How Carin Gan’s CoffeeSpace is changing the way startups are built

KUALA LUMPUR: A successful company is rarely defined by its idea alone, but by the people behind it. The right mix of co-founders, teammates and collaborators often determines whether a concept becomes a working product or fades away before it begins.

For many aspiring entrepreneurs, finding these people remains one of the biggest challenges early on. This gap led Carin Gan and two others to launch CoffeeSpace in 2023.

Drawing on their own experiences, they set out to make team formation more intentional by helping people connect based on shared ambition, complementary skills, and a genuine desire to build.

Often described as a “Tinder-like matching app for startups”, CoffeeSpace was founded by Gan alongside fellow Malaysian Hazim Mohamad and Fauzan Maulana from Indonesia.

The platform matches users based on their skills, ambitions and startup interests, making it easier to form co-founding teams and early-stage collaborations.

According to Forbes, the platform has attracted more than 25,000 users, generating around two million swipes and approximately 50,000 matches.

“Most people don’t wake up one day and decide to start a company. It usually starts with something much smaller: a side project, a random conversation, meeting someone interesting, or joining somebody else’s idea. That’s the journey we’re trying to support,” Gan, 29, told FMT Lifestyle.

“Especially now, with AI making it easier than ever to build, there are so many people with ideas who can turn them into reality. Often, all they need is the right people around them and a little encouragement to get started.”

Born in Kuala Lumpur, Gan attended Catholic High School and Sunway College before receiving a scholarship to study in the US at the University of Pennsylvania.

While at university, she enrolled at the Wharton School of business. Rather than following the traditional finance path, she found herself drawn to building products and taking computer-science classes.

After graduating, she joined Meta as a software engineer before eventually leaving to build CoffeeSpace.

This year, Gan was named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia list in the Social Media, Marketing and Advertising category. She joins a select group of Malaysians recognised by the publication, including entrepreneur Daniel Woodroof, social activist Allison Choong, and Machino founders Amy and Esther Tai.

Today, Gan splits her time between San Francisco and Malaysia as she continues growing CoffeeSpace and expanding its team here.

She recalls spending much of the company’s early days onboarding users and personally introducing potential matches. At one point, she and her team were spending their Sundays manually matching people to ensure the quality was right.

She said building something you care about with people you genuinely enjoy working alongside can feel like “a really fun school project”, albeit on a much larger scale.

“That’s a big part of what inspired CoffeeSpace. We wanted to help more people take that first step into entrepreneurship and discover whether it’s something they love, too.”

Gan emphasised that starting something and making it work are “very different things”. Much of what CoffeeSpace has become was shaped by listening closely to users, and learning lessons that could never have been figured out in isolation.

Building world-changing companies

Asked which entrepreneur she would “swipe right” on to build a company with, Gan names Canva CEO Melanie Perkins.

“Building Canva alone is an extraordinary achievement, but what I admire even more is how many barriers she broke through along the way,” she said. “As a female founder building outside Silicon Valley, she’s expanded people’s perception of who gets to build world-changing companies.

“Most people know Canva today, but they forget how many years and how many rejections came before it. There’s something incredibly inspiring about someone who keeps going despite hearing ‘no’ over and over.”

Her advice for aspiring tech entrepreneurs? Optimise learning over outcomes, especially in the early stages.

“Most founders spend a lot of energy trying to avoid failure. I think a better question is whether you’re improving. As long as you’re learning, adapting and getting better, you’re probably moving in the right direction.

“The bigger risk usually isn’t making mistakes,” Gan concluded, “it’s not learning fast enough from them.”