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

Poesy Liang is an interdisciplinary artist with a background in architecture, luxury design & media. She is an innovator on the social front, founding 2 Facebook movements – Helping Angels & Bald Empathy Movement, and has won numerous media awards in South East Asia for her humanitarian projects. An early adopter of technology since 1999, long before the terms ‘blogs’ and ‘cloud storage’ even existed. Poesy recently implemented a blockchain system with her collection of physical works for authentication & provenance, and receiving bitcoins as a mode of payment since late 2015. Her famous cat Harry Putter appears on Telegram as emoji stickers. Poesy is occasionally invited to speak on leadership platforms to share her remarkable energy that defeated paralysis twice caused by spinal tumours, and her survivor story is often retold in the media. While Poesy continues to produce paintings, sculptures, objects, museum installations, gemstone jewelry, lifestyle spaces, fashion, etc – she also create music and movements, and actively experiment with technology to widen her portfolio around her signature works – she finds it important to bridge the gap between the realms in order to achieve her calling to affect media reform and engage her skills for social good. Poesy started out in the world when she was aged 14 as the Levi’s 501 girl for South East Asia and became a familiar face in Asian television commercials before she reinvented herself into this current form.

John is the founder of Saturday Kids - a curiosity school for children - and Doyobi - an edtech startup setting out to become the 21st century skills framework adopted by every school. He is also an investor in tech startups, in particular startups reimagining the future of work and learning such as Padlet, Galileo, Contra and Beanstalk. Saturday Kids runs Code In The Community, a Google and government supported initiative that is the largest free coding programme in Singapore. John is an Obama Foundation Asia-Pacific Leader, Transcend Fellow and Ashoka Changemaker. He sits on the board of Ninja Van and ErudiFi.  He is a father of five whose music playlist alternates between jazz, old-school hip-hop and Japanese city pop. In a different life he’ll probably be a music writer. Or winemaker. Possibly ski instructor. One day when he's tired of tech he wants to open a natural wine and vinyl bar in a ski resort somewhere in Japan. Show notes at: https://www.jeremyau.com/blog/john-tan You can find the community discussion for this episode at: https://club.jeremyau.com/c/podcasts/john-tan This episode is produced by Kyle Ong.

Wing Vasiksiri is a Co-Founder and Managing Partner of iSeed SEA, a venture capital firm that invests in founders building software and technology-enabled companies across Southeast Asia. The firm is sector agnostic and focuses on seed stage investments in Indonesia, Singapore, Vietnam and Thailand. Limited partners in the fund include global founders like Naval Ravikant (Founder & Chairman of AngelList), Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal (Founders of Snapdeal), and Jonathan Swanson (Founder & Chairman of Thumbtack) among others. He was previously on the operations team at AngelList Venture where he worked with angel investors and fund managers to invest over $80M into 357 startups. During his time at AngelList, he launched and deploy investments for 25 venture funds, working directly with emerging fund managers across the fund life cycle. Before that, he helped raised institutional funds for 500 Startups and The House Fund and has personally angel invested in 18 startups and 3 venture funds. He is now based in Thailand where he invests across Southeast Asia and helps companies scale and break into the Thai market. Wing graduated with a degree in Economics from the University of California, Berkeley. His hobbies include freediving, scuba-diving, surfing, and jiu jitsu. You can find him on Twitter at @wingvasiksiri. Shownotes at: https://www.jeremyau.com/blog/wing-vasiksiri

A serial entrepreneur and CEO operator with a track record of 0 to 1 growth and a strong focus on building healthy unit economics early on in a venture's life-cycle. He founded Postr, a leading lock screen advertising SDK in 2014 (exited to Play2Pay in 2021). He currently works with MonksHill Ventures and Kickstart Ventures, building out ivs.tv, SEA's largest B2B video player and advertising delivery platform, serving over 120 million unique users, across over 1.2bn pages per month. Show notes at: https://www.jeremyau.com/blog/milan-reinartz You can find the community discussion for this episode at: https://club.jeremyau.com/c/podcasts/milan-reinartz This episode is produced by Kyle Ong.

