Between burnout and balance, Zillennial business leaders found a third way

They were born into contradiction. Old enough to remember the patience of dial-up, young enough to crave the instant feedback of social media. Raised by parents who prized stability, yet coming of age in a world that punishes hesitation. Theirs is a generation fluent in paradox — and it shows in the way they build.

Across conversations with 10 Zillennial founders in the following few pages, I realised they aren’t rebelling against capitalism; they’re rehabilitating it. They are builders who still believe in ambition, but no longer worship at its altar.

For them, success has lost its old choreography — the relentless chase for scale, valuation, or virality. In its place is a quieter, steadier rhythm: growth that feels proportional to purpose.

Tommy Pang of Bai Nian Holdings, for instance, measures success not by expansion but by the ability to care for his family and preserve what his parents began. Nabill Shukry Johary, who built Cheekies from a home kitchen into a health-driven food brand, describes success as ensuring that “everyone around you gets to thrive.” 

Even Jake Berber of Prefer — who’s literally reinventing coffee and cocoa to survive climate change — says his company exists to “buy time” for the planet. These are signals. A generation that once idolised speed is now learning the value of sufficiency.

There’s also a striking emotional literacy that cuts through their stories. The myth of the hardened founder is losing credibility. Today, many of them talk openly about burnout, therapy, and the discipline of introspection.

Jingjing Zhong, founder of the AI automation platform Superbench AI, told me she underwent therapy before starting her company — an act she saw as operational preparation. To her, self-awareness isn’t a luxury; it’s infrastructure. 

A new leadership vocabulary

Unsurprisingly, this emotional awareness is changing how Zillennials lead. Power, for this cohort, is less about control and more about coherence — aligning what they build with how they live. In the past, leadership was measured by stamina and sacrifice. Today, it’s measured by empathy, restraint, and discernment. When Ollie Wang of REVL Singapore describes his company as “a third space where people rally behind something bigger”, he’s not romanticising community; he’s operationalising it. Belonging has become the new form of capital.

That same reorientation appears in education, where Le Yi Khor of Ottodot rejects the fixation on efficiency, arguing that learning should prioritise curiosity before optimisation. It seems in social discourse too, where Yulianna Frederika of Lepak Conversations practises adab — respect — while refusing to let it slide into subservience.

And it appears in media, where Keith Yap’s Front Row Podcast treats conversation not as entertainment but as a civic duty, building what he calls “intellectual infrastructure” for Singapore.

Across these examples runs a common thread: the pursuit of meaning over magnitude. For this generation, doing well and doing good are no longer competing instincts. The calculus of growth has changed — not eliminated, but expanded to include human consequence.

What also defines them is how they engage with uncertainty. They don’t glorify failure the way Silicon Valley once did, but they accept it as data. Hafiz Kasman of Kinobi AI admits that building in education technology — one of the toughest sectors to monetise — was a decision driven more by passion than logic.

Yet, he stays because the work matters. Likewise, Berber says of his company’s missteps, “We’ve made plenty of mistakes, but I would not undo any of them.” 

Repair as defiance

This sense of equilibrium — ambition softened by self-awareness — may be what truly distinguishes this cohort of business leaders. Instead of chasing disruption, they are practising repair. In an economy built on extraction, they are quietly restoring trust: in food, in education, in technology, in each other. They’ve inherited the fatigue of a world that ran too fast and are learning to move at the speed of intention instead.

They are, in no small ways, the first founders of a post-hustle age. Their work still demands excellence, but not exhaustion — never. They scale more slowly, listen more carefully, and measure success by the sturdiness of their culture.

Daniel Woodroof, who built and later sold his agency Pandan Social, describes his proudest moment not as an acquisition but as watching his team cry when they won an industry award. His is a reminder that pride, not profit, was what bound them together.

To celebrate this generation is to recognise the subtle revolution they represent. They are proving that empathy can (and should) coexist with ambition, that discipline need not erase curiosity, and that leadership can look like listening. They are not loud about it, but perhaps that’s the point. They’ve seen what noise can do.

The in-between generation isn’t trying to build empires. They’re trying to build endurance — for their people, their communities, their planet. In doing so, they’ve made something rare: ambition that still feels believable.

And in a time when belief itself is in short supply, that might perhaps be the most radical thing of all.