Listener Q&A: Founder-Investor Trust, Buy-Now Pay-Later Credit Models & USA SEC Regulatory Impact on SE Asia VC - E308

Shiyan Koh, Managing Partner of Hustle Fund and Jeremy Au answer some listeners’ questions. They discuss three major themes:

1. Founder-Investor Trust Dynamics & Reality Checks: Shiyan and Jeremy underscore the importance of cultivating transparent relationships between founders and investors. Founders often hesitate to reveal business setbacks to investors, but transparency is vital and investors can assist better when they're kept in the loop. They discuss that perfection is unattainable and not believable, and it’s more credible for founders to admit when they don't have answers and share their approach to resolving uncertainties. They also advise founders to confront the reality of their business, whether to pivot to a small business model, return the remaining capital to investors, or pursue an alternative route.

2. Buy Now, Pay Later Credit Policies: Shiyan highlights that successful BNPL models extend credit at the point of sale based on quality underwriting, especially in emerging markets with underdeveloped credit scoring systems. Jeremy also talks about how certain products, like Peloton in the US, are well-suited for BNPL due to the high price point and the creditworthiness of its typical consumers, but there’s a challenge in finding products that align with the BNPL model in markets where transaction volumes may be low, and the costs of underwriting could outweigh the benefits.

3. US SEC Impact on SEA VC Landscape: They discuss how SEC guidelines, particularly those affecting investments in China, pose challenges for US LPs looking to diversify into Asia. They highlight the significant shift of Chinese founders and global investment teams and their consideration to move to Singapore as a reaction to the current investment climate. They also share that the trend of decoupling between the U.S. and China is unlikely to improve in the near future, prompting both investors and founders to strategize accordingly for the long term.

They also talk about venture debt as a financing option, how founders can deal with emotional ups and downs and the value of seeking advice, and the significance of devising a contingency plan.

Supported by Baskit

Baskit is a company focused on digitizing Indonesia's supply chains. With a focus on empowering local communities, Baskit recognizes the immense potential within the 200,000 distributors and wholesalers scattered throughout the country's vast landscape. Unlike disruptive approaches, Baskit takes a collaborative stance, working hand in hand with these traditional businesses. By infusing technology and providing access to financing, they modernize operations and create efficient supply chains, benefiting manufacturers and consumers along the way. For more details about Baskit and their journey towards revolutionizing digital commerce and supply chains in Indonesia, please visit their website: https://baskit.app/

(01:17) Jeremy Au:

Morning Shiyan! Another week, another episode. Aren't you so psyched?

(01:22) Shiyan Koh:

Good morning, Jeremy.

(01:27) Jeremy Au:

So this week, we got a lot of Q&A and feedback over the past few weeks, and we just thought we would just go through them. So this would be a little bit of a light episode, frankly, but we'll just go from there. So I think we had Haywood kind of said, "Hey we really enjoyed the BRAVE episode just now on the Southeast Asia funding climate, no BS talking points, and he really appreciated your points on startups needing to get cashflow positive, as well as slicing one to two hours a week for fundraising relationship building. How do you feel about that? Any shoutout you want to say to Hayward?

(01:57) Shiyan Koh:

Yeah, I think this is probably in line with a lot of things that we're going to talk about in this episode, which is we all need to live in reality. And the reality is it is harder to raise money. Timelines are getting extended on fundraisers and so, as a founder, you need to figure out a Plan B, where not everything is going to go right, or things aren't, you're not going to wrap up your raise this month. Every time you talk to someone, they're like, we'd love to close next week. And you're like, okay, that's great. We all would, we'd love to close yesterday, but it's probably not going to happen. So you need to make a plan, like a contingency in case it doesn't go exactly the way you'd planned.

And I think cashflow breakeven is the only way to really own your destiny, and not leave it in the hands of whether or not you can raise in time. And I think sometimes, that can be a hard thing to think about because people have been so primed to grow. But I think you have to ask yourself that question, which is like, Hey, if I couldn't raise money the way I had planned to, what does that actually mean for my business and what's really essential and what do I need? And sometimes the answer is, I don't have a venture scale business, and that's hard to face up to, and there's a couple routes that people take.

