Arunkumar Krishnakumar

With another book began another journey, yet those whose life faced disruption supported it unconditionally. Thanks to my wife and my daughters for allowing me the time to do this.

The book wouldn't have happened without Max, who kept us honest on the quality of the content, stories and the completeness of the models we created for the book.

Maxson Tee

Never have I ever thought that I would be writing a book. It has been a hard but rewarding journey. None of this would have been possible without my coauthor, colleague, mentor and friend, Arunkumar. I am forever indebted to him for his patience, kindness, friendship and guidance.

To my family – thank you, Josephine Chai, my mum, for always being the person whom I could turn to during my darkest periods. Alfie Pok, my mum's partner, for being a father figure to me when I needed it the most. My little brothers, Jason and Dickson: thank you for your care and support in my life.

We thank …

We thank all the entrepreneurs, VC investors, innovation thought leaders, academics and central bankers who contributed to this book. It was a difficult period for the whole world when we started writing this book, and they were very generous with their time. Some of them even offered to spend more time with us than initially planned and provided introductions to help us with more interviews.

We thank all these super women …

• Our friend and colleague Theodora Lau, who has kindly written the foreword but also provided critical feedback on the coverage of topics that helped us.
• Dr Rajeswari (Arun's mom), who helped us with the Shakespeare quotes for every chapter. It was an interesting experience explaining the gist of a chapter in a business book to a professor of English literature. She would then come up with several pages of quotes per chapter, and we would choose one of them.
• Veda Kasireddy for doing the cover art for us. We weren't the easiest to please, and she did a patient and a tremendous job of nailing the theme of the book with her artwork.
• Meera Ganesan, for allowing us to use her poem in the preface of the book.
• A special shoutout to Doris and Raji at Firebrand Labs (FBL). Without these two amazing women, the visual deliverables wouldn't have reached us in time and in style. Team FBL have added a spark to the design elements of the book.
• To the awesome Wiley editorial team – Susan, Purvi, Gemma and Gladys. Thank you for keeping us honest with our content, language and timelines.

This book is a result of several amazing minds contributing selflessly to give back to the entrepreneurial community. Thanks to that spirit of giving!