The journey · one obedient yes at a time
How God built a movement.
A boy, an accordion, and a prayer for ducks.
Aleks was eight, spending the summer at his grandmother's village in Russia. Hunters brought him along to play the accordion. When the hunt came back empty, the boy offered to pray for ducks. Minutes later his mother walked out of the village — a duck in her hand.
Half a world away, God was waiting in Singapore.
Years later, and thousands of miles from that village, Aleks met God again — this time in Singapore, worshipping as part of City Harvest Church. The childhood conviction that “there is a God in control of everything” became a living, gathered faith in a brand-new city.
He chose his team over his safety — then peace found him at 30,000 feet.
War and mobilisation hit. SOMIN.ai was losing over $150,000 a month and its Russian team. Aleks refused to abandon them and flew back into conscription risk. Only after he had already decided did comfort arrive — C.S. Lewis's The Screwtape Letters, bought in a London Orthodox bookshop, whispering that “all the bad things could not possibly happen at the same time.” Orthodox and charismatic Christianity, meeting to set things right.
Finding his people at Digital Mission Ventures.
SOMIN.ai joined DMV Redemptive Labs — first with Aleks as a cohort member, then as a mentor to other founders. Here, “business as mission” stopped being a phrase and became a practice: building Southeast Asia's redemptive tech ecosystem, turning down work misaligned with God's values, and trusting that setbacks are just divine redirection.
At the FDE conference, the founder said: start one here.
At the Faith Driven Entrepreneur global conference, Aleks met co-founder Henry Kaestner — who challenged him to plant a chapter in Singapore. That single invitation became Faith Driven Singapore.
Not another networking club — a family of builders.
Aleks looked hard for a co-founder. Plenty of experienced, willing people stepped forward — yet none was the right fit, and he refused to settle. Faith Driven Singapore had to be something rare: a genuine community of Christ-following founders, not a business fellowship where everyone quietly sells to everyone else.
The chapter began the moment the right people showed up.
With Aidan Chan and Yuh Tyng Hsiao alongside him, Faith Driven Singapore truly launched — and hasn't stopped growing since, now 200+ members strong.
We keep changing venues — not because we want to, but because God does.
Gatherings move around the island — Browzwear, Block71, City Harvest, a coffee-shop table with a book in the middle. We don't cling to a place. We follow where God opens the next door.
From Taipei to London to Kenya — Faith Driven goes global.
The first overseas group took root in Taiwan — an introduction, a coffee, a book on the table, and Faith Driven crossed its first border; the Taipei group has been thriving ever since. Now a new group is launching at Meta's London office, with another taking shape in Kenya. The movement doesn't chase geography — it follows the builders who are ready to say yes.
Why not you — in your corner of Singapore, or your company?
Every chapter began with one person saying yes. Somebody in each of those rooms went first.
The people who said yes
