Shuyin Tang: Radical Responsibility, Strategic Debt As Tool & Consultant to Venture Philanthropy to Impact Investing - E411

Shuyin Tang, CEO of Beacon Fund and Partner of Patamar Capital, and Jeremy Au talked about three main themes:

1. Consultant to Venture Philanthropy to Impact Investing: Shuyin initially aspired to a career in diplomacy but was rejected - leading to her choice to become a management consultant at Bain & Company. She worked hard at Bain to merge business skills with social impact initiatives by working with nonprofits, e.g. through nonprofit projects and a strategy engagement to improve the livelihoods of Indian smallholder farmers. These experiences led her to LGT Venture Philanthropy and to impact-driven investing at Patamar Capital.

2. Strategic Debt As Tool: As CEO of a debt fund, Shuyin emphasized the advantages of debt financing over equity for businesses in Southeast Asia, highlighting its suitability for the region's predominantly small and medium enterprises (SMEs). Unlike traditional high-growth startups, these enterprises benefit from the steady support that debt provides, enabling gradual growth without the pressure of rapid scaling demanded by equity investments. She also addressed cultural hesitations towards debt in Asian markets where it has historically been viewed negatively, and explained the shift in perception as businesses recognize that debt financing can preserve company control, prevent ownership dilution and facilitate smoother operational progress without the disruptive demands of equity-based exit strategies.

3. Radical Responsibility: Shuyin discussed her transition from a role within a collaborative team to spearheading her own investment fund, which marked a significant shift towards adopting a “radical responsibility” mindset to make impactful investment decisions and foster sustainable growth within the companies they support. She emphasized the expanded scope of responsibilities that come with leading a fund, which includes not only making strategic investment decisions but also managing fundraising, operations, and team dynamics. She also highlighted the challenges of navigating these complexities and stressed that understanding and accepting full accountability for both successes and setbacks has been crucial.

Jeremy and Shuyin also talked about the integration of financial returns with social impact in investment strategies, VC developments in the region’s ecosystem, the challenges in implementing large-scale social projects within emerging markets, and the need for investment tools that are aligned with businesses’ diverse needs.

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(01:41) Jeremy Au:

Hey, I'm really excited to have you on the show. It's really inspiring what you're doing in the region, a slightly different tech than all the VCs out there, but I would love for you to introduce yourself.

(01:50) Shuyin Tang:

Hi there, Jeremy. First of all, thank you so much for inviting me to be on your show. Hi to all of the audience as well. It’s a real pleasure to be here today. I would be what you’d call an accidental investor. If you asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, when I was younger, I would have said I wanted to become a diplomat, be at the UN, or something to do with an international NGO.

At that time, it was my calling in life. As things often don't go the way you plan, I ended up working at Bain first, then finding my way into development consulting, and then impact investing. Geographically, that journey has taken me from Australia, where I grew up, to India, and then to Vietnam, which is my adopted home. Today, I'm the CEO and Cofounder of the Beacon Fund which is a private debt fund but a private debt fund that focuses on the missing middle of entrepreneurs in Southeast Asia.

(02:50) Jeremy Au:

Awesome. We'll definitely get into that. You were really into community service and national representation, from what I can tell. What were you like as a kid?

(03:00) Shuyin Tang:

That’s an interesting question. I had a gift of a very stable childhood. I lived in the same house and went to the same school for basically my entire formative years. I have what you’d call hippie Asian parents. They're not your typical tiger mom and dad at all. Rather than telling me I need to study more and get A+, they tell me to get out more, take a walk, and see my friends. I'm not sure whether any of our listeners in Asia can relate to that, but I have to say, I'm extremely blessed to have very cool parents.

