January Capital

Leading with technical specs is a common founder mistake, but Tom Hamer found that the real unlock is showing a customer their own future. The product doesn't need to be explained — it needs to be experienced. Marqo wins enterprise deals by running live demos on a prospect’s actual data during the very first call, often configuring in five minutes what legacy systems couldn't achieve in five years. That's the shift most technical founders miss. Watch the full episode now.

On 12 May, we brought OpenAI's Startups Team to Kuala Lumpur for the first build sprint of its kind in Malaysia - hosted together with OpenAI and Jelawang Capital. Our partner Benjamin Dunphy opened the session, and together with Joshua Lim on the ground, we spent the morning with over 80 founders, CTOs, and builders who came ready to build. In one hour, they got hands-on with OpenAI’s latest tools - Codex, the Agents SDK, and GPT-5.5 - tackling real-world problem tracks across SME workflows, enterprise knowledge systems, and research intelligence. The builds ranged from early workflow experiments to ideas demo-ed that were clearly onto something - with builders articulating what they’d ship next if they had more time. Selected teams took the stage. Three stood out: 🥇Shi Wei Leong - A multimodal accessibility agent you speak to that sees your screen, understands plain-language instructions, and guides or acts on your behalf step by step. 🥈 May Law - Rosary Vision: Automating bill of quantity reconciliation for quantity surveyors, turning a deeply manual process into an AI-assisted workflow. 🥉Hong Bing Sim - StartMate: A live AI co-presenter for solo founders that listens to your pitch, watches your screen, and steps in with cues and answers when you need it. Congratulations to the winners - and to everyone who showed up and shipped something real in 60 minutes. As one builder put it after the session: “This is exactly the kind of session Malaysia’s builder scene needs more of.” We couldn’t agree more. We’ll be back. Thank you to OpenAI’s Startups Team for bringing the tools, the expertise, and the energy - and to Jelawang Capital for hosting and making it happen in KL. #JanuaryCapital #OpenAI #JelawangCapital #MalaysiaAI #KualaLumpur #AIBuilders #BuildersSession

Every founder building in Australia eventually faces the same question — do I need to move to the Bay Area? For Tom Hamer, Co-founder & CEO of Marqo, being surrounded by founders operating at global scale became a compounding advantage. Watching peers go from “figuring it out” to $50M ARR in a few short years reshaped what felt possible, and accelerated his own trajectory. If you’re building in AI, the environment you choose can become your biggest growth lever when the ceiling of your ambition is shaped by the room you’re in.

Proud to see our portfolio company Tazapay officially granted the Money Service Operator (MSO) licence in Hong Kong. 🇭🇰 Since we first backed Tazapay, our conviction in their vision of building a globally compliant, modern payment architecture has only grown stronger. Hong Kong is no ordinary market, sitting at the heart of some of the most critical cross-border corridors in global commerce. With this license, Tazapay is now better positioned to serve the enterprises and fintechs that need secure, compliant access to these high-volume corridors. With coverage across 70+ markets and over US$10 billion in annualized payment volume, Tazapay continues to build the rails that global commerce runs on. Congratulations to Rahul Shinghal and the Tazapay team. The best is yet to come. Jonathan Hodson | Roy Ong #JanuaryCapital #Tazapay #HongKong #MSO #CrossBorderPayments #Fintech #PortfolioNews

30 teams. One week. Here's what went down at the OpenAI × January Capital × Lyra × Relevance AI Hackathon: Last Friday, the teams took the stage at the Relevance AI Office to show what they'd built. The challenge: pick a real-world market - Enterprise, SMEs, Commerce, or Venture Capital - and build an AI agent using Codex or OpenAI's APIs and solve real-world problems. Here's what rose to the top: 🥇 Orbit — $50,000 USD in OpenAI credits Adit Vikram Mishra and Shaurya V Sharma Orbit is an AI office for the agentic workforce that delivers a full marketing campaign by generating ideas, planning, researching, creating, reviewing, approving and executing real work end to end. 🥈 Julia — $25,000 USD in OpenAI credits Chris Yoo, Antoine N., Kevin Lin and Eric R. Julia is an agentic workspace that autonomously runs experiments to discover novel proteins and facilitates drug discovery at speed, a process that traditionally takes months, compressed into minutes. 🥉 Shortlist — $10,000 USD in OpenAI credits Jing Long Wong, Shana Yutuc, Jena Bathan and Triet Le Dinh Minh Shortlist is an AI-powered full HR suite for creating job postings, scheduling interviews, and interviewing candidates with automated meeting notes. Everything a small team needs, without the headcount. Congratulations to every team that shipped last week! Across all four tracks, builders came in with a problem, a blank canvas, and less than 4 days to figure it out. What they walked out with was something far beyond a prototype. Thank you to our partners for bringing this to life — from judging to venue: OpenAI (Thomas Jeng, Sun Weiran, Gabriel Chua), Lyra (Anh Dao, Sukhesh Patro, Gia Luong), Relevance AI (Jacky Koh, Chelsea Wise, Andrew Suryanto). Australia's AI ecosystem is taking shape in real time. Last week was proof. We can't wait to see what comes next.

