Gavin is an Asia-based executive search leader specializing in AI, technology, and PE/VC-backed companies, helping founders and investors build high-performing leadership teams across Southeast Asia and Greater China.

With over two decades of experience, Gavin partners with PE/VC funds and fast-growing technology ventures to build world-class leadership teams across North Asia, Southeast Asia, and Greater China. His work spans technology, consumer tech, AI, and digital transformation, with mandates from Series A through pre-IPO.

Gavin collaborates closely with global investors and their portfolio companies, including:
• PEs: L Catterton, Permira, EQT, CVC, Carlyle
• VCs: Sequoia, Lightspeed, Qiming Ventures, NLVC, Cathay Capital, New Horizons

Outside of executive search, Gavin is also an investor, founder, and executive coach, guiding leaders through personal reinvention, mindset development, and navigating growth with clarity and self-awareness.

🌐 https://www.mindssearch.com
📩 gavin@mindssearch.com

Gavin Ng

I’m grateful to GlobalBiz Outlook for this recognition.

After more than 20 years in executive search, what matters most to me is the journey shared with people.

Being part of their paths — helping companies grow with the right leadership and helping many find meaningful roles — has been the real privilege.

This recognition feels less like a milestone and more like a reflection of that collective journey.

Thank you to those who’ve been part of it.
There’s more to build ahead.

— Gavin

Full article:  https://lnkd.in/gXkz2DzE
Join my community: https://lnkd.in/gNTbRf53

Executive Search Leader | Founder | Investor | Coach

Executive search at startup speed in Hong Kong taught me one rule: move like a founder, not a recruiter.

A year ago, a VC-backed company in Hong Kong came to us with a simple but brutal ask:

We need a CMO.
We have eight weeks.
Our runway won’t wait.

Two traditional search firms had already told them the standard line:
“Senior hires take 2-3 months.”

And on paper, they were right.

But startups don’t operate on paper.
They operate on time, burn, and momentum.

So instead of treating it like a textbook search, we treated it like a founder problem.

Week 1: We dissected the role to its non-negotiables.
Week 2: We activated founder-to-founder referrals, operator circles, ex-CMO WhatsApp groups.
Week 3–5: We ran a decision cadence that matched startup tempo—daily calls, not weekly check-ins.
Week 7: Offer signed.
Candidate onboarded before the deadline.

And that experience reinforced three truths that still shape how I run searches today:

🧠 Speed is not a luxury in scaling companies — it’s a survival variable.

Every week without the right leader compounds lost revenue, slower execution, and operational drag.


🧩 The hiring formula is simple: clarity × network × decision cadence.

If any one of these three breaks, the whole search slows.
Most companies fix the wrong parts.

⚡️ Search leaders must translate startup tempo into hiring rhythm — or they fail their clients.

Founders don’t need a fancy “process.”
They need motion.

Let me leave a few thoughts for our executive search friends and senior recruiters:

1️⃣ Set a real hiring runway for your next leadership role
Not “as soon as possible.”
Pick a number (5–6 weeks) and commit to the tempo.

2️⃣ Mobilise your founder and operator network immediately
Hiring is faster when you pull warm pipelines, not cold ones.

3️⃣ Design your decision gates upfront - set higher bar
Shortlist by week 2.
Finals by week 3.
Offer by week 4.
Onboard by week 6.

What leadership hire are you racing against — and how fast can you move?

- Gavin

Join 5,000+ leaders and founders to get regular insights: https://lnkd.in/grbwK4By

#ExecutiveSearchforstartup #AsiaStartups #Foundersupport

Growth game, health and wealth aren’t separate — they compound each other.

A few months ago in Hong Kong, I met a founder who ran a fast-scaling fintech across three markets.
Burnout wasn’t theoretical for him — it had hit twice.

But this time, he told me something different.

“My 5am workout is my best business decision,” he said.
Not because it made him feel good.
But because by the "start" of his days, his judgment was sharper, his team interactions calmer, and his execution cleaner.

And it hit me:

The people who win long-term aren’t just the ones who grind the hardest.
They’re the ones who manage the inputs that sharpen their internal instrument — the body, mind, and energy system that every decision flows through.

Here’s what I’ve observed working with founders and executives across the region:

🧠 High performance isn’t only strategy at work — it starts in the life wellness practice
You can’t out-strategize chronic stress.
You can’t out-hustle low energy.
The quality of your decisions is downstream of the quality of your physiology.

