Let’s start with after KLClassifieds bombed. How did you climb out of that RM300k hole?

Something fortunate happened. Mark Chang, whom I knew when I was launching my classifieds product, called me up and asked me to join Jobstreet.

I said, “Okay, I’ll consider it.” He told me, “Malek, your salary will be around RM6,000”, and I was looking at the numbers… I had a RM300,000 debt at that time and I couldn’t make ‘the numbers’ work, right?

So, I apologised. JobStreet had great potential, but I couldn’t do it as I’d probably have to go to Singapore to get a job. I was a management consultant before this and I needed that kind of job to pay off my debt. And I had to earn a hard currency as the ringgit had tanked.

We left it at that. But two or three days later, I got another call from him and he asked me to come over to meet some of the Jobstreet co-founders. It was a really odd interview, it wasn’t about my skills, more like my philosophy, family, ambitions, etc.

Then I was asked to wait in the next room.

After a while, Ng Kay Yip, one of the Jobstreet co-founders I met came in my room. He sat me down and said, “This is what we are going to do, I’ll give you a cheque for RM200,000, you pay off your bank loan, and then you come and work for Jobstreet.

“We’ll figure out a salary for you after we get some venture capital funding, but for now what I’ll do is, I’ll pay off your loan. If we fire you or find you not suitable for the role, you don’t have to pay the loan back. But if you leave on your own accord, you pay the loan back.”

At that moment, I thought I should have told him the real number of my debt, which was towards RM300,000, but I said RM200,000, which was the principal amount. I should have said the real figure. [laughs]

So, in a way, this was a golden-but-strings-attached handshake, but to me, it solved one big worry of my life. Is that serendipity? I mean, who does that for you, right?

That’s how I got into Jobstreet and out of the hole.