Yiping Goh on Hard Truths for Founders, NUS Enterprise Interview

FORMAS.AI co-founder and CEO Yiping Goh sat down with NUS Enterprise to share what founders needed to unlearn about fundraising and where their edge lay in an AI-powered world. The interview, published 20 July 2026, argued that the old playbook, building in isolation until a product felt "perfect", was no longer viable in a market that demanded external engagement from day one.

A Career Built on Exits, Not Just an Idea

Yiping's counsel carried the weight of nearly two decades in the enterprise ecosystem. She founded her first venture in 2004 as an undergraduate at the National University of Singapore, later joining the NUS Overseas Colleges programme for a stint with the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. All Deals Asia, the company she co-founded with Wayne Goh, grew into one of Southeast Asia's early deal-aggregation platforms before being acquired.

In 2016, Yiping moved from founding companies to funding and advising them, spending nine years across Quest Ventures and McKinsey & Company in business development, venture capital, private equity, and product management across Asia. FORMAS.AI's public beta, launched in November 2025, brought that experience together with her real estate background and co-founder Professor Carlos Bañón's design expertise as Chief Product & AI Officer.

Fundraising Isn't Built on Pitch Decks

Yiping pushed back on the idea that strong ideas attract capital on their own. The more common outcome for first-time founders, she said, was a round of intense early interest from multiple parties that ultimately stalled, everyone watching, no one stepping up to lead.

Institutional rounds, in her experience, were rarely won through cold outreach or a polished deck. By the time FORMAS.AI's first official call with institutional investors took place, the deal was largely assembled, the result of long-term relationship building and visible momentum. That groundwork helped the company close an oversubscribed US$3.98 million pre-seed round in April 2026.

"The fundraising playbook isn't what you think it is. Today's founders must get out there much, much earlier." — Yiping Goh, Co-Founder & CEO, FORMAS.AI

Her advice to earlier-stage founders: open the funnel as early as possible, so people know about the founder and the product long before a round opens. That meant building an active network, earning the trust of likely early backers, and convincing them to commit a first $10,000, $50,000, or $100,000 ahead of a formal raise.

Visibility Isn't Validation

Yiping was candid about the limits of social media in this process. She posted frequently on LinkedIn but drew the line at what she called "cringey" TikTok and Instagram videos, and cautioned founders against mistaking superficial visibility for genuine market validation. Investors, she said, looked past follower counts to the waitlist itself: how many signups converted to registered users, how many of those became paying customers, and how large the resulting commercial funnel could grow.

When Anyone Can Code, Who Wins?

Yiping noted that while an estimated 94% of companies used AI in at least one business function, most remained stuck in a "bolt-on AI" phase, layering AI tools onto legacy infrastructure. That approach could work where the interface stayed simple, but it broke down in complex fields like architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC), where designers already juggled separate tools for concept development, modelling, visualization, rendering, collaboration, and documentation.

That fragmentation was the problem FORMAS.AI set out to solve, an AI-native workspace built as a single vertical solution rather than another tool bolted onto an already crowded stack. On the broader AI landscape, Yiping was blunt: with AI, almost anyone could code, so software alone was no longer a defensible edge. She pointed founders instead toward deep vertical expertise, speed, and distribution as the harder-to-copy advantages, along with a clear read on how a product actually fit into users' daily workflows, and a product-led, community-driven approach to growth rather than a permanent reliance on cold outreach.

Stand Tall While the World Hunkers Down

Asked about today's volatile funding climate, Yiping framed it as an opening rather than a warning sign, a "reset" moment that left many unsolved problems for new companies to tackle.

"Don't over-index on planning. Go full stack quickly. Move from idea to prototype fast; code it out, market it, and release it... Put it out there. The market will teach you faster than theory ever can." — Yiping Goh, Co-Founder & CEO, FORMAS.AI

About FORMAS.AI

FORMAS.AI is an AI-native design and marketing workspace for architects, interior and product designers. It orchestrates 60+ specialist AI models in one platform, turning sketches, images, and 3D models into client-ready renders, video, and editable 3D.

Used by designers and studios worldwide, FORMAS.AI is also reaching the next generation of architects through students and studios at institutions including MIT, Columbia, Cornell, and SUTD. The company raised an oversubscribed US$3.9M pre-seed round led by Vertex Ventures Southeast Asia & India and won first place at SuperAI Genesis 2026.