⚡️ Younger professionals in Asia often trade health for hustle — and it works… until it doesn’t.

In your 20s you can brute-force your way through.
In your 30s and 40s, the body sends invoices.
The cost shows up in decision fatigue, emotional volatility, slow recovery, and inconsistent output.

🧩 The real role of a leader today is integrating health, wealth, and purpose into a sustainable system.

Designing life in a way that energy and clarity become competitive advantages is paramount, not afterthoughts.

The top performers I work with don’t optimise for hours.
They optimise for capacity.

Action Steps

1️⃣ Block 30 minutes each morning for a health anchor
Movement, breathwork, meditation — anything that stabilises your physiology before the world demands from it.

2️⃣ Track one health metric this week
Sleep hours, HRV, resting heart rate, mood.
What you measure becomes the thing you improve.

3️⃣ Make one business or financial decision that frees future time
Delegate one task.
Automate one workflow.
Invest in something compounding.
Reduce friction, increase space.

What health habit are you locking in this week — and what business decision will it unlock?

- Gavin

Join 5,000+ leaders and founders to get regular insights: https://lnkd.in/grbwK4By

#HealthAndWealth #ExecutiveCoaching #PeakPerformance

The least technical CEO I worked with this year is leading the boldest digital transformation.

A Malaysian founder running a F&B SME told me over Zoom:

"I don’t understand transformers.
I don’t understand APIs and GPUs.
But I know my business.”

He wasn’t being humble.
He genuinely had no technical background.
He's telling the truth that many SMEs are facing these days. 

But here’s what he did surprised me:

He appointed a strong technology transformation lead.
Someone who successfully led digital transformation at small businesses.
He re-wrote KPIs and digged into the data.
Let data speak and drive their decisions,
And he ran monthly reviews. 
Pivot fast.

No fancy jargon.
No 200-page strategy decks.
Just clarity, ownership, and accountability.

And it worked — his organisation moved 10x faster. 

He taught me one thing:

Non-technical CEOs don’t need to understand the AI, technology etc.
They need to understand leverage.

You can lead a successful transformation without touching a line of code — if you set the right metrics, owners, and timelines, and leveraging the right talent.

Investors don’t expect you to build the model.
They expect you to own the direction.

If you are in a similar eat, here’s where I’d start:

1️⃣ Choose one clear AI owner
Someone who can coordinate across teams, remove blockers, and keep momentum — not necessarily someone “technical,” but someone who gets things done.

2️⃣ Define what “AI success” means for your business
Is it faster operations? Better customer experience? More revenue?
Pick three simple outcomes — not tasks.
(If your board asked “What did AI improve?” — what would you want to say?)

3️⃣ Create a monthly AI rhythm
One meeting.
One hour.
One agenda:
💡 What moved forward?
📊 Where did we save time, money, or effort?

4️⃣ Normalize experimentation
Give your team permission to start small, start messy, and test ideas without waiting for you to be the expert.

5️⃣ Communicate direction, not instructions
Your job isn’t to tell people “how” to use AI.
Your job is to set the why and the where — and let your team build the “how.”

That’s it.
Focused. Executable. Repeatable.

If you’re a non-technical founder…
what’s actually stopping you from leading an AI program like this?

#NonTechnicalFounders #ExecutionMatters #executivesearch

- Gavin

Join 5,000+ leaders and founders to get regular insights on entrepreneurship and investing: https://lnkd.in/gNTbRf53

How long do we really have before AI stops being a competitive edge… and becomes basic hygiene?

A PE partner in Hong Kong told me something over a group dinner that stuck with me:

“We think there’s a short window where basic AI adoption can still move valuation multiples.”

Some founders at the table immediately responded.

One said 5+ years.
Another said 12 months.
A third said “we have time.”

No one had a real framework.
Everyone had an opinion.

McKinsey’s 2024 “State of AI” survey shows 65% of organizations already regularly use gen AI in at least one business function, nearly double from ten months earlier — and “AI high performers” are already pulling ahead in financial performance.

And, BCG writes that deploying gen AI is already becoming “table stakes” in today’s competitive environment — meaning basic adoption will soon no longer be a differentiator

Whether you believe the window is long or short doesn’t change what’s actually happening.