Amazon's search converts at 18%. The rest of e-commerce? 3%. This gap is exactly why Tom Hamer left one of the world's biggest tech companies to build Marqo — and why it attracted a USD$12.5M Series A led by Lightspeed. In this episode, Ben and Alex are joined by Tom Hamer, Co-Founder and CEO of Marqo — the AI-native vector search platform giving every e-commerce company access to the same calibre of search technology that powers Amazon. Tom reflects on his own founder evolution — from a self-taught coder in Australia to an Amazon Web Services (AWS) engineer, to a Bay Area CEO navigating early product mistakes, cultural hiring decisions, and the realities of scaling a deep-tech company globally. Watch the full episode to hear Tom's insights on building a self-optimizing search engine, why traditional chatbots fail in commerce, and what the next era of AI-powered retail looks like.

January Capital, together with OpenAI and Jelawang Capital, are bringing OpenAI’s Startups Team to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia for a curated, builder-first working session with founders and technical operators actively building AI products. This is not a panel — the session is designed as a hands-on build sprint, focused on real product decisions and live demos. All attendees will receive OpenAI credits. The strongest demos on the day will receive: 🥇 $25,000 in credits + 12 months ChatGPT Pro & Codex 🥈 $10,000 in credits + 12 months ChatGPT Pro & Codex 🥉 $5,000 in credits + 12 months ChatGPT Pro & Codex Built for founders, engineers and technical operators actively building AI products in or from Malaysia.  📅 Tuesday, 12 May 2026 🕘 9:00 AM (GMT+8) 📍 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (venue shared upon approved registration) Sign-up link in the comments ⬇️ Spots are limited and curated — priority goes to teams actively building and shipping. Joshua Lim | Joie Yi Jie Ong | Thomas Jeng #JanuaryCapital #OpenAI #JelawangCapital #AI #KL #Malaysia

Yesterday, we brought together Sydney's most promising early-stage founders and builders at the Airwallex office for Pitch Day. 9 teams. 3 minutes each. A judging panel from January Capital, OpenAI, Airwallex and Accel, who didn't make it easy. Here are your winners 🏆 🥇 1st Place ($100k in OpenAI credits) — Apate.ai | Brad Joffe 🥈 2nd Place ($50k in OpenAI credits) — Alloovium | Zander Schweitzer 🥉 3rd Place ($25k in OpenAI credits) — Matrak | Shane Hodgkins Congratulations to all three — and to every team that took the stage and walked away with $10K in OpenAI credits for pitching. Thank you to our partners who made this event possible: OpenAI (Thomas Jeng, Satya Tammareddy), Airwallex (Taylor Fox-Smith, Lisa Tsai, Melissa Sumarli) and Accel (Siddharth Prabhu). We'll be back with more opportunities to connect ambitious founders with the people and resources to help them grow. Keep watching this space! #JanuaryCapital #OpenAI #Accel #Airwallex

On TheFirst Podcast, we explored the unconventional hiring strategies of founders we spoke with. From seeking out "under-leveled" talent to hiring future entrepreneurs, these insights redefine what it means to build an early-stage team. Thank you to the featured founders for sharing their hiring philosophies: • Chris Eigeland (Go1), Ned Dwyer (Great Question), John Melas-Kyriazi (Standard Metrics), Chris Withers (klikit)

🚀 Almost 30 teams showed up to the OpenAI × Lyra × January Capital × Relevance AI Hackathon Kickoff yesterday — and OpenAI shared a live demo of Codex, giving builders a first look at what's now possible before they got to work. Hackathon Week is in full swing, and what the teams are shipping is something you need to see in person. 📍 Finale & Demo Day — 1 May | Relevance AI Office We're opening registrations to the broader startup ecosystem. If you're an investor, operator, founder, or builder — this is your front-row seat to Australia's next wave of AI-native startups. Register now in the link below ⬇️ Alex Rankin | Raynard Lao | Joie Yi Jie Ong Thomas Jeng | Gabriel Chua Anh Dao | Gia Luong Jacky Koh | Andrew Suryanto