"If all you're doing is narrating what ChatGPT can do because ChatGPT is good at output, you will not have a job, you will not get paid well, you will not get promoted, and you will be a grunt for the rest of your life that will get marginalized by ChatGPT because it can produce output 24/7 at any time of the day and in any volume. Your life got harder because before ChatGPT came out, you had a normal job where, as long as you put in effort, you'd be recognized as an A player, and if you didn't, you'd be penalized. In today's world, if you put in effort, you still get rewarded, but if you don't and all you do is repeat what ChatGPT is doing, you will get an above-average score." - Jeremy Au, Host of BRAVE Southeast Asia Tech Podcast

Jeremy Au breaks down why most startups fail and what it really takes to succeed in the AI age. He explains the six patterns of startup failure, the tricky economics of service businesses, and why AI will wipe out average workers. He also explores how caring about a problem gives founders their edge and why listening, not output, is the real marker of a great marketer or executive.

"The challenge for us is growth. As we crack eight-figure revenue, how do we get to nine? What I learned is that each revenue milestone is like a new boss. Your first million ARR is one boss. Five million is very different from one million, and ten million is different again. Figuring out ten to twenty is what we still have to solve as a company." - Daniel Thong, founder of Nimbus

"Hire faster, fire faster, or hire slow and get it right. My conclusion is that it’s very contextual. For my industry, it’s unsexy and doesn’t pay that well because clients sometimes don’t pay well for essential services. You can’t get a Harvard MBA guy joining you. In my case, hiring slow and getting it right matters because the cost of losing continuity is huge. If you're managing 400 distributed workers and HR keeps leaving, workers think something’s wrong with the firm. It’s way better for me than hiring fast and firing faster, just because of the nature of the business." - Daniel Thong, founder of Nimbus

Daniel Thong, founder of Nimbus, returns to BRAVE to share how he built a profitable, tech-enabled service business without venture capital. He and Jeremy Au unpack the rise and fall of tech companies like Zilingo, examine the structural issues behind finance misconduct, and explore how AI is reshaping service operations. Daniel discusses why bootstrapping gave him more control, how he spun off a new AI startup from within, and what it takes to retain talent and stay healthy as a founder. The conversation offers a grounded look at sustainable growth, founder philosophy, and the realities of Southeast Asia’s startup landscape.

"Few months ago, we laughed about the idea of AI companions and that people would fall in love and get married to them. I was at a meeting where we discussed how the newest batch of hottest startups in California are all AI companions. Their job is to create AI-powered waifus so people can finally fall in love with somebody who loves them. Are more people going to fall in love with digital avatars and AI companions? That’s not far away—only 10 or 20 years out. What does a hundred years of that technological evolution look like? And then AI companions don’t just hang out with you—they can hang out with other AI companions." - Jeremy Au, Host of BRAVE Southeast Asia Tech Podcast

Jeremy Au explores how exponential tech progress is reshaping the future, why Southeast Asia is positioned for a surge in unicorns, and how venture capitalists evaluate founders. From AI relationships to realistic startup odds, this discussion challenges assumptions about the next 100 years of innovation and entrepreneurship.

"Let's say you want to do logistics. AI can help with a lot of optimisation, specifically with complex models. The question is, should you only use AI for search? No, you should use it to optimise freight and path costs, factoring in tariffs. I had to do a routing, and it turns out O1 and O3 reasoning engines are extremely good at this. I did a demo for a retail business—they gave me all their constraints, and ChatGPT generated a highly optimized path that matched exactly what their experts expected. They said, 'That's correct.'" - Bernard Leong, founder of Dorje AI and host of Analyse Asia

"What AI has done is it destroys the ERP. First, traditional ERPs like Oracle and SAP require you to conform your business processes to their logic. With generative AI, you don’t need to—you can customize everything through code generation. The new business model should allow every user in the company to use the app. With proper access controls, finance handles the accounting, and everyone else should not have access to the company’s P&L charts. Access control remains a very human responsibility." - Bernard Leong, founder of Dorje AI and host of Analyse Asia

Bernard Leong, founder of Dorje AI and host of Analyse Asia, joins Jeremy Au to explore how AI is transforming software development, business models, and professional roles across Southeast Asia. They break down why dev houses are losing ground, how AI accelerates coding and reshapes team structures, and why traditional SaaS and education models must evolve. Bernard shares how he replaced an outsourced dev team using AI tools, the dangers of hallucinated code libraries, and his vision for a new enterprise software model powered by prompt engineering and cloud-based trust.

