“My career has been a series of ventures and adventures… it’s a path that doesn’t look or feel like any other, that rarely ever feels like work… I’ve done this by challenging established norms, relentlessly going out of my box and into many other boxes, appreciating how seemingly disparate realities tie together, threading constellations where others barely even see the dots.”

Andre A. Yap            
Founder & CEO
Ignite House of Innovation            

Quotable Quotes

“Innovation is the most difficult thing we will ever do, yet the capacity to fulfill it’s highest promise lives deep inside all of us.”

~~~~~~~~~

“You fall in love with the problem, you fall in love with the people whose pains you are uniquely gifted to heal, you fall in love and you will not stop until you have solved the problem.”

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“The problem is when we have fallen in love with the solutions, with what has worked before. And this falling in love with success and all its perks, it makes us averse to pushing the frontiers of all that we can still be, for ourselves, for our employees, for our customers, for society, and humanity.”

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“Who am I? Why am I here? What was I born to do?” What’s stopping me?”

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“We obsess, not just about the How of Innovation, but above all, about the Why of Innovation. That’s how we get the all important Who of Innovation.”

~~~~~~~~~

“People embrace greatness when they see people embrace greatness. people believe when they see people believe; people embrace change no matter how difficult when they see people change no matter how difficult; people admit mistakes when they see people admit mistakes; people work as a team and put pettiness aside when they see people work as a team and put pettiness aside; people start to innovate and create value within the context of their own roles when they see people start to innovate and create value within the context of their own roles; people act with integrity when they see people act with integrity; people live corporate values when they see people live corporate values; people strive to fulfill mission and vision when they see people strive to fulfill vision and mission.”

~~~~~~~~~

“Discernment is about life’s most important conversations. Nothing more complicated than that. Remember who am I? Why am I here? What was I born to do? There is never a final answer. When you discern, why am I here, what was I born to do, it’s a life-long process.”

~~~~~~~~~

“All the force in the universe that you need to be, the best person you can be, to have the biggest impact to your family, to your colleagues at work, to society, to every person you touch. All the force is already inside you.”

~~~~~~~~~

“Ready, fire, aim; jump off the plane and build the parachute on the hurtle down.”

~~~~~~~~~

“Two things happen as you go deeper. It gets darker. How do you navigate yourself in darkness, as much as it gets darker there is still light. You keep on following the light, no matter how.”

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“What is it about me, that is most alive in me, that consistently makes others better?”

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“In everything we do we are first and always moved by the only thing that matters: to serve in the spirit of true love. A grace we can only find by constant and humble prayer.”

~~~~~~~~~

“It’s all about battleground zero and this fight to give people the opportunity to pursue their greatest potential. It’s the idea that a human being is boxed in and cannot go anywhere anymore in life, that’s what we’re fighting here.”

