February 23, 2021 Huy Truong The term “unicorn”, used to describe start-ups worth more than US$1 billion (S$1.3 billion), had not even been coined in 2009, when Stanford MBA graduate Forrest Li began working on his new gaming company with nearly a dozen employees – all cramped in a tiny shophouse in Singapore’s central business district. Garena, his fledgling gaming company, kept a low-key profile, though its almost immediate success meant investment rounds and expansion plans came thick and fast. Soon Garena outgrew its small outfit on Maxwell Road, then a move to a two-storey penthouse office beckoned. A decade on, Garena is now one limb of the gargantuan Sea Group.