"Right after we graduated EF, we started building the earliest layer of accounts receivable automation, which was collections automation. These are different modules within the same AR stack that help companies send invoices faster, collect on those invoices quickly, give clients professional branded portals to make payments, check invoice status, extract statements of accounts, and apply payments to incoming transactions. We built that first, and by 2022, the entire stack was in place." - Saurabh Chauhan, Co-founder and CEO of Peakflo

"We have been doing a proof of concept with a lot of our AR clients on a voice AI agent that can be embedded in the existing workflow. It coexists with automatic email reminders, SMSes, or WhatsApps, and somewhere in the workflow, you can insert a voice AI agent to make a call, for example, seven days past the due date depending on your preference. Just like a collection officer, it has full context about the client it's calling—it knows the outstanding invoices, the total amount due, the original due date, any open disputes, and even prior conversations like a promise to pay in two weeks. It tracks whether that's an upcoming or broken promise to pay." - Saurabh Chauhan, Co-founder and CEO of Peakflo

Saurabh Chauhan, Co-founder and CEO of Peakflo, returns to BRAVE with Jeremy Au to reflect on their journey since first meeting at Entrepreneur First in 2020. They unpack how Saurabh identified pain points in finance ops during his time with Rocket Internet, how he structured his co-founder search, and how early customer interviews shaped Peakflo’s product roadmap. They explore why he rejected the social commerce hype, how Y Combinator reset his scale ambitions, and how Google’s AI Accelerator helped move Peakflo from traditional SaaS to agentic workflows. They also discuss startup fraud detection and how external stakeholders can cut through opacity.

"I always tell people, emerging VCs are like founders—they build a company from scratch. When building a first fund, you plan to design your thesis: do I make 20 investments or 40? Do I invest in a certain geography? Do I invest in America? Do I invest in Hong Kong startups? There’s a bunch of thesis work. Then you do fundraising, pitch people to put money in the fund, close the fund, get everybody to wire the money, and manage your relations with the LP over time. Now they understand the whole unicorn structure of it. The LPs provide about $99 million, and the GPs provide about $1 million. The VC will earn about 2% of this million for 10 years." - Jeremy Au, Host of BRAVE Southeast Asia Tech Podcast

Jeremy Au breaks down the hidden math behind venture capital: why only a few startups matter, how VCs double down or walk away, and what real exits look like. Using the case of Instacart and Southeast Asia IPOs like SEA, Grab, and GoTo, he explains what separates paper value from cash returns, and why timing is everything.

"Number one is the founder. We focus on the people and the founder because we operate the business ourselves, so we know what kind of people drive success. Number two is the synergy we bring to the table—whether through better COGS, operational costs using our central kitchen, improved unit economics, or logistics that squeeze more margin. When we integrate them into our infrastructure, they benefit from it. We calculate the integration impact and how quickly it can happen, depending on how open-minded the founders and team are. Number three is we avoid trendy businesses. At Daily Box, now Daily Co., we focus on comfort food and staple foods—things people consistently want." - Kelvin Subowo, CEO of Daily Co.

"What's helped me a lot during tough times is having great teams that always support me. I've had to make difficult decisions that impact people's lives and futures, but they always aim for a bigger purpose—we want to create disruption for this country. We truly believe in the Indonesian market and its people. That belief keeps us motivated. Many founders who joined or were acquired by our company see how we treat talent, and that makes a difference during challenging periods. As founders, we sometimes feel faint-hearted, unsure if we can deliver or navigate the storm, but it helps that the team has seen our progress and how we've weathered past storms." - Kelvin Subowo, CEO of Daily Co.

Kelvin Subowo, CEO of Daily Co., joins Jeremy Au to share how he built one of Indonesia’s fastest growing F&B groups after seven failed ventures. They talk through how Kelvin’s early failures taught him the realities of Indonesia’s price sensitive market, how cloud kitchens initially succeeded but quickly collapsed post-Covid, and how Daily Co. pivoted by acquiring and scaling offline food brands. They explore how founder retention, backend integration, and M&A discipline enabled sustainable growth. Kelvin also explains how Chinese brands are entering Indonesia with capital and speed, and why his team is doubling down on scale, team culture, and long-term local partnerships.

