FATHER OF THE YEAR: MICHAEL TEO

It’s hard to imagine someone with more of a charmed life than Michael Teo. The founder of one of Singapore’s most visionary companies has a picture-perfect family, a gorgeous house, and a growing collection of classic sports cars. Did we mention that he has the physique of a Calvin Klein underwear model and cheekbones you could cut diamonds on? Olivia Irawidjaya digs a little deeper, and discovers that there’s far more to the man than meets the eye…

“Do you know what this is?” Michael Teo asks as he points to an old yellowing document in a simple titanium frame hanging on the wall of his ultramodern dressing room, in between rows of bespoke suits from the likes of Brioni, Caraceni, and Cifonelli. I scrutinize the writing and discover to my astonishment that it’s signed “Abraham Lincoln.” “This is an original copy of the Emancipation Proclamation. There are only seven copies in existence and I own one of them,” Teo says proudly. “I’ve hung it right across from the mirrored wall in my closet so that I can see it every day while I’m putting on my clothes, and be reminded of who I am.”

It’s only fitting, since Teo is an emancipated man himself—a few years ago, he was a virtual unknown toiling away at his tech start-up in Jurong. This son of schoolteachers grew up “very middle class in Toa Payoh,” he shamelessly admits, but through hard work and perseverance gained a place at St. Andrew’s School, and from there became a standout commando in the Singapore Armed Forces.

“From the very beginning, Teo proved himself to be one of the bravest cadets of his generation,” his former commanding officer Major Dick Teo (no relation) recalls. “His endurance level was almost superhuman, but it was his intelligence that propelled him to the top of military intelligence.” Teo won a government scholarship to study computer engineering at the prestigious California Institute of Technology, and after graduating summa cum laude, he returned to work at the Ministry of Defence.

Another high-ranking official I spoke to, Lt. Col. Naveen Sinha, says, “I can’t tell you exactly what he did, because that’s classified information. But let’s just say that Michael Teo has been instrumental in helping to bolster our intelligence capabilities. We were sorry to see him go.”

What led Teo to leave a promising career with MINDEF to go into the private sector? “Love. I fell for a beautiful woman, got married, and decided that I needed to start acting like a married man—all the constant travel visiting army bases around the world and working through the night was no longer for me. Plus, I needed to build my own empire for the sake of my son and my wife,” Teo says, his piercing hawk-like eyes flickering with emotion.

When I quiz him about his wife, he remains somewhat evasive. “She prefers to stay out of the limelight.” Spying a black-and-white portrait of a stunning woman in his bedroom, I ask, “Is that her?” “Yes, but that was taken quite a few years ago,” he says. I take a closer look and discover that the photograph is signed “To Astrid—who still eludes me, Dick.” “Who’s ‘Dick,’ ” I ask? “It’s actually some photographer named Richard Burton who died awhile back,” Michael says. Wait a minute, was this picture taken by the legendary fashion photographer Richard Avedon? “Oh yeah, that’s his name.”

Intrigued by this astonishing tidbit, I went sleuthing into Astrid Teo’s past. Was she a high-fashion model in New York? As it turns out, Astrid is not just another pretty Methodist Girls School girl who married well and became a pampered housewife. Pinnacle can now reveal that she is the only daughter of Henry and Felicity Leong—names that are quite meaningless to most readers of this magazine, but who are apparently influential in their own right.

An expert on Southeast Asian lineage (who wished to remain unnamed) says, “You won’t ever find the Leongs on any list because they are far too smart and far too discreet to be visible. They are an exceedingly private Straits Chinese family that goes back generations and has diversified holdings all over Asia—raw materials, commodities, real estate, that sort of thing. Their wealth is vast—Astrid’s great-grandfather S. W. Leong used to be called ‘the Palm Oil King of Borneo.’ If Singapore had an aristocracy, Astrid would be considered a princess.”

