Khor Swee Wah / Grab

The CEO of Malaysia's car industry secretly funded the company that would make cars less necessary.

Every family has the one conversation nobody talks about after.

The one where someone says, "I'm leaving everything to start something," and the room goes quiet. You know how it ends. The father says no. The uncles shake their heads. The mother sits there listening.

Here's what I didn't know about Grab until recently: the first angel check didn't come from a VC in Silicon Valley. It came from Anthony Tan's mother.

Khor Swee Wah was running Tan Chong Motor Holdings. The Nissan franchise for Malaysia. Roughly RM3 billion in revenue. Her husband, Tan Heng Chew, was President. The family had been in the car business for generations. Grandfather drove taxis before founding Tan Chong Motor and bringing Japanese cars to Malaysia. Father built it into a billion-ringgit empire.

And then Anthony comes home from Harvard with an idea for a taxi app.

His father's response, as Anthony told it: "Your head is in the clouds." Then later: "I don't think it's going to work out, so please don't disturb me about this anymore." Anthony told CNBC his dad basically disowned him.

But here's where it gets interesting.

The mother said yes. Not enthusiastically. She was skeptical too. But she wrote the first angel check -- several million ringgit -- and started showing up at investor meetings. While still running the car company.

Think about that for a second. The Group CEO of Malaysia's biggest car distributor was quietly funding a company whose entire business model was making it easier to not own a car.

Anthony's HBS pitch had won a $25,000 prize. By 2018, Grab was valued at $6 billion -- the same year Khor was promoted to CEO of Tan Chong. She was running both sides of the bet simultaneously. Selling Nissans by day. Betting against car ownership by night.

Grab went public via SPAC at a $40 billion valuation. It's settled around $15 billion now, pulling in $955 million a quarter. The taxi app became Southeast Asia's super app.

Khor retired from Tan Chong in June 2023. Anthony, when asked about his father, told reporters: "He didn't disown me the last time I checked."

The father saw a son making a mistake. The mother saw a son making a bet -- and decided to bankroll it even though she wasn't sure either. That's not confidence. That's something else entirely.

Who took a bet on you before they were sure it would pay off?