"Well, to me, I think the graduate unemployment issue is going to get really bad really quickly. I mean, if you just look at the Graduate Employment Survey, which I think the Ministry of Education releases every year, this year is probably the lowest—it dipped under 80%. Usually, it's somewhere around 85%. You can attribute this to many different things: uncertainty around MNC hiring due to trade wars and Asia-Pacific budget cuts, or AI eradicating a lot of jobs. But I also think there's a cultural disposition among the younger generation toward wanting to work at recognizable brand-name companies." - Adriel Yong, Orvel Venture Partner

Adriel Yong, Orvel Venture Partner, joins Jeremy Au to reflect on five years of career transitions from investing to building startups across Southeast Asia and the US. They unpack how American venture capital has turned inward, the unintended consequences of remote work, and why AI is upending both work and relationships. Through candid stories from fundraising dinners in San Francisco to AI-generated breakup scripts they explore how technology is transforming how we build companies, make decisions, and stay human.

"Convertible debt is coming back. Price equity rounds, I said, historically were used for almost all investments like 20 or 30 years ago. A SAFE note has only emerged over the past 15 years as a standard norm for early stage startups. But convertible debt is coming back as a norm for later stage startups. So a SAFE note is totally inappropriate for a middle or growth stage or late stage startup. Let's say the company has a $20 million valuation or $15 million valuation or $200 million valuation. They may say something like, I need some capital in the short term to make a decision, but it's hard for me to tell what the price for the next round is. So I want to use a convertible note structure to absorb some capital and then say, if you come in now and give me $10 million, for example, then you get a 20% discount on the next round in one year's time. So you get 20% bonus shares for coming in one year early." - Jeremy Au, Host of BRAVE Southeast Asia Tech Podcast

Jeremy Au breaks down the evolving power dynamics between VCs and founders in Southeast Asia, diving into board control, investor rights, and why most startups fail despite support. He shares practical lessons from both sides of the table, highlights the return of convertible debt, and explains how founders should think about conflict, dilution, and boardroom politics.

"Yes, AI can do it for you, and AI can do it for, in fact, everybody now, since so many—everyone has access to AI, right? So then what makes you different from others, right? What's your talent, or how—if you and another person are in a run for the same job, same position—what's going to make you stand out? So I would ask the youth to really think harder in such questions." - Janine Teo, CEO of Solve Education

"For the audience that I'm working with, which are marginalized youth, I think AI is very exciting because this means that with AI, they get to explore, ask questions, and learn at their own pace. For us, we even integrated an AI coach within our platform at bot.ai, so that it is able to give our students career guidance or even encouragement—or just be there, sometimes just someone to talk to and also ask questions that they don't understand from their schoolwork." - Janine Teo, CEO of Solve Education

Janine Teo, CEO of Solve Education, returns to BRAVE after three years to explore how AI is reshaping education for marginalized youth. She and Jeremy Au unpack the double-edged nature of AI in learning, how Solve Education leverages gamification and AI coaching to drive motivation, and the shifting job market where entry-level roles are disappearing. They discuss how AI is widening access for underserved learners, challenging traditional career aspirations, and demanding new approaches to teaching foundational skills. Janine also shares how her team’s GAIN model: Gamification, AI, Incentives, and Network, tackles agency gaps and builds community-led learning environments for impact at scale.

"Democratic instability has been very much a recurring issue and theme across Thai politics, right? I think the biggest thing to keep in mind here is that this is just the latest escalation in a very long-running conflict—it’s been happening for, what, almost 20, 20-plus years. And even though the government was elected democratically, if the people aren't happy, you see protests, and they can still be removed by the courts. I think it shows that the Constitutional Court is still one of the most powerful players in Thai politics. But the ripple effects—from tourism, overall morale in the country, investor sentiment, investor confidence—it’s going to be, yeah, we’re going to continue feeling this, right?" - Wing Vasiksiri, Investor and Ecosystem Builder

Wing Vasiksiri, investor and ecosystem builder, returns to unpack the recent political upheaval in Thailand, the shifting startup landscape, and how these dynamics intersect. He and Jeremy Au explore the Prime Minister’s suspension, the ripple effects of leaked diplomacy, and what these events signal for foreign investment and local sentiment. They also discuss the country's cannabis policy reversal, new crypto tax breaks, and the comeback of early-stage incubation. Wing introduces “Project Thailand,” a new public resource and investor-backed report aiming to support Thai founders by mapping out the entire ecosystem. Their discussion offers a real-time pulse check on Thailand's path toward stability, growth, and tech-driven innovation.