Sometimes it's, hey, I have an okay business. It's not a venture scale business, and I'm probably not going to be able to raise money for it. I need to run it as a small business. Sometimes it's, my thesis isn't playing out, I'm going to return the money, what's left to investors and do something else. And I've kind of seen both things play out.

(03:46) Jeremy Au:

Yeah.

(03:46) Shiyan Koh:

Or, you know, I have an interesting product, but it's not a standalone business and I need to sell to somebody who could incorporate this into their product line.

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(03:57) Jeremy Au:

Yeah. I think one interesting thing is that definitely seeing founders obviously coming back on the market and fundraising, but also I think finding that the market's a lot softer than they had. And so, I'm starting to see they're trying to accelerate the pace, if that makes sense. And sometimes, it shows up as what I call false ultimatums, trying to increase the pace of that velocity. And I think that's kind of an interesting dynamic because I remember being a founder, fundraising, and I think the tricky part is that you get to increase the tempo when you have lost options, and there's auction, there's competition but I think figuring out what part of that process you're willing to accelerate versus not is tricky.

Yeah I think what's interesting is that I think we've potentially, don't quote me on this, but we've hit the bottom. I think in terms of the fundraising market, it's slowly getting better and so founders are coming back in the market. I think that investors are re-engaging and that there's that question, still, a lot of founders are facing, which is, should we fundraise now or if we can, should we fundraise in about six months? And it obviously varies person to person, but in general, I think what I find is that if you have stellar results, you can fundraise now. But even something that's less than stellar, seeing if you can push that out further out might be a little bit better. I don't know if that makes sense to you, or do you share that similar advice or how do you think about it In terms of market timing?

(05:10) Shiyan Koh:

Yeah, I mean I think the same things are always true, which is what is the thing that makes people feel like they need to act now? And if investors feel like there's going to be a lot of competition because the business looks really good, then they'll be motivated to move faster and the round will get done. But if the results are like, okay, then it's kind of in everyone's interest to be like, Hey, so great to meet. Let's check back in three months or six months, or whatever. And so I think that's the question, you have to ask yourself is, do you go through the time and energy of trying to kick off a full round? Now, if there's nothing, that really says you got to invest now, versus saying, Hey, I've validated some key hypotheses in this business, and now is the inflection point. And now is like when you should participate because if you waited three or six months, you know the valuation's going to run away from you.

(06:07) Jeremy Au:

Yeah, and I think the tricky part is that there's almost an opposite mindset here, because as a founder you want to push out and do it and keep iterating. But I think if you kind of go off a full raise, then you don't miss it, and then you try to raise a smaller round, or you try to go back out on the market and do it again in six months, then you look like you're always fundraising. I mean, you look like you're always fundraising. Then you know, people get disinterested as well because they feel like, you're not. And I think there's an interesting dynamic where people say, oh, they've been fundraising for the past one year. But actually it's two or three different mini raises, and basically, I think the founder gets it's a point as a result because of what the sentiment across the investor crowd is. So yeah, I think if you want to it's almost a contrary motion, which is a founder you want to do as much as you can, as many experiments as you can, but when it comes to investments, I think it's better when you have everything put together and you go out in one fluid motion with very clear goals and you know that you're going to get the whole round.

(07:01) Shiyan Koh:

It depends on your stage and it depends on the quantum, right? Which is I think sometimes what happens is people are like, I'm going to raise $5 million seed round. And that's not where the business is. And so they go out and then they get feedback and everyone's like, this seems like a lot relative to where you are. And then they revise and then I think there's also, how do you size how much you're raising relative to progress? How big is the group you're going out to? What is the speed you can get it done at? Because there is a world where you say, Hey, actually I'm going to raise a million dollar round.

And everyone's oh yeah, that makes sense, right? And then in 12 months you come back and you're like, okay, now I'm going to raise four, or whatever it is, versus saying, you go out to the market with five, everyone's like, eh, come back, you're like, oh, two and a half. And so I think that's part of the timing, momentum, sizing type question.

(08:03) Jeremy Au:

And I think also, like a lot of people get confused because folks will go through accelerators, for example. They kind of have that mindset around demo day, and then everything's packaged for them I guess they call it sales motions and sales, right? But fundraising motion is very different than if you were to go out trying to raise for a price round which tends to be like, now priced and so, so forth. So I think a lot of founders don't make that leap because it's not an intuitive. You keep doing what worked for you last time around, but it's actually not what's needed for you to succeed this time around.

