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

"When you have a personal mission in your life and you let it shine in a way that you live and breathe it, people are attracted to it. People see the dedication and the passion, and they want to help in many ways."​ - Geoffrey See Geoffrey See is the founder and chairman of Choson Exchange. Over the past 12 years, he built the leading grassroots-led organization driving economic change in North Korea. He has trained over 2000 North Koreans in entrepreneurship, economic policy and law. He has also distributed teaching materials to over 10,000 North Koreans. His work has introduced a generation of North Koreans to international practices. He has also contributed to enterprise reform, the establishment of special economic zones, and the reforming of legal property rights. Geoffrey also advises the South Korean government on the Kaesong Industrial Complex, a joint manufacturing zone, collaboratively built and manage by North and South Korea. His work has been written up as a Harvard Business School case study, which he helps teach to Harvard MBAs in the Global Capitalism class by Professor Sophus Reinert. He has survived two near-death experiences in his work in North Korea. Geoffrey is a Kauffman Fellow in venture capital. He is also passionate about technologies for financial inclusion and data. He co-founded CirCO, the leading co-working space business in Vietnam. He also helped establish HGX, a securities exchange in Singapore built on blockchain technology. Most recently he is at Trusting Social, providing identity solutions for the unbanked in emerging markets, through AI and facial recognition technologies. He also worked as a management consultant at Bain & Co. in Boston on big data retail and private equity. Geoffrey graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Economics at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. He also did and completed a Master of Arts in East Asian studies at Yale University. He was also an exchange student at Tsinghua University. On the side, he enjoys current affairs, running and traveling. You can follow him on Twitter @Geoffrey_See. Find the show notes and transcript at https://www.jeremyau.com/blog/geoffrey-see You can find our community discussions for this episode at https://club.jeremyau.com/c/podcasts/5-geoffrey-see-founder-and-chairman-of-choson-exchange

Elaine Truong is the first product technical product manager at Facebook Singapore. Facebook  connects 241 million Southeast Asians and one interesting difference is that 94% use Facebook through mobile. She's worked on connecting people in developing countries to the internet, 5G and virtual reality as well as the latest products by Facebook and Instagram. Elaine mentors startups around the world on product management and development for the Facebook Accelerator program. She is also on the Products A to Z committee at Grace Hopper Conference and is an advisor at #BuiltByGirls. She had previously launched Facebook's telecom infrastructure project and the associated Community Labs globally in partnership with Nokia, Intel, and telcos to promote open source hardware for telecom infrastructure solutions. Elaine is also an active tech community builder and an investor in startups and venture capital funds. She is on the board of SoGal Foundation, the largest community for over 100,000 female founders and investors across 50 chapters around the world. SoGal focuses on supporting diverse founders and funders to close the diversity gap in entrepreneurship and venture capital. She shared her product learnings with entrepreneurs in Cuba, Indonesia, Mexico, UK, and Singapore. She has cofounded Sprouts, consultancy to coach Singaporean startups on regional expansion to Southeast Asia. Recently, she coached Vouch.sg, a local Singaporean startup that builds localized chatbots for Southeast Asia. Prior to Facebook, she advised an IIT Bombay team that invented a device that costs less than 1 USD to eliminate smoke emissions from firewood cookstoves. It offers increased energy efficiency, reduced cooking time, and lowers harmful emissions. The pilot projects in Mumbai distributed over 2000 units. The team was a semifinalist at the DBS-NUS Social Venture Challenge, featured as a Next Generation Startup by Inc. Magazine and was a Kairos Society Top 50 company in 2014. Elaine is a member of the selective Sandbox community, a mobile society of trailblazers. They unlock human potential by bridging geographies and disciplines to create opportunities for meaningful conversation, collaboration, and discovery. She is also a global fellow at Kairos, a community that builds and funds companies to make life more affordable. They focus on critical life stages where old industries have failed to meet the needs of everyday individuals around the world. Elaine was born and bred in Los Angeles. She has a Bachelor of Science in Materials Engineering at UCLA, the University of California: Los Angeles. She enjoys traveling, reading, and learning Mandarin. Read the show notes and transcript here at https://www.jeremyau.com/blog/elaine-truong You can find our community discussions for this episode at https://club.jeremyau.com/c/podcasts/4-elaine-truong-product-technical-program-manager-facebook

