the NCB, Michael spearheaded various national programs to establish Singapore as an icon for info-communications adoption and innovation in the region.
Michael is on the board of directors of various public listed and private companies in Singapore and Malaysia. He had served as a board member of various public organizations including Singapore Science Center, MDA and NCB. He is currently a member of the Board of Trustees, Singapore Institute of Technology.
He has been recognized for his contributions including the World Economic Forum as one of the “Top 100 Future Global Leaders” and BusinessWeek as one of “50 Stars of Asia”.