We’re already moving through phases of AI adoption — faster than most leaders realise.

Phase 1 (now):
The obvious things still differentiate.
Chatbots. Summaries. Auto-emails.
Simple tools that improve margins and speed.

Phase 2:
These things become table stakes.
Every company will have them, the same way every company today has email or CRM.
The edge shifts to data quality, workflow depth, and integration.

Phase 3:
AI becomes invisible infrastructure.
Models won’t matter.
Your data + distribution will.

And the companies that win won’t necessiarly be the ones who built the best model —
but the ones who built the best system around it.

So here’s what I learnt from the rest of our dinner discussion:


1️⃣ Start mapping your AI roadmap into two buckets:
Today (fast, obvious wins)
and
Edge (data, systems, process, deeper integration roadmap)

2️⃣ Treat the next 18–24 months as your “catch-up or get left behind” window. Pick whatever timeframe that works for your companies. Key is sense of urgency.

3️⃣ Move fast on anything generic.
Start messy on anything data-heavy.
Don’t wait for a perfect strategy — build the muscle now.

AI advantage isn’t a lifetime advantage.
It's a window of opportunity. 
And it’s closing.

If you had to bet: is the AI window 12 months, 24 months, or more?

- Gavin

Join 5,000+ leaders and founders to get regular insights: https://lnkd.in/grbwK4By

#aiadoption #executivesearch

The 30-Day Experiment

I once worked with a founder, a solopreneur, who looked exhausted in our first coaching. 
He was brilliant and obviously diligent — first in, last out, and knew every inch of his business.

But his team?
Frozen.
No one made a move without him.

In our session, I asked one question:
“What would happen if you did nothing for 30 days?”

He laughed.
Then frowned.
Followed by a 10-second silence.

After a long pause, he said,
“Everything would gradually fall apart.”

I told him,
“That’s exactly the problem.”

So we tested it.
He stopped jumping into Slack threads.
Stopped rewriting pitch decks.
Stopped “just helping” in every meeting.

Week one — chaos.
People stalled. Mistakes happened.
He almost gave up.

Week two — something shifted.
His team started making decisions.
Not perfect ones, but theirs.

By week four, they were operating —
faster, clearer, more confident — without constant sign-offs.

He didn’t lose control.
He gained trust.
And the team? Stepped up. 

What Every Founder Should Remember 🧭

🔥 1. Over-functioning leaders create under-functioning teams.
When you overhelp, you quietly teach people you don’t trust them.

🧠 2. Step back to build ownership.
Real leadership isn’t about control — it’s about space.

🤫 3. Silence reveals capability.
When you stop talking, you see who’s ready to lead.

⚙️ 4. Decide what’s truly yours.
If every decision needs your approval, you’re not leading — you’re babysitting.

💬 5. Reward initiative, not permission.
Praise those who move, not just those who ask.

👉 When was the last time you gave your team space to surprise you?

- Gavin 

Join 5,000+ leaders and founders to get regular insights on entrepreneurship and investing: https://lnkd.in/grbwK4By 

#executivecoaching #trueleadership

What do you do when AI is clearly the future… but your entire team can’t code?

A founder and friend from a logistics SME asked me this over lunch last week.

He looked genuinely worried.

“Gavin… be honest. Are we already too late for AI? I run my business pretty much the same way in the last decade. I know nothing about AI. My team can’t code anything. "

then we had an hour long discussion on his operations and workflow — customer support, monthly reporting, sales outreach etc.

And here’s what surprised him:

None of those workflows needed a single engineer.
None needed a machine-learning team.
None required “building an LLM.

They just needed workflow redesign.

Because the first 50–70% of AI impact in most businesses doesn’t come from technical brilliance.
It comes from operational clarity.

You don’t need a research lab.
You need to a clear  workflow to be followed, by teams or AI. 

"What are we doing repeatedly?
What slows us down?
What can be automated without rewriting the entire business?"

Most SMEs in Asia don’t have an AI problem.
They have a "clarity first, adoption later" problem.

And the real danger isn’t lacking AI skills — it’s waiting until your competitors prove the ROI first.

Here’s what I told him:

Start small.
Recommended step emojis:

1️⃣ Pick one workflow. Start with baby steps.
2️⃣ Test a no-code AI tool for 30 days.
3️⃣ Assign an AI project owner from operations, not IT.
4️⃣ Measure one thing: time saved.

