BRAVE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pP0L_qhSRJA

Keywords: US Immigration, O-1 Visa, US Expansion, L Visa, Venture Capital, Tech Startups, Product-Market Fit, Founder Resilience, Southeast Asia Tech

Meet Frederick Ng

Jeremy Au: Hello, Fred. Good to see you.

Frederick Ng: Great to be here, Jeremy.

Jeremy Au: I'm excited to have you on the show because you're talking about immigration to the US, which is a struggle that many founders have as part of their global expansion to the US market. I have referred many friends to my past immigration lawyer for help with the O-1 Extraordinary Alien Visa. I believe that's what it's called. They've had good outcomes with that, and I'm excited to hear that, Fred, you're offering a solution for founders to get this visa category, but also to explore the immigration opportunities and channels to the US. So Fred, could you introduce yourself?

Frederick Ng: My name is Fred. I'm a co-founder at Beyond Border. Prior to founding Beyond Border, I spent time on both sides of the table. For the last eight years, I've spent time operating twice and being a venture investor twice.

I think a common denominator of how I've spent my time professionally is being a facilitator of exceptional talent. At Glints, for example, that meant helping talent from the region to be discovered by companies that are not operating in the region, mostly from the developed side of the world, to work with them, and through that, providing a pathway for them to really realize their human potential.

As a venture investor, it's more about finding exceptional founders, sometimes begging them to take your capital, and helping them in a small way to achieve their ambition.

In all of that, I found a common denominator and a lot of joy in helping people get to where they need to be to achieve their dream. I'm very glad that immigration, and what we do at Beyond Border, became a very important vessel for helping them realize and accelerate their human ambitions. It also helps us create impact and help people not be confined by where they're born, limiting where they need to go or where they can go. So that's a brief summary of how I've spent my time in the last couple of years.

Hong Kong, London and Multiple Passports

Jeremy Au: Wow, fantastic. Let's get to it. You grew up in Hong Kong and then you studied at the London School of Economics. So that was your first experience with immigration. Was it easy? Was it hard? What was that experience like for you?

Frederick Ng: The immigration part was somewhat easier. I was very lucky that my parents did all the groundwork, and I think that was a very big plus in hindsight. Immigration is not something you can do at the flick of a switch. The immigration part was easy because my parents laid the groundwork and gave me multiple passports to allow me to make that move smoothly.

But living abroad taught me so much. It was the first time I realized that immigration, and being able to expand your horizon out of your home country or wherever you're from, really helps you realize what your potential can be. It was the hardship I went through living abroad for the first time that taught me how important this topic was.

A lot of it comes down to understanding a new way of doing things, and how people are funny in a different language and a different cultural context. Because you're immersed in such a different environment, it stretches you and helps you expand what you're capable of. It was a very impactful experience.

Chasing the Opportunity Home

Jeremy Au: I think that's a fair point, which is that your parents make such an important decision about your immigration status, either by blood, because of what nationality they are, or otherwise. So many parents are thinking about what is the best country for their kids to grow up in, to study in, to work in. So much of a kid's nationality is dependent on the parents, either by right, which is their blood or their nationality, or by location, which is the country they're born in. So a lot of decisions need to be made.

So I'm curious, when you think about those identities. You could have made a decision to keep staying in London. Your parents did all the legwork. You went to study at the London School of Economics. You did well in academics, and you could have stayed in the UK like so many Hong Kong friends of mine. What made you say you wanted to go back to Asia versus staying in the UK for longer?

Frederick Ng: It's about chasing the opportunity in front of me, and what I had the ambition to do back then. It was very difficult for me to find a role in venture capital. At that point in time, I was very dead set, for very different reasons from why I did my second stint in venture, on starting my career in venture capital. And it was very difficult for someone who was not born in the UK, and who naturally didn't have the right networks to tap into, to be effective as a venture investor. So I had to immigrate back.

This is one of the things I share with a lot of our clients: you have to chase opportunity and make decisions based on that, and hopefully immigration is not an issue. For me, it was moving back home to chase that opportunity. I was lucky it was home for me, and it was easy for me to go back, but it's sometimes very difficult for a lot of our clients. For me back then, it was about going back so that I could begin my journey in venture capital. That's why I made the move.

Starting on the Wrong Side of the Table

Jeremy Au: So there you are. You're doing venture capital, then you're an operator at Glints, and then you go back to being a VC again. Can you talk a little bit more about those career choices?

Frederick Ng: When I first started in venture, and I like to tell people this, I started on the wrong side of the table, because I went straight into an investor role, out of ego more than anything. I thought it was cool to do venture. It is quite cool in many ways, but I was going into it for the wrong reasons. When I became an investor for the first time, I had no idea how to operate. I'd never built a business before. I'd never run a business before.

It took me a good year to realize I was way out of my depth. If I had done my job right, I would have partnered up with best-in-class operators, and they don't need guidance. But ignorant me, back in the day, was trying to tell people that they should do this and that. It was very embarrassing. It took me a good part of a year to realize I was out of my depth.

