Our Team

Max-F. Scheichenost

Position

Partner

Team

Functional - Digital Transformation & Analytics

Location

Ho Chi Minh City

Mekong Capital BOD team Max-F. Scheichenost

In his University time, Max met his Internet-Godfather at an event in Vienna/Austria in 2008. His Internet Godfather started (and shortly after successfully sold) the largest German-speaking social network platform. Max was so inspired by him on stage: smart, driven, humble and a creator who challenged conventional thinking and how to do and run a business. Right at the event Max asked him what he has to do so he can learn from him and his answer: “work with me“. This was the start of a decade-long partner/mentorship – a decade of ‘Grandescunt Aucta Labore’. Referencing Max’s alma mater, it means “by hard work, everything grows and increases“.

He got Max into entrepreneurship (right out of university) invested in his first business DailyDeal (which got acquired by Google Inc after 22 months of launching), coached Max to follow his passion/dream (and not be stuck with a Tech Corporate for the next couple of years), invited him to manage his tech portfolio in South-East Asia (SEA). And thanks to him, Max literally jumped on a plane in 2011 to manage his eCommerce portfolio without knowing where most of these exotic countries are exactly located on the map. And Max’s first trip to SEA was to Vietnam in 2011. He still has his lucky 100,000 VND note on his desk as a constant reminder for this experience.

The entrepreneurial journey

After his second trip to Asia, Max decided to set up a venture incubator (Alps Ventures) in Singapore and continued to invest as a business angel with the intention to support & coach the next generation of entrepreneurs – as his Internet Godfather has done it for him.

Max and his partner launched/invested in more than a dozen companies, scaled most of them, successfully exited some of them, and closed a handful of them.

Reinventing personal vision

Bio MAX-F. SCHEICHENOST Mekong Capital Partner 2

Overall, it was an exciting entrepreneurial journey with 10 years of the “highest highs and lowest lows”. They focused on building and growing entrepreneurs and less on the (strict) financial performance as they invested their own capital. Thus, they had no (external) pressure to exit these businesses. The superior returns they generated were a by-function of their ambition to grow the next generation of entrepreneurs and less of a “we have to generate a return of X”.

April 2019, Max’s son Leopold-Minh was born. He never thought that his son will have such a pivotal impact on his life but the moment Leopold-Minh was born (including the near-death experience of his wife during delivery) Max decided that he doesn’t want to be a weekend Dad. This decision meant that he eventually moved his base from Singapore to Vietnam. And that he moves from his entrepreneurial (“all or nothing”) way of doing to a more sustainable (later stage investment/Private Equity) way of BEING. And by turning from Entrepreneur/Doer to Investor/Coach, he created his vision for the next decade of his life (2020-2030): Freedom, Independence & Happiness.

And this decision also led him to start working with Mekong Capital, where he can fulfill his mission of reinventing Private Equity and generate breakthrough results while being a loving father & partner.

The state of fulfilment

Every day he uplifts his passion for Digital Transformation by providing the best (digital) transformation tools & frameworks to guide the optimal pathway for breakthroughs with velocity.

He is also the COACH for Mekong Capital’s investee companies to discover the power of Digital Transformation, Business Intelligence Analytics, and being Customer Driven and help them generating unprecedented results.

He is present both at work and at home, seeing his boy every morning and nearly every evening.

He is now grateful for what he can do, with the people he wants to work with, and most importantly, for the fact that he is adding value to Vietnam (and thereby to the world).