Aldi is the Partner at Arise, an early stage fund initiative by MDI Ventures and Finch Capital with a mission to empower the 3rd Generation of Entrepreneurs in the post-pandemic era who's building a R.A.B.B.I.T. (Real Actual Business Building Interesting Tech) through his Backward Investment Thesis which is powered by multi corporations and venture funds backers.   He is also the VP of Investments at MDI Ventures, an $830 Million AUM Global Multi-Fund VC Firm investing in local founders, mainly backed by Telkom Indonesia. Aldi is leading the overall global investment activities with focus on seed-to-growth equity stage startups across 5 Funds and 3 Offices (ID, SG, USA) with portfolios that represent 12+ Countries including PayFazz, Waresix, Kredivo, MPL, aCommerce, SiCepat, ObserveIT (Exited to Proofpoint), Wavecell (Exited to 8x8), Red Dot Payment (Exited to PayU Naspers), Whispir (IPO at ASX), and Geniee (IPO at TSE).   Prior to MDI Ventures, he was in charge of setting up, leading, executing, and managing investments of a Silicon Valley based Venture Capital firm in the SEA region and #1 Fintech focused VC arm of Indonesia largest Corporate Lender with top SEA portfolio which includes Alodokter, Investree, Koinworks, Amartha, Bridestory (Exited to Tokopedia), Moka (Exited to Gojek), Urbanindo (Exited to 99.co) Jurnal (Exited to Mekari), Talenta (Exited to Mekari), and Cashlez (IPO at IDX).   Recently, Aldi was awarded as the only GCV Powerlist Top 100 from SEA region among other top global CVCs such as Softbank, Intel Capital, GV, M12, Naspers, Tencent Investment, and Alibaba Innovation Ventures.   If you are an aspiring 3rd Generation of founders who is interested to build R.A.B.B.I.T and looking for a highly strategic and agile partner in Indonesia to crack its US$ multi-billions Digital Market opportunities, don't hesitate to reach him out - aldi.hartanto@mdi.vc Show notes at: https://www.jeremyau.com/blog/aldi-hartanto You can find the community discussion for this episode at: https://club.jeremyau.com/c/podcasts/aldi-hartanto This episode is produced by Kyle Ong.

Robbie Crabtree started his career working inside of the courtroom where he developed and refined his speaking, strategy, and storytelling as a trial lawyer. In 102 jury trials he tested and validated his system in murders and child abuse cases. As these skills grew, he was asked to coach the national mock trial team at SMU Law School in Dallas, TX which he has done for the past 4 years. Robbie called his system Performative Speaking and began working with founders, entreprenuers, and executives when they reached out to him after seeing him in the courtroom. Over the past 2 years he has worked with founders to successfully fundraise at the pre-seed through series B levels and advised others around leadership development, strategic communication, and best sales techniques. Robbie's role as a consultant and coach to startups and founders has put him in front of large audiences around pitching and pitch decks in both On Deck and with Jason Yeh's Fundraising for Founders. He has also taught his own Performative Speaking online program where he has worked with over 150 people in the last 9 months to turn speaking into a superpower. Robbie's big question is how can he help people with world changing ideas to effectively communicate those ideas to actually change the world.

