DREAM CATCHA

In Patrick Grove's world, there are no regrets, only lessons, and an unwavering commitment to building a better digital future

- Lynette Ow.

“If I’d just hung around for six more months, I would have been a chartered accountant,” says tech entrepreneur Patrick Grove of his early career, when he joined now-defunct accounting firm Arthur Andersen. But even though he had completed most of the chartered accountant exam, he was eager to start an internet company in Asia: it was 1999, and the dotcom revolution was beckoning. This was an era marked by a proliferation of startups, when investors were pouring money into tech companies as the world eagerly anticipated the dawn of a new era—the digital age. So Grove left and started a dotcom company called Catcha.com, which went on to grow at breakneck speed. A year later, just as it was about to go for an IPO on the Singapore stock exchange, the dotcom bubble burst. Grove was 25 years old.

“I would have been the youngest CEO of a public company ever,” says Grove, laughing as he shares the concluding events of the failed IPO. “So we’re one week away from being a public company and we were on the roadshow. Day one was in Singapore and day two was in Hong Kong. While we were flying to Hong Kong at night, the US stock market crashed,” he says. “The next morning, the deal was off—there’s gonna be no IPO. That’s it. What was really funny was that … it showed us how quickly the merchant banker was prepared to break up with us.