BRAVE Southeast Asia Tech: Singapore, Indonesia, Vietnam, Philippines, Thailand & Malaysia Startups, Founders & Venture Capital VC (English)

In this episode of Brave, Jeremy Au and Shiyan Koh discuss the 2023 Southeast Asia's winners (region vs. Singapore), losers (overcapitalized vs. middle-stage startups) & Contrarian Beliefs (tech-first innovation vs. green & ESG startups). Show notes at: www.jeremyau.com/blog/2023-southeast-asia-winners

Koh Shiyan is the Co-Founder and Managing Partner at Hustle Fund, a venture capital fund that invests in pre-seed software startups in the U.S., Canada, and Southeast Asia. Prior to that, she was the VP of Business Operations and Corporate Development at NerdWallet, a fintech startup that helps users with a range of financial decisions through content, community, and tools. Show notes at: www.jeremyau.com/blog/creative-founder-legacy

Eugene Cheah, is the founder of Uilicious.com - which helps automate UI testing at scale for development teams, with AI assistance. He was a software engineer, who dived early into the startup scene, before spending time in the enterprise financial space, before returning to the startup scene as a founder. All while working on his own set of opensource projects behind the scenes. Show notes at: www.jeremyau.com/blog/eugene-cheah

Brian is a 3x founder turned investor now spending the majority of his time as General Partner of Iterative Capital. Brian was previously the founder and CEO of Divvy Homes ($2B valuation), Weave (YC S14, acquired), and Decide (Series C company, acquired by eBay). In non-existent spare time, Brian enjoys dog parks with his German Shepherd mix, rides on his motorcycle, and aping into interesting crypto projects. Show notes at: www.jeremyau.com/blog/brian-ma

Kai Yuan Neo is the founder and CEO at Rocket Academy, a live-online coding bootcamp based in Singapore that helps career switchers become software engineers. Launched in 2020, Rocket has trained over 1000 students in its intro coding courses and over 100 students in its career conversion Bootcamp course. To date, 100% of Rocket's Bootcamp graduates have received software engineering offers within 6 months of applying, from companies such as Grab, Ninja Van, Zendesk, Foodpanda, Circles. Life and Decathlon. Prior to Rocket Academy, Kai studied Computer Science at Stanford University and worked as a software engineer at Meta, Alibaba, Nuna, and ErudiFi. He loves reading autobiographies, playing guitar, and enjoying a nice cup of tea with friends. Show notes at: www.jeremyau.com/blog/kai-yuan-neo

Kathryn Cross is the founder of Anja Health, which she founded in memory of her brother, Andrew, who had cerebral palsy. Kathryn has cultivated a pregnancy and cord blood banking community on TikTok as @kathrynanja, where she raises awareness about the importance of cord blood banking and other issues related to pregnancy. Originally from Los Angeles, Kathryn graduated from Wellesley, where she received a B.A. in Media Arts & Sciences and Economics. Show notes at: https://www.jeremyau.com/blog/kathryn-cross

Florian is the co-founder & CEO of Midstay, a platform helping companies and individuals relocate easily to dreamy locations and work remotely. He is Belgian, formerly a product UX & UI designer and entrepreneur, and graduated from the College of Advertising and Design in Brussels. He founded a music festival in Belgium that reached 20k+ festival goers at the age of 23. He has traveled the world to work with startup founders and helped them reach their business goals with innovative user experiences and visuals. San Francisco, New York, Australia, Barcelona and Southeast Asia are some of the places where he has worked closely with Executives to help them design their product. He is a long-time traveler and remote worker. With a well-rounded blend of technical, design, marketing, and sales skills. He's passionate about all types of communication, art & technology. Show notes at: https://www.jeremyau.com/blog/florian-jacques

Nir Eyal writes, consults, and teaches about the intersection of psychology, technology, and business. Nir previously taught as a Lecturer in Marketing at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford. Nir co-founded and sold two tech companies since 2003 and was dubbed by The M.I.T. Technology Review as, “The Prophet of Habit-Forming Technology.” Bloomberg Businessweek wrote, “Nir Eyal is the habits guy. Want to understand how to get app users to come back again and again? Then Eyal is your man.” He is the author of two bestselling books, Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products and Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life. Indistractable received critical acclaim, winning the Outstanding Works of Literature Award as well as being named one of the Best Business and Leadership Books of the Year by Amazon and one of the Best Personal Development Books of the Year by Audible. The Globe and Mail called Indistractable, “the best business book of 2019.” In addition to blogging at NirAndFar.com, Nir’s writing has been featured in The New York Times, The Harvard Business Review, Time Magazine, and Psychology Today. Nir invests in habit-forming products that improve users’ lives. Some of his past investments include Eventbrite (NYSE:EB), Anchor.fm (acquired by Spotify), Kahoot! (KAHOOT-ME.OL), Canva, Homelight, Product Hunt, Marco Polo, Byte Foods, FocusMate, Dynamicare, Wise App, and Sunnyside. Nir attended The Stanford Graduate School of Business and Emory University. Show notes at: https://www.jeremyau.com/blog/nir-eyal

Raagulan Pathy is the Vice President, Asia Pacific for Circle. Based in Singapore, his responsibilities include the go-to-market strategy, sales and representing Circle in the region. Raagulan was previously the Head of Enterprise for the Asia Pacific region at Zoom, and he brings over a decade of business and sales leadership experience within the Cloud and technology sectors. Prior to his role at Zoom, he held senior business roles at Workplace by Facebook, Amazon Web Services and as co-founder of a Cloud software company. Show notes at: https://www.jeremyau.com/blog/raagulan-pathy

Jed is the Founder of AngelSchool.vc: the only program helping Angel investors build & grow syndicates. He is an active angel investor who has backed 2 seed stage startups to unicorn status. His syndicate is backed by 1000 LPs. As an operator, he built & ran the world's largest API Marketplace with a16z backed RapidAPI. Show notes at: https://www.jeremyau.com/blog/jed-ng