Gregory Van is CEO of Endowus.com, Asia’s leading fee-only wealth management platform. Headquartered in Singapore and backed by Lightspeed Venture Partners and Softbank Ventures Asia, Endowus is the first digital advisor to span both private wealth and public pension savings (CPF & SRS). Endowus focuses on providing expert advice, institutional access to financial solutions, at low & fair fees to everyone, in a delightful digital-first experience. Greg started his career in investment banking at UBS, advising and fundraising for private equity and venture capital firms in the Asia Pacific region. Greg then joined Grab in its early days and was the business development and partnerships lead for payments and technology. ‍ As a young father of two, Greg realised the importance of personal financial planning but found that managing the finances of his young family was challenging as it was costly, frustrating, and limited in high-quality options. “Investing should be accessible, and advice should be scientific in helping people realise their goals. Coming from an investments background, I was shocked by what someone has to go through in order to plan for their family’s financial future with confidence. There is a huge gap between people’s investment activities and the portfolio that would suit their individual situation. I believe technology and access to the right products will close this gap and achieve measurable client results through structured, progressive, and personalised financial planning.” Greg therefore saw an opportunity to combine his expertise in tech and finance to empower people to realise their financial goals. As part of Endowus Investment Committee, Greg is passionate about building holistic portfolios for every investor. Greg’s passion for investments and helping others stems from his personal experiences and failures. At 17, Greg made his first investment in Amazon and profited 7% in 3 days. Emboldened, he began speculating which resulted in his portfolio fluctuating from a 30% profit to 95% loss. Through this journey, Greg fine-tuned his investment approach to be holistic, evidence-based with the lowest fees possible. Today, Greg and his family have invested all of their savings in Endowus’ 80% stocks, 20% bonds portfolio. Greg graduated magna cum laude with a BA in Politics, Philosophy, and Economics from the University of Pennsylvania. He also did a one-year exchange program directly enrolled in the School of International Studies at Peking University. Show notes at: https://www.jeremyau.com/blog/gregory-van You can find the community discussion for this episode at: https://club.jeremyau.com/c/podcasts/gregory-van This episode is produced by Kyle Ong.

Janine Teo is the CEO of Solve Education!, an education technology not-for-profit with the mission of delivering quality education to everyone, focusing on the bottom of the pyramid demographic. She is the first Asian to receive the International Intellectual Benefits to Society Award by Mensa International. Janine is also an advisor to ADB’s Digital Technology for Development Unit, and a fellow of the University of Pennsylvania—Global Social Impact House. She believes that education is the key to solving the many challenges we face in the world today. She is an avid speaker on topics like education, EdTech, gender equality, and poverty alleviation. Janine began her career as a software engineer in Paris and concurrently founded and operated various businesses in Singapore. She eventually joined Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide Inc, and served various postings in Thailand, Maldives, US and Indonesia over eight years. Janine obtained her Bachelor in Computer Engineering from Nanyang Technology University. In her free time, she enjoys mentoring, upcycling furniture, cooking and training her newly adopted cat. Show notes at https://www.jeremyau.com/blog/janine-teo You can find the community discussion for this episode at https://club.jeremyau.com/c/podcasts/68-janine-teo-on-edtech-founder-pathing-insatiable-curiosity-gamifying-education-from-indonesia-to-beyond

Melvin Sumapung is the Co-Founder & CEO of Justika (www.justika.com). Justika is a legal services marketplace, aiming to make justice more accessible to Indonesians. They helped tens-of-thousands of Indonesians seeking help on divorce, inheritance, criminal, land and property, and also businesses. The platform also partners with the public sector such as the Ministry of Cooperatives and SMEs and also The Asia Foundation, to provide free consultations to covid impacted SMEs and domestic violence victims. Before joining Justika, Melvin worked at an AI/data analytics startup where he improved the functionality of the most widely used regulations database in Indonesia, and had also spent his career in the corporate strategist and business transformation field of corporates. Melvin graduated from Bandung Institute of Technology, majoring in Industrial Engineering. In his spare time he enjoys doing sports, and is always open to connect and casually chat with fellow and aspiring entrepreneurs. You can connect to him at https://www.linkedin.com/in/melvinsumapung/.

Mark is a software entrepreneur, business development expert, startup advisor, community builder, and author of Community-in-a-Box. He currently works at AWS as a Principal Startup Advocate advising founders and technical teams on how startups across Asia-Pacific successfully build and scale their startups on AWS. As a community builder, Mark founded DEVBIZOPS, a long standing newsletter and blog about innovation, technology transformation, and developer culture. Mark also is the founder of the Enterprise Sales Forum, a global community of 25,000 B2B sales professionals that meet in-person and virtually to share ideas, network with peers, and learn new skills. Previously, Mark was with Stack Overflow to help launch their SaaS Q&A platform and then led efforts to expand business in APAC working with C-level executives to help them understand how to build internal tech communities in order to improve software delivery performance. Before that he launched an HR tech startup, invested in numerous B2B tech companies and worked at a diverse group of leading technology companies including Oracle, E.piphany, and Siebel. Mark graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering from Boston University. In his non-working hours, he likes to search cities for the best local foods, and he can be seen rocking out to extreme metal on occasion.