"In general, the more successful a startup is in the early stages and the faster they grow towards a unicorn, the more likely the founder is able to maintain majority control even all the way to exit. So if you look at, for example, Mark Zuckerberg—even though he has a minority share in terms of his economic rights, in terms of a percentage of the entire company—he has a special class of shares that gives him control and voting rights that allows him to have an outsized control versus his actual economic control. But that's a function of the fact that Facebook grew very fast and was very successful, and investors were willing to give him more control rights even though they were taking up economic rights for themselves to share in the risk and reward." - Jeremy Au, Host of BRAVE Southeast Asia Tech Podcast

"Anti-dilution provisions are basically saying that investors have the right to protect themselves from dilution over time. There's all kinds of versions of this—ratchet versus full weighted average—but they're quite significant, and they actually can be quite onerous in Southeast Asia, primarily because of the smaller size of outcomes historically to date, but also the less mature VC ecosystem. So this is something for you to be aware of. And lastly, of course, is the employee options pool size, which is how much of the economic pool we are saving for employees. Because you, as a VC, you're negotiating with the founder, but then the VC wants to make sure that there's enough economic upside to be shared with the key leadership team who are not the founders, so there is a third person in the room that is not being compensated for, and this is how they discuss and negotiate that." - Jeremy Au, Host of BRAVE Southeast Asia Tech Podcast

"Convertible notes and SAFEs are simpler instruments that were generated over time. So in the past, if you go back 30 to 40 years ago, all investments were done through priced equity rounds. But convertible notes came second, and what they were was that convertible notes were basically saying, 'How do I create a debt instrument that allows me to be protected as a debt instrument for the next, for example, two to three years, but at the right timing be able to convert into an equity type of outcome?' So it's meant to be a simpler document which uses a short-term interest rate as well as some other control mechanisms, but basically it looks like debt in the short term but converts into equity at a future date. Convertible notes were historically built to make it easier for early-stage startups to use less lawyer time, use less accountant time, and come to agreement about what needs to be done." - Jeremy Au, Host of BRAVE Southeast Asia Tech Podcast

Jeremy Au broke down the real stakes behind early-stage fundraising—where founders trade equity for survival, and investors negotiate for control. He explained how financing tools like SAFE notes, convertible notes, and priced rounds shape who gets rich, who gets a say, and who gets left behind. From legal traps to boardroom dynamics, this session reveals what every founder should know before signing a term sheet.

01:05 Understanding Startup Economics: Jeremy explains how startups face a "valley of death" where they burn cash before reaching profitability. He introduces the idea that funding always comes with tradeoffs in economic and control rights.

01:39 Debt vs. Equity: Key Differences: A breakdown of how debt requires repayment and protects ownership, while equity gives up a piece of the upside but doesn't need to be paid back if the startup fails.

03:23 Equity Financing: Preferred Stock, Convertible Notes, and SAFE Notes: Jeremy walks through the three common fundraising tools, how each works in early-stage rounds, and why SAFEs have become the global standard for speed and simplicity.

08:00 Control Rights and Board Dynamics: The discussion turns to how board control shifts as startups raise money. Jeremy explains why early governance decisions shape long-term power and influence over the company.

