The Pedalling Investor — Jia Hong Shaw

Turn Off Turn On Ventures · Singapore

The
Pedalling
Investor

Amsterdam to Sofia on two wheels.
15 investments. 40+ founders.
One very deliberate bet on the planet.

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"Turn Off" means switching off — on a bicycle, in wind and rain, far from any screen.
"Turn On" means showing up, in person, for the founders changing everything.

The Story

A Singaporean in finance
trades it all in.

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The Background

Ex-BlackRock. Born in Singapore. Trained in institutional finance — the kind of career that makes sense on a LinkedIn profile and on a dinner table. But Jia Hong Shaw had a harder question he couldn't stop asking: what is capital for, if not for what matters most?

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September 2021 — The First Cheque

In September 2021, he wrote his first angel cheque in the sustainability and climate space. Not a fund. Not a firm. Just a conviction and a signature. With the encouragement of close friends and mentors, that first cheque became a private angel syndicate — and the syndicate became Turn Off Turn On Ventures.

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2022 — The Decision to Pedal

The MBA savings were real. The opportunity was real. But the classroom felt like the wrong room to learn what the world needed. He chose Europe instead — not by plane, not by train, but by bicycle. From Amsterdam to Sofia, meeting founders, researchers, and investors at every stop. The thesis was simple: the best due diligence is done in person.

15 Investments globally
40+ Startups mentored & advised
2 Chapters across Europe
∞ Kilometres still to pedal
The Journey

Amsterdam → Sofia,
and back again.

Chapter 1 was the route. Chapter 2 was the return.
Every city was a conversation. Every conversation was a lesson.

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Amsterdam, Netherlands · Chapter 1

The starting line

The beginning of the Amsterdam → Sofia route. Add your story here — what it felt like to clip in and push off for the first time, knowing how far you had to go.

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Rotterdam, Netherlands · Chapter 1

First conversations

Home of Venture Café Rotterdam and one of Europe's most forward-looking innovation hubs. Add your story from this stop.

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Berlin, Germany · Chapter 1

The startup heartland

Home of INAM Berlin and one of Europe's deepest climate tech ecosystems. Delivered an Angel Investment workshop here. Add the real story from this stop.

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Warsaw, Poland · Chapters 1 & 2

Bootcamp & Demo Day

Freespace Warsaw hosted TOTO's very first Bootcamp and Demo Day. Founders including FibriTech, URVIS.BIKE, Alpha Powders, and TechNovator took the stage. Add your story from this city.

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Tallinn, Estonia · Chapter 2

The return — with a new lens

Chapter 2 brought a renewed focus on storytelling. Tallinn was one of the stops for connecting with local cleantech players and running storytelling bootcamps for founders. Add your story here.

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Sofia, Bulgaria · Chapter 1

The finish line — and a new beginning

The final destination of Chapter 1. Add the story of arriving here — what it meant, what you felt, what you learned on the road that you couldn't have learned anywhere else.

More stops, more stories — the full journey is still being written.

The Work

Investing, teaching,
and convening.

Climate hardware needs more than capital. It needs storytellers, connectors, and believers. TOTO is all three.

01

Angel Portfolio

15 early-stage investments globally, concentrated in climate hardware. Circular economy. Carbon capture. Advanced materials. Energy storage. Every cheque written after meeting founders in person.

Ask about the portfolio →
02

Storytelling Bootcamps

A needs-based, 1-day bootcamp for cleantech founders — helping technical teams find the human story inside their innovation. Run at Freespace Warsaw, AdMaLab, and with incubators and accelerators across Europe.

Bring a bootcamp to your programme →
03

Workshops & Keynotes

Angel investment workshops (INAM Berlin), ecosystem keynotes on Singapore's VC landscape, and conversations at Venture Café Rotterdam and Warsaw. 40+ startups mentored and advised across the journey.

Invite Jia Hong to speak →
Investment Thesis

Climate hardware.
In person. Always.

TOTO invests alongside other angel investors in early-stage companies solving the hard physical problems of decarbonisation.

  • Circular economy
  • Carbon capture & removal
  • Advanced materials
  • Energy storage

The requirement is always the same: meet the founders first. No cheque is written from a pitch deck alone.

"The best due diligence I ever did
was done at 15 kilometres per hour."
Get in Touch

Founder. Investor.
Bootcamp host.
Let's talk.

Whether you're a climate tech founder looking for a first cheque, an accelerator wanting to bring a storytelling bootcamp to your cohort, an investor curious about the angel syndicate, or a journalist following the journey — reach out.

✉ hello@turnoffturnon.life ↗ turnoffturnon.life in Turn Off Turn On Ventures

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