Womenpreneur Showcase: Joanna Teo, Managing Director of Attribute Data

One of our UOB FinLab Womenpreneur programme participants, Joanna Teo, Managing Director of Attribute Data, sat down with MoneyFM to share her entrepreneurial journey. Attribute Data is a customer intelligence consultancy that transforms data into actionable intelligence that drives innovation and strategic decision-making.

Joanna started her career in large technology companies such as Yahoo and Dell. She worked her way up and eventually managed entire departments, overseeing profit and loss, hiring, and how to run a profitable team.

While Joanna had a solid career and financial security, she was motivated to do more. She wanted to start her own business but wasn’t sure where to start and how to scale.

Combining Passion with Entrepreneurship

After her time at Dell, Joanna learnt the best practices from her manager on building networks, create partnerships with MNCs, pitching for businesses and stand out from the crowd. She was essentially running a small business within a larger business.

Joanna also found her passion in data analytics where she enjoyed the process of using data to help make businesses grow by creating personalised services and products that customers require. Beyond collecting, understanding and integrating data, Joanna found data ethics extremely important and continues to ensure she is well-versed with it.

The combination of Joanna’s passion for data analytics and her new-found knowledge of running a business led her to create something of her own. This was the birth of Attribute Data.

Entrepreneurship and building a business is often framed as speed, scale and venture capital. But Joanna wanted to take a different approach to ensure the longevity of her business. She bootstrapped her business to profitability without any external funding.

To Joanna, external funding can pressure a startup to return money to investors and make decisions based on profits instead of innovation. It may stifle some of the ideas they want to trial that may not even be in the market yet.

Constant Knowledge is Key to Success

Joanna believes that training and knowledge is key for a business to succeed. She invested heavily in training and certifications which is especially important in the technology world as new release cycles happen very frequently. Certification gives credibility and assurance to clients and ensures every team member is at the forefront of the latest trends.

She invested not only in others but also in her own development. Joanna returned to school to pursue her Masters, joined a student run VC club and even started to Angel Invest in promising companies. These extra touchpoints with other entrepreneurs, professors, and students have deepened her knowledge, which translates to running a better business. She can get instant advice or bounce ideas off people who are going through the same challenges, or who have already overcome them.

As an entrepreneur of nearly two decades, one of the most important pieces of advice Joanna can give is the importance of having a strong network and partnerships.

Building a Network

In addition to the network she built during her Masters, Joanna joined UOB FinLab’s Digital Innovation Programme: Womenpreneur, which is designed to build a community and empower female entrepreneurs through mentorship, business transformation, and growth with digital innovation. The programme is tailored to female entrepreneurs and business owners, including those in managerial positions, who own or manage small to medium businesses.

Joanna highly valued the supportive network of women entrepreneurs at various business stages, all sharing a similar mindset and commitment to mutual assistance. This was complemented by UOB FinLab, which introduced industry experts—masters in fields like branding, presentation, and e-commerce—to help participants elevate different facets of their businesses.

Click to check out the full interview.

Click to find out more about our Women in Business Programme 2026.