"If you look at the Vietnamese demography, we're getting older before we get richer. So 2030 is when our golden population is no longer golden, because 2030 is when we start to age more than we have newborns. So this strategy is quite dangerous if one day our labor workforce is no longer the low-wage workforce that this model might work with. That’s why Resolution 68 and, late last year, Decree 58 are orienting Vietnam toward a newer economic model." - Valerie Vu, General Partner at Ansible Ventures

"Before, state-owned enterprises contributed more than 50 percent to Vietnam’s GDP, but according to Resolution 68, the government wants to push more private enterprises and private entrepreneurs to contribute more to the local GDP. They want entrepreneurs to build more and contribute more to the economy, especially the conglomerates. They want them to contribute at least more than 50 percent to the economy, instead of below 50 percent as of today. So state-owned enterprises will become less—still very important—but no longer the biggest contributor to Vietnam’s GDP. We encourage entrepreneurs and business owners to be at the forefront of building Vietnam’s economy." - Valerie Vu, General Partner at Ansible Ventures

"So I think we just finished the third official meetings for the negotiation of the tariff. The exact number was not disclosed, but both sides have been saying that most of the major concerns are already resolved, though there are still one or two points we haven't come to an agreement on. That's why they could not disclose the final number for the tariff, but they have already gone through three official meetings. From my intels, the U.S. side has asked a lot of difficult and very tough questions and also made demands—not just for military support like Vietnam starting to buy F-16s from the U.S.—but also forcing Vietnam to cleanse and clean out domestic commerce and trade so that we can prove that we have transparency on where the goods are coming from." - Valerie Vu, General Partner at Ansible Ventures

Vietnam’s rapid economic transformation is reshaping its future. Valerie Vu, General Partner at Ansible Ventures, joins Jeremy Au to explore how Vietnam is shifting from export dependence to a tech-driven, domestic growth model. They discuss the rollback of anti-corruption campaigns, intensified U.S. trade negotiations, and how food safety scandals are driving transparency reforms. Valerie also explains Resolution 68, a blueprint promoting private sector innovation and deep tech, and what this means for founders and investors.

"Talent is bell-curved, right? In the sense that from people who are super good in this one domain to people who are not good in this domain. So Jeremy is horrible at piano, but he's probably good at podcasting in the Southeast Asia context. Not world-class. And that's the talent piece, which is like, I'm on one side for this one skill. And then we talk about it, which is there are certain hubs, right? Talent vortexes that suck in talent. And so if you wanted to be the best at, I'm just example, acting, you probably want to go to Hollywood. And there's some local regional hubs like Bollywood. Obviously there's the Chinese who have their own Hong Kong nexus for acting, et cetera. So there's these pockets for their own local markets, but Hollywood is that talent vortex for acting talent." - Jeremy Au, Host of BRAVE Southeast Asia Tech Podcast

"I read a very interesting article, I don't know if it was The Economist or The Atlantic, that was basically saying the decline in fertility globally is actually driven by smartphones. So they basically said, you know, people have all these other things like enough childcare, not enough, you know, all this other stuff. But they said if you map it, right, you know, people always like to hold up Scandinavia as like a place that has really good childcare and child leave policies. But even in Scandinavia, fertility rate is going down. And so they made the argument that it's actually like, if you map smartphone penetration, that's how you see the fertility rates correlating and that the places with the highest fertility have the lowest smartphone penetration." - Shiyan Koh, Managing Partner at Hustle Fund 

"You know, there's this feeder program, which is like, you know, in undergrad, you wanted to be a bio scientist and then suddenly you started zooming in to be like, I want to do like longevity and aging. And then you do your, then you did your master's, then you go do your PhD at Harvard. And so there's this massive suction effect. Where Harvard had these like rock star professors that were globally known. And then they got this incredible bench of like super hungry, super ambitious, super smart. And then people, and then money comes in and it's like, you know what? You know, like you did this, you did that. Why don't we do the next thing on top of that, right? And then those labs were spitting out patents, startups, spinoffs." - Jeremy Au, Host of BRAVE Southeast Asia Tech Podcast

Shiyan Koh, Managing Partner at Hustle Fund, joins Jeremy Au to examine how geopolitical shifts, demographic decline, and education policy are reshaping global talent and innovation flows. They explore Japan and Korea’s push into Southeast Asia, the unexpected impact of smartphone culture on fertility, and how political actions in the US are disrupting the university pipeline and research ecosystems. They also critique bureaucratic inefficiencies in tech transfer and reflect on assimilation policies, academic flywheels, and the cultural nuances behind talent mobility.

