Co-Founders of Mig33

by **prince_suhel** Sat Aug 02, 2008 6:48 am

Steven Goh, Co-Founder and CEO

Steven is CEO and co-Founder of mig33, the global mobile Internet community that opens instant communications up to everyone in the world with a mobile phone in an integrated interface.
Steven has extensive experience in developing and delivering compelling internet services for consumers, having founded both mig33 and Sanford Securities Pty Ltd, Australia’s first online stockbroking company. From 1996 until 2003, Steven led Sanford’s growth as an innovative financial services firm, becoming the first online broker in Australia, and the only one with its own end-to-end platform (from web and wireless, to custody and settlement), and establishing Australia’s first online investment bank. Sanford delivered a “virtual broker” service which enabled over 150 financial planning groups in Australia to deliver a branded, sharetrading service and an outsourced stockbrocking service to National Australia Bank, Australia’s largest retail bank. Steven led Sanford to an IPO in 2000, delivering over $80 million in shareholder value. Sanford was ultimately acquired by another financial services company in 2003.
Subsequently, Steven went on to co-found Project Goth Pty Ltd, the holding company to mig33. The goal was to build a mobile Internet community by connecting consumers via mobile phones using popular Internet applications, such as instant messaging, chat rooms, VoIP, photo sharing, e-mail and more. The first product, X-TXT had limited success and was discontinued in 2005. A lot of learnings from X-TXT were applied to the development of mig33. Since its release at the end of 1995, mig33 has attracted more than 6 million users in over 200 countries, based on its compelling value proposition, ease of use and entertainment value. In 2007, Steven moved the company from Australia to Silicon Valley, and secured additional funding for its growth from top tier venture capital firms including Accel and Redpoint.
Steven began his career at the Age of 7 by programming Fortran in the University of Western Australia’s Math Department courtesy of his father who lectured there. After finishing University in 1990, he worked in the Business Advisory division of Arthur Anderson and then Audit Division of Coopers and Lybrand, before returning to studies in 1994. Afterwards, he worked as a stockbroker for Saw James Capel then at McIntosh West between 1994 and 1996 before founding Sanford in 1996. He still maintains an avid interest in a range of computing languages ranging from HTML and PHP, to Java and C++.
Steven was awarded an inaugural Western Australia Business News “40 under 40” Award in 2002, and he was a finalist in Ernst & Young’s Entrepreneur of the Year Awards in Australia’s Western Region. Steven has extensive private and public board experience, has served as a keynote speaker and panelist at several dozen Internet and financial services industry conferences in Australia and Asia, and has appeared on CNBC and Bloomberg TV.
Steven received both a Bachelor of Commerce and an MBA from the University of Western Australia.

Mei Lin Ng, Co-Founder and VP Special Projects

Co-Founders of Mig33 Mngtp710

Mei Lin oversees the marketing, communications and customer service for mig33; a mobile community that is loved by millions of consumers all around the world.

As co-founder of mig33 in 2003, Mei Lin was heavily involved in the product development process. mig33 delivers a mobile service (popular internet services incl. messaging, chat, pictures, profiles, VOIP) that addresses everyday consumer needs (communications choice on the mobile). As the popularity of the services grew into a mobile community with millions of users across Asia, Africa and Europe, the founding team secured venture capital and relocated the company to the US in 2007, to further accelerate the business.

Before co-founding mig33, Mei Lin was the marketing manager with Australian-based financial services firm, Sanford Securities Limited (prior to the company's acquisition by IWL Limited). There, Mei Lin substantially influenced the growth and sustainability of the retail and wholesale divisions during a period of depressed markets. Revenues from these divisions accounted for over 50 percent of Sanford's total revenues (over $20m per annum). In addition, Mei Lin was involved with corporate dealings and public affairs issues during Sanford's engagement with both the OM Group (now OMX) and IWL Limited.

Mei Lin has a Bachelor of Commerce Degree with Honors in Marketing from the University of Western Australia.

Francis H. Yu, VP, Engineering and Operations

Francis Yu oversees the IT Engineering and Operations of the mig33 team, spanning across the US, Australia and China.
Before joining mig33, Francis served as Senior Vice President of Engineering at à la Mobile, a developer of mobile Linux software, and Executive Vice President of Global Services and Operations at Sonim Technologies, a provider of VoIP and push-to-talk solutions.

Francis spent over 6 years as the Vice President of the Device Product Group at Openwave Systems. There, he led the development and deployment of the company's mobile browser product, built and managed a worldwide organization, and oversaw millions of handsets across hundreds of different CDMA, GSM, and UMTS models shipped with the company's software.

Prior to Openwave, Francis was Chief Operating Officer of Intellimatch, a pioneer in web-based recruiting. In addition, he spent over 6 years at Oracle in various capacities, including senior director roles in engineering, marketing, and professional services. Francis spearheaded the development of Oracle's natural language processing and document retrieval products.

Francis holds a Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science from Florida Atlantic University. He also attended Fudan University in Shanghai, China.