Splice Media

When Sam Altman of OpenAI suggested that AI could allow the creation of a one-person billion-dollar company, Splice Media co-founders Alan Soon and Rishad Patel decided to take that challenge on for themselves. With their Knight Fellowship, Soon and Patel are building Splice Nano, a program that aims to create 10 viable single-founder media companies powered by AI in one year. 

Since Splice’s founding in Singapore in 2015, Soon and Patel have been helping news entrepreneurs build businesses that serve a user need, create value, and ultimately make money.

Alan Soon is the co-founder of Splice Media. A career journalist for two decades, Alan has worked in radio, television, news wires, magazine, and online across Asia, giving him unique insight into how various newsrooms get things done—and where they get stuck. He started his career as a reporter and grew into other operational roles at Bloomberg, CNBC, Kyodo News, Star TV, and Channel NewsAsia. He later ran Yahoo’s media business in India and Southeast Asia. Alan is a certified coach, and helps media professionals think through their careers.

Soon writes Splice Slugs, a weekly media intelligence newsletter. 

Rishad Patel is the co-founder of Splice Media.  For over twenty years, Rishad has been a product and design professional. He has designed and developed media strategy, products, and branding for audiences and users across multiple platforms and formats for companies and markets in Singapore, India, New Zealand, Europe, and the United States. He has been a design consultant for MIT and ETH, an editorial consultant at news media organizations in Singapore, New Zealand, and India, and once co-founded an app startup in San Francisco. Rishad mentors people on media entrepreneurship and designing products for revenue.

Patel’s newsletter, Splice Frames, is a weekly wrap of media products and design in the wild.