“So the first agreement that I have to talk about is what I call the founder's agreement, and this is quite key because founders often have a very messy birth process or conception process for what the startup looks like. So what I mean by that is that founders are often meeting new founders, they're hiring new employees, they're attracting customers—they are often doing this without a company. So there's no legal company, there's no legal agreement technically, so it may be two people working in a room and they're just saying ‘I want to work with you.’ And sometimes those teams break up, and then a new founder comes in or a new employee comes in. So what often happens is that the founder's agreement is quite key.” - Jeremy Au, Host of BRAVE Southeast Asia Tech Podcast

Jeremy Au breaks down the hidden risks in Southeast Asia’s edtech sector and early-stage startup law. He explains why edtech often fails to scale, how founder disputes emerge without early agreements, and why choosing the right jurisdiction like Singapore matters for survival. From investor alignment to taxation nightmares, this episode guides founders through the hard truths of building legally sound and scalable ventures.

"With how AI is coming up, if you don't have a core system to which everything talks to and from which everything emanates, then in the future, the more AI systems advance, you're not collecting all that data, you don't have mediums to then transform yourself to reap the next level benefits with all the technologies now that are coming." - Olzhas (Oz) Zhiyenkul, CEO and co-founder of Investbanq

"It's a thing of the past, and even a huge institution will collapse if it doesn't have systems. And what I got to experience was a massive inefficiency, starting with the fact that till this day, a digital interface in a private bank is either a beautiful front end that is written with errors because it's built on legacy systems, to the fact that still to this day, you can't trade most asset classes on a private bank digital interface. When in 2022 we exited that wealth management company successfully, I thought, 'I need to do something about this 'cause I still haven't found a system that is going to enable wealth management digitally.' And at that point in time in 2022, it was clear where the wealth management industry is moving and what it's gonna be in the next 10, 20 years."  - Olzhas (Oz) Zhiyenkul, CEO and co-founder of Investbanq

"And what I got to experience was a massive inefficiency, starting with the fact that till this day, a digital interface in a private bank is either a beautiful front end that is written with errors because it's built on legacy systems, to the fact that still to this day, you can't trade most asset classes on a private bank digital interface. And then going a notch below that, 90% of wealth managers, outside of a few large ones, are operating without systems or with very narrow systems, and 90% of family offices are still operating on Excel. I got to witness that and feel that firsthand. I asked many questions, researched, and received answers: Why are banks doing that? Why are they not investing into those systems? Why are wealth managers making this choice? Why is it so difficult to switch outside of Excel?"  - Olzhas (Oz)  Zhiyenkul, CEO and co-founder of Investbanq

Olzhas (Oz) Zhiyenkul, CEO and co-founder of Investbanq, joins Jeremy Au to share how his journey from post-Soviet Kazakhstan to launching a full-stack wealth operating system was shaped by hardship, global education, and the inefficiencies he witnessed firsthand across Asia’s financial sector. They discuss how legacy systems fail family offices, why most wealth managers still operate on Excel, and how Investbanq aims to empower rather than replace relationship managers. Olzhas also recounts building boats from garbage on reality TV, reflects on cultural shocks from the UK to Singapore, and maps out his long-term vision for a digital-native wealth future.

"I think what's interesting is that's been borne out in our data. Our business model is tutor outsourcing, so we have tutors based in Asia and we staff them with tutoring and education companies around the world. Those companies have been implementing AI into their operations. They are competing with AI-only solutions. The feedback we're getting from clients is those who can afford it want a human component—they'll want that one hour of English, that one hour of math every week. Then, you know, the rest of the week they can do all sorts of other things, but they still want that human, regular touchpoint. Mm-hmm. And that's where we come in. We provide the teachers for that regular touchpoint." - Henry Motte-de la Motte, CEO of Edge Tutor 

"AI allows you to personalize. Those who can afford it will have the highest human element because those with the means have essentially AI-enabled human teachers. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. So you get the human element. There's also a trust element. You know what's so interesting is a lot of the guys in Silicon Valley talk, and you ask them how they raise their kids—no screen time. Make it make sense. It's classic NIMBYism, right? They're all for social equality, but please, not in my backyard. No social housing behind me. You have entire school systems trying to reduce the use of technology. Sweden has gone back to pen and paper because they've proven that you learn more when using pen and paper than digital devices." - Henry Motte-de la Motte, CEO of Edge Tutor 