What happened was, and kudos to Oswald at Glints, whom I worked with in my first operator stint, I picked up the phone and called Oswald, and I said, "Hey, sorry I was being very arrogant in the way I said things and communicated. I realize now that I need to earn some battle scars to do the venture job a lot more justice. So if you'd be so kind as to give me a shoestring budget and let me operate and learn through that, hopefully I'll build a business or two that's profitable and creating value for Glints." He was gracious enough to say yes to that.

So I made the switch and went to the dark side of operating. I did that for two years, and it was a phenomenal learning experience, because I learned everything. I'm still learning, but I learned the basics of operating, especially in a service-heavy industry, which is fundamentally what Glints is trying to disrupt. I learned a lot about operating a service business, and a lot about hiring A players: what an A player looks like, what B and C players look like, and what you can do to maximize your chance of getting lucky and partnering up with an A player.

So that was two years in. At that point, I decided that I had learned some skill sets. I had hit a milestone in building two profitable businesses for Glints, and it was easier for me to go back to the nicer side of the table, so to speak, and hopefully do it with a bit more justice this time, having operated a bit. So I decided to make the switch and got in touch with the team at Square Peg. They were very lucky to take me on, and I had a phenomenal two and a half years of learning and working together with some of the best founders in the region before I started building Beyond Border.

Why Operators Make Better Investors

Jeremy Au: Let's talk a little bit about that transition between venture capital, operating and venture capital again, because in some ways that's the dream job for many undergraduates.

Frederick Ng: Sure.

Jeremy Au: I've seen so many undergraduates who call me and say, "Hey, Jeremy, I'm an undergraduate. I would love to be a venture capitalist. Should I become a founder first to become a venture capitalist? Should I operate to become a venture capitalist? Or should I just go straight into a venture capital job?" I'm curious, because you said it was a mistake, that you felt out of your depth going into venture capital out of college. Could you share a little bit more about that reflection?

Frederick Ng: I want to start with a big caveat. There are great investors I've worked with and learned from who didn't come from an operating background per se, but they're still phenomenal. Tushar Roy from Square Peg, for example. I think he's hands down one of the best investors in the region, and he hasn't operated in a startup environment before.

A lot of it comes down to the way an individual learns. For me, it's always experiential. I had to go through things and experience them myself, as opposed to just intellectually understanding certain lessons, to apply my learning to doing a better job in venture capital. That's just the way I'm wired.

But personally, having gone through that operating experience became a superpower in some ways. One is, if you speak to 10 founders who are fundraising, 10 out of 10 will tell you they prefer to work with an operator investor, because they have gone through that journey and they know how tough it is. A very key part of having experience as an operator is that it gives you empathy. You also know that people work in spikes.

What I mean by empathy is that if you've gone through it, you understand that building a company has lots of ups and downs, and there are many things that are not within your control. So being a great investor, at least from my point of view, is sometimes about being empathetic about the situation. The founder already has a hard enough job to do. It's more than a job, it's their livelihood. Empowering them with empathy is sometimes the only thing they need to get through tough times. Because if you have done your job right and partnered up with best-in-class people, they're best placed to solve the problem they decided to put their life's work into solving. So just giving that emotional support is helpful, and being an operator in the past helped me realize that.

The second thing is that it helps you get into tactical conversations with founders if you've operated before. I'm a very big fan of founders, or generally brilliant individuals, who can think in levels. There are people who haven't operated before who have a natural knack for asking the right questions to get to what matters, even in an operating setup. But generally speaking, if you've operated before, you know from firsthand experience how to make better hiring decisions, and what's priority one versus priority zero. You know what is typically going to cost your business versus what's not. On the surface, if you haven't operated before, two fires that look similarly big might both look like P0 at the same time. So being an operator helped me massively as an investor, at least personally.

Empathy Means Knowing It's the People

Jeremy Au: I empathize with going through this set of experiences, because I was a founder and a management consultant, and then turned to venture capital. There was that dimension of conversation, which I think was helpful. One interesting part you mentioned was empathy. Could you share a little bit more about that? You had your first stint as a VC without any founder experience, and then you came back with some operating experience. What did that difference in empathy mean in terms of how you felt, or how you practiced venture capital?

Frederick Ng: The difference, having gone through both the operator and the investor route, is an understanding. Empathy is an understanding of emotion and also of the situation at hand. In a venture capital setup, it's understanding that people build businesses. Ultimately, what matters, at least what I chose to believe in having gone through that operator-investor journey, is that whatever your problem set or the idea you decide to embark on, it's the people that matter.

Without that operator experience, purely as an investor, I'd be very fixated on whether it's a good problem set, whether the economics are great, and whether the person is just smart. But what does smart really mean? That's where empathy comes in. Having operated, smart to me is whether you're a talent magnet, whether you're thinking from first principles, and in different contexts that would look different.

