At the recent entrepreneurship roundtable involving professionals from media, energy, finance and technology sectors evolved into a wide-ranging discussion on nuclear energy, talent ecosystems and the kinds of high-stakes negotiations increasingly shaping modern entrepreneurship.
The session brought together founders, corporate professionals and students from industries ranging from real estate and retail to engineering, media and construction.
Among the more striking topics raised was nuclear energy.
Azeem Abu Bakar, managing director of FMT and founder of Futures Capital, said his investment platform had started exploring nuclear-related opportunities as Malaysia’s future electricity requirements continued rising sharply.
“We’re currently looking at nuclear energy,” he said.
According to projections discussed during the session, Peninsular Malaysia’s installed power capacity could rise from roughly 33GW today to around 170GW by 2050, driven heavily by industrial expansion, artificial intelligence infrastructure, electrification and rapidly growing data centre demand.
A single nuclear plant with four reactors could typically generate more than 4GW of stable baseload electricity, implying Malaysia may eventually require the equivalent of roughly 20 to 30 such plants over the coming decades if current demand trajectories persist.
The analysis suggested that solar energy alone may struggle to support such growth due to intermittency, storage limitations and land constraints.
“A lot of people are still afraid of nuclear because of perception,” Azeem said.
“Trying to get people to understand it’s not as dangerous as they think.”
Azeem, who was invited by Rosatom to visit one of its nuclear facilities in Russia last year, argued that much of the resistance towards nuclear energy stemmed less from technical realities and more from decades of public fear and misunderstanding.
“People fear nuclear because they don’t understand it,” he said.
“But entrepreneurship is also about seeing opportunities where other people only see risk.”
The discussion later evolved into a broader conversation on entrepreneurship, talent and the future industries likely to shape Malaysia’s economy.
Current KYSER president Alif Adam Zulkifli raised questions about how professionals and corporate leaders could better support entrepreneurial ecosystems and emerging founders.
Alif, who works as a geologist with Petronas, said many talented individuals across industries often operated in silos despite holding valuable expertise, networks and institutional knowledge.
In response, several speakers argued that long-term ecosystems were ultimately built around talent, capability and trust.
“All the KYSERs just need to do their best and become very good at what they do,” Azeem said.
“From there, people will naturally know who they want to work with, partner with and bring into opportunities.”
Azeem revealed that throughout his career, he had hired and partnered with at least 30 KYSERs across various ventures, relationships he said became possible largely through Cemerlang, the online publication launched to track and showcase alumni talent.
“The best thing about media, when you start any media platform, information starts coming to you,” he said.
“You become like a magnet for information.”
Moderator Liyana Farzana agreed that talent remained one of the most undervalued assets within professional and entrepreneurial ecosystems.
Drawing from her experience in corporate finance, including her time at JPMorgan Chase, she said opportunities often flowed naturally towards individuals who consistently demonstrated reliability, capability and long-term credibility.
Liyana also reflected on her experience working alongside Azeem during the restructuring and expansion phase of FMT.
At the time, FMT was seeking fresh capital to expand and strengthen its business model during a difficult period for the global media industry.
Azeem became heavily involved in corporate structuring, fundraising discussions and negotiations involving several prominent Malaysian billionaires despite initially entering the process largely for the experience and exposure.
Liyana said the process exposed younger professionals to high-level negotiations, restructuring dynamics and strategic decision-making rarely encountered early in corporate careers.
FMT would later become profitable despite a difficult environment for digital media globally, growing into one of Malaysia’s largest locally-based digital media platforms with around six million unique monthly visitors.
The discussion also touched on the role sincerity and long-term learning played in entrepreneurship.
Amir Kamarudin, founder of Ark Asset, a real estate investment firm, and a former Petronas executive, recounted taking unpaid leave from Petronas to work under a successful property entrepreneur purely to gain mentorship and exposure.
“I told him I didn’t need salary. I just wanted to learn,” he said.
He said the experience later transformed his understanding of business, assets and entrepreneurship itself.
Liyana noted that many of the opportunities discussed throughout the evening, whether in media, property or energy, often emerged when people committed themselves fully to learning difficult industries and solving meaningful problems over long periods of time.
By the end of the evening, the conversation had evolved well beyond entrepreneurship itself into something larger, a reflection on infrastructure, strategic finance, talent and the scale of challenges Malaysia may increasingly need to confront over the coming decades.