"Most of my team—we use AI in our operations. We use it in teacher recruiting, we use it in teacher training. I half-jokingly tell all my colleagues like, 'Ask ChatGPT before you ask me, because ChatGPT is a lot smarter than me, and you know.' Mm-hmm. 'Only ask me if you still can't figure it out with the AI tools you use.' But that's quite different to how most people learn. Most of us are actually lazy learners. We're not in the 5% hyper-proactive learners. You can also be a very proactive learner for some topics, but not for others. I'm constantly learning about the space that I'm in. I used to speak Spanish, and I've been trying to learn it again over the last three years. I've signed up to a bunch of high-quality software solutions. I'm not learning Spanish because I'm just not motivated enough." - Henry Motte-de la Motte, CEO of Edge Tutor 

Henry Motte-de la Motte, CEO of Edge Tutor, and Jeremy Au reconnect two years after their last conversation to discuss how global tutoring has evolved. They examine the rise of AI in education, differences in learner motivation, and how human connection and structure remain critical to learning. They explore Edge Tutor’s expansion into 30 countries, the decision to stay focused on English and math, and how demographic and economic shifts are transforming education into a premium service. Their conversation also touches on the societal role of parenting, immigration, and childcare policy as key levers to address falling birth rates and education equity.

"So you wanna depict a good picture, but you also wanna be realistic and say, 'Look, there could be this and this that can happen.' I'm doing that a lot more than I used to, and then admit that a lot of things you don't know. Say, 'Look, I don't know, and we'll experiment and see if this works, but it just might not work.' But to be more honest in that sense, I think, is a sign of maturity as a founder, right? Mm-hmm. And I've seen this in some other founders that are talking openly about their mistakes. They don't know, they're trying these things, and they hope it will work, they'll do their best, but it might not work—versus younger founders saying, 'Oh, we know what needs to be done. We're going full steam ahead, and this is gonna work out, this is gonna be massive,' right? You can immediately see the two more different types of founders." - Ilya Kravtsov, Co-Founder of Ringkas

"Founders should really be very clear on that. One thing is legal and the other one is illegal. You never wanna cross that line, right? But even what you do to try to hack your numbers, you also need to be transparent about that. As long as it's clear, people will take the risk. In that case, there were two lines crossed. Mm-hmm. First line crossed—that it was illegal, which you cannot do. The second line is that whatever was happening was not fully disclosed in a transparent way. So I think every founder should never cross one line for sure—and the second one as well. Only in that case you can boost your business or whatever you have to do, right?" - Ilya Kravtsov, Co-Founder of Ringkas

"But again, are you scaling for the right reasons? Are you scaling with the right methodologies? For me, it's not only about fake it until you make it. I think you need to, as a founder, take a step back and try to seek the truth. Seek the truth means, are you doing it just to boost your numbers, or are you doing it because you really believe that long term it's gonna work? And I think at a certain point, more and more—as a younger myself 10 years ago—I would be hungry about pushing the numbers and getting to that next milestone. But now I look at things differently. It is gonna explode—yeah—and it's gonna waste my years—mm—of effort, because boosting numbers takes a lot of effort. So that's why I think it's very important to seek the truth and be very honest with yourself. First of all, with yourself. Secondly, with your team, right? And that's why having a culture where your numbers are quite transparent and people know what's going on is very important." - Ilya Kravtsov, Co-Founder of Ringkas

Ilya Kravtsov, Co-Founder of Ringkas, joins Jeremy Au to unpack the rise and fall of Indonesia’s lending wave, the ripple effects of the eFishery scandal, and the hard lessons founders must absorb to build sustainable startups. They examine how early hype misaligned business models, how fraud damages more than just a company, and why radical transparency is key to long-term leadership. Ilya shares how Ringkas scaled without lending, why developer partnerships unlocked bank adoption, and how he carefully built a diversified cap table to preserve founder control.

