2025 passed quickly for me. Tried to pay attention and be present to each day but because there is no big change in many aspects from previous few years, life just flows by. I realize that it’s in new situations and environments that time slows down. Makes sense as our minds tend to ignore status quo items. So when traveling, life is extended such that the 88 days spent traveling this year feels many times as long and memorable than the SG days.
In all, 2025 has been a mostly positive year on most dimensions. Readers can read my 2023 update and 2024 update to get more context.
In 2025, I traveled about 88 days with the highlight being the family trip to Nepal, Jiuzhaigou and the couple trip to Alaska.
Children wise, 2 in university, one in IB and one in primary 5. All are doing fine school and health wise. Likewise Shao Ning and I are in good health and generally happy. The above 2 statements are short but are already huge blessings that are prerequisites for leading a good life.
AngelCentral continued its activities and as predicted last year, the ecosystem is still at bottom with just a few green shoots of fund raising and secondary exits.
The one big down item is linked to above. Many startups face big stress as they are still unable to turn profitable and/or raise more capital and/or get an exit. And we are very disappointed to see some founders make poor decisions or unethical decisions or self serving moves when facing large business challenge. It’s this disappointment in human nature that is the biggest source of unhappiness.
To recap, I centered myself on 3 purposes.
Purpose 1 - Be there and be good help for family. Extend to friends if i can.
Purpose 2 - Be as healthy physically & mentally
Purpose 3 - Be a good custodian of wealth and sharer of experience. Help grow startup ecosystem via angel investing & AngelCentral. Contribute to broader society as a volunteer.
Purpose 1: Be there for family. Share and guide kids more. Maintain friendships.
Overall rate this purpose an 8.5
Wife and I continue to spend time communicating about our relationship, about kids and our joint work. Dad wise, he his overall mind is still sharp and we just brought him to Japan where he walked 6k-10k steps daily.
Wife & I continue our date nights, couple trips and now integrate work better. Our work is mainly about Angel investing, Angelcentral, own portfolio mgmt, & family finances management.
The 4 boys and wife continue to be my biggest motivator in life right now. Very proud of all 5 of them.
I have a continued shift in mindset this year where I have moved further to care less about winning in terms of finances or career. Part of it is just growing older and knowing my situation and mindset won’t allow me to take risks needed to scale things faster. So might as well be content and happy with what I have.
Friends nothing much changed. Many of us turned 50 this year, so had 2-3 celebration dinners. Forum carry on as normal.
Kody the dog is healthy but slowing down for sure. He now doesn’t bother to jog with us and likes to sleep much of the day away. Still walking twice a day. Very happy he came into our lives.
Purpose 2 : Be as healthy as I can mind and body
Rate this 8.5
I maintained at 63kg-64kg, body fat <20%. Weight actually fell to 61+kg but wife told me need more muscle. So I consciously ate more protein for 1 mth and reversed it. Quite happy with this new state as I have more energy and don't tire too easily. I continue to eat salad for breakfast. Eat minimal degustation menus and heavy dinners. Continue exercise/move around a lot about 5-6 times a week. Exercise is usually 1 hr dog walk + 40min yoga or jog or swim. My motivation to be healthy is so that I can eat and travel well into old age.
Supplements all continue as per normal. One thing different is taking a 30min nap in the afternoons if free. Works to prevent sinus acting up.
One fun activity I picked up is pickleball. Been playing it weekly with my cousins/ friends and also with hwachong alumni. It’s easy to pick up and gives a decent workout. A bit more social than just solitary exercise.
Mentally, the boredom as an early retiree still surfaces. This is no different from past years since retiring. Think the only way to cope is find new things to do and environments to immerse in.
The mental drain dealing with unethical or bad actor founders is still there. Not fun at all but have to plow thru it I guess. Part of the role I undertook. What helps is to focus on all the founders that are trying to do the right thing. And ignore the lousy ones.
Purpose 3 : Preserve & Grow Wealth - 10% annualized net IRR on net worth. Quality startup angel work for 100 startups+ build AngelCentral + good volunteer
I would rate this 6.5 this year.
Biggest reason is PE side was down 12% from the year! Mainly due to mark to market down rounds on two startups and asean VC funds writing down a lot this year. -12% is a very bad annual return for the risk and lack of liquidity we take in this asset class. For context, startup and vc investments are now at about 14.1% IRR since 2015 or 2.08 TVPI. So still up but no where near justifying the risk taken.
Only bright spots in this space are a handful of startups turning profitable, DPI improving significantly with a few PE/VC funds returning some capital and a good sized startup secondary sale.
Rest of investing did fine with
public portfolio of bonds, stocks and cash up another 10% in sgd terms on the back of strong performance by single stocks picks, astral fund and STI specifically and lesser extent SPY, QQQ & bond positions.
It does look like the long term target of 10% IRR on net worth is increasingly hard to achieve with a diversified portfolio. I am at about 8% now since 2012. But will leave it there as the goal was to give myself a challenge. Key thing is startups/VC need to deliver. Over 14 years, every other asset class has delivered as expected or better.
AngelCentral and angel investing took up most of my work time this year and we saw our members funding stabilize to be similar quantum as last year. For our own portfolio, we invested 2 more new startups and a bit more into 2 existing ones. Added one new AI fund too. Budget for investing a bit higher than 2024 but still halved from 2022 peak.
We have decided to drop the 100 startups goal. Not realistic since the exits are so slow in coming. I don’t want to be 70 years and still talking about startup liquidity.
I will make separate post on startup portfolio and angelcentral work to review 2025.
Finally on volunteer work, I continued to do volunteer work at Hwa Chong, IPOS and NRF. Retired from my ITE role after 9 years. Felt a bit sad as I really liked the ITE mission and vision. Took on more responsibility with HC side so that kind of balances out.
So in summary, 2025 has been a good year for all 3 of the purposes. The write downs on VC side finally came but it’s the ugliness/weakness of human nature that is subsequently exposed that I would rather not have to experience and see.
Looking forward to 2026, i expect to continue life like in 2025 but with a bit more stress as number 3 has IB exams and number 4 has PSLE. Probably can’t travel that much too.
Also, i hope our tech ecosystem prospects will improve but i know there will likely be more closures and write downs coming even as the better companies start to pull ahead and shine thru.
