Hsiang Low is the Head of Asia-Pacific at SeedLegals, a legal-tech platform that automates the legal process early-stage startups need to fundraise and grow their company. 

Prior to joining Seedlegals, Hsiang practiced as a lawyer at magic circle law firm Linklaters for over 10 years and co-founded Nakhoda, Linklaters’ in-house legal tech startup. Having had his own startup experience, Hsiang is passionate about making use of his legal and technology expertise to help startup founders navigate through their early-stage journey. 

👋🏼 How would you explain your job to someone outside tech?

I help founders with the legal processes they need in their early stages to fundraise and grow their startups. Within SeedLegals, I am here to lead market strategy, build a team, and steer the business in Asia-Pacific. 

🧐 What's something about you or your job that would surprise us?

My personal mission is to disrupt the industry I started my career — legal. This sector has traditionally been opaque, slow, and expensive, and I remember all too well how expensive the cost of my billable hour was as a lawyer in a law firm where I spent over a decade in legal practice.

Over the past few years, I’ve navigated a career pivot toward business and strategy. Today through SeedLegals, I’m able to combine technology with legal expertise, and a laser focus on customer service, to provide entrepreneurs with more accessible and affordable legal support to help grow their startups. 

🏆 What has been the biggest highlight of your career so far?

Right now, my highlight as I reflect on each working week is building and managing a team.

I’m blessed that I have a stellar team across Hong Kong and Singapore, and it’s been personally rewarding to be able to lead a cross-functional team of individuals who come from different backgrounds from sales to legal, from blockchain to public sector, from introvert to extrovert and from cat lover to dog lover. On that last one, I have a personal preference, but we also promote diversity and inclusion in our team :)

🔍 What's a startup trend or space you're watching this year?‍

The buzz these days is all about the adoption and application of artificial intelligence technology. This isn’t entirely new but the introduction of Chat-GPT has made the discussion more mainstream. I’d love to see how generative AI helps to improve overall creativity.

💼 What advice would you give someone starting out in your industry? 

And which industry would that be?  

Sometimes I struggle to define the precise industry I’m in - legal, startups, venture, or technology? Labels and jokes aside, I think my advice would be the same regardless of the industry - be curious. 

As a lawyer in a big international law firm it would have been easy for me to only focus on a niche (I worked in structured finance), but my curiosity to learn about other practice areas such as real estate and M&A meant that when I moved to legal tech, I was able to apply the technology to other areas of legal practice outside of my own and scale the product. My curiosity about the use of technology was what led me to learn programming and Excel skills and this eventually allowed me to explore legal tech. 

Today, I encourage my team to be curious about our customers, the startup founders. It’s actually very easy because most of them have really cool, crazy ideas! And once we learn more about the business, the founder, and their goals, we’re better equipped to help them through their journey of growth. The best founders are often the ones who are constantly working on self-improvement, and being curious to learn about what they do has also benefited me.

🗣 What's one thing you can keep talking about for hours? 

Scuba diving! I’ve met some really cool people from all over the world through my diving trips, and I love sharing and hearing about diving stories. 

I recently returned from the Galápagos Islands where I had the most amazing dive experience of my life. The biodiversity is incredible and as soon as you hit the water you’re treated to an abundance of marine life of sharks, turtles, stingrays, fish, eels, and more. My list of places to visit includes Pulau Sipadan, Raja Ampat, and the Komodo Islands!

🎥 What's your favorite movie/TV show? 

A movie in the last few years that surprised me was Free Guy - it was refreshingly and unexpectedly clever, funny, and original. 

🍨 What's your go-to ice cream flavor?‍

Pistachio

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