Vardhan Kapoor is the Business Strategy Manager for Deliveroo, overseeing the development and deployment of the organization's strategy across Singapore. He also co-founded the company's Global Sustainability Committee. He is passionate about seeing the technology industry evolve in an increasingly sustainable manner. For those in the know, Deliveroo is a food technology company present in 13 countries across Europe, the Middle East and Asia. It was the Financial Times fastest-growing European company at 2017 and 2018 and is one of Europe's highest valued startups. Deliveroo in Singapore has over $45 million of revenue, 6,000 writers and 4,000 restaurant partners as of December 2018. He’s also a mentor at Big Idea Ventures, a hybrid venture fund that invests in and accelerates alternative protein companies. The fund has raised over $50 million and invested in over a dozen startups across New York and Singapore. He also advises startups in the sustainability and social impact space. Prior to Deliveroo, he worked in management consulting and Monitor Deloitte across the UK, UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Russia. He holds a Master of Science in Law and Accounting and is a Bachelor of Arts in Law and Anthropology from the London School of Economics. He is a World Economic Forum Global Shaper and International Institute of Communications Young Leader. He is also a Fellow of the Royal Society of the Arts in the UK. In his free time, he enjoys reading, writing, and cycling. For the show notes and transcript, go to https://www.jeremyau.com/blog/vardhan-kapoor You can find our community discussions for this episode at https://club.jeremyau.com/c/podcasts/3-vardhan-kapoor-head-of-strategy-deliveroo

Chia is a Principal at Saison Capital, a leading FinTech-focused venture capital fund, who has done especially well in emerging markets like Southeast Asia and India. Their direct investments include Grab, Southeast Asia's largest startup and super-app, as well as ShopBack, Southeast Asia's largest shopping and cashback rewards platform. Their limited partner investments include some of the top-performing funds in Southeast Asia, like East Ventures and Beenext, as well as global funds like Quona Capital and Antler.  Previously he was the fifth employee for Antler, the leading global pre-team venture builder. He also both invested and launched markets for them in Europe. He was also at Rocket Internet where he helped build out an eCommerce company in Pakistan and Sri Lanka that was bought by Alibaba. On the side, he is cofounder of Shaper Impact Capital, a 60-person platform that helps early stage startups with an impact connect with resources they need for the next stage of growth. He runs good-admissions, a Harvard Business School admissions advice platform where all proceeds go to charity. He also angel invests in marketplace and consumer startups in emerging markets like Indonesia, Bangladesh, and Egypt. His educational background includes a law undergraduate degree from Cambridge and will be doing his Harvard MBA in the future. He likes indie music, hiking and writes about venture capital at his website, which can be found at www.chiajy.com.  Find the show notes and transcript at https://www.jeremyau.com/blog/chia-jeng-yang You can find our community discussions for this episode at https://club.jeremyau.com/c/podcasts/2-chia-jeng-yang-principal-at-saison-capital

Kwok Jia Chuan currently leads payment product policies for Google. Previously, he was Deputy Director in the Singapore government's digital transformation office. He led a product team working on digital payment and identity products. He also led the project for PayNow, one of the world's first government-created peer-to-peer payment systems. He led its national adoption from 0% to over 75% in two years. PayNow now transacts over $12 billion annually. Today, Singaporeans now commonly say "I'll PayNow You," just like how Americans say, "I'll Venmo you" or " I'll PayPal you." He also happens to be a graduate of the London School of Economics and MIT, and is recognized as a World Economic Forum Global Shaper. With Jeremy Au, he co-founded Conjunct Consulting, Asia's leading social impact consulting platform, that has delivered services worth millions of dollars. You can find the show notes and the transcript at https://www.jeremyau.com/blog/kwok-jia-chuan You can find the community discussion on our podcast episode at https://club.jeremyau.com/c/podcasts/1-kwok-jia-chuan-global-lead-payments-product-policy-at-google