~~~~~~~~~

“When you know your answers to these deeply personal questions of compassion, then the contagion of passion will naturally ooze out of you. You will be unstoppable. Your story will always start in that sweet spot of who I’m doing this for and why I care so; and it will never sound like a pitch. Compassion will rouse you out of bed every morning, and it will keep you going when the darks days visit and stay awhile; and even in the good days, compassion will drive you to not settle, to just forge on and on because what you desire is bigger than yourself – yet everyday you grow in wonder and amazement and conviction that the solution lies very much within you.”

~~~~~~~~~

“Do what you were born to do in the company of others who are doing what they were born to do. Find your deepest truth and so fulfill your greatest potential. Find your GPS, that unstoppable force within you. Find the people and mission you were born to serve. Find the greatest joy, meaning and impact of your life. Find the brave hearts who will journey with you.”

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“Our mission is to get you to live a life far bigger than yourself.”

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“Experience is one of the most critical prerequisites of learning. Learning in turn is the most critical prerequisite of innovation: the internal capacity, desire and joy to learn and continuously learn to see things through a different frame, to formulate new questions, to pursue those new questions towards new answers and so on.”

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“To Ignite is to seek our deepest truths and so fulfill our highest potential and greatest promise.”

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“The greatest quality of the great leader is the capacity to be led.”

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“As human beings we want finality, we want certainty. We’re here to tell you that let us get used to the flow and the uncertainty. And how do we deal with that. And how does that matter in life’s most important conversations. Observe, observe, observe. Don’t prescribe the truth for yourself, just observe. So it’s truth observed. This is the kind of conversation that discernment is all about. Truth observed. Like I said it’s not what life says you should be. In engaging in these conversations in life’s most important conversations, you observe.”

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“In life we need space, we need pace, we need pause. That’s the only way emptiness can come.”

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“You have no box. You have no limits. Lead with your GPS. It is an everyday thing. It never stops. It’s about the flow. It’s not about the finality. It never stops.”

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“My deep desire is to help people in my life, beginning with myself, peel the layers of dark and gray, so we can discover the light that was always there, a light that holds our deepest truth, a light, therefore, full of our truest joy and beauty; yet discover still that this light, if nurtured honestly, humbly, can also be a flame, then a fire and a raging wildfire that knows no limits in its capacity to fuel our every breath; to give meaning and force and transcendence to our lives as much as to our every relationship and every endeavor; to embrace then the world’s problems as we encounter them and as they are revealed to us and not to others, there must be a reason; to heal, to feed, to fill where we are needed; to give love to all we touch, that love freely received that is at the true heart of every human being; to find in ourselves, in a word, God.”

“I’m a free spirit. My life-work journey was never a conventional one — thriving in the world of corporate, entrepreneurship, and community service all at the same time, from local to global. With a messianic motivation of finding opportunities to transform, empower and care for people I connect with, I have relaunched my career over in ways I didn’t imagine; pushing borders and exploring unchartered territories moving from aviation to a field of an esoteric mix of wellness, peak performance and innovation that a stickler and perfectionist wouldn’t even dare cross.” 

Joana Alberto            
Co-Founder & Managing Partner
Ignite Center for Peak Experiences            

Quotable Quotes

Quotable Quotes from Joana’s book
#Metamorphosis: The Ultimate Makeover Manual for 40-Year Olds and Beyond

 

“Life is too short to have these ailments dragging you down from enjoying your life to the fullest. It’s never too late to change behaviours and attitudes that completely keep you from enjoying a body that’s capable of functioning perfectly if used properly.”

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“Change is tough. It is also scary. But we must remember that self-reliance is one of the most important ingredients to success. Regardless of what changes we may face in life, by choice or by fate, knowing that you can weather the storms will make you rise above the circumstances. We all have the power to survive and consequently serve as a guiding light to others. And by being a light to others, the more radiant our light will become. “

~~~~~~~~~

“The greatest gift you can give yourself is to believe that you can soar.”

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“Wellness is not all about diet and exercise. It’s a holistic approach to having good health, a happy disposition, and a great sense of fulfillment. It is living a well-balanced life, being able to satisfy every aspect of your being to maximize your existence. It is giving attention not only to your body but also to your mental, spiritual, emotional, financial, and even health. That’s why it is important that you give enough time for rest and relaxation. “

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“Excuses are for those who are lazy. Pardon me for being blunt, but I believe this to be so true. It is for those who have no sense of purpose and are just content with what they have and what they are at the present moment, as dictated by indolence. This is not what life is all about. It is about discovering something new each day. It is realizing your uniqueness and ability to make a difference in the lives of the people around you. “

~~~~~~~~~

“Offloading does not only pertain to social relations. We need to leave a lot of excess baggage that may slow us down. What we also do not need are harmful attitudes and beliefs that will be detrimental to achieving our goals. “

~~~~~~~~~

“Discernment is about life’s most important conversations. Nothing more complicated than that. Remember who am I? Why am I here? What was I born to do? There is never a final answer. When you discern, why am I here, what was I born to do, it’s a life-long process.”

~~~~~~~~~

“Accountability is the key. If there are other eyes watching, you will be more responsible in staying focused.”

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“In any flight, diversion is only an option during extreme circumstances. A constant heading to wellness is a big challenge. So the reason to deviate should be for a bona de reason. What we must be mindful of is that along the way, we have to be always ready to change our altitude or alter our course. But the focus still is to endeavour traveling on a direct path toward our final destination.”

