Nicholas Lim Pinn Yang is the name to watch in the F&B e-commerce scene in 2025. As the co-founder and chief executive officer of Good Foodie Media Sdn Bhd, Southeast Asia’s leading curator of lifestyle and food content, the 31-year-old is the leading man behind the rapid rise of the region’s top “Foodie” platforms such as KL Foodie, Penang Foodie, Singapore Foodie, Bangkok Foodie, and more.
With over 30 million followers across the company’s pages today, Good Foodie Media wields the power of influence among our generation’s social media-savvy consumers. This milestone comes just eight years after he carved his own path as an entrepreneur. But how did he expand his media company so rapidly and why did he leave a stable full-time job to pursue this path?
For our Purpose issue, we spent a day with Pinn Yang to discover what drives his journey from helping his father sell goods at a morning market to scaling Good Foodie Media across Southeast Asia and beyond.
A true Foodie at heart
Growing up in Penang, food has always been integral to Pinn Yang’s life. “I think Penang people generally have a foodie tongue. We always think our food tastes better and all kinds of discussions will arise about food,” he says with a laugh.
“My parents would take us out for a good meal every weekend,” he continues, “That was the most enjoyable moment of my childhood – food hunting with my parents.” It was simple joys like this that never left him wanting despite living in a modest 700-square foot flat with his parents and two younger siblings then.
“My dad used to sell insurance before he pivoted to selling things at the local market. “Every single holiday, my brother and I would help him sell things at the store,” he recounts.
This early exposure to the “art of selling” instilled in him an interest in marketing, which was his favourite subject in university. At the same time, he was heavily inspired by influential figures of the world’s top technology companies, such as Steve Jobs and Elon Musk. Naturally, upon graduation, he applied for an internship at Tencent, one of China’s largest technology conglomerates.
“During the interview process, they asked me to write a blog about my favorite song or my favourite food. Food was the easier choice, so I wrote about my food hunting journey with my roommate at the time. That’s how I got the role to help build the company’s food discovery app,” he explains.
“Food hunting with my parents was the most enjoyable moment of my childhood.”
Nevertheless, the app he worked tirelessly on failed to launch, leaving him frustrated. “As someone who dreamt of climbing the corporate ladder and getting big bonuses, it felt like everything was going down the drain after three years of hard work, so I decided to resign and go back to Penang,” he says.
While working at a digital marketing agency back in his hometown, he started Penang Foodie to earn extra side income. “Every night after work, I would go out with my brother, and now my co-founder, to cover the streets of Penang. Funny enough, we also went back to places that my dad used to bring us on the weekends when he was selling things at the market. I really wanted to help the local hawkers there too.”
Fuelling his passions with purpose
At first, Pinn Yang only earned a few cents a day with Google AdSense. Within a year, the blog gained 1,000 followers on Facebook. He realised that the impact he was making for the stalls and micro-SMEs in Penang could be replicated elsewhere, so he started purchasing other Foodie domains even before venturing into those localities. He saw more than just a business opportunity; he found a purpose.
From there, Pinn Yang and his brother gradually approached small local businesses to help promote their products through digital marketing. This helped them draw a steady income, so they continued pitching to more clients. Once the business managed to achieve RM15,000 in monthly revenue, they quit their day jobs to focus on building Penang Foodie full-time.
“My definition of purpose, which is according to ikigai, is the reason I wake up every morning – my reason for being,” Pinn Yang muses over the theme of our first cover of the year. “I found my purpose seven years ago when I started my company, Good Foodie Media. My purpose is to inspire experiences through recommendations – whether it’s food, attractions, or technology and lifestyle products.”
“My purpose is to inspire experiences through recommendations – whether it’s food, attractions, or technology and lifestyle products.”
Based on this Japanese concept, purpose is found at the intersection of four elements: what you love, what you’re good at, what you can get paid or rewarded for, and what the world needs.
“I love building digital property – learning how to rank my articles on Google, hacking my way to the top results,” he gushes. “It’s a passion that gives me energy and positivity.” Pinn Yang’s enthusiasm for developing digital content, coupled with the platform’s growth and profitability, speaks for the first three aspects of ikigai. But more importantly, he believes in the value it brings to small business owners.
“People come to us and say things like, ‘Hey, thank you for helping my uncle’s business. It’s not just surviving but growing right now.’ So, I saw that digital media can really bring positive value, at least to the SMEs,” he divulges.
“My dad used to run a small business that didn’t really have voice in the online world, too. That’s why it really resonated with me and my mission, so I’m very fortunate to find my ikigai and I’m going to do this for the rest of my life.”
