Mei Ling Tan
Mei Ling graduated in 2011 from the Faculty of Technology, Policy and Management, MSc Systems Engineering, Policy Analysis and Management. During her studies, Mei Ling was active as a student assistant at YES!Delft, where she organised entrepreneurship courses for fellow students. During her graduation, she was part of the entrepreneurship programme for students in the United States, run by The Kaufmann Foundation. During this programme, she was inspired by the American tech start-up ecosystem.
In 2012, Mei Ling co-founded House of Einstein, an online personal shopping platform that enables a new e-commerce business model for retail.
While searching for potential investors, Mei Ling realised that the success of a new venture is determined not only by how well-developed the product is or how big the market is, but also by how good the access to capital is.
"I realised that female-owned companies not only get less funding, products invented by women get less capital and will be less developed. Let alone products invented by people with a different racial or socio-economic background." From then on, her personal mission became: to improve access to capital for minority tech (female) entrepreneurs.
Mei Ling will use the Marina van Damme grant to fulfil her mission. She wants to immerse herself in the world of financial markets and build a larger network in this sector. The first step she will take for this is to attend the Oxford Private Equity Programme.