There are two things to know about me when I was growing up. Number one is that I was not entrepreneurial or business-oriented at all. Some of my friends have great stories about starting their first business at age 10 and making more than their mom and dad. That was not me. I didn't really have an entrepreneurial bone in my body. Maybe I did, but it was yet to be discovered at that time. The second point that’s interesting now that I look back at it was that, my parents always tell me the story. Once, we're over at a family friend's house, and then they had a kid about my age, and he would literally wave his hand in front of my face and ask if I talk because I was that quiet and I was always in my own shell. That's been an interesting journey because to start a fund, you have to really be out there. And I've had to somehow dredge up from inside myself the kind of extroversion and the sales qualities that one needs to have.

(04:33) Jeremy Au:

yes. And what's interesting is that you went on to become a consultant at Bain, which I also worked at. So what was that experience like?

(04:39) Shuyin Tang:

Yes. It was my dream to join the Australian public service. Many good things happen in life, unfortunately, there was one rejection there and I didn't get the job. I didn't get even called to the interview that could’ve led to another wonderful door opening. And for me, that was getting the chance at Bain. It was definitely a bit of a baptism of fire. Before I started at Bain, I had literally never opened Excel, but with a place like Bain, you either learn or you do not last there very long. I did learn and challenge myself, and it got up to speed. This was corporate Australia 15 years ago. I would say, it was a bit challenging for me when I didn't see as many leaders who really looked like me, and had the same story as me. So I did raise some questions about that, but overall, I can't think of a better place to build a lot of fundamental skills that still helped me to this day.

(05:49) Jeremy Au:

What jumped out at me is that you definitely co-led Aurora, which is the pro-bono consulting group. Then you later went on to consult with TechnoServe, which is also a pro-bono strategy consulting project. So what was that experience like?

(06:02) Shuyin Tang:

Yes, as I've shared, impact was always very close to my heart. Bain was a stepping stone to something else, as it is for many people. Some people who started in Bain did want to become a Bain partner. That was their goal in life. Many people saw it as a stepping stone like I did. So for me, even while I was at Bain, I did want to get as much impact on nonprofit experience as I could. Unfortunately, when I was at Bain, because of the working hours, it was hard to explore that as fully as I would truly wanted to, but in small ways, we were able to support local nonprofits in Australia and I began to see how a more generic consulting skillset could actually be applied to problems that I felt more passionate about, so these questions of social impact and serving underserved communities. One of the great things about Bain was that I got to take this transfer and I went to New Delhi in India. And that was definitely a moment when I realized there’s another side to the very quiet, sleepy suburb of Sydney that I grew up in. I fell in love with that kind of emerging market energy. And basically, since then, I’ve been living in Asia. It was also the catalyst for me to say that Bain was a great experience. I've used it as that stepping stone, but it was time to branch out and get back to my original calling. Soon after that transfer experience in the New Delhi office of Bain, I decided to leave and go with TechnoServe. It's a development consulting firm. So on one half of the firm, you have people from MBB or JP Morgan investment bankers, and then on the other half, you have amazing development who I had wanted to be, those hardcore development professionals who know a lot about agriculture or workforce development or topics such as that. And it was a beautiful thing to see what happens when you put these two groups or different types of people together. On one hand, there are some pretty idealistic ex-consultants and bankers, and then people who frankly had a lot more real experience than us, solving the most intractable problems.

(08:13) Shuyin Tang:

So in TechnoServe, I was also living in India, doing a really interesting project in the agriculture space, basically asking ourselves the question, you're working with a large donor, and how do we increase the livelihoods or increase the incomes, and improve the livelihoods of smallholder farmers in Bihar and Orissa, which are two of the poorest states in India. The learnings from the experience at Bain are actually applicable to these types of issues as well. That logical thinking, the framework, all of that is pretty applicable. And then I also realized I do have a lot to learn about consulting, as it can be quite high-level, and it is by definition, strategic. So I did have a lot to learn about what it really meant to be a small pharma producer organization in Bihar, to deliver fertilizer in a very practical way, and no amount of beautiful slides or aligned footnotes could really get me out of that, and contribute to that dilemma. It was a good wake-up call as well as another catalyst for deciding what I wanted to do next.