On that note, there was some other feedback that we got Jing Lin said, Hey, she really appreciated your advice for female aspiring VCs about how to improve the tradecraft. Any fresh thoughts since then about, any advice you would give for folks who are thinking about being investor and that.

(08:46) Shiyan Koh:

No, I mean, I think there's no magic bullet. I feel like there's a bunch of work that people can do and I probably should just pin that episode or write it up on my blog because I do get requests for informational interviews a lot, and I don't have time to. Do all the one, one-on-ones, but I do end up kind of saying the same, and I think one of the things we talked about was sort of like, how can you demonstrate your sort of skillset without a job first? And whether it's, writing or doing podcasts or things like that, like actual, original content creation. And I think that's just really, it's a really hard first step for people to put their ideas and their thoughts out there. And so I would just kind of reiterate don't wait for it to be perfect. Just start and then each subsequent time will get easier.

(09:38) Jeremy Au:

Yeah. I had a couple of walks with aspiring investors. So they are lawyers or investment bankers or operators and, but they're all relatively young in their careers. So I would say they're in the late twenties. And I think they're asking the same type of questions, which is is this a good time to be a vc? How do I become one? What's the job like? And what was interesting was that after I sat down and heard their personal situations for all of them, I actually ended up saying Hey, you know, for all three of them, I actually ended up saying maybe being an operator is better right now based on your geographic requirements, based on your salary requirements, based on what you're trying to prove to yourself. So I thought it was an interesting conversation where I think there was a very clear initial spike of interest, which is, I want to be a VC. But actually, the question really became inverted, which is, what is the best job for your unique set of skill sets and what your personal aspirations are? So I thought it was an interesting, I don't know what's the word, coaching or professional development conversations I ended up being in as well.

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(10:35) Shiyan Koh:

Was there any commonality that you had noticed across the conversations about I thought VC was X and that's why I thought I wanted to do it, but actually, oh, it's Y.

(10:45) Jeremy Au:

Yeah.

(10:46) Shiyan Koh:

Maybe I want to do something else first. Did you notice any sort of misconceptions that you were able to help clear up?

(10:54) Jeremy Au:

Actually, that's a very fair point. I think for all three of them, they all actually had the opportunity to compare markets. So some of them were comparing, for example, Australia versus Singapore. People were comparing Singapore versus Vietnam, other people comparing Singapore versus the US. So actually what was common across all three of them, I'm glad you asked this question, was I think they had flexibility in terms of geography, right?

So not just about the role, but also the markets. And I think for me it boiled down to two things. I think first of all, if you're moving to a new country, it's always hard to do a triple jump. So it's hard to do a country shift, industry shift, and a roll shift at the same time, right? And so all of them are trying to do a double shift jump, but triple jump, and that's not easy because, it's hard to get a visa in Singapore. It's not easy to build networks in our country and get a job. So I think people were like, oh, I'll be able to do a triple jump and I'll easily get my immigration visa and I'll get paid the same. And I'm just like, yo, you can't, if you do a triple jump, you're effectively, you know, you're an entry level candidate effectively for the employer because you don't have any relevant skills, experience, or history for the role. So that dynamic I think was really important. That was one.

But two also, I think what was interesting to me was the concept of are they here for a short-term game or long-term game, was really important. That came up repeatedly. So what I mean by that is a lot of them were like saying I want to be in Singapore for a while, or Vietnam for a while, and they want to see if they want to do more of it in the future. But there is some level of a switch where they could potentially say they want to go back to X country, a Y country. And for me, I think what that made me realize was if the moment that there's some possibility that you may not stay in that country for more than two or three years, then I think that being an operator makes more sense because you can build skills that are in yourself as less network dependent, but also you can do well and you can port that skill around different markets, versus, I think as a VC, it's very much about network community building, and so that payoff and ramp takes a longer period of time. So I think if that was something that I noticed was the two pieces of advice I converged on.

(12:53) Shiyan Koh:

Got it.