Inspiring experiences, empowering businesses
Having a purpose is honourable, but building a multimillion-dollar business from it? That’s a whole different ballgame – and Pinn Yang has achieved this in less than a decade. From a company valuation of RM1.7 million during the days of their angel investor in 2018 – which led to their entry into Kuala Lumpur and Johor – Good Foodie Media’s value has snowballed to an estimated RM100 million today.
Reflecting on this success, Pinn Yang shares, “One thing that we did right is building [Penang Foodie] like a media platform from the start. A lot of food bloggers use their names, which makes it hard to scale up because one person cannot be doing reviews every single day. Our road map was always going to be digital media, so we could hire editors with the same mission to run the content locally.
“The pivotal point for us was when we started doing videos,” he elaborates. “People were comparing our website traffic and visitors with other food bloggers in Malaysia, so we wanted to try something different, and we knew that video [content] was gaining traction.”
“We are really happy seeing [small businesses] succeed because we were there in their early stages.”
True enough, Pinn Yang’s visionary strategy to piggyback on the rise of video content paid off. In May 2022, Bryan Loo and Chee Leng of Loob Holding (which owns Tealive) acquired a stake in the company, facilitating further expansion into more countries and categories. Today, Good Foodie Media has 70 full-time editors and 20 brands to its name.
“We are going to churn out more niches, but we will pilot them using our current media pages because we have very engaging audiences who will give us feedback. If they don’t like to see too much of something, then we will create a new page for it. This our current strategy,” Pinn Yang shares.
Now you may have noticed that all these brands end with the suffix –ie. This is intentional, as it represents the company’s mission to “inspire experiences”. And speaking of mission, Pinn Yang remains steadfast to his own.
“So far, we have helped more than 25,000 SMEs. We’re talking about very small businesses that have now ventured out to 10 to 15 outlets. We are really happy seeing them succeed because we were there in their early stages,” he beams, considering it one of his greatest milestones.
Manifesting his vision board for 2025
Despite not putting a face on the company in the past, Pinn Yang began stepping out as a content creator in his own right two years ago. “I really want to bring back the founder aura because last time, nobody knew who was behind the company. In order to build trust, Pinn Yang has to step out to share our brand values and bring that positive connection for my brands,” he reveals.
So, who is Pinn Yang? “I’m the kind of person that practises manifesting a lot. Every single morning, I wake up and just manifest what I want to become or what I want to do,” he says with an assertive smile. “People that know me know that I’m a hustler. But I work not because of money; I just love building stuff. My motive is to inspire people to support those selling stuff on the streets because I used to [help my dad] sell stuff on the streets.”
“I think 2025 is going to be our most exciting year yet. Our vision board is turning content into commerce.”
As for what he’s manifesting this year, Pinn Yang summarises it into four key pillars: content, creators, commerce, and community. For one, Good Foodie Media will produce more content and branch out into different niches, while also working with content creators to monetise, grow, and scale their personal brands. They will also move into e-commerce, particularly livestream selling – which he believes is the next big thing for the media industry.
On the community front, he shares, “We have 30 million followers but we are digital, right, so we haven’t really met them. I want to gather our followers through offline events, like a festival bazaar and food expo.”
That’s not all – Pinn Yang is also working on the launch of a new app called Goodie. Set for testing this first quarter, the app will leverage their content to allow consumers to pre-purchase a meal and redeem it in-store.
“All the big brands have money to build their own loyalty apps, but not the SMEs. So, we are putting in our profit to build an app for the SMEs in Malaysia. It will be data-driven with more recommendations and readers can automatically become loyalty members,” he explains, pausing for a moment before adding, “I think this is my way of closing the loop on my story because I was working on a food app before, remember?”
To sum up why he’s the man to watch this year, Pinn Yang confides: “I think 2025 is going to be our most exciting year yet. Our vision board is turning content into commerce. When people think about buying stuff, I want them to think of us first as a recommendation platform.”
Featured image: Top, cardigan, pants, and shoes are all stylist’s own.
Editor and words: Natalie Khoo
Coordination: Ashley Chan
Creative direction: Driv, assisted by Chin Yi Ting and Mon Kai Siong
Props: Imran Sulaiman
Photography: Cham Zihao, assisted by Saiful Azwan
Videography: Haoyii Lim
Video subtitles: Neda Al-Asedi
Styling: Bluey Ngai, assisted by Keat Kit
Hair and grooming: Fiona Yip
Location: Trés Hotel
Read more of FirstClasse Malaysia’s Inspire digital cover stories here.