Once you see the ROI, then decide whether to hire, partner, or stay no-code.

AI rewards the curious, not the technical.

If your whole team is non-technical, where would you deploy AI first — support, operations, or sales?

- Gavin

Join 5,000+ leaders and founders to get regular insights: https://lnkd.in/grbwK4By

#AIforBusiness #SMEAsia #LeadershipAsia #ScalingSmart

Break it down before you build it up.

Thinking more isn’t the problem.
Thinking on top of a poorly framed question is.

Many people don’t get stuck because they lack ideas.
They get stuck because they’re applying effort to the wrong problem.

So they add more thinking.
More discussion.
More analysis.

And the confusion gets smarter, not smaller.

I see this constantly in start-ups' meetings.
The room is full of capable people, all thinking hard, yet progress stalls.

Not because they aren’t thinking enough.
But because no one has slowed down to ask the right question.

Strong problem solvers don’t think less.
They think lower first.

They go back to fundamentals before they scale ideas.

They ask, what has to be true for this to work?

That question changes the quality of thinking that follows.

Here’s the shift most people miss.

More thinking is only useful after the problem is clean.
Otherwise, you’re just building complexity on top of assumptions.

Clarity comes first.
Then depth actually pays off.

Here’s a simple way to apply this.

👇 Use this when you feel stuck or overwhelmed 👇

🧭 1. Reframe the problem
Describe the issue in one clear sentence.
If it feels vague, you’re still too high-level.

🔍 2. Question the question
Ask yourself: Is this the real problem, or a convenient one?
Often, the real issue is hiding underneath.

🧱 3. Identify first principles
List what must be true for success.
Facts only. No habits. No “this is how it’s done.”

🧠 4. Think deeply from there
Now add thinking.
Now explore options.
Now invite more ideas.

That’s the difference between productive thinking and expensive thinking.

Where might asking a better question change the outcome this week?

- Gavin

Enjoy this? Join our community of 5,000+ subscribers today: https://lnkd.in/gNTbRf53

AI won’t kill your valuation overnight. It’ll erode it quarter by quarter—until one day your buyer shows you the comparison.

At a dinner in Singapore, a growth-stage founder asked me if she could “wait a year” before thinking about AI.

An investor at the table didn’t even blink:

"You can.
But your buyer in two years will compare you to someone who didn’t wait.”

The table went quiet.

Because the real risk isn’t AI adoption itself.
It’s the compounding opportunity cost of not adopting it.

And this is what more investors have started telling me privately:

🧠 Not adopting AI is a decision.
And the opportunity cost compounds every quarter.
Your peers keep compressing cost, improving throughput, and accelerating cycles.
You don’t feel the gap today—but it widens silently.

📊 The first valuation impact won’t come from “AI narrative.”
It’ll come from margin and productivity comparisons.
Lower cost per ticket.
Faster cycle times.
Higher output per employee.
That’s what buyers measure.

👉 Every buyer, acquirer, or IPO investor will start asking:
“Where is AI in your story?”
Not as hype—but as proof of operational leverage.

If you’re a founder today, here’s what I’d do:

1️⃣ Benchmark against one AI-forward competitor
Look at cost per output: per ticket, per order, per lead.
This tells you exactly where the valuation gap begins.

2️⃣ Set a hard cutoff date
“By X date, at least Y functions must be AI-enabled.”
Not perfect—just directionally real.

3️⃣ Add an ‘AI roadmap’ slide to your next investor conversation
Even if it’s version 0.1.
Investors don’t expect perfection—
they expect intentionality.

Because in three years, someone will look at your company and ask:

Did AI help your valuation—or quietly hurt it?

Which side of that question do you want to be on?

- Gavin 

Join 5,000+ leaders and founders to get regular insights: https://lnkd.in/gNTbRf53

#AIAdoption #executivesearchasia #ValuationDrivers

Based in Hong Kong, Simple is a core member of Leathwaite's global Strategy and Transformation, CEO and Growth practices. She works with a wide range of financial services, corporate and professional services clients to support their regional and country leadership requirements and has delivered searches in Hong Kong, China, Singapore, Japan, Korea and Thailand. With a strong interest and commitment to ESG, she supports clients with sustainability leadership appointments and is a member of Leathwaite's Environment Council.​

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