(12:54) Jeremy Au:

Yeah. It's hard to be a great VC.

(12:55) Shiyan Koh:

Yeah. The thing that I tell people a lot is it takes a really long time also to figure out if you're any good.

(13:00) Jeremy Au:

Yeah, a hundred percent.

(13:04) Shiyan Koh:

That I think if you're not sure it's the thing you want to do, that's like a big investment. So that's like something to really think about.

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(13:12) Jeremy Au:

Next I think we have Lisa S at R3I Capital. She really enjoyed our conversation about US, China, and SEC regulations. I think her question was very much what does she think and how does SEC and US regulations impact Southeast Asia venture capital? I think more on a high level perspective So for me, I would just quickly answer that. I think, obviously I think US LP capital is a big chunk of capital investments into venture capital funds all around the world.

And so I think SEC regulations, for example, the one on investments into China, Basically means that if you are a US LP looking to diversify into Asia, there are some significant difficulties about how you want to invest into China. And so I think there's some consideration about how you can further diversify into other areas in Southeast Asia or how you continue to get exposure to the Chinese market. So I think that's one aspect about how it impacts, Southeast Asia VC funds down the road as well into the conversation. Shehan, how about you? Any thoughts about SEC regulations and the trends that you're seeing?

(14:16) Shiyan Koh:

I mean, it's a hot topic of conversation. I think a lot of people are worried about the chilling effect, that even though the directive is only about AI, quantum.

(14:28) Jeremy Au:

I think the truth is, it feels like it's going to be almost all of it, because there's a lot of conditional review.

(14:33) Shiyan Koh:

Yeah. So people feel like it'll be broader than that, and so I think the conservative move is just to pull back altogether. And I think there's a lot of fund managers who are talking about that, and I think that the sort of immediate effect is that it basically just shrinks like pipeline of US capital. But there's actually a Krugman sort of op-ed that talks about what does decoupling actually mean for the US economy and that on a relative basis, like US investment in China isn't actually that much and China isn't actually that big a purchaser of US exports as well. So it's more like on the other side of the equation. And so, there is lots of domestic capital that can fund all of that innovation in China. And it's just more a matter of like, how do they get out of China? If these sort of restrictions continue to be in place or get more stringent, actually.

(15:36) Jeremy Au:

I think what's interesting is that I've definitely seen more Chinese founders move or consider moving to Singapore and Southeast Asia. So I talked about it in previous episodes as well. But I think I just had a very strong conversation in this past week and it was basically a very clear signal that there's a lot of interest because I think some of Chinese founders wanted capital from both Chinese and global Capital, and what's been interesting is there's been two sets of conversations.

One conversation I had was literally a founder who was a strong founder. For this founder was very clear that she only wanted global capital because she got to choose, and so she wanted global capital. So that was an interesting dynamic. That's one, even though I think the connections were primarily with China. And then the second piece of course is I think there are a lot of founders who are looking to move, and so having conversations or inquiries about how to move I guess, it's somewhat of a repeat, but I think this was underscored because I had a personal interactions around this dynamic. So that was interesting.

(16:33) Shiyan Koh:

Yeah, and I've heard of global funds given sort of the slowdown in investment activity in China. I've heard of global funds with investment team members relocating to Singapore to follow the Chinese founders actually, who are relocating, to have a higher chance of getting deals done since there's not as much activity in China right now.

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(16:54) Jeremy Au:

Yeah. So yeah, I think what's interesting is, I don't think it's going to get better in terms of this decoupling. I think it's just the movie's going to keep going. So I think if you're an investment fund manager or a founder looking in the next 10 to 20 years of, timeline, I think people are starting to place their bets and move accordingly.

On that note, there's another listener who shared, Eileen Sim, she's an executive leadership coach. She said, Hey, you know, I really saw the tendency for founders to portray perfection even in the Bay Area, and that she imagines as the founders are terrified to share how bad things are, especially if whoever you're talking to is a potential investor or well connected to them. So how do you and I think about this as funders?

So my quick answer to that is, yeah, it's not easy because the ecosystem's pretty small, I mean, even in the Silicon Valley, but even in Singapore, everything's very densely connected. And so if you're talking to a tech friend of yours, sometimes you're like, what if they're an advisor to a VC fund ? What if they're also go and hang out buddies with somebody else? So I think there's always that conversation that's there, and I think the awkward reality is, yeah. I think when you have a dense network, there's a lot of serendipity happening.