Another grande dame of Singapore’s old-money crowd who will only talk off the record tells me, “It’s not just her Leong blood that makes her important. Astrid is loaded on both sides. Her mother is Felicity Young, and let me just tell you, the Youngs make everybody else look like paupers, because they intermarried with the T’siens and the Shangs. Alamak, I’ve already told you too much.”

Can this mysteriously powerful family be responsible for Teo’s meteoric success? “Absolutely not!” Teo says angrily. Then, catching himself, he breaks into a laugh. “Originally, I was the one who married up, I’ll admit that. But nowadays I fit in very well with her family specifically because I never asked for their help—I was determined to succeed entirely on my own.”

And succeed he has—by now everyone knows how Teo’s fledgling tech firm was suddenly acquired by a Silicon Valley company in 2010, increasing his net worth by several hundred million dollars. While most men might have been content to spend the rest of their lives staring out at the ocean view from one of Annabel Lee’s luxury resorts, Teo doubled down and started his own tech-focused venture capital firm.

“I had no interest in retiring at thirty-three. I felt like I had been handed this golden opportunity, and I didn’t want to take it for granted. There is so much talent and ingenuity right here in Singapore, and I wanted to find Asia’s next generation of Sergey Brins and provide them with the wings to fly,” Teo says. So far, his bets haven’t just soared like eagles, they’ve rocketed to the moon. His apps Gong Simi? and Ziak Simi? have revolutionised the way Singaporeans communicate and argue about food, and several of the start-ups he has funded have been acquired by behemoths like Google, Alibaba Group, and Tencent. The Heron Wealth Report estimates that Teo is now worth close to a billion dollars—not bad for a thirty-six-year-old who shared a bedroom with two of his brothers until he went to college.

So how does a man like Teo enjoy the spoils of his fortune? For starters, there is the contemporary villa in Bukit Timah that anyone driving past could easily mistake for an Aman Resort. Built around several reflecting pools and Mediterranean-style gardens, the sprawling house is already getting a bit cramped for Teo’s growing collection of war artifacts and sports cars. “We are in the process of building a new home, and have been interviewing prospective architects like Renzo Piano and Jean Nouvel. We really want something revolutionary, a home like nothing Singapore’s ever seen.”

Until then, Teo takes me on a tour of his exclusive booty. On the ground-floor gallery, samurai swords from the Edo period and a massive canon from the Napoleonic War are displayed alongside his sparklingly restored Porsches, Ferraris, and Aston Martins. “I’m taking my time, but I hope to amass the finest collection of vintage sports cars outside the Western Hemisphere. See this 1963 Ferrari Modena Spyder over here?” Teo says, as he rubs the chrome work lovingly with his index finger. “This is the actual Ferrari that Ferris Bueller drove on his day off.”

And just home from kindergarten is Teo’s adorable son, Cassian, who enters the room doing a series of cartwheels. Teo grabs him by the collar of his shirt and lifts the boy into his arms. “All these things I possess, though, are nothing to me without this little rascal here.” Cassian, a high-spirited boy who has inherited his parents’ extraordinary looks, will turn six later this year, and Teo is determined to pass on the secrets of his success to his son. “I’m a true believer in the adage ‘spare the rod and spoil the child.’ I think kids need a great deal of discipline, and they need to be trained to function at their highest level. For example, my son is exceedingly smart, and I don’t feel that he’s being challenged at his kindergarten, and this will be very bold of me to say, but I don’t think he’ll be challenged at any primary school in Singapore either.”

So does that mean that the Teos plan to send their child abroad to a boarding school at such an early age? “We haven’t made up our minds yet, but we think we’ll either send him to Gordonstoun in Scotland [the alma mater of both Prince Philip and Prince Charles] or Le Rosey in Switzerland. For my son, nothing is more important than the best education that money can buy—I want him to go to school with future kings and world leaders, people who really shake up the world,” he fervently declares. Michael Teo is undoubtedly one of these people, and with such a dedicated vision and love for his son, it’s no wonder he is Pinnacle’s Father of the Year!