Darren Ho
I’m Darren, currently leading my own blockchain and Web 3 investment and consultancy firm.
Darren is a successful entrepreneur who defies all stereotypes despite the fact that he has three neurodiverse conditions: autism, ADHD and Tourette's syndrome.
My role is to help companies expand into the Web 3 and blockchain space, while helping them with their digital strategies as well as raising funds for new and existing projects.
Work experience
I started my career when I was relatively young, at 15. I was assembling computers for people and it was very technical and engineering-related. I progressed from that to starting online e-commerce.
It was geek work basically, just programming. Then I moved into something that was more engineering-related in the mobile and telecommunications space. I started my own company where we served the Middle Eastern and the local market here, providing messaging solutions.
Then, it got really interesting. I suddenly took this leap, and I went from programming back end, back-facing solutions to running a media company. Then I realized that when you run your own business, you need to market your services. That became a very interesting step because I started to apply all the skills, moving heavily into content marketing, digital marketing etc.
After which, I managed to sell my company, joined another one and started learning more about managing finances and project financing and all of that, more 360 rather than looking at silo-ed work. Having to lead teams across the region and having to lead people who sometimes don't speak English is quite an interesting experience.
Then I went to Indonesia where I helped someone start a farm-to-table business. That was a very interesting experience, completely out of my original line of work. I still apply the same principles and then landed at this point where I was very kindly offered an interesting role to enhance people's experience on digital platforms. I get to coach and teach, which I love. And at the same time, I get to strategically give them the resources they need to make things happen for their growth. And then from there, we look at creating products or services that can serve Singaporeans better.
Childhood
I think my childhood was relatively eventful. I say that because I was always a very active kid, running around, and wanting to do things. Played a lot of tennis when I was younger, and always dreamt of becoming a professional tennis player. However, that didn't work out due to injury and other factors. It wasn't very suitable for me to pursue that path but I always remember my childhood being one where I was always perspiring and physically, always having to move and do something.
If anyone struggled a lot at academics, that would probably be me, really not the most attentive person in the class. I always had issues with carelessness and all of that. On every report card, my teacher’s comments were, "I think Darren has got potential, but he's very restless. Always disturbing people and needs to settle down a little bit". But overall my childhood was relatively fun.
Schooling days
For me, secondary school was a really good experience. I went to St Joseph’s Institution and the teachers there were very nurturing and patient. Even today, I feel my parents and I made a really good choice enrolling me there. Nonetheless, those four years were particularly difficult for me as I was quite a difficult teenager. I was getting involved in all sorts of wrong things. But the teachers were nurturing, and I think they did a really good job in pulling me out of that space together with my parents. Those four years were very memorable and if it’s not for them, I might have gone down a very different path.
Schooling for me has always been tough, to be honest. I mean, you're talking to someone who can barely keep his attention span for 15 minutes on a good day and three to four minutes at a time on bad ones. And, as you can imagine, long periods of classes made it very challenging for me.
“Education has always been challenging. Not because of the friends and the people I meet, but more because it’s always a struggle to sit through a one-hour lesson, and absorb only the first 10 minutes. Then you go back and relearn everything yourself.”
Socially, it's also a bit of a challenge sometimes because I don't quite like large crowds and that social setting. I get a bit anxious at certain times. Again, over the years I’ve learnt to cope with it but when you are growing up as a teenager, you don't know how to deal with it.
Coping skills & strengths
One of the things that I tried initially was to cram as much as I can read within 15 minutes, which I thought was not sustainable. So instead, I broke things down into small chunks and started pacing myself instead of sprinting. I wouldn't pressure myself in trying to understand something immediately.
I don't think it’s the concept of whether someone is slower or faster at comprehending something, I think it's just that our minds work differently. I realised that without that pressure and without putting that pressure on myself, I was starting to deal with it a lot better. Because, when you're surrounded by a class of 40 people in secondary school and 20 people in JC and when everyone gets it while you're struggling to get it, you start to put pressure on yourself.
I take whatever notes I can and then revise after. I tend to spend a lot more time on my studies than other people because I spent the extra time reviewing and breaking information down into sizeable chunks. It's not only about the time spent but the quality of it. Hence, I try to create an environment around me that is free of distractions.