" I mean women have it so much harder, right? Because for them, their bodies are literally changing on a daily basis. Then the emotions, the appetites—everything is going through a massive cycle. For me, my wife was a huge inspiration because she was dealing with a whole bunch of ups and downs. In my mind, I was like, I have no place to be stressed out or frustrated, 'cause what she's going through is way worse. I have this thing where, if I'm in a bad situation, I will always reference myself to individuals that I know within my network that are in really difficult situations. And I'm always like, look, my situation is really not... yeah, yeah, yeah, you. It just helps make things a lot easier, helps ground me on some level. It just fundamentally is a psychological trick to make me realize it's not that big a deal." - Mohan Belani, Co-Founder of e27

"Even if it opposes your worldview, it's really important to stay curious rather than be judgmental or critical. So there's one quote that I shared with some friends earlier this year—I think it's a bit corny, but actually very powerful for me at least, especially now in the age of AI. This need to consistently be curious about what's new, what's interesting, or what's changing, even if it opposes your worldview, is really important rather than to be judgmental or critical. I'm hoping through that I can be a better learner, a better dad, but also a lot more ready for the changes that are coming. Because if you are able to be curious, the good thing about AI is that it will feed you that curiosity. But you’ve got to have the curiosity—the patience to ask questions and not just judge the outcome. So yeah, for me, be curious, not judgmental." - Mohan Belani, Co-Founder of e27

"We made the decision that we were husband and wife first and parents second. It doesn't mean that we didn't care about the kid, but we had to make sure that we put in effort, time, to continue to build on and respect the sanctity of our relationship, and not pour everything into just purely raising the child. We made a lot of decisions that maybe third parties would look at and go like, 'Wow, you guys are bad parents for making those decisions.' When really, from our perspective, we're like, 'No, we are making sure that we are rock solid as partners, and that rock solid foundation will help us bring up the child better.' And I think looking back, I'm really very happy we made those decisions." - Mohan Belani, Co-Founder of e27

Mohan Belani, Co-Founder of e27, and Jeremy Au reflect on what it means to be a tech leader, startup founder, and modern dad raising Generation Alpha. They explore how parenting rewires identity, the mental load of fatherhood, and how decision-making feels like startup building in a world flooded with information. They discuss the tension between being an attentive partner and a present parent, how childhood memories shape parenting choices, and how to raise children with curiosity and resilience in an AI-saturated future.

"I tried calling my partners and their phones were not even switched on. I panicked. It was eventually discovered that my ex-partners had forged financial documents. Mm-hmm. Not only did they forge the financial documents, but they also forged Ernst & Young chief auditor's signature on those financial documents. With those forged financial documents, they went to six different banks to borrow money from each bank, plus all the money that was injected by all these investors from family offices and whatnot. They emptied the bank account and fled to China, abandoning their wives, partners, children, and families, and leaving us all high and dry—leaving the businesses, investors, and banks high and dry." - Dr. Gerald Tan, founder of Elite Dental Group

"For example, if you got involved in a very bad road traffic accident and you fractured or smashed your teeth, and if you had an old picture of yourself prior to the accident, smiling, I could take that and feed it into the AI, and the AI would redesign exactly the same kind of teeth to reconstruct all of your broken teeth—to make you look exactly like what you looked like before the accident. Which is simply amazing, isn't it? I didn't know that was possible until you just told me. Yeah. So it's all about AI design—computer-aided design driven by AI. Mm-hmm. And then, of course, the dentist or the dental technician has the right to manually override and tweak whatever the AI suggests." - Dr. Gerald Tan, founder of Elite Dental Group

"That's how AI is impacting design. A large part of what I do is designing. A lot of my patients have severely worn down, broken, or missing teeth and just have to reconstruct. So the reconstruction process always starts with design first, before you actually execute. So that's how AI is impacting my field. What's even more exciting—and I'm just so excited to tell you about this—is that I'm currently involved in an AI project that has the attention of the government, of the Agency for Integrated Care. It's caught the attention of the National Dental Center of Singapore. It's caught the attention of the Faculty of Dentistry, NUS. Caught the attention of Health Minister Ong." - Dr. Gerald Tan, founder of Elite Dental Group

Dr. Gerald Tan, founder of Elite Dental Group and the first Singaporean dentist to graduate from Harvard Business School, joins Jeremy Au to share how dentistry blends science, art, and entrepreneurship. They explore his journey from being one of 30 students in NUS Dentistry to leading an AI-driven public health initiative and surviving a devastating fraud by trusted business partners. Gerald unpacks how AI is reshaping oral health diagnostics, how public and private dental sectors have evolved in Singapore, and why legal protections alone aren’t enough in business. His story is a powerful look into what it means to lead with resilience and foresight in healthcare.