Management Team
Douglas Abrams / JP Mougin
Co-founder & CEO (The Boss)
Douglas heads up the overall strategic direction of First Meta. He brings to the company 7 years of experience as an entrepreneur, venture investor and entrepreneurship educator in Singapore and 13 years as a corporate entrepreneur at JP Morgan in New York.
Prior to founding First Meta, Douglas founded Expara, an entrepreneurship training and advisory company, where he successfully launched a fund to invest in early stage Interactive Digital Media companies. He is also the Founding Partner and Managing Director of Parallax Capital Management, a funds management company, where he manages the venture investing arm.
An Adjunct Associate Professor at the National University of Singapore's (NUS) Business School, Douglas lectures on Technopreneurship and is actively involved in many local and international entrepreneurship-related programs.
Douglas is the co-Deputy Chairman of the Business Angels Network South-east Asia (BANSEA) and sits on the steering committee of several NUS venture funds.
Prior to coming to Singapore, Douglas managed information technology at J.P. Morgan for 13 years. From 1997 to 1999, he was Global Markets Head of Internet Marketing, where he developed and executed J.P. Morgan's client Internet and e-commerce strategy.
Douglas graduated from the Annenberg School, University of Pennsylvania with a B.As. in Communications and received an MBA from The Wharton School.
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Aileen Sim / Tyra Fierrens
Co-founder & COO (Nanny)
Aileen is responsible for the day-to-day operations of the company. She has 4 years of experience in early stage venture capital, finance and entrepreneurship education, and has been in Second Life since November 2006.
Prior to founding First Meta, Aileen was working with Douglas at Expara, an entrepreneurship training and advisory company, and played a key role in the company successfully launching a fund to invest in early stage Interactive Digital Media start-up companies.
Throughout her undergraduate days at the National University of Singapore (NUS), Aileen was extremely active in entrepreneurship-related activities. In 2005, Aileen was one of twelve people selected to participate in a year-long entrepreneurship program in Philadelphia. She worked with serial entrepreneur-turned-investor, Josh Kopelman, at First Round Capital, an early stage venture capital firm that invested in companies like del.icio.us, Riya.com, Pandora, IronPort and Traffic.com. Meanwhile, she also studied Technopreneurship at the University of Pennsylvania.
For 3 years, Aileen was a Teaching Assistant for Technopreneurship courses at the NUS Entrepreneurship Center. During this time, she mentored many student teams to develop their business plans, many of which won prizes in business plan competitions around the world. She was also a student ambassador and lead organizer for many entrepreneurship-related events including national and global business plan competitions.
Aileen has a B.Sc. in Applied Mathematics from the National University of Singapore.
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Cyph Ho Ming Shun / Cyph Clary
CTO (Geek God)
Cyph has more than 7 years of experience in technical development. In 2002, he co-founded a software consultancy, WITS, together with Gary Teo. Before starting WITS, Cyph worked for eXtropia, a company specializing in banking and financial software.
In the course of work, Cyph has developed encryption software securing e-Banking transactions, and has been called upon to review and strengthen security at Singapore Police Force Technology Department.
Cyph's journey started after getting his first PC whenhe was 11. He became a self-taught programmer who spends an unhealthy amount of time in front of computers. When not obsessing over his latest high-tech gizmo, he is trying to make the latest high-tech gizmo.
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Joy Cheok / Joy Laperriere
VP Sales & Marketing (Lala Croft)
Joy takes pride in steering the Sales & Marketing of First Meta grid wide to position First Meta dynamically as the Finance Services Provider in Second Life and across all virtual worlds. Her forte and passion for sales and creativity is enhanced by her abundant work experience in both Real Life and Second Life.
Prior to joining First Meta, Joy spent 5 years spear heading TV Programming for one of asia's largest broadcast station MediacorpTV Singapore Pte. Ltd. Joy manages the airtime sales, advertising and innovative contents creation that brought the company to greater heights. Joy has also worked and contributed in Hydrochem (S) Pte Ltd now known as Hyflux, a renown company responsible for the technology behind Singapore's "NEWater" and the first water treatment system company to be listed on SESDAQ.
Only a year into Second Life, Joy owns Orient Kulture and is also a realtor for virtual estates, customer builder and developer in Second Life. Excelling in every given responsibility in a high dynamic workplace has contributed to her motivation to bring First Meta to lead on ground breaking financial services in all virtual worlds.
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