Work-wise, sometimes people love having meetings with me as my meetings are very short. But for meetings that do get a bit longer, I will stand up just to freshen things up. In today's context, people don’t question why someone stands up anymore. For me, it’s not about falling asleep but more like needing a change.
Another strategy I have is that I take a lot of notes. My notebooks run out in like two to three months. Writing (as opposed to typing) gives me a much closer affinity to what I'm listening to and I depend a lot on my senses, especially the sense of touch which is very important to me. I will write and take notes and would go through them at the end of the day just to make sure I understand and if I don't, I’ll ask questions. It’s good to ask questions, you don't want to have any half-truths.
From a young age, I tend to look at things systematically, and it became quite natural for me to look at a complex issue and bring it down into its simplest unit and then solve it from the bottom up. It has helped me to structure my thoughts and to also see things from another perspective that others might not see. It is something that I've picked up and cultivated. I've been doing that for almost 20 years already.
When I look at problems, I don't look at what's in front of me. I always try to dig deeper and investigate.
Socialising & friendships
Socialising has always been awkward for me, and even though I learned how to mask it better these days, it is still awkward. When I was younger, I tend to get agitated when there were too many people. You can imagine the sensory overload and communicating with someone is challenging when there are too many people in the room. I get very distracted when there’s a lot of noise and I could be hearing another conversation during our conversation. It’s as though they're right next to me.
On top of that, because of the sensory overload, sometimes I forget what has been said in that conversation, which leads me to become edgy and nervous around people. Even though I’ve done interviews and public talks, when it comes to the after-party, I'm always not there. I prefer to take time to recover and shut down. I guess that explains why I’ve never liked team sports. That dynamic is a bit too much for me which explains why I've always liked to train alone, even for tennis and triathlons.
I don't generally go out a lot and prefer to do things in the comfort of my home. I socialise with close friends and as we got older, we don’t really like big crowds and want to have more meaningful conversations instead. But, when we were younger, everyone wants to go out in big groups and that personally was tiring for me.
I have an understanding and supportive group of friends who didn’t treat me any differently when they found out about my condition. Sometimes I need to cancel appointments due to meltdowns and they were understanding about it. Although it took me a while to be open about my condition as I was afraid of being judged, I found out that the more people know about my condition, the more accepting they become. After telling my condition to others and explaining it to them, they seem more aware and interested in finding out more.
My friends always respect me for being brutally honest. There are times I have no filter, and people think my social skills are shallow. In a way, there's always going to be someone who's like that. Whether you're neurotypical or neurodivergent, I think there are people who just speak their minds. I'm glad that I have a group of friends who accepted me even when they know that I had these learning disabilities, we still form very close friendships.
When we are perfectly open and honest with one another, then I think we can form close relationships.
Focus on process, not just results
If we all grew up surrounded by media and social media, we start to benchmark ourselves by what we should be achieving, based on what someone else has done. We start to look at ourselves and think that we're not good enough.
We start to look at our results and when we don't get what we want, based on the effort that we put in, we think that that's a failure. Take me for example, I'm someone who can put in possibly two or three times more effort than someone else and barely scrape through.
“I used to put a lot of pressure on myself. I used to think if this is what life has in store for me, it’s looking bleak.”
If you were to ask me if I would do things any other way, my honest answer is, “What other ways do I have?” I was born this way and I just got to keep at it.
We are very used to measuring ourselves with what we can see, and we don't take stock of what we’ve learned along the way. Qualities like perseverance, fortitude, determination, the never say die attitude and the always can-do attitude are more important.
It's a very challenging world today where everyone is worried about money and results, but it's about focusing on what's truly important that will enable us to succeed. The world is starting to realise that it's not that difficult to produce visible results. But the cost of it comes where we cannot recover, and this comes down to yourself as well. If we keep pushing and pressuring ourselves, for tangibles that we can see, we forget the lessons we learn along the way. Then we are simply promoting a belief that we are only as good as what we can see in front.
Sometimes when we fail, it is important to see the positives and ask yourself what did you learn from it? It's like how you take your money and save it. Similarly, you take life lessons and you bank them as well, something that you can fall back on a rainy day.