The flip side of that is yeah, I think this kind of stuff is there. It's really important as a founder, as a result to have honestly, friends who are outside the technology scene. I think that's one, you know, do you have a loved one? Do you have good friends, old friends they you can talk to? And if you talk to someone at tech scene, I think you also know who's more trustworthy, right? You can have that deep, personal, but also tell them that you want to have a confidential discussion. And so you have to respect that on a code. And on this side, if you're an advisor to somebody and somebody's telling you they want it to be private or confidential, then I think you should respect that as much as possible. Otherwise, you burn that relationship the moment the news comes out. What do you think, Shiyan?

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(18:41) Shiyan Koh:

Yeah, I think there's also the question behind the question, which is how real are you with somebody about the state of the business? And there's a spectrum, right? I don't think you need to be falsely upbeat about your business. You don't have to puke your guts out, especially if it's not really an interested party.

But I think the original conversation we're having that triggered that was like, people saying that they didn't necessarily feel comfortable telling their own investors when things weren't going well. And I think that is a dangerous thing to be in because when things are going badly, if your investor has known all along, they feel like there's been transparency and communication, they don't feel surprised by it. I think it puts them in a better position to help you versus if you've just been hearing like great reports, and then suddenly the founder's oh no, it's all going to hell and I need your help now. That's like much harder to, then you're like, wait, then do I trust what you've been telling me to date? How did it all suddenly change so quickly? And so I've heard people say stuff like, I don't want my investors to think I don't know what I'm doing. It makes them more reticent in sharing things that are hard, but I think what we try to tell people is starting and growing a business is hard. That actually is a baseline expectation and there's no way you can know all the answers. It's impossible. That's why you need to leverage your investors, leverage your advisors and get help. Because it isn't the expectation that you know everything, but it's the expectation that as things arise that need to be solved, you can figure out how to marshal resources to solve it, right? Not you. You don't have to generate the answers for everything. And so I guess, I do wish people ask for help more.

And then I think the second thing is it's important to live in reality, right? We can't hide from what reality is, whether it's ourselves or our investors, and I know sometimes that's hard because also in front of employees, you also want to put on a show that, Hey, I'm not freaking out. I have a plan. But I also think employees can sense when you're not living in reality, they also talk to customers. They also see the product, all those sorts of things. And so I think there's a balance between being positive and relaying the vision, but also being realistic and being like, Hey, here's where we are. It's going to be hard. We knew it was going to be hard. Here are the things that we kind of really need to get clarity on the next three to six months.

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(21:26) Jeremy Au:

Yeah. I think a big part of it's just as an investor you should be building trust with the founder so that the founder's able to talk to you about both the good news and bad news. So it's a two-way street because I think, like you said, the worst case scenario is the founder doesn't trust the investor and then the investor learns that they don't trust that the founder, because it's been all good news. So how do you aggressively build that trust during the fundraising process? That you have selected an investor that you trust that you're willing to think through the good aspects, but the fundraise, but also I think the hard milestones that need to be de-risked.

That's all aspects that need to be, I think they're often said by the more mature, more experienced operators and as well as the more experienced and more mature investors right around the table. But I think portraying perfection is one tactic to be able to close the fundraising round, especially if you are looking to coast on a certain strategy. But I don't think it's optimal, or at least it can be quite brittle once bad news starts to kick in really hard.

(22:28) Shiyan Koh:

Well, I also just think it's not believable, right? First of all, perfection? Impossible. So it's not believable and at least where we operate in the early stage of the spectrum, you're not going to know all the answers, because you just, your business just isn't mature enough. And so I think it's a perfectly acceptable answer if somebody's like, Hey, well how about X, Y, Z thing? It's okay to say Hey, I actually don't know, but here's how I would think about it. Here's how I think we're going to learn that answer. And I think that's a perfectly acceptable way to answer the question, and I think it's actually more credible than pretending that no risks exist.