~~~~~~~~~

“Turbulence is part of life. I was able to learn how to use it in light to my advantage during crew rests. I have made it as a lullaby instead of a waker-upper.”

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““Smile, though your heart is aching. Smile, even though it’s breaking,” the song goes. If you do, your disposition will simply follow as it trickles down to your heart. Eventually the other parts of your body will too.”

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” Wellness is all about finding our center of gravity. For us to soar higher amidst the turbulence and land safely, we must Find our balance in life.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

GPS Quotes
From Wellness to Wholeness

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“The practice of discernment is crucial to have a well-lived life. It is the ability to pause and listen to the whispers that lead us to a life of deeper joy and meaning.”

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“I used to refer to Genius of GPS as the 3 T’s: Time, Talent and Treasures. Because all those T’s are what we are gifted with — and it’s meant to be shared with everyone.”

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“Purpose is not just our passion, because passion is quite fun. Purpose is about the pain that we see around us, the pain of others that we are drawn to heal. Pain may not be fun, but the rewards are far greater.”

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“When our purpose and genius collide, it explodes and drives us to action. And that action to serve others is not just compassion, it’s love. “

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“We are not meant to live like robots — living from pay check to pay check, clocking in day in and day out. There’s always a choice to the means. The rightful path is not what will give us financial freedom, but what’s our means to get there.”

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“GPS (Genius, Purpose, Service) is the manifestation of the reason why we do what we do — even when nobody else is looking, or even when we know that no one will recognize and appreciate what we do.”

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“We are all drowning from the noise around us, which brings us unnecessary stress, worry and anxiety. If only we could only listen and live our truths, we could be deaf to these useless chatter that’s wasting our energy and brain space.”

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“I don’t believe in the saying, “You can’t teach old dogs new tricks.” I have reimagined, redesigned and relaunched my career a number of times. I’m in my golden era yet I’m still not done evolving. If we allow our GPS (Genius, Purpose, Service) to manifest in our life, it will constantly expand and bring us to a limitless cycle of transcendence.”

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“Gifts are meant to be given away, and sometimes these gifts are not wrapped with fancy papers and bows. They are wrapped with empathy, compassion and love.”

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“The best things in life are free. I totally agree. And this is our Genius — given to us when we were born which expands, multiplies and gets unleashed at the right time as we age.”

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“Discernment for me is not about thinking deep, it’s about being mindful of how feel when we listen to the voices in our head. Deep joy is triggered when the whisper is leading us to live our truths.”

Uniquely at the nexus of corporate, innovation, venture capital, and igniting all we touch to their greatest growth and impact.

You’ve never met anyone like us.

Old School Letter
from our CEO

Layer 1

We didn't skip a beat. Started 2024 the way we ended 2023: full throttle on our investment mandate to find and fund 30 of the country’s most ignited founders.

Q4 2023 saw us pull the trigger on 5 iconic investments and we’re on track to exceed that in 1H 2024 (more on this later, including our 3 key investment criteria and how we’ve expanded our venture capital focus to include steady ships, besides the usual rocket ships).

In January we broke all records with our biggest Ignite ever. Partnering with Ateneo’s DOST-backed Blue Nest Technology Business Incubator and the Ateneo Intellectual Property Office, we gathered some of Manila’s most badass founders, investors, and CEOs, along with our most promising young professionals and student leaders. For 5+ hours on a chill January afternoon, we ignited on the common ground of Peak Performance and Peak Living in 2024.

More Than VC

Our January highlight was the launch of 5VC FITNESS, a hybrid app, online and face-to-face platform for individuals, teams, and organizations to methodically and measurably grow their 5 Cycles of Virtuous Capital in 3-month sprints.

See how 5VC can power you and your teams to unrivaled growth and performance;

See how you can partner with Ignite to bring 5VC to schools, corporations, SMEs and LGUs all over the country. This is one of our major KPIs in 2024-- to build partnerships (think franchising!) that bring 5VC FITNESS to every corner of Filipino society.

Fund 30 of PH’s Most Ignited

January was also our public unveiling of IGNITE VC 2024: our quest to find and fund 30 of the country’s most Ignited founders, targeting to be the first money in and invest PHP5-10MM per founder in the next 18-24 months.

