Rene Menezes

Rene is our presence on the ground In Malaysia. As an entrepreneur himself, and with his extensive experience in Malaysia’s digital scene, he is a great help in keeping us closely informed on startups and investment trends in the country.

Rene has been starting and investing in businesses since 1997.  He currently sits on the board of a diverse portfolio of companies, some of which he co-founded covering Advertising Tech, F&B and Manufacturing. His investment portfolio includes startups in logistics, affiliate marketing, fin-tech and social applications. These leverage his strong regional network and reputation.

In his most recent role, he was CEO of CtrlShift, the largest independent Ad Tech company in Asia, managing the P&L and over 150 employees in a business that spread across Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand and Philippines.  This included driving the merger of three companies operationally and culturally.

The first business he co-founded was a soft-landing partner to the largest digital media companies around the world by giving them a low-risk model to enter these emerging markets. Yahoo!, MSN, Facebook, Waze, Spotify, BBC, ESPN, Disney and countless more relied exclusively on his company to generate advertising revenues, build the foundation for market entry and establish and maintain a brand identity during their contract tenure.

He also assisted GlaxoSmithKline, Pfizer and British American Tobacco navigate the digital world for the first time in the region during the infant years of the Internet and jointly built the first Ad Network in Malaysia.

Rene was instrumental in the formation of the Malaysian Digital Association (the apex industry body for Malaysia) where he was President for 2 terms.

He recently acquired a stake in an F&B business and two frozen food manufacturing companies and intends to use these as vehicles to revolutionize the US$1 trillion premium halal foods industry globally.

With his breadth and depth of experience around the new economy, he is interested in working with fast-growth companies regardless of size and doesn’t shy away from rolling up his sleeves and getting shit done.