(09:08) Jeremy Au:

Yes. And what you did next was join the venture capital slash venture philanthropy side with LGT, with En Lee and folks.

(09:16) Shuyin Tang:

Yes, exactly. At that time, I was a consultant. I'd done strategy consulting and then I'd done development consulting. Then, I heard about this very interesting idea called impact investing. These days, everyone knows about impact investing. Everyone wants to become an impact investor. Back then, it was still pretty new and it was quite niche, but through the network and circles that I was in, I did hear about it and I thought it was very cool. As we know, being an investor, you do have more skin in the game than being a consultant. That's the truth of the matter. And that was really interesting to me. I did want to see things over a longer time period. Consultantsadd value, but it’s case-driven. Six months, you come in and then you move on to the next. As an investor, the cycles are much longer, typically 10 years for the most plain, vanilla-type fund or even longer, arguably. And I thought about how things really work because it takes time, especially in these markets, so how do I give myself a seat at the arena where you can see these things evolve over a longer time period? So that was my initial motivation for thinking about investment as the next career path for me. There was a big problem with that which is that I had zero investment experience and zero deal-making experience.

So I was pretty open-minded and flexible about where I should go, which firm I should work for, and what I should do. The other big piece for me was the impact aspect, so I always intentionally wanted to work for an impact investing firm, not necessarily a more mainstream VC or private equity firm. That did limit down the options a little and that's how I ended up at LGT. And yes, I'm very grateful. that they gave me that opportunity and brought me to Vietnam, which has been another turning point in my own experience. And I started from the ground up, learning the basics, deals, term sheets, and due diligence. As I said, I had no deal experience going to the job, but that was 11 years ago now. And ever since, I've been so lucky and privileged to see Vietnam’s early-stage entrepreneurship ecosystem really emerge almost from nothing to where it is today, and that's been a journey of a lifetime.

(11:29) Jeremy Au:

Amazing. And what's interesting is that you were really at a ground level of venture philanthropy, because that was so early back then. 2013 was really like ground zero. I'm just kind of curious, are there any myths or misconceptions about venture philanthropy from your perspective? The field has also evolved a lot over the past dozen years.

(11:48) Shuyin Tang:

Yes. Let me comment about impact investing in general because venture philanthropy is a whole different debate about the spectrum of capital, but let me talk about impact investing. It's very interesting. Impact investors have a bit of a chip on their shoulders in some ways because since that kind of field began, there's always been tremendous pressure on impact investors to prove somehow that they can deliver good returns. What are good returns? That depends on who you ask, but more specifically, for a lot of that period, there's been a lot of pressure on impact investors to prove that they can deliver a risk-adjusted market rate of returns, to use our favorite jargon, and for the record, I do believe that's possible. I do believe that by investing with an impact lens or a sustainability lens, you can achieve those types of outcomes financially, but one of the biggest myths in life is that you can always have your cake and eat it too. I've seen you talk about trade-offs in other versions of your podcast in different settings, both personal and professional. With impact investing, there are trade-offs as well. It's quite hard to have amazingly spectacular financial returns, but at the same time, deliver the deepest impact to the most underserved communities.

And I hope that people can see impact investing as a spectrum. There is this place for, highly attractive financial returns and also good, respectable impact, but if you do want to tackle some of the more intractable problems in society or with the environment, you can't expect a market rate of return. And both sides need spotlighting. There needs to be a spotlight on a lot of the most commercially attractive solutions, but also, coming from more of that impact-focused, community-driven background, we can’t just sweep under the rug all of the other problems and challenges that don't make tons of money just because of that reason. There are still ways to achieve sustainable returns. I'm not saying that has to be solely the purview of philanthropy or charity, but people sometimes have a bit of trouble imagining looking at all the space in between charity on the one hand and then all out for profit-driven investing. There are a lot of beautiful things in betwen. Let's look at that more carefully.

(13:59) Jeremy Au:

And what's interesting is that you continue to explore this further because you went on to start at Patamar capital, And it's been nine years of your journey as well, and also doubling down on Vietnam as a geography. Could you share more about that move?

