Joel Neoh joins hands with ex-Fave colleague to launch early-stage fund First Move

Joel Neoh, the founder of payment app Fave, has joined hands with his former colleague Audra Pakalnyte to launch an early-stage fund called ‘First Move’ to support consumer-focused startups in Southeast Asia.

The fund will provide pre-seed funding of up to US$100,000 and mentorship to early-stage ventures in the e-commerce, fintech, and healthtech sectors. It has already invested in seven startups in the e-commerce and D2C spaces across Singapore, Indonesia and Malaysia.

Also Read: Fave Co-Founder Joel Neoh to head Prenetics’s consumer health subsidiary CircleDNA

First Move’s early investors include 500 Global.

In addition to providing direct funding to startups, First Move will partner with other regional VC firms.

The fund has also established the Consumer Tech Angel Syndicate, a close-knit group of experienced founders and executives in the consumer space. Its members, which include founders and senior executives from D2C, e-commerce, mobility and fintech scale-ups across Southeast Asia, will co-invest in First Move deals.

Audra Pakalnyte, Partner of First Move, said: “As founders ourselves, at First Move, we go beyond capital injection. We believe in providing guidance, mentorship, and access to a vast network of industry connections which is crucial in early stages of getting on the right path. We understand the pain points of founders and aim to leverage our experience to provide invaluable mentoring support during the early days of their journey and set our portfolio startups up for long-term success.”

After leaving Fave earlier this year, Neoh joined CircleDNA, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Prenetics Global, a genomics and oncology company listed on the Nasdaq. He wrote the first cheque for Prenetics as an angel investor back in 2014.

Also Read: Dream big, start small: Joel Neoh shares lessons from his years with Fave

Pakalnyte is a seasoned founding team member of multiple successful startups alongside Neoh. She worked at Fave for over eight years and left the company as the Head of its buy-now-pay-later unit FavePay Later.

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