Navigating Southeast Asia: Jeremy Au on Building, Investing, and Career Pivots - E720
"When it comes to angel investing, this is an Olympic-level race and not a pass-fail threshold. If you walk into a gym with 100 people working out, my job as an investor is to pick the top three. If you're number four or five, maybe this year is not your time and you need another year in the gym before you get picked. The criteria is not the magic sauce; it's the high bar at which you select."
"Building companies is really, really hard. There is a difference between building a product, building a team, and building a business. First, you have to figure out a product that people actually want to buy. Then, you build a great team and attract them to your mission and vision. Lastly, you must transition from being a founder who is selling something into a CEO who is able to strategize, prioritize, and stack rank decisions in a complex and ever-changing world."
"The story that has been told a lot is about the macroeconomic situation of Southeast Asia, like the rising middle class and trade between East and West. What is not told enough is the nuance around localization and the opportunities at a ground level. You cannot paint it with one brush; Singapore is very different from Indonesia, which is very different from Malaysia and Vietnam. An industry thesis really fundamentally has to be broken down at a country level, playing to each country's unique strengths."
Jeremy Au joined Rohit Malhotra on Life Self Mastery to talk about the moves between founder, VC, and operator, and what each seat actually teaches you. Now leading Cosmetic Physician Partners Asia after Bain, CozyKin, Monk's Hill Ventures, and Lucence, Jeremy is candid about what does not transfer between roles.
They cover the three things every founder has to get right (the product, the team, and the business), the Southeast Asia story that still is not told at ground level, why angel investing is an Olympic-level race rather than a pass-fail test, why coaching someone and investing in someone are two completely different prisms, and the two-by-two he uses to advise emerging fund managers who have deployed capital without returns.
Support the original show: Life Self Mastery with Rohit Malhotra: https://www.youtube.com/@LifeSelfMastery
00:00 Intro
01:19 Founder to VC to operator, and back again
03:10 The three things: product, team, business
07:33 Scaling a clinic group from the US into Asia
10:54 The Southeast Asia story nobody is telling
18:30 Why a regional thesis is too broad a brush
22:20 Angel investing is an Olympic race, not a pass-fail test
25:41 Coaching someone vs investing in someone
28:08 Advice for emerging VCs who have not returned capital
35:07 The thread: high-performing teams
41:59 The comfort crisis and the 2% idea
46:54 What he would tell his younger self
50:20 Why Flow Club is his favourite tool
52:37 Where to find Jeremy
Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3GVydLTmN8c&list=PLl9u6ECOP8_7scb97PE3whKu4yJVizIOd
Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/75KsWpLxObxZEDPE6cGkzW
Keywords: Southeast Asia Tech Ecosystem, Startup Founder Journey, Venture Capital Strategy, Angel Investing Criteria, Business Model Execution, High-Performing Teams, Market Localization in Asia, PropTech and HealthTech, CEO and Operator Roles
