SEAT OF POWER

All Ian Ang wanted to do was to design the best chair for gamers. That hot seat has him helming a company now valued in the millions.

- Charmian Leong

Ian Ang talks really fast. It fits his image of a boyish, 28-year-old CEO absorbed in his first business – and with a mind that works even faster than his mouth. But that’s the fun of talking to a millennial leading millennials. There’s no fear of the unknown – and no time to dwell on past successes and failures. The future is everything – and the one he’s working towards, he says, “has a Secretlab chair in front of almost every single PC in the world”.

However, Ang and Alaric Choo, his business partner, didn’t start Secretlab to make office chairs. Avid gamers, they wanted to build a chair comfortable enough for gamers to keep playing for hours.

It was a lofty goal as the target market was a demographic once associated with non-legitimate careers. And the fact that Ang’s parents basically went into conniptions when he dropped out of college to pursue this passion project was not entirely surprising. But what was astonishing was Secretlab’s rapid rise to success.