(14:10) Shuyin Tang:

Yes. Patamar was where I spent most of my professional career. And yes, this is where I am a bit relevant for your podcast and that I did work at impact VC for the time that I was focused on Patamar's venture capital. Again, it was nine years ago, so at that time, the venture capital ecosystem was very early in not just Vietnam, but Southeast Asia. I'm sure readers know that extremely well. It was interesting. A lot of our impact thesis at the time was focused on Hey, we are backing entrepreneurs who are serving low and lower middle income consumers. And believe it or not, that was actually quite a revolutionary idea back then. Nowadays, everyone is targeting the mass market. Almost all VC firms think Southeast Asia's a mass market, this is where the money is, but honestly, nine years ago when we were talking about low and lower, middle-income consumers, people were like, this makes no sense. How can you build tech companies that focus on this type of segment? So that is one of my biggest, interesting reflections on how the market has evolved. And for the better, because ultimately, it's a good thing that there is more capital flowing towards entrepreneurs who are meeting the market where it is, and as everyone says, these days, tapping into the middle class.

(15:23) Jeremy Au:

What do you think was the challenge for folks to understand that? Between poor people versus emerging middle class, what was the gap in that understanding?

(15:31) Shuyin Tang:

Honestly, some of it was more about repositioning it. “Poor people”, it's also a bit of a dismissive term as well. It's a bit offensive almost in a way. So repositioning it towards more like the aspiring middle class, so it had a bit of a branding issue, but then, people ultimately saw this is where the market is, and if you can find a way to capture a portion of this consumer brackets’ share of wallet or spending power, then you can build big businesses out of that. And it was just all of us getting smarter over time and really seeing that this was a commercial and viable business opportunity. Honestly, that's the story of many things in the impact investing space, which has a bit of a negative connotation. For example, SMEs, we can get to that later but actually, there's money there too, And how do you develop the right model for that market and segment? Maybe we have to change.

(16:22) Jeremy Au:

Yes. And what's interesting is that you also doubled down and then you went on to co-found Beacon Fund as well. Could you share more about that?

(16:29) Shuyin Tang:

Yes, don't get me wrong. I love VC. I love tech startups. And as I said, it was a huge part of my formative experience as an investor. Another thing did become clear to me though, through all of the conversations I had with entrepreneurs, with investors around the region, and it was the idea that startups are great. They have a lot of potential and I cheer on all of the VCs in this region. The challenge is VC is just one funding tool or instrument in a toolkit. Actually, if you look at most companies in our region, they are SMEs. They are not startups. They are not high-growth tech startups. And this became very clear to me as well as the team, at large, because we would often be turning down investors, even us as impact investors. We would often be turning down companies because we think this isn’t really like a billion-dollar market that you're targeting. I don't see the potential for this to grow 10X or double in size every year. These are very common frameworks or heuristics that VCs used to screen through companies. Again, I'm sure all of your listeners are well aware, so that was an interesting insight. Maybe it's not very insightful in a way, because it's obvious, but it was an interesting prompt for us to think about, given a large part of my North Star has always been about providing capital to companies that are underserved who need it more and the most, or and are doing very interesting things. How can we think about setting up a fund that really meets their needs? And that was why we settled on launching Beacon, which is a private debt fund. You might be wondering, why debt? That sounds bad. Why do that? I don't say debt is better than equity or debt is better than VC. It depends on every company and every situation. And frankly, it's often a mix of the two that can take companies to where they want to go, but there isn't much debt apart from bank loans, in our ecosystem or in our environment.

Debt is an interesting option for entrepreneurs because it takes off pressure because it's self-liquidating. So over a three, four-year timeframe, the company can repay that debt and you're done. You shake hands, you walk away. There's no thinking about year nine or ten of your fund life and how you need to get out, which is, very frankly, one of the challenges as a VC in this region. So that's number one, which is about this piece around exit.