(23:07) Jeremy Au:

And I think it's important to say, especially if things have gone wrong as well, then you should say all of that and be very clear about how you have personally learned it. As well as what, as the company has learned, because otherwise it's very difficult for future investors to come in and feel comfortable saying Hey, it's okay to have made mistakes. It's okay to have been experimenting, but what did we all learn both on a professional and personal level?

On that note, I think last two questions real quick. One question from Shang Ong, who is a Solutions Architect at Whale, asked what are your opinions on the credit policies of BNPL, Buy Now, Pay Later?

(23:40) Shiyan Koh:

Oh, that's such a broad question.

(23:42) Jeremy Au:

Yeah, maybe, what's your broad answer?

(23:45) Shiyan Koh:

I think we talked a little bit about this before. Credit is willingness to pay and ability to pay, and you're trying to measure those things and that's your underwriting policy. And then, your variables are CAC and cost of capital. So, I think, BNPL started with the promise that hey, we can extend credit to people at the point of sale because they've already shown intent and we can do good underwriting on people that might not be traditional credit candidates at the point of sale. And it's a win-win because merchants get increased conversion. So we can take some money from them on that side, and we believe our underwriting's good enough to collect well.

(24:26) Jeremy Au:

Right.

(24:27) Shiyan Koh:

So I think it just all hinges on how good your underwriting is, and I think in a lot of emerging markets where credit scoring systems are less developed, people are sort of building their own underwriting models, pulling in sources of alternative data and trying to figure out right there that point of sale, is this person a good credit or not? And it takes a reasonable amount of time and money to build those models. And so I think, the people who've stood the test of time are the people who've had, who are able to raise money or have access to capital and who've been able to build very robust sort of underwriting models against those before getting blown up by bad underwriting.

So I think like probably advanced AI. They just raised $80 million in the spring. They've continued to build out their infrastructure around AI-enabled underwriting and credit services and build BNPL and a number of other things around that platform. But I think a lot of people who looked at Afterpay and the Australian BNPLs and try to replicate it, but didn't have enough runway, time or money-wise to build out that underwriting, they got acquired or went out of business because they just couldn't sustain the PLs long enough.

(25:38) Jeremy Au:

Yeah, I think it's really important because I think we look in the US for example, like one of the biggest drivers of BNPL, I remember reading the report was like Peloton. So Peloton was like the marquee customer and it was comprising of half of the BNPL that's underwritten because, it kind of goes back like, why is a Peloton bike, why is it a good product?

One is the people who want to buy generally tend to be affluent, so they tend to have better credit risk. But two, they don't want to buy the whole thing. It's relatively expensive, so it's a good chunk of capital and a single item so I think that was a very good item that was matched a relatively good segment. The problem is that there aren't a lot of those products around. You wouldn't want to do BNPL for prawn crackers and biscuits for example because that's a very low amount of transaction volume under loan and underwritten for high operating costs relative to that.

And it's not a segment that may not fit well with high underwriting quality. And so I think a big aspect of it in Southeast Asia is what are those products or what that match up the right segment and the right underwriting quality and accuracy. I thought it was interesting that advanced AI, Atome actually did experiment for one year in Vietnam. So they did, went Vietnam for one year and then they withdrew after one year, which sounds like a very good experiment, honestly. I mean, I think that obviously there's not much explanation about what was going on. But I think it just meant that they experimented, they launched the market and they felt like it didn't work out right. And I thought that's okay.

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(27:01) Jeremy Au:

So, last thing say here is a nice shout out to Yuen Sieh. So, she helped recommend it. You and I reconnect and do this regular show. So thank you so much for recommending this over a year ago. On that note, any last words of advice that you have for everybody out there?

(27:22) Shiyan Koh:

Keep on fighting the good fight. Sometimes, I think it can feel heavy and but hopefully you guys are all enjoying the work that you do, making progress and everyone is learning and then trying to make it. So don't worry too much. I don't have anything super profound this week. I got a lot of things to get done but I do enjoy the reader questions and so we should try to do those semi-regularly if possible. It's always good to get ideas and topics as well, that folks are wanting to spend more time on and possibly guests that we can bring in to the conversation.

(27:58) Jeremy Au:

You heard her. If you have a question that you want to ask, feel free to ask and if you have recommendations, feel free to let us know. All right. See you next week.