If you have operated before, you know that businesses come in different shapes and sizes. Some sectors require a lot of capital intensity. For example, if I'm building hardware, if I'm building, say, WHOOP, I would need to be a very good fundraiser to be a really good operator in that space, because you need to fund the J-curve with a lot of capital. That's different from someone like me, operating in a less capital-intensive industry. What exceptional looks like can differ in terms of the founder's background and DNA. So I think that's empathy, and the insight that having operated before unlocks.

Too Impatient for a 10-Year Feedback Loop

Jeremy Au: You've done both stints: operator, as a country market launcher and as a GM, as well as a VC. And then you decided to become a founder. You could have kept going in venture capital. It is hard times, but you have that experience and that perspective. Why decide to be a founder?

Frederick Ng: I decided to be a founder for two reasons. Number one is more personal, and I think it's also a function of time and learning more about myself: I'm a very impatient person. In venture, if you want to be very good, the number one trait you need is to be very patient. You need a 10-year learning cycle to know whether you're good or not. You make a decision, and then after 10 years you find out whether you're good. I'm too impatient for that. That was one big realization I had. I'd much rather be working on things where I can see almost immediate impact, either on the business or on the clients I serve. I like to be fixing the problem.

When I was an investor, one of the very big principles of how we decided to operate was that we wanted to stay out of the way of the founders we partnered up with. That means that even from a 20,000-foot view, you're sitting on boards and hearing how founders talk about their problems. There are certain problems where you think, I have experience with that, or I know the right person I can bring in to work together and solve this. But it's against the principle to do so, because you partnered up with the founder in the first place because you believe the founder is best placed to solve those problems. So there was always this itch that I could do more, and the impatience kicked in. I'd think, "I wish I were in the company, doing things for them and solving problems." That's part of the realization.

The second thing is that I had time to think back on what matters to me. Being in venture capital is great because you're partnering up with people wherever they're from, and they have very big ambitions they want to go after, but you can only play a small part in that journey. I think there's a lot more direct impact I could deliver if I'm hands-on, getting my hands dirty and solving impactful problems. Immigration became an extension of that understanding.

So without having anything lined up, I decided to make the switch and go find interesting problems to solve. It didn't take me and Arnold, Arnold being my co-founder, very long to decide that immigration was something impactful to solve. It comes down to two things. One is being able to roll my sleeves up and go solve problems, because I'm impatient. Number two, I'd rather be working on a problem than sitting 20,000 feet up and watching how others go solve it. I don't want to miss the fun.

Ten Meetings in a Week With No Website

Jeremy Au: How did you land on this product-market fit?

Frederick Ng: It was one of those where the dots connected, if you will. When I was in venture, part of my mission was to partner up with founders in the region who were primarily building AI SaaS startups. Typically, a lot of them would subsequently move to the US, because that's where the capital, the clients and the business development side of things are. I saw firsthand how my founders struggled with the immigration process while trying to build their companies, so I knew there was a big job to be done there.

The next thing was to see whether the problem was painful enough. Our journey to find product-market fit was to go to the market first, as opposed to building a product and hoping it sells itself. We decided it was easier to see whether we could reach out to third-degree connections. When Arnold and I embarked on the journey, we were very dead set on not finding friends to buy from us or be design partners, so to speak. Rather, we wanted to go out to almost complete randos and see, without a website and with nothing but a narrative, whether people were willing to pay, and pay a pretty high ticket, for the products and the visas we sell. If people are willing to pay despite all of that, it tells you pretty much that there's an impactful job to be done. There's a lot of value left on the table, and a lot of value left to be created.

Once we decided immigration was an impactful problem to solve, one aligned with our goal to accelerate human ambition and help talented people get to wherever innovation happens, we decided to go out and find venture-backed founders and see whether they would respond. When we first went to market, we didn't have a website. We were just learning on every call. In the first week, without a website, without anything, we had 10 meetings.

Within the first month, we got on a call with a Swedish entrepreneur. He had raised $50 million, and he needed to move to the US to build a geothermal plant. Mind you, we had no website. We were armed with a little bit more knowledge about the O-1 visa, which was the hero product at the time. And within 10 minutes, he wired us. Arnold and I looked at each other and we were like, "Oh, wow, there's something here."

So that was the quote-unquote product-market fit exploration: compressing that timeframe, getting to the market as quickly as possible, and not being afraid of embarrassment, almost welcoming it, because you learn the most from it. That's how I think we accelerated our journey to finding product-market fit.

Empathy Over the CRM

Jeremy Au: Visas are obviously a problem, especially when you're applying from a foreign country and getting to the US is attractive. If you Google this, there are many services available. There are law firms and so forth. So what's your approach?

Frederick Ng: We wanted to work with a lot of empathy, compared to how others might have experienced their journeys with a traditional immigration law firm. What I mean by that is, having operated in this space and solved this problem, and with a team that is primarily immigrants themselves who have gone through that journey, we know it's a very emotional one. Part of what makes a great case is someone who has spent time with whoever is going through the process. Through the inevitable ups and downs of getting the case done and getting your evidence together to help your visa process go through, you support them emotionally, so that whoever's going through it doesn't get affected too much by the process while juggling building their thing.

