Episode 131 - From a Place of Helping People to a $14B Valuation with Anthony Tan

**William Norvell** (0:15)
Welcome to the Faith Driven Entrepreneur Podcast. If you're an entrepreneur driven by your faith or want to be driven by your faith, then you're in the right place. The best way to stay connected is to sign up for our monthly newsletter at faithdrivenentrepreneur.org.
This podcast doesn't exist without you, our community. One of the things that the community has asked us for is helping connecting them with like-minded, faith-driven investors.
We're in the process of launching Marketplace, a new platform to present your venture and connect with like-minded investors that are serious about honoring God as you are. Everything from philanthropic to market rate deals from here in the US to emerging markets. Check it out at faithdriveninvestor.org. While you're there, please send us any thoughts you have about how this podcast might better serve you or any questions you might have about being a faith driven entrepreneur.

**Anthony Tan** (1:07)
Jesus was just the most, bar none, incredible leader of all time. And he could kneel down, take his waist cloth, and clean the feet of his disciples.

**Henry Kaestner** (1:23)
Right.

**Anthony Tan** (1:24)
If he can do that, he is God. Who are we?
So, that servant leadership is so powerful, right? Again, you know, every day, I just pray, God, Jesus, I just wanna be more like you.

**Henry Kaestner** (1:42)
Welcome back, everyone, to the Faith Driven Entrepreneur podcast from wherever you are on the globe. Well, if you're in America, you may think of the company Grab as the Uber of Southeast Asia. Of course, if you live in Southeast Asia, Uber is the Grab of America, whatever way you look at it. With 198 million downloads of the app, nine million drivers in 351 cities in eight countries, and a $14 billion valuation, Anthony Tan and Grab are making huge waves in the ride-sharing industry.
Today, Anthony shared his entrepreneurial journey, which started with a simple question. How can I best take care of other people? Let's listen, Matt.

**William Norvell** (2:29)
Welcome back to the Faith Driven Entrepreneur podcast. We're so glad you've joined us. We have a special guest. If you've listened to this before, you've heard me say that before.
We've got a really, really special guest today. A great friend of ours, who we've known now for six or seven years, and his faithful leadership in the space of Faith Driven Entrepreneurship, who's joining us from Singapore. But I wanna actually ask you a question that just came to mind as we're just getting ready.
Anthony, I think that you probably have the best voice in Christendom. Have you ever considered a career in radio?

**Anthony Tan** (3:02)
Yeah, well, if grab doesn't work out, I could be a radio DJ. That could be an option.

**William Norvell** (3:10)
You have an incredible baritone voice. I mean, I'm just gonna just listen to whatever you do going forward. As it turns out, you do have a full-time gig that probably is gonna take you away from doing that anytime soon.
You are running a really phenomenal company that God has blessed. You're making an incredible impact on culture in just an incredible size and scale. And we wanna talk about that, of course, but before we do that, we like to get an understanding about our guests and where they come from.
What I wanna start off with you, and since we got a chance to see your daughter, beautiful daughter, is we're just getting started here. Tell us about your family situation and your family of origin before you talk about Chloe and the kids. Tell us about your journey growing up. Take us from the beginning, please.

**Anthony Tan** (3:50)
Wow, there's a lot to share, but I'll start with the most important part of my life, my wife and kids.
I've been very blessed with a very Christ-centered wife who, I mean, she's probably the most... My head of people said this to me, as she said, you know, there are very few wives or husbands in the world who will let their husband work. So nearly every lunch and dinner over the past, I guess, two weeks have just been spent with either business meetings or grabbers just to keep topping up the social capital because, you know, everybody's working from home now. And clearly, you know, I couldn't have gotten here or we couldn't be here without her. Her name's Chloe, C-H-L-O-E, and she's just been an incredible partner in my life. And then one of her philosophies that she's taught me is that we come from a traditional Chinese family. She comes from a big family business, and I came from a family business before. And our traditional Chinese parents will historically say, hey, you've got to love your children so much, and sometimes even forget investing in a marriage. And my wife has taught me that we show to our kids the love for each other so much that they are looking up and modelling that love, right? In the same way that we learn love from Jesus and how he loves the church and how he loves us.