I realised that when you accumulate those lessons and put them to use, the problems you start to face become lesser because you’ve faced them before. My advice would be to not worry, don't worry unduly about things you can’t control and worry about what you can control. It's like how every river will eventually meet the sea. It's a meandering road and never straight.
The idea is that you then need to just follow and just let it be for a while and there will be wisdom from that. I used to always try to go straight, the fastest possible route, and it got very demoralising. When you go off the path for a while, don't look at your losses but appreciate the beauty that is around you.
A certain obsession with results is important, but sometimes when you don't get the result you want, take a step back and just understand, why is it a mistake, why you've gone down this path and then try again. And never stop trying.
I think anxiety comes from this sense of hopelessness but think about it this way. If you've tried hard once, you can always try again. And eventually, the results will come. Life has got great things intended for you and you just need to keep going at it. We could be one step away from a breakthrough but if you choose to give up now, you'll never see it happen.
Triathlons
About 11 years ago, I weighed 150 kilos and was morbidly obese with a failing liver and yellow eyes when I woke up. To the point where my doctor told me that I cannot live past my 40th birthday. Looking back, all the problems and anxiety going on in my mind culminated and I lost control, which led me to go down this destructive path of eating and drinking without any control. From there, I went from a fit tennis player to a fat person.
I had a wake-up call when my uncle passed away for very similar reasons as he was overweight and did not want to control his diet. He had diabetes and what started with a small cut on his foot resulted in a loss of his toe and finally his leg. Having been there when he died, I decided I didn't want to be that way anymore.
When that happened in 2012, I decided I needed to do something. I exercised and controlled my diet for 6 months but nothing happened. Even though I was doing everything right, I cut down on alcohol, and fast food and started to exercise, my weight dropped only a little and that discouraged me. I went on a rebound, and I regained whatever little bit of weight loss I had.
I then gave myself a longer time frame of five years to get healthy. In 2016, My weight was back to double digits. I started to get into cycling and considered joining cycling races. In races, cyclists are compacted together which made me uncomfortable as I don’t do well in crowds. So came my friend who challenged me to do a triathlon instead. Even though I can’t swim and my cycling isn’t great either, he told me that if I can lose 50kg then he’s sure I’ll find a way to do it.
So, I started researching and taught myself how to swim but eventually, I got a coach. Ever since, I started swimming and running every day, forcing myself to run no matter how short the distance. That year, I did every triathlon distance available except for the ultra-distance. I did the sprint triathlon, Olympic distance, half Ironman, then a full Ironman and in that one year, I did seven races.
“There’s always going to be a lot of pain in (triathlon) races, and that’s where I started to understand and apply those important life lessons I’ve learned. When it hurts, you just have to tell yourself, just push that little bit more.”
Our minds have a very quick way of shutting us down the moment it feels a bit of pain. I like to believe that our bodies are a lot more capable if you can tune your mind to think that way. In 2017, I did a back-to-back Ironman where I went to Switzerland followed by Russia. In 2019 I represented Singapore in the World Championships and had the honour of wearing our national flag.
2020 was supposed to be a fun year and then Covid struck. That didn’t stop me from running and I managed to run 105km, and biked 500km over 4 days, followed by a marathon. To end the year, I finished with a 100km run. I took a break in 2021 to recover and prevent injuries. And finally, in 2022, I’m training for races again, went back into tennis and even took part in tournaments in which I didn’t do too badly.
Getting diagnosed
I was having lunch at a hawker centre in Old Airport Road. During that time the place was crowded with people, so much so that temporary tables were set up. I was sitting at one of those tables and suddenly felt this wave of anger rushing through me. According to witnesses, I stood up, shouted, threw the chair on the floor and stormed off. The next thing I knew I was in my car and I was driving off.
It's a scary situation when such an eventful thing has happened and you don't remember the exact details of it. That to me was a red flag and made me think, what if I happened to attack someone? Saying I don’t remember is not going to be a valid excuse. I remember telling my mom that I needed to see the doctor and that something wasn’t right. So I went and did a barrage of mental tests and was diagnosed with Tourette’s Syndrome, ADHD and autism.
Tourette’s and ADHD weren’t as shocking as it was quite visible. I’ve always been easily distracted and have a short attention span. The one that was a little bit more shocking to me was autism. Based on what the media portrays, I always saw autistic people as those who are unable to take care of themselves.