I think that's the big part where traditional professional services are lacking, specifically in immigration. A lot of the time, especially when a firm is operating at scale, you start to become a number in their CRM. We decided that's not what we want to do, because a lot of our team members have been through that journey. We have team members who have done green cards for their own families as well as themselves, and that really changed their whole family's livelihood. With the same empathy that we received, that's how we decided to operate: to help founders achieve their ambition wherever they are. The journey of building a company is already hard enough. The best we can do is make it a little less painful when they juggle immigration as a necessary step to expand to the US. I think that empathy is what differentiated us.

Judgment Versus Intelligence

Jeremy Au: Based on what you share on your website, you're tech-enabled, you do things faster, and there's a money-back guarantee. Could you share a little bit more about how that works?

Frederick Ng: Our process is designed from first principles, differently from a traditional lawyer's. The framing is AI-native services. It just so happens that we're building this business in immigration. You can think of the job to be done as judgment and intelligence. That's typically what a body of work encompasses in professional service settings.

We can use a different industry to see the parallels. Let's say an accountant. You hire an accountant to do the work of keeping your books, obviously, but the accountant also tells you how to keep the books, and how to allot certain line items in a way that makes sense within the auditing standard.

If you take the same analogy to what an immigration professional or immigration lawyer does, the body of work comprises judgment, which is what you do in a particular situation, and then how you do it, which is the actual work that an immigration attorney and an immigration paralegal would do. How we do it differently is that we're very consciously trying to unbundle the two, and give more time back to the immigration professionals and attorneys we work with, so that they spend more of their time on judgment, which is what a human can do and what LLMs cannot. Then there's the intelligence, which is how you do it: how you compile a case of a 700- to 1,000-page petition with as much LLM-enabled assistance as possible, so that you give more time back to intelligence.

Let me put this into an actual situation. Let's say two founders come in who look completely the same on paper. Both are Series A founders, both are very well credentialed, and they would probably qualify very well for the O-1A. So the intelligence on how you craft the case will be very similar. But as you dig in and spend time with the founder, you start to understand the unique situation each person is in. Even though both are Series A founders, one might have, hypothetically, overstayed in the US on a B-1/B-2 visa.

That's where judgment comes in, and where our model lets immigration professionals and attorneys do their best work: freeing up more of their time to decide whether this is the right time for case number one, a Series A founder with a visa overstay, to go through immigration. Versus case number two, also a Series A founder but without that overstay, who can go through the process. We're very intentional about unlocking more time for judgment, and that typically makes or breaks an immigration case, because on paper you might qualify, but there are often nitty-gritty details in a personal situation that make or break a case, so to speak.

So where our model is different is that we try to automate as much of the intelligence work as possible, and unlock more time for the attorneys, or our immigration paralegals, to work with the founders. One immediate byproduct is that our clients get a lot more face time with immigration professionals and attorneys, and they feel more supported along the way. That's how we're different.

Why the Details Matter More Now

Jeremy Au: Can you talk to me about why that matters, that differentiation between the two founders?

Frederick Ng: Now is a very challenging time to go through immigration. It matters that we're able to spend enough time on one company versus another, or one founder versus another, because every case is unique. When you pair that with a very challenging immigration environment, the details determine whether the immigration process is a success or not.

I'll give you an example. Say that in the past, under a different administration, a founder was going through the immigration process and taking a launch team over to the US alongside them, which is a very typical use case for what we do. In the past administration, we would have taken everyone on an O visa: the founder and the founder minus one. If you'd spent enough time with the team members, you'd understand whether they could be a good fit for an O-1 visa versus a typical pathway like the L visa or H-1B.

Fast-forward to today, in a more challenging immigration environment, being able to spend time to really understand the case makes all the difference, because it helps you determine the right visa type. That's judgment: how do you decide the right visa type for the person, and for the team members, to move to the US? If you've spent enough time, that empathy and understanding allows you to say, "Okay, except for the founder, these people shouldn't go through the O-1 visa. They should go for, let's say, an L visa to bring the team over." That makes all the difference, especially in an environment like this: being able to zoom in, with enough time, on client A versus client B, who might look the same on paper.

Three Months, Not 48 Hours

Jeremy Au: What's interesting is that you're mentioning all these different types of visas, and I'm familiar with them because I was in the US. But for a founder or technology executive in Southeast Asia who's interested in moving to America, what's the span of visa categories they should be aware of, and who is each one best for, based on persona?

Frederick Ng: Let me take a step back. This is something I wish founders knew when they came to us. In terms of awareness of visa types, most founders haven't heard of O visas or L visas. It's great, Jeremy, that you've gone through the exercise, and I'd say you're in the minority of founders or venture operators who come to us already knowing about the visa type.

