Podcast · 离线时间
离线时间 is my Chinese-language podcast: long conversations with AI founders building companies that go global. English interviews and analysis are published here in Writing.
Make your company
legible.
From Singapore, I help AI founders make their company legible to the next market and the next investor: the story it tells, and the people who hear it first.
Writing
AI founders, going global.
Founder interviews and independent analysis by Ellen Cheng. Many of these conversations start on 离线时间, my Chinese-language podcast.
01 / What I do
Conversations that lead somewhere.
Community · AI for Beautiful Business
A small, closed-door gathering for founders taking AI companies global. Each session is built around one real case, with space to go deep into the decisions behind it.
Working with founders.
Bring a specific question: who needs to understand your company, and what do you want that conversation to lead to? It could be a customer, a partner, or an investor.
hello@ellencheng.com ↗02 / Selected work
Selling visibility,
not automation.
The company was selling automation: AI that does most of the bookkeeping. Customer conversations told a different story. For a restaurant group running around 30 outlets, the value wasn't fewer hours. It was seeing the month's numbers on Day 1 instead of Day 20, down to every line on every supplier invoice.
We rebuilt the company's story around one idea: see your business for the first time.
That idea now anchors new industry and product pages, starting with F&B; a search programme designed to be found by both Google and AI assistants; and a content series co-created with the flagship customer's founders.
03 / Ways to collaborate
Working together.
Narrative
Project-basedPositioning and a clear founder story for customers, partners, and investors—with fundraising strategy and an investor narrative when raising capital is the goal.
Monthly partnership
MonthlyFounder-led content, strategic introductions, and support for conversations with customers, partners, and investors.
Equity partnership
Cash + equityFor a select few early-stage AI companies, I take a hands-on role in founder narrative, strategic relationships, and market expansion—with compensation structured as a mix of fees and equity.
From arrival
to connection.
Getting established. Considering Singapore as a base? Start with the questions of setting up locally, covered in the article linked below.
Capital. Fundraising can be part of our work: clarifying the company story and supporting conversations with investors.
Founder networks. I built a Singapore community from the ground up, bringing AI founders, operators, and investors together through founder dinners and closed-door conversations.
Read about setting up in Singapore ↗04 / About Ellen
Close to the
people building.
Since moving to Singapore in 2023, I've spent most of my time with founders building AI companies for global markets: interviewing them, bringing them together, and working inside a few of their companies.
I host 离线时间, a weekly Chinese-language podcast of long conversations with AI founders; the English interviews and analysis are published here in Writing. I co-run AI for Beautiful Business, a closed-door gathering where founders take one real case apart. And I take hands-on roles with a small number of companies on narrative, go-to-market, and fundraising.
Before Singapore, I invested at a USD fund in Beijing and co-founded a startup. That's where I learned how investors read a company, and how rarely founders tell their story the way it deserves.