The three diagnoses to me were quite eye-opening because they made me realise that things happened in my 35 years of life for a reason. It’s also sad because I suddenly realise that a lot of things that I’ve done were denying the person that I was. A lot of time was spent growing up in social settings, as I try to be this chameleon, blending in into whatever worked.
“I had to do a lot of research on how to deal with myself by starting to make sense of why things happened the way they did, and it allowed me to almost break through a glass ceiling that was on top of me.”
Once I realised what the problem was, I let the process take its place, dealing with it when it arises, knowing what to avoid and embracing myself, accepting the person I am. The things that kill us are usually things that we don't know and when you know better, that changed my life.
Those are two very big milestones, one is losing weight and the second is getting diagnosed. Looking back, I first had to go through weight loss and now I have a mental thing to deal with, it made me think that all these things happen for a reason, it’s part of the process and allowed me to grow so much as a person.
Parenting a neurodivergent child
As for my parents, they’ve never treated me differently from anyone else. Regardless of whether they knew about my condition, they never made me feel that I was second to anyone.
The world today is very different from the world I grew up in in the 1980s. The world is more accessible with a lot more pressures these days and so I think we need to be more sensitive to certain things. Whether a child is neurotypical or neurodivergent, they are special in their own way.
And that doesn't change regardless of whatever learning disability or disability they have. For every disability, there is an ability somewhere else. It's about identifying where their strengths are. We all contribute a certain flavour to this world and that's what makes society colourful and fun to be in.
“Trust the process, even though it might seem somewhat difficult. My parents struggled with me but eventually, it all works out. The idea is to be supportive and keep your eyes open for what talents they might have.”
I can say this from an ADHD and autistic perspective.
Yes, we have a lot of weaknesses, but when we find our strengths, we are pretty good at them. Discover those strengths, hone those skills and make that your biggest strength.
I think this applies to everyone as well. We spend so much time looking for weaknesses and thinking about how we can improve, but we always forget to develop our strengths. It's like saying, if you're a talented tennis player, you don’t need to work hard and that’s not true. Because you are talented, you need to work harder and optimise your potential. It goes beyond whether you're neurotypical or neurodivergent, the principles of finding the best and bringing out the best in someone apply regardless.
Misconceptions about ADHD and autism
Most people perceive ADHD as a condition of inattentiveness. But if you get me on the topic of weight loss, fitness, technology or things like blockchain, I can go on for hours and I can scroll through articles and spend the whole day reading about them.
ADHD is not just about the deficit, there is this thing called hyperfocus. When we find something that we love, we give our all and more.
Then, people might think, won’t our relationships be all over the place? Yes and no. This is why it's important to understand yourself well and to be as open as you can and want to be, with the other person. People look at me and say he’s autistic, so what can I say to him? What can I not say? Will you lose your temper if I touch you? While it is true that I don't like physical touch because it's sensitive and it’s an overload, but that doesn't mean that we close it off entirely.
“We are still human beings and we still like that comforting touch. Just maybe we don’t need it as much as other people.”
Being autistic doesn't mean that we can’t read or that we don't understand concepts. In contrast, I think autistic people can analyse problems well. And I say this from a personal perspective. People always come to me at work and ask me about complex problems. I see things as systems, building blocks and structures. Moving these pieces and linking them together doesn't take much effort, which is why I generally gravitate towards topics like data and building structures.
People might say, what can autistic people do, and I always say that it is such a wide spectrum. There are a lot of us out there who can do things and we do it pretty well. So that's one of the misnomers that we get.
Another misunderstanding I get is people might say I don’t like to be in a social setting. But if we need to be there, we'll be there. If you see us isolate a little or quieten down, don't worry about us, we'll take care of ourselves. The last thing you want to do is to bring people over and intrude on our space because one might think that I have no one to talk to. Hence, education and understanding are very important.
Everyone has their quirks, everyone has their strengths, and with more education and awareness, then our society becomes even more flavorful than before.
Trust the process
If I could travel back 25 years in time to when I was 15, I would say trust the process. When I was just starting my career, there was a lot of fear, worrying if I will make money or will I be wasting my time. My advice would then be to trust the process. Every journey leads you to somewhere else which then leads to another. Life is precious in a way that in life, the only commodity that we can’t control is time. And if you’re doing something that you truly believe in, there will be good things that come from it, whether material or intangible, and that has been something that I've been very thankful for.
