Our Southeast Asia team have advised ADPList, a cross-border mentoring platform, on their recent US$1.3m seed round. The round was led by Surge, the accelerator programme run by Sequoia Capital India. The funding is supported by prominent angel investors Crystal Widjaja (ex-Gojek executive), JJ Chai (CEO of Rainforest), Quek Siu Rui (Co-founder & CEO, Carousell), Ting Feng Toh (Co-founder of GetGo), and Zopim Founders (Royston Tay, Wen Xiang Wu, and Yang Bin Kwok).

ADPList (formerly ‘Amazing Design People List’) connects people in the design and product management community to mentors in some of the most popular tech companies in the world such as Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, and Google. Mentors can show their availability on a shared calendar that mentees can access in order to schedule virtual sessions. Virtual sessions are conducted within the platform via one-on-one video calls, small group mentoring, and townhall-style talks.

ADPList, originally conceived as a publicly shared Google spreadsheet, started out in April 2020 by Felix Lee and James Baduor as a way for designers to provide peer support and share advice with others impacted by the pandemic. Today, it is available in over 70 countries with 20,500 mentees, more than 2,500 mentors, and 5,000 booked sessions a month. Booking a mentor at ADPList is currently free, with plans to commercialise the service as well as expand the platform to include other professions.

“It’s warming to see people wanting to give back and support upcoming talent in their industry”, partner Chris Wilson says of the deal. “The cross-border element also allows knowledge from some of the most successful companies in the world to circulate beyond Silicon Valley, which is promising for the development of other tech hubs.”

Read our other recent deal announcements here.