I'll give you a stat. We spoke to about 6,000 founders in the last year, and 55% of them don't know what an O-1 visa is, let alone the different visa types. Most of the founders who come to us think a typical US work visa can be done as easily as ESTA, which is what you'd use if you're a Singaporean, or coming mostly from developed or European countries. You fill out a form, and within 48 hours you get a visa outcome. It's not like that, and most founders don't know that it's not that easy. It's a 700- to 1,000-page petition, because you're literally going after the most powerful work visa for operating in the US.

So number one, generally the awareness is not quite there yet. If there's one thing I hope founders take away, it's that this isn't something you can get done within 48 hours. A good process typically takes about three months.

The O-1 and the L Visa

Frederick Ng: Then it's about the different options they have. The O-1 is great for venture-backed founders. If you think about it from first principles, what does the O-1 visa do? It has a reputation for being called the Einstein visa, or the extraordinary ability alien visa. Why are venture-backed founders a great fit? Because in spirit, this visa type is trying to attract people who are the crème de la crème of their industry to go and contribute in the US in a work setting. Being a venture-backed founder typically means you are one of the very few who have been selected by a venture investor and received institutional investment. Through that, you're among the very top in what you do, which is entrepreneurship. So the O-1 is typically a very good pathway for them.

One thing most people don't realize is that the O-1 has consistently had a broad-based, very high approval rate across different administrations. Case in point: in the first Trump administration, the O-1 visa had a 90% approval rate. In the Biden administration that came after, 93%. And in the latest stats published by USCIS, the US immigration bureau, so to speak, the second Trump administration has a 91% approval rate. Founders are expanding to the US, and they need certainty that the visa is there so they can go expand. What they don't realize is that this is a category with a very high approval rate, and hence the certainty founders are seeking.

Another typical visa type that fits a venture operator or a founder is the L visa, which is an intra-company transfer visa. The typical use case is founders who have built their base in Asia, need to expand to the US, and want to bring their launch team over with them. The founder minus one might not have as well or publicly chronicled a profile as the founder, so a better way to go through it is to say, "I've spent one year in a local entity affiliated with my US entity." A startup typically has a Delaware C-Corp or an LLC. If you've been on the payroll of that local entity for 12 months, you can do an intra-company transfer and say, "I need to do in the US the same thing I did with the local entity."

So these two tend to be the most typical pathways startup operators go through. If there's one thing to take away from all of this and from understanding the different visa types, it's that this is not something that can be done in 48 hours. It takes at least three months to run a good process. So as founders think about their US expansion motions, it's one of the first things they should think about.

Family First: Spouses, Dependents and the EB-1A

Jeremy Au: For many founders, when they think about their visa move, they're also often thinking about their spouse and sometimes their children. If you're a very young founder and maybe you studied at a US university, it's pretty straightforward to go through the practical training afterwards. There's a window to stay in America. But people who are using visa services often have a spouse, a girlfriend or boyfriend, and children. So how do you talk to them about that process?

Frederick Ng: It's one of the first things we try to get clarity on with founders, or even tech executives for that matter, who come through our door seeking advice on visa or green card types. To bring this to life: a lot of the time, whether you decide on one visa type versus another, or one green card type over another, comes down to family considerations. Maybe not so much for founders, but for tech operators especially.

We have a lot of executives from across the Mag 7 today, be it Meta or Google. The first question we often ask them is what their spouse's visa status would be if they were to go through this visa versus that visa, because not all visas allow the spouse to work in the US. They can live and stay, but not work. That's a main reason why people need to switch visa types, and it's something people should bear in mind. It's not just about the utility and how quickly you get the visa for yourself, but also the dependent status.

We've literally seen a lot of tech executives who couldn't make decisions that were more favorable to them and their families because they were boxed into a particular green card type. Case in point, a lot of tech executives from, say, Amazon come to us. Amazon will sponsor a category called EB-1C for them, which is for multinational executives, and the wait time is super long. Because Amazon is sponsoring their process, they can't leave. If they leave, it's not only their professional career that's in jeopardy, but also their family's livelihood in the US.

So a lot of the time they come to us and say, "Okay, I want a different visa." We chat with them and understand the practical situation the family depends on. Then we say, "Okay, have you thought about the EB-1A?" Without going into too much terminology, it allows you to anchor your professional merit against the qualifying criteria and be approved for a different green card purely on that basis. Once you've gotten that status, your dependents can live and work in the US without any ties to Amazon. That unlocks their ambition, because now they're not tied to an employer. They can go work for whoever they want, or even start a company.

So the dependent situation, the family situation, is often the first thing we talk about, especially for those who are already based in the US and have built some sort of livelihood there.

Ten Days of Silence, Then Everest Base Camp

Jeremy Au: That's so great to hear. My last question for you: could you share a personal story about a time that you've been brave?

Frederick Ng: That would be the time before I started this company. When I was a venture investor, I took a sabbatical. I knew I was going to build something. I didn't know what it was, but whatever I'd learned in the years prior taught me it was going to be a rough journey, a really rough journey, that would test my limits in every facet. So I decided to go and seek some hardship. I took a sabbatical, and that was the month when I was the bravest I've been in my entire life so far.