For other companies or other entrepreneurs, it's around control. They want to run their business their way. They don't necessarily want to be beholden to that logic or formula of VC which demands a certain growth path, an expectation, and to meet your commitments to your VC investors. So some people just don't want that for different reasons. And for this segment of founders, can we do something which really respects that choice?

The third piece is that I don't come from a finance background, but now I know very well that debt is cheaper than equity. And it sounds obvious to anyone who has an MBA or someone who studied finance, but that insight is not necessarily commonly accepted. So often, the response that we get from founders is that equity is free and debt is something you have to pay back. You probably shouldn't tell your VC that equity is free, so there's still a lot of knowledge-sharing, and experience-sharing that needs to be done around debt as a product, as just another option. As I say, I don't say debt is better or worse than equity. It's just another option for certain entrepreneurs to consider as they chart their own destiny.

(20:07) Jeremy Au:

These are pretty spot on. The challenge for exits in Southeast Asia makes it difficult for that 10-year life cycle and exit structure. So I really agree with you that depth is a good instrument here. And I want to double-click on what you said, which is founders have that aversion to debt. Why do you think that happens?

(20:22) Shuyin Tang:

That's an interesting question. Some of it is a bit cultural. Even for my family or the way that I grew up, there's this bit of a stigma attached to being in debt or taking out a loan. Maybe that's more in the personal context, but in some ways, that's been transferred to business because frankly, all large companies in the world, like Apple, and Google, everyone uses debt. So in some way, maybe it’s a bit about Asian culture.

The second piece is that, yes, it definitely does enforce a certain kind of discipline or it does require a certain type of discipline around cash flows, and financial management. I'm not going to lie. When you do take on debt, you have to pay it back according to a fixed schedule, and there are consequences if you do not. Of course, most debt investors, I'd like to think, and not loan sharks, but frankly that is even some of the gap or hesitation on the part of some entrepreneurs. So yes, it’s cultural, and maybe stigma. Secondly, there’s this need for a very extreme or very disciplined kind of financial management. And three, there have been some bad actors in many of these markets where quite an active black market or less than the informal market in lending, perhaps has again turned people off. In the early days, we had to do a lot to convince people that we're actually very credible institutional investment funds, not something that we're running in the back streets. So those are some of the reasons why it hasn't taken off in our region.

(21:58) Jeremy Au:

And as you deploy more and more debt over the past couple of years into Southeast Asia, what are some non-obvious principles or things that you're looking out for?

(22:07) Shuyin Tang:

Yes, it's interesting. One is, it's quite challenging to find companies in that exact sweet spot of what we're looking for, in the sense that you want a company that has good cash flows, some track record of generating cashflow but not too good, because if they were so fantastic, then they wouldn't need you. On the other hand, you would like to avoid companies who are in the more needy or in a more cash-strapped type of situation because those types of investments are more for special situations lending, which is frankly something that we do not do. The returns on that can also be quite attractive, but we lend to companies that are performing well. So to find companies that are in that sweet spot of they need you but then they're not too desperate is an interesting balance that needs to be found.

The second learning that we had was that the level of due diligence that was required as a debt investor was in some ways next-level to what I did as a VC. You're looking for different things. I don't say this to criticize or throw stones, but the level of due diligence and scrutiny that we had to put on, ultimately, cash flow from the operations of these companies was at a whole different level than we did at VC. In VC, we're not really looking at the financial model. Of course, if something is submitted to us, we look at the projections. They show a nice hockey stick going up and up, at some point the company breaks even, but it's much more about the founder. It's about the fundamental product, the innovation that's occurring in that company. That's at least from my own experience of it. That was the focus of VC investing, but debt investing is quite different. It's very equally focused on the people that we're backing. Again, at the end of the day, you want to work with the right people, whether that's in debt or equity investing, but the level of financial scrutiny was at a different level from what we were doing in VC.

(23:58) Jeremy Au:

And could you share a personal story about a time that you've been brave?

