"One thing that Peter Thiel said which shook me a bit was that he mentioned that Asia doesn't need innovation, Asia just needs execution because it's so far behind. Which is annoying, but factually accurate in 2014. There was a lot of room to catch up, so following the whole motivation of trying to do something for Southeast Asia and pay back, we thought, 'Okay, let's see what can we do for the region.' We looked at the most innovative companies in the US... and we used that as a starting base and modified it for Southeast Asia."
"If you bought a regular smart lock that is Wi-Fi connected, a lot of times when you want to set a temporary code for a guest to check in, the Wi-Fi might not hit the lock. It might not work. In our initial first couple of hundred of locks that we shipped out to Airbnb hosts, honestly, more than half of them didn't work just because of Wi-Fi problems. So what we needed to do was to then go back to the drawing board and say, 'How do we make a non-connected smart lock for this market?'"
"Starting a startup here is hard. The Philippines, for the average small to medium-sized business... it's just, in general, not an easy place to do business. Getting business permits is multiple windows and lines of paperwork, and there's a significant trust factor gap here in the Philippines. You gotta be committed and be there regardless of the money that you make from someone. That's where trust is built. I'm gonna help you, Mr. and Mrs. Business Owner, regardless of the amount of money, I am so committed to solving your problem and goal that I'm gonna help you until the end."
Where does innovation in Southeast Asia actually start?
Not in a lab. In this compilation from the BRAVE archive: a lock that took eleven hours to install, a Peter Thiel put-down at Harvard, and customers using a real estate website to sell food.
Anthony Chow built Igloo's first smart lock from parts bought in China, watched the first shipments fail, then invented an offline PIN lock (Google Authenticator, but for doors) because vacation rentals have no Wi-Fi. That invention won the Airbnb partnership and now runs more than half of Australia's tennis courts, fully unmanned.
Kelvin Teo heard Peter Thiel tell a Harvard room that Asia doesn't need innovation, just execution ("annoying, but factually accurate") and turned it into the method behind Funding Societies, which underwrites SMEs by asking for more documents than the banks, because its real competitor is the money lender charging 48% a year.
Dennis Velasco burned $150K on a broken real estate market before his users showed him the pivot, launched Prosperna three months before the 2020 lockdown, and argues that none of it counts until small businesses trust you to stay.
Watch the full episodes:
E676 Anthony Chow, Co-Founder & CEO of Igloo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rU1-wIvarVk
E678 Kelvin Teo, Co-Founder & Group CEO of Funding Societies | Modalku
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ob9Wq9DMpko
E692 Dennis Velasco, Founder & CEO of Prosperna
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xVw0B8m3eN4
Keywords: Southeast Asia Startups, SME Lending Southeast Asia, E-commerce Philippines, Fintech Innovation, Proptech and Real Estate Tech, Hardware Startups