I went to two places, India and Nepal. In India, I locked myself in an ashram about an hour's drive from Hyderabad. I was the only foreigner there, and it was a super rundown situation. You wake up at 4:00 AM, and you're not allowed to touch your phone. You're not allowed to do anything outside of meditating. You wake up at 4:00 AM, you go to bed at 9:00 PM, and you do it again. You're not allowed to talk throughout the entire experience.

It was brave because I care a lot about the people around me, and I didn't want them to think I'd died. And vice versa. During those 10 days, so many of these thoughts came to my mind: "Oh, my parents might have died in these 10 days. For whatever reason, my partner might have left me." All sorts of things. It absolutely tested my limits. I went through it, and I thought, "Okay, if I've gone through and survived that, I can probably do something and not be daunted by the challenge ahead of me."

So to put that to the test, I took a bus across the border to Nepal, and I decided to hike to Everest base camp. Armed with all the confidence I had from Vipassana, and from having lived in the ashram without any contact with anyone, I went up toward Everest base camp. It was a long hike. I got to about 4,800 meters above sea level, which is relatively high, and I started developing altitude sickness, but I was three days from base camp.

The outcome I'd set for myself, to really test whether I had the resilience, was to reach base camp no matter what. I think this would resonate with a lot of founders as they go through their own company-building journeys, and it certainly resonates with mine. I was three days out from base camp, and reaching it was something I'd be really proud of for the rest of my life. I had a cracking headache every day. I couldn't sleep for three hours, three days straight. You're operating at really high altitude, so you get sick really easily.

The Sherpa had explicitly told me, "When you experience a headache, you should let me know, and then we're going to send you back." At that point, I decided I was either going to get there or die trying. I didn't tell him about my headache, and I made it all the way to base camp. Right after I reached base camp, I collapsed, and I had to be sent back by helicopter to Kathmandu to recuperate.

That one month really tested my limits, and it has helped massively in the journey of building Beyond Border, because of the many inevitable ups and downs. In the tougher moments, I go back and tell myself, "If I've gone through all of that and survived, I can probably survive this as well."

Three Takeaways

Jeremy Au: Thank you so much for sharing your experience. Wow, what a crazy story. On that note, I'd love to wrap things up by summarizing three big takeaways.

First, thanks so much for sharing about your early career and your own immigration and movements across Hong Kong, the UK and Singapore, and also your career across founder, VC and operator roles. There's a lot to learn from those career choices.

Secondly, thanks for sharing your experience of being on all three sides of the table, as a VC, an operator and a founder, and what empathy means in that context. Also some of your self-realizations about the skill sets you needed, how you could be helpful to founders, and how to be a real thought partner to founders.

Lastly, thanks for sharing about the immigration solution your company is building. I thought it was fascinating to hear a little bit about what you're planning, and also your first-principles approach to making this a better experience across the different visa categories, whether it's for a solo founder, a technology executive, or somebody with a family who is thinking through their spousal decision. On that note, thank you so much for sharing.

Frederick Ng: Thanks, Jeremy. Thanks for having me. This was fun.

Singapore: Health, Scale & Policy Blueprint - E735

Thu, 01 Oct 2026 04:50:07 +0800

"I actually think that in the long term, if we could also improve diagnostics to detect early disease, that would actively help the therapeutic space. You can go in earlier and treat problems earlier, and just like anything in life, the earlier you figure out the problem, the better you solve it." - Dr. Joshua Wang

"From a biological perspective, we know that Asians tend to develop complications from having excess fat, specifically visceral fat, at much lower BMI thresholds. As a result, we may not look obese on the outside, but we hide it really well around our waistline. This type of fat tends to be highly pro-inflammatory and contributes significantly to diseases like heart disease, vascular diseases, and kidney disease." - Dr. Sue-Anne Toh

"Everything works so well in Singapore that people do not have to think very hard as they go through life, meaning there is less of a survival mentality or sharp problem-solving skills born out of necessity. While this creates a phenomenal quality of life for citizens, it can dull the disruptive entrepreneurial spirit. Conversely, this is exactly why immigrant founders flock here—they see the operational chaos elsewhere and realize that in Singapore, they can focus entirely on company building." - Adriel Yong

In 2016, Singapore declared a War on Diabetes. This BRAVE compilation looks at what the Singapore blueprint gets right on health and public policy, and what that stability may cost in entrepreneurial drive.

Dr. Sue-Anne Toh of NOVI Health explains TOFI (thin outside, fat inside), why Asians develop diabetes at lower BMI, and how insulin resistance works. Adriel Yong of Clouted lays out the efficiency paradox: when public services work this well, fewer people grow up as problem solvers, and state ownership leaves few business families to build on. Dr. Joshua Wang of VerImmune covers why cancer is detected too late, why new therapies are tested on late-stage patients first, and how diabetes went from a death sentence to a chronic disease.

