From Investment Banking to an Accidental Mine in Indonesia
Derek Wong has been an entrepreneur for about 17 years. But it didn't start out that way. He began his career in investment banking, working in mergers and acquisitions (M&A) and equity capital markets (ECM) out of Hong Kong in 2006. Then, as the global financial crisis hit, he was suddenly without a job.
A project crossed his desk in 2009, which was an investment opportunity in a mining project in Indonesia. Derek invested money into it, then spent years helping expand the operations and marketing its offtake mainly to Chinese buyers. This work brought him to Southeast Asia, Singapore, Malaysia, Laos, Indonesia, and he eventually relocated to Beijing in 2012.
A few years in, the mine was stolen out from under him. It's a more common story than people realise, a lesson in what happens when a foreign investor goes into a country without a strong enough local partner. Derek and his partners lost everything they'd put into it. However, China had become home by then. He stayed in Beijing for a further six years, before moving to Shanghai in 2018, where he has lived since.
A Watch Brand, a Global Pandemic, and a New Start as a Line Cook
The next pivot came from an unlikely direction: luxury timepieces. In 2017, Derek took on another entrepreneurial project to rebrand and relaunch a historic watch brand, attempting to raise capital and bring it back to life. Then COVID arrived, fundraising collapsed, and again Derek found himself, like a lot of people that year, needing to reassess life.
Stuck in Europe for nine months, unable to return to China, he started cooking: three meals a day, every day, for himself and a friend. Coming from a finance background, he hadn't thought of himself as being a creative. Over time, cooking had convinced him otherwise. And the writing was on the wall.
At 37, going back to culinary school wasn't realistic, and he knew exactly how that conversation would go down with his parents. So he skipped it. He went back to Shanghai as soon as flights were open again, took a job as a line cook, earning 30 RMB an hour, minimum wage, and learned the trade the only way left open to him: by doing it, over and over, from the very bottom.
It's really my passion in hospitality that really made me run through brick walls and break through all these barriers to get to where I am today.
Building Madame Ching: Cantonese Tapas With a Cheeky Twist
Madame Ching takes its name and its spirit from Ching Shih, the real-life Cantonese courtesan-turned-pirate queen who once commanded a fleet of 1,800 ships and 80,000 men. Derek and his team deconstruct classic Cantonese dishes and create what they call Cantonese Tapas: bold, punchy small plates and shared dishes, served alongside a cocktail programme built on the same reinterpretation of tradition. Their primary focus, however, is not just on the food or the drinks, but instead, what differentiates Madame Ching amongst its peers is their music, vibe and the energy in the room. The restaurant's motto says it plainly: food, drinks, happy endings.
For Derek, the food itself matters less than what happens around it. He's self-taught, never went to culinary school, and says star ratings and reviews are irrelevant to how he measures success. What matters to him is the room: strangers reconnecting after 20 years at the same table, an unexpected flavour sparking an intense discussion, a night someone remembers for reasons that have nothing to do with the food itself, but the people around them or the experience they just had.
I like to gather people across the dining table, because that's when some of the most interesting stories are shared, and some of the most memorable moments are created.
A Global Vision, Kept Deliberately Small
Madame Ching is currently a standalone restaurant in Shanghai, and Derek is clear-eyed about why he wants to keep it that way. A concept this personal doesn't scale into fifty locations without losing what makes it work: the personality on the floor, the specific energy of the room. He isn't interested in opening in fifty cities across China. His ambition is a small, deliberate global network, maybe three or four places globally, in markets where the concept can genuinely mean something.
That long-term thinking is part of why he set up Madame Ching's holding structure in Singapore rather than leaving everything based in China, a foundation built for a brand that might one day operate in more than one country.
Finding Osome, and Trusting a Referral
When Derek started researching where to incorporate in Singapore, he narrowed it down to two options, helped along by a nudge from a friend and fellow entrepreneur who had come across Osome. It looked like Osome covered what he needed, and he decided to go with it.
What built his confidence early on was the sense that there was always a real person on the other end. Even when a chat opened with a bot, it quickly handed off to someone who could actually help, a contrast to platforms like Meta, where he says reaching an actual human can feel almost impossible.
I know it's a bot at the beginning, but then you connect to a human [with Osome's chat support]. That, I think, is the most important thing.
Incorporation and Corporate Secretary Support That Keeps Pace
Running a hospitality business out of China while holding a company in Singapore means Derek is rarely in the same city as his own paperwork, which makes responsiveness the thing he values most. He rates Osome's incorporation and corporate secretarial support a solid nine out of 10, pointing specifically to how fast questions get answered over chat, and how quickly a real person picks up the conversation once the initial query has been handled.
Notarisation support has mattered in particular. With overseas shareholders in the mix, notarising documents is normally its own separate headache, one Osome absorbs rather than leaving it to him to sort out from a different time zone.
It's a solid nine out of 10, [for incorporation and corporate secretarial support,] because questions are answered very speedily.
Time and Money Saved Without the Hassle
Before Osome, Derek's experience running a company in Hong Kong meant emails, phone calls, and physically showing up to collect mail in person. With Osome, incoming mail gets scanned and sent to him, so he can tell at a glance what's urgent and what can wait, without paying to have it couriered halfway across the world or flying in to check a mailbox. Incorporation steps that would once have meant printing, signing, and physically returning documents now happen entirely online.
It's the kind of saving that's hard to put a single number on, by his own admission, but Derek estimated it at around 100 hours saved over the past year, not counting the cost and disruption of trips he no longer needs to make.
[I'm] talking about probably up towards 100 hours [saved with Osome], overall, for the past year. And that's quite a lot of time.
Looking Ahead
Derek already runs Madame Ching with Claude close at hand, using it for strategy decisions and weekly reports on what's happening across the business. He's keen to explore Osome's own presence inside Claude next, querying bills and administering transactions without switching apps, folding it into the same workflow he already relies on.
Looking back on the last 15 years, investment banking, a mine in Indonesia, a watch brand, a line cook's apron, and now a restaurant with ambitions beyond one city, Derek's advice to other founders comes from having rebuilt more than once: find the thing you're intrinsically motivated by, and expect the industry to test you regardless of what it is. He's already recommended Osome to other entrepreneurs in his network.
