The Southeast Asia Investment Landscape with Jeremy Au

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Jul 25, 2023

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INSIGHT

Market Fundamentals And VC Home Runs

Southeast Asia's startup case rests on rising middle class, urbanization and digitalization combined with industry-specific disruption opportunities.
Venture returns depend on building $100M+ revenue businesses within a decade to deliver typical VC home runs.

ADVICE

Choose Great Bosses Early

Go work for or with a great boss early; they accelerate learning and open future opportunities.
Seek psychological safety and mentors who push you to 'drink from the firehose.'

INSIGHT

GDP Per Capita Predicts Vertical Timing

Southeast Asia is heterogeneous in GDP per capita, so tech adoption and vertical maturity vary by country and income level.
Founders should match product categories to each market's economic inflection points rather than assume uniform timing.

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"Southeast Asia is a very exciting market and I think lots of folks, and probably guests have talked about it, but let's just rattle off the list; obviously you have a rising middle class, you have that openness to trade, openness to immigration, and openness to keep growing from a policy perspective. Of course, there's the urbanization and the internet technology digitalization wave. So these are all the first three slides of every VC fund and LP deck, but also the first three slides of every market report. There are so many great ones out there. But I think when we double click a little bit further, what we're also thinking about is what are the industries that are ripe for change. You can call it disruption, you can call it digitalization, but I think that's the crux of it. When we look at venture capital, how do you build that a hundred million dollar revenue business within 10 years and create that 10x multiple? I think that's the home run that VC funds are geared towards. That's something that is currently still in motion. 10 years ago it didn't exist." - Jeremy Au

Fresh out of the studio, Jeremy Au, chief of staff & venture capitalist from Monk's Hill Ventures joined us in a conversation on how to navigate the challenging investment landscape in Southeast Asia. The conversation began with his career from an entrepreneur to now venture capitalist & podcaster. Jeremy drilled down specifically on the venture capital and angel investing scene and dived deep into the emerging trends shaping the different key markets from Indonesia to Vietnam, and elucidated startup expansion strategies driven by changes in technology, language and markets. Last but not least, he offered his take on what great would look like for a successful venture capitalist in Southeast Asia.

Podcast Information: The show is hosted and produced by Bernard Leong (@bernardleong, Linkedin) and Carol Yin (@CarolYujiaYin, LinkedIn). Proper credits for the intro and end music: "Energetic Sports Drive" and the episode is mixed & edited in both video and audio format by G.Thomas Craig (@gthomascraig, LinkedIn).