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February 2, 2023

QED hires Melissa Ho as first employee in Singapore

By

Ashley Marshall

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ALEXANDRIA, Va. -- QED Investors, a leading global venture capital firm focused on investing in disruptive financial services companies, today announced the hire of Melissa Ho.

Melissa joins QED as a principal focusing on fintech investments across multiple stages in Southeast Asia, with an emphasis on early stage companies.

“Mel is passionate about working closely with the companies she invests in and has a sense of humility and realism which takes her a long way there,” said QED Investors Partner and Head of Asia, Sandeep Patil. “She is a driven and energetic investor and a determined and intentional partner. Her diverse breadth of experiences and depth with the Singapore and Southeast Asia ecosystem will be brilliant additions to QED as we advance to help founders at the earliest stage of their journeys and build our on-ground presence in Asia.”

Previously, Melissa led the investment team at Wavemaker Partners, one of Southeast Asia's leading seed VC funds investing in enterprise, deep tech and sustainability companies. She was responsible for the Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia and Bangladesh markets, plus the primary verticals of SaaS, B2B marketplaces, proptech, edtech, commerce and consumer internet.

Melissa started her career at Singapore Airlines where she gained operational experience across product innovation and management, corporate strategy, as well as fuel procurement and hedging. Before transitioning to VC, she founded and led the regional marketing, partnerships team at Shopee, Southeast Asia's largest e-commerce firm.

Melissa graduated Summa Cum Laude with a B.A. in international relations and economics from New York University.

Founded in 2007, QED Investors has invested in more than 200 companies, including 28 unicorns, and has $4.3 billion under management.

‍

Contact
‍
Ashley Marshall
Director, PR and Communications
QED Investors
(518) 577-9984

‍

ALEXANDRIA, Va. -- QED Investors, a leading global venture capital firm focused on investing in disruptive financial services companies, today announced the hire of Melissa Ho.

Melissa joins QED as a principal focusing on fintech investments across multiple stages in Southeast Asia, with an emphasis on early stage companies.

“Mel is passionate about working closely with the companies she invests in and has a sense of humility and realism which takes her a long way there,” said QED Investors Partner and Head of Asia, Sandeep Patil. “She is a driven and energetic investor and a determined and intentional partner. Her diverse breadth of experiences and depth with the Singapore and Southeast Asia ecosystem will be brilliant additions to QED as we advance to help founders at the earliest stage of their journeys and build our on-ground presence in Asia.”

Previously, Melissa led the investment team at Wavemaker Partners, one of Southeast Asia's leading seed VC funds investing in enterprise, deep tech and sustainability companies. She was responsible for the Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia and Bangladesh markets, plus the primary verticals of SaaS, B2B marketplaces, proptech, edtech, commerce and consumer internet.

Melissa started her career at Singapore Airlines where she gained operational experience across product innovation and management, corporate strategy, as well as fuel procurement and hedging. Before transitioning to VC, she founded and led the regional marketing, partnerships team at Shopee, Southeast Asia's largest e-commerce firm.

Melissa graduated Summa Cum Laude with a B.A. in international relations and economics from New York University.

Founded in 2007, QED Investors has invested in more than 200 companies, including 28 unicorns, and has $4.3 billion under management.

‍

Contact
‍
Ashley Marshall
Director, PR and Communications
QED Investors
(518) 577-9984

‍

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01

Settlement Collapse

Value transfer moves from days - corresponding banking, T+1 securities - to seconds. Working capital tied up in float is released.

02

Cost Collapse

Marginal transaction cost approaches zero: fractions of a cent, versus 1-6% on card and corresponding rails.

03

Programmability

Money becomes an object that carries logic - escrow, splits, rebates, compliance - executed by code, not back offices.

Pure infrastructure with no revenue accrual

Layer-1 chains and general-purpose middleware — outside our circle of competence and typically outside our stage.

Speculative asset creation

NFT platforms, memecoins, prediction markets styled as products — mapping to none of the five functions; structurally uninvestable for us.

Three structural truths cut across all five functions.

(a)

Regulated-first wins

The 2020/21 cycle proved permissionless purity does not survive contact with real financial regulation. GENIUS, MiCA, CLARITY and the UK/Singapore regimes are producing founders who start from “how do we get licensed” and build backwards — precisely the founder profile QED has always preferred.
(b)

Incumbents upgraded, not disintermediated

JPMorgan, Citi, Bank of America and Wells Fargo are jointly building a tokenized-deposit network; Visa launched a stablecoin platform in July 2026; 140+ businesses signed an open stablecoin standard. Banks migrate — and new-generation infrastructure companies own the picks and shovels of that migration.
(c)

Emerging markets feel it first

Every function improves most where the fiat experience is worst: cross-border payments, dollar access, investment product availability, working-capital finance. Those are exactly the geographies where QED has fintech ventures’ deepest footprint. Our geographic distribution is not incidental to the tokenization thesis — it is the thesis.

Trade & working-capital finance

Finkargo( LatAm import finance) and OatFi(B2B working-capital infrastructure) sit directly on flows whose logical settlement layer is stablecoin.

Collateralized digital-asset lending

Tokenized Treasuries, equities and stablecoin holdings as instant, programmable collateral.

On-chain private credt

Maple, Centrifuge and emerging institutional protocols - credit funds migrating to programmable rails.

Why QED is advanced

Credit is QED's craft: distinguishing lending businesses from fintechs pretending to be one, charge-offs earned from charge-offs deferred. On-chain credit is a straight-line extension, not a stretch.