How good a gamer is Razer CEO Tan Min-Liang? We challenged him and found out
- Tan has turned his passion for gaming into a global business with more than US$700 million in revenue last year
- Razer is building an ecosystem of products and services catering to gamers
Tan Min-Liang hates Tim Cook and Jack Dorsey.
Or more precisely, the kind of early-morning routine that the CEOs of Apple and Twitter favour: gym workouts, yoga, runs and meditation performed when most people are still in bed.
“A lot of tech CEOs wake up at 5 o’clock in the morning, they meditate, and then they go for a run,” Tan, 42, co-founder and chief executive of gaming hardware maker Razer, said in a recent mid-morning interview. “I hate all those CEOs. I cannot do that.”
Tan wakes up at 8am most days if he has “no choice”, checks email in bed before “dragging” himself to work. That last comment is misleading given how the avid gamer built Razer into a global business with a cult following in the gaming community. One fan tattooed Tan’s likeness on his calf. Many more have inked themselves with Razer’s logo of three intertwined snakes.
Today, he is arguably one the most high-profile tech entrepreneurs from Singapore since Sim Wong Hoo, the 64-year-old founder of Creative Technology, the company behind Sound Blaster audio cards.