Here are the 3 most important finds we’re looking to invest in:

1) Founders who are obsessed with solving important problems at scale (where revenue and customers grow much faster and bigger than costs).

2) Founders who are obsessed with customer impact (where everything they do is built around continuously solving customer pains).

3) Founders who are obsessed with being great at execution and culture (because this is how they’re going to keep great people happy and full).

If you’re our kind of founder, we will invest in either of 2 scenarios:

1) Your venture was birthed as a rocket ship (to achieve massive scale within 3-5 years).

2) You’re currently a steady ship that can be transformed into a rocket ship. A steady ship is a solid business that is currently profitable (or can be within the next 6-12 months) and has a great product that delights customers in ways that are important to them.

Rocket ship or steady ship, we invest when we see that our Ignite capital, including our 5VC (5 Cycles of Virtuous Capital) can drive 10-100X++ growth in your venture.

Want to explore an investment from Ignite? Pls message us here and tell us what you have in mind. We’ll pick it up from there.

That’s all for now. Let’s keep igniting.

Andre A. Yap
February 2024

Joana Alberto is a CoFounder and Managing Partner of Ignite House of Innovations and Ni2, the National Innovators Initiative to power 100,000 Filipino innovators by 2023. She’s also the Managing Director of the Guild by Ni2, a dedicated team that focuses on career and OJT acceleration of college students and fresh grads at scale. The space that she holds is all about nurturing individuals to drive peak performance by discovering Ignite GPS (Genius, Purpose, Service) our personal navigation system that leads us to fulfill our highest potential, under Ignite Centre for Peak Experiences.

Before joining Ignite, Joana served the aviation industry for almost three decades while thriving in the field of entrepreneurship — from designing and manufacturing her own line of arts and crafts to selling dry goods, managing a flower shop and being an events designer, and never leaving out her social responsibility via community service. She was never content with just being employed.

“I’ve had many twists and turns in a career that has brought me to hundreds of cities all over the world, first as a flight attendant and cabin manager, then in HQ. After 27 years in aviation, I clipped my wings, and packed the manuscript that I worked on for 4 years entitled, #Metamorphosis: The Ultimate Makeover Manual for 40-Year Olds and Beyond, along with my certifications on wellness coaching and various healing modalities. In a matter of months, I went from wearing two hats in the airline, managing inflight performance while designing and delivering leadership programs to 120 nationalities, to leaving all that and holing up in India for a month – to learn yoga, find myself, reinvent my future.”

I was 47 then, a wife and mother who had spent the best years of my life flying in and out of my family’s life. I had been an expat for so long. I was finally coming home to Manila with a new career in corporate wellness. I thought that was it, my final chapter, time to get settled before entering my golden era.

 

But no.

 

A wise friend once asked me… Joana, you’ve been in a perfect storm! You’re an extreme empath and you’ve met, served and managed so many more people from so many more countries in 27 years than most people do in 3 lifetimes: those dreams and pains and wants of so many people must have a way of sticking on you, haunting you, no?

 

Yes, exactly; they’ve haunted me.

Before I jumped into corporate, I designed a program for Filipina overseas workers – for people and pain I know so well. I designed a 6-month journey that would help them create their Dream Life Masterplan. I included all the right things I did and didn’t do, all the research and study, trial and error, consulting friends and experts, and sleepless nights in search for my truth. So OFWs long separated from their families can speed up their coming home — prepared. Well, my Dream Life Masterplan never reached a single soul. My intention was pure and noble. But I was alone for a huge mission.

Fast forward to 2017. A friend invited me to an Ignite gathering and I was never the same again. I found my space, found my missing pieces, found my partners and team. And I found the Ignite GPS: Genius, Purpose, Service. It was my finally embracing my own GPS that really put me on a new journey and challenge: to take care of people beyond wellness, so they can be whole – so they can live their deepest truth and so fulfill their highest potential and greatest promise. That’s what I found in the Ignite GPS.