Watch the full episodes:

E718 Dr. Sue-Anne Toh, Co-Founder, CEO & Medical Director of NOVI Health

E705 Adriel Yong, Co-Founder & COO of Clouted

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eOimzcac29w

E628 Dr. Joshua Wang, Founder & CEO of VerImmune

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=roXPyXASiRk

00:00 Intro

01:02 Dr. Sue-Anne Toh: Singapore's War on Diabetes

01:47 TOFI: thin outside, fat inside

03:38 Insulin resistance and the pancreas "factory"

06:43 AI, manual labor and the WALL-E future

08:28 Adriel Yong: the Efficiency Paradox

10:04 Temasek, GLCs and the missing business families

11:39 Focus or numbing? HF0 and founder distraction

14:21 Why swing for a billion?

16:12 Dr. Joshua Wang: therapeutic, not preventative

18:36 Why cancer is detected too late

21:27 From death sentence to chronic disease

22:55 Outro

Keywords: Singapore Healthcare, Biotech Innovation, Asian Metabolic Phenotype, Cancer Immunotherapy, Startup Ecosystem, Preventative Medicine, Public Health Policy, Immigrant Founders

Edy Widjaja: From Jakarta Provision Shop to Bain Senior Partner & The Lessons In Between - E734

Mon, 28 Sep 2026 04:50:00 +0800

"As much as we like to credit ourselves—thinking we went to the right school, worked hard, and did all the right things to become successful—the reality is that's not even half of it. Along the way, people help when you almost fall. They are gracious enough to spend time on you, and it is the investment of colleagues and clients that ultimately gets you to where you are today." - Edy Widjaja

"Often, the frontline workers are actually more useful than senior management. They are the ones who go through the day-to-day operations. I would rather hear from a salesperson than a regional director because they are the ones who face the rejections and receive the customer complaints directly. That feedback is vital." - Edy Widjaja

"Way before becoming a senior partner, I was actually just a kid growing up in West Jakarta, Indonesia. I grew up working in my parents' nine-square-metre provision shop, doing everything from cashiering to deliveries. Returning to Asia after years abroad in science, consulting became the bridge that allowed me to learn and bring value back to the region." - Edy Widjaja

Edy Widjaja, former Senior Partner at Bain & Company and author of The Accidental Partner, joins Jeremy Au for a candid look back at a 16-year management consulting career. They cover what the job actually consists of once you take away the slides and the pitch, how performance reviews and feedback really work inside a top firm, how he handled clients and competing stakeholders, how he and his wife traded off two demanding careers around a young child, what a partner does day to day that nobody sees, and what happened after he retired at the end of 2025.

Edy Widjaja spent fifteen years inside an elite global management consulting firm, rising from an overlooked research scientist with zero interviews to Senior Partner advising top executives across Southeast Asia.

He holds a BSc in Metallurgical Engineering from the University of Indonesia and a PhD in Materials Science from Northwestern University — a path that was originally meant to end in a laboratory.

Long before any of that, he learned to read a customer's needs from behind the counter of his parents' nine-square-meter provision shop in Chinatown, West Jakarta. That instinct, it turned out, mattered more than almost anything he learned in a classroom.

He co-founded his firm's Jakarta office, led its Southeast Asia Financial Services practice, and spent a decade shaping the region's hiring and mentorship as its Recruiting and People Partner. In 2026, he closed the laptop for the last time to write, travel, and figure out who he is without a calendar telling him.

The Accidental Partner is his first book. All net proceeds support education access, scholarship, and mental health initiatives in Indonesia. He lives in Singapore. Get the book at https://www.edywidjaja.com

00:00 Introduction

02:37 From a provision shop in West Jakarta to Bain

10:21 The INSEAD MBA, and nearly not getting hired

14:21 What consulting actually is behind the slides

19:45 Performance reviews, feedback and the ego

26:58 Clients, stakeholders and the front line

37:23 Jakarta, travel and not being a weekend dad

42:08 Two careers, taking turns

44:19 What a partner really does all day

49:52 Why he retired at senior partner

53:45 Life after the calendar empties

56:57 Three takeaways

https://youtu.be/jaeEyRF3doA

Keywords: Bain & Company, Management Consulting, Indonesia Business, Career Transitions, Stakeholder Management, INSEAD MBA, Leadership Development, Work-Life Balance

EdTech: The Future of Learning & K-12 Disruption - E733

Thu, 24 Sep 2026 07:57:53 +0800

"Your brain is most receptive to absorbing educational knowledge as a young person, as a teenager. If you don't impart the right skills at that age group, it is difficult to course correct. It is never too late, but your best ROI you'll ever have is from getting K-12 education right. Getting K-12 right is the single most important thing that an education system can do." - Henry Motte de la Motte

"One of the consistent trends is that increase in screen time and increase in use of gadgets in schools has not improved, but made educational outcomes worse for the students over time. For the first time in global history, we see students' academic outcomes decreasing, not increasing." - Adam Huh Dam

"I built an education tech company in the US, and I'm choosing to raise my kids in Singapore. You had to build education tech in America because the public and private system, and the gaps in between were so bonkers that private market solutions were really the only solution for many people. As somebody who has the ability to access the Singapore education system, it felt like a no-brainer both on the value in terms of outcomes coupled with the safety and stability component, coupled with a tremendously low cost." - Jeremy Au

Get the basics right in school and everything else builds on it. Miss that window, and it is very hard to course correct.