Of course, along the way you doubt yourself many times again, but all these things teach many valuable lessons that you can take on your next journey with you. Ultimately, we all know where we're going, so just follow the river, don’t fight it. And if it meanders then we meander with it, but eventually, all the rivers will flow back to the ocean. For some, it might take a longer time, but we have to trust and move with it.
I’m proud of the fact that I've experienced quite a few things at a very young age. Maybe proud isn’t the right word but I'm very appreciative of the lessons I've learned, the experiences and the mentors I’ve met along the way. This allowed me to see things from a much bigger perspective. With the world becoming more complex, the lessons I've learned in the past 25 years have allowed me to view certain problems quite differently from how others see them. To me, these are all building blocks, whatever we're going through is a building block to build a better tomorrow.
It's also allowed me to understand that for things to happen, it takes time.
A lot of us want fast results like if I work hard this year, the return should be great. I had to endure almost 23 years of fighting for myself in startups, sometimes not getting paid while paying others first, before landing my first stable job in public service. Would I have it any other way? I probably could have but would I want it any other way? Probably not. Because it teaches you that when you delay gratification, good things come out of it. And I think there are a lot of important values when it comes to being patient. And it's ironic as anyone who knows me knows that I’m an impatient person. Having said that, I'm learning that patience is very important.
At the end of the day, you are running a marathon, not a sprint. To me, that's the most important thing, understanding that every process takes time.
Building an inclusive work environment
I think the environment starts with the people. Obviously, you can’t go in and expect people to understand you immediately. And that's why I think education and awareness are important. When it comes to jobs, when it comes to roles, what is being crafted out there for neurotypical people may not apply to someone who's neurodivergent, so KPIs and OKRs might have to shift a little while still aligning to what the organisation wants to achieve. Likewise, putting someone who's neurodivergent on promotion pathways, the career development pathways are very different.
I am a strong believer that if people have an open mind and are more embracing toward one another, the physical environment doesn't matter. Because everyone feels like it's a home away from home. If you think about it, we spend more time in offices than we do at home actually, of course barring the past two years (pandemic) and that’s why I think people are really important. It's about building awareness and educating people as well. It's like how we got over racism in Singapore, you educate and you teach.
“We all have our quirks whether you are neurotypical or neurodivergent. So, it’s all about being more accepting of one another and understanding how to work with one another and bringing out each other’s strengths.”
That's why I take a lot of effort into building teams. Because I don't believe that a strong team consist of everyone with strong technical knowledge or interpersonal skills. You need a balance and that's why I structure teams in a way where if we need a certain task to be done, that person has it covered. In this kind of team, whether you're neurotypical or neurodivergent, everyone has a role to play. I feel that the main cause of everyone’s anxiety is that you don't know what your role is. And so, when we can solve that, we start to hopefully eradicate people's anxiety. Work then doesn't become stressful because you know what you're supposed to do.
Hopes and dreams
Personally, it's always been a blank whiteboard for me.
I move to a certain point, look up and see a lot of it is still left to be charted. It's like a map and there’s so much left that’s unexplored. And so, I want to keep exploring, and I want to keep experiencing new things.
With those experiences, I would like to help coach, guide and lead people, not to see things my way but to optimise their capacity and potential.
As for society, my hope is that we all become more accepting of one another. And I don't say this from a one-way track, I’m speaking for the neurotypical or neurodivergent and vice versa. Sometimes we want things a certain way, but others don't make it easy.
“I’m hoping that that handshake happens and that we will soon be able to treat everyone as equal regardless of race, gender or neurodiversity.”
With the acceptance that all races and gender are equal, the last mile to cross will be neurodiversity. As it isn't physical, it's harder to cross. When you look at me, it's not like I have ADHD plastered over me right? And that's what makes it challenging because you don't know and by the time you see it, you've already formed your judgement about someone. That to me is almost like the final frontier. And once we can cross it, I think there will be a paradigm shift because you'll be surprised when you get neurodivergent people in teams, they will see things you'd never thought possible. That’s my hope for the future.