Today, Joana is leading a team of Gen Z’s to launch a human + app coached program to help colleges students find clarity in their life-career direction. She also just launched the pilot project of her startup  —which partners with farm owners to create viable and sustainable ventures that support agri-eco tourism, farm based co-creation opportunities, tech guided wellness experiences and socio-economic development initiatives. At the rate she’s going, nothing can stop her from founding more winning innovations in the next coming years. A genuine Iska — a graduate of the University of the Philippines, her mission no doubt is to make an impact on the lives of her kabayans, dreaming to make her country a better place.

Andre Yap is the founder and CEO of Ignite House of Innovation, which invests and operates in venture capital, technology, media, education, healthcare, energy, hospitality, food, agri, HR and enterprise solutions. 

Andre also serves as Executive Chairman of Ni2, The Philippines’ National Innovators Initiative to power 100,000 Filipino Innovators across key sectors of society. Ni2 is a public-private partnership with national and local governments, business and non-profit organizations, and the academe.

As a serial founder and startup investor, Andre built Ignite House to be an innovator for innovators – to R&D, build, operate and continuously invest in proprietary systems, platforms, programs and technologies in order to nurture, scale and sustain innovation capabilities, open collaborations and disruptive opportunities uniting key sectors of society (business, education, socio-civic, government, startups, investors), with the vision of establishing the Filipino as a uniquely disruptive force in global innovation.

Ignite’s mission is deeply personal to Andre: to build and invest in transcendent ventures by building up and investing in transcendent founders and teams, advancing his core belief that innovation is the business (i.e., building sustainable operating models) of solving society’s wicked problems. In 2018 Andre authored the Ignite Manifesto and has relentlessly pushed its growth as an Operating System that has helped thousands of individuals and teams channel deeply personal GPS (Genius, Purpose, Service) into shared Mission and Collaboration, into Innovation and Impact.

Andre was born and raised in Manila and educated by the Jesuits and the Opus Dei, before moving onto the US, where he earned 3 degrees (Yale, Fordham, NYU) and lived for 15 years. In 2009, based on his pioneering work with CUBED (“Cube Ed”), the Center for University-Based Enterprise & Development, which Andre founded as an innovation accelerator and ecosystem in the state of Connecticut, the US Government granted Andre the status of Permanent Resident on the Basis of Exceptional Ability in the National Interest of the United States of America

Nevertheless, Andre’s heart remains fully in the Philippines, where he wants to do his best work and most meaningful impact. He has called Manila home again since 2011, when he moved back with his wife and their 2 dazzling boys. 

 

“I’ve pursued my career as a series of ventures and adventures… it’s a path that doesn’t look or feel like any other, that rarely ever really feels like work… precisely by challenging established norms, relentlessly going out of my box and into many other boxes, appreciating how seemingly disparate realities tie together, threading constellations where others barely even see the dots.”

 

From choosing Yale for its public-private management focus and then following it up with a second Masters in Interactive Marketing at NYU; to deciding against the post-MBA rush into investment banking or management consulting so that I can start the YGroupe and really understand the leverage in my New York, New Haven, Manila connections; to starting CUBED despite my perfectly zero knowledge of tech, incubators or the academe; to choosing to come home to Manila despite CUBED’s success and the US government’s offer of Permanent Residence; to the long and winding road of ventures, investments and partnerships that have now led to the National Innovators Initiative and cross-sector collaborations, not just across industries, but tying together national and local governments and hundreds of schools and MSMEs. I’ve really enjoyed the thrill of going into frontier space that I know nothing about, that no one knows anything about, and making sense and structure out of all that chaos and ambiguity – building value, outcomes, impact where nothing but deep need existed.

 

“Innovation: that’s what many people call it. For me, I see myself as an artist no less than Da Vinci or Picasso – business is my canvas and if I’m honest and brave there is no other way to paint but my way. Above all, I see innovation as my humbling participation in God’s ongoing work of creation – to help make things new and better all the time and to share that fire and capacity for renewal with everyone I meet. As we say, to ignite all we touch to live their deepest truth and so fulfill their highest potential and greatest promise— for joy, meaning, success, and impact; a life fully-lived.”

Your people don’t have to suffer.
Gift them the future they deserve.