(24:02) Shuyin Tang:

Wow. That's the theme of this podcast. I did think about this I didn't think of myself as a brave person, maybe even until this day, but then people always tell me, “Wow, you moved to India by yourself when you were 25? That's quite brave”! And then, you did X, Y, Z. You started your own fund. These seem to be times that you’re brave. So in some ways, maybe I'm brave. The time I took the biggest leap of faith is really starting a new fund. I was chatting to a friend in the investment world. And she said something very interesting to me and I was like, “That's kind of true.” She said that being a good partner, in a VC firm is quite different from being the managing partner or CEO of a VC firm or an investment firm. When I was reflecting back on my own experience over the last 10, 11 years, I realized that is true because I went from being a pretty good partner at Patamar, and where, the role was focused on good companies, investing in them and that's that. And the mindset shift that happened when I started Beacon was that part of the experience was finding some good companies and investing in them. It’s just one small fraction of what it means to run a fund. At a very basic level, there's the whole fundraising. How do you keep the money coming in? How do you keep the lights on? There's the whole fund management operations aspect of it, building a team in a different way. So I didn't honestly realize it at the time. I'm not sure that I was very brave at that moment, but looking back now at that shift from a comfortable role as a partner at an impact VC firm where I got my paycheck every month, to taking some risks from a financial perspective at that time and taking a career path that may not work out. Maybe it still won't work out. That's life, but that was the leap that has been brave, but then also, that's where the rewards come. I also grew a lot and I would say was able to empathize with entrepreneurs in a whole different way because I have P&L responsibility in the end. If you run what I do have now? And boy, have I grown up.

(26:16) Jeremy Au:

What does it mean to have grown up from your perspective?

(26:18) Shuyin Tang:

For me, it means taking responsibility. It’s this idea of almost radical self-responsibility. In the past, I used to parcel out. Now, having that experience of my own business in a way, even though it is a fund, everything is like the buck stocks with me a hundred percent of the time. You can't say this investment didn't work out because somebody else led it or somebody else approved it. No, it's all you or that the team dynamic isn't working in this particular area. I created that. And it sounds self-flagellating in a way. Everything's your fault. No, it's not about that. It's about recognizing your responsibility. There's this great saying from a book called "Reboot". The question that he asked is, how are you complicit in creating all of these situations that you say you don't want? And that was all of these situations that I complain about or whinge about. I created them, or I let myself sit in that situation. And it's a journey and I'm not sure that you ever graduate from this, but realizing that it's on me in the end to either change the situation or get out. It's helped me become a lot happier and also improved the relationships that I have because it's not about blaming others or blaming situations, but it's working through things together.(27:50)

Jeremy Au:

Amazing. I love that so much. So on that note, I'd love to summarize the three big takeaways I got from this conversation. First of all, thank you so much for sharing about what you were like growing up as you're looking to save the world and really taking those steps along the way in government service, being rejected from government service, working at Bain to working in frontier and emerging markets all the way to venture philanthropy. So it’s interesting to see your navigation and your staircase to figure out where you want to be and how you want to be.

Secondly, thanks so much for sharing about how you think about Southeast Asia, not just in terms of venture capital, but in terms of debt, your approach to it, how you think about the exit markets, and how you wanted to play a part in it in terms of focusing. On, not just Vietnam, but also on debt as a vehicle. I thought that was a very good snapshot on how to think about debt as cheap and equity in many ways, but there are cultural aversions and roadblocks to it being adopted, but that's changing especially as you look to deploy more and more into companies that fit the bill.

Lastly, thanks so much for sharing about radical responsibility. It was fantastic to hear about how one is complicit in the situations that you end up yourself being in. And it was fascinating to hear that you've really exemplified that courage at every stage of your career in terms of changing roles, changing geographies, and setting up your own fund as well. So on that note, thank you so much for sharing your story.

(29:10) Shuyin Tang:

Thank you, Jeremy. It's been a lot of fun.