In this compilation from the BRAVE archive, Adam Huh Dam of Stick 'Em, Adriel Yong of Clouted, Henry Motte-de la Motte of Edge Tutor and host Jeremy Au break down what actually improves learning outcomes, and why so much of edtech does not.

Why authenticity and real traction can beat a polished pitch, from the team that won the 2025 Hult Prize (Adam Huh Dam)

Why more screens and gadgets in schools have made outcomes worse, and where AI can genuinely help students (Adam Huh Dam)

How the US and Singapore education systems differ, and how gaps in public schooling create private markets like college counseling (Jeremy Au and Adriel Yong)

Why time abroad and cross-border relationships matter more for young people as AI takes over routine work (Adriel Yong)

Why selling into public school systems takes so long, from multi-stakeholder buying to risk aversion (Henry Motte-de la Motte)

Why K-12 is the highest-ROI investment a government can make, and what the Asian Tiger economies got right (Henry Motte-de la Motte)

Watch the full episodes:

Adam Huh Dam, Co-Founder of Stick 'Em

How To Win A $1M Prize And Fixing The Global Education Crisis | Adam Huh Dam of Stick ‘Em - EP682

Adriel Yong, Co-Founder & COO of Clouted

AI Has Changed The Way We Create, Consume And Value Content | Adriel Yong - E730

https://youtu.be/qqrkSe95nmY

Henry Motte-de la Motte, Founder & CEO of Edge Tutor

Henry Motte-de la Motte: Education Tech Challenges - E372

https://youtu.be/oENqetfds_4

00:00 Intro

00:40 Adam Huh Dam: going to London knowing we wouldn't win

03:48 Why Stick 'Em won the Hult Prize

04:50 AI in classrooms: the low-hanging fruit

06:07 More screens, worse outcomes

07:36 Jeremy Au & Adriel Yong: Singapore versus America

09:57 College counseling and pay to play admissions

11:51 The moonshot: six months abroad for every student

13:22 Henry Motte-de la Motte: education's long sales cycles

14:23 The window closes at 18

15:04 What the Asian Tigers got right

15:50 Outro

Keywords: EdTech, Southeast Asia Education, K-12 Education, AI in Education, Singapore Public Schools, B2G Sales, Government Procurement, Hult Prize, Startup Founders, Screen Time Outcomes

Singapore Buys Fintech. Thailand Builds Data Centers. | Wing Vasiksiri - E732

Mon, 21 Sep 2026 07:48:00 +0800

"For future M&A transactions in Southeast Asia, global or regional acquirers worried about management risk, regulatory complexity, or market volatility will structure deal mechanisms to align long-term incentives. Whether through staged buyouts like Grab's 60% upfront acquisition of Atome or all-equity transactions like Circle's acquisition of Tazapay, structuring payouts around future performance aligns management teams and mitigates tail risk while scaling into new geographies." - Jeremy Au

"Southeast Asia's tech story has largely been defined by the super app strategy: start with high-friction pain points like transportation, expand into daily verticals like food and groceries, offer a better payment solution, and ultimately dominate consumer financial services. With basic infrastructure now built, the remaining underserved demand lies in credit and lending, which makes large-scale fintech acquisitions like Grab's purchase of Atome so strategic." - Wing Vasiksiri

"We are finally seeing large-scale tech M&A transactions emerge from Southeast Asia, from Grab acquiring Atome Financial for $1.5 billion to Circle acquiring Tazapay for $400 million. These deals demonstrate that financial services platforms built across Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, and the Philippines have achieved the scale, cross-border regulatory licensing, and transaction volume needed to become high-value targets for global acquirers and public tech giants." - Wing Vasiksiri

Wing Vasiksiri, investor and ecosystem builder, returns to unpack two of the largest Southeast Asian tech M&A deals in years, both announced within a week of each other: Grab acquiring 60% of Atome Financial from Advance Intelligence Group for $1.5B with a two-year earnout on the remaining 40%, and Circle's roughly $400M all-stock acquisition of Singapore-founded Tazapay. Wing and Jeremy Au dig into why the deal structures matter more than the headline numbers (earnouts and equity are how global and regional acquirers are pricing in the tail risk of Southeast Asian management teams), and why Grab is deploying cash that US retail investors aren't fully valuing into new growth stories rather than dividends. They also cover Singapore's $200M+ countercyclical fintech fund push, the e-commerce growth still coming out of Vietnam, Indonesia, and Malaysia, why Thailand and Malaysia are winning the data center boom while Singapore has structurally sat it out, and how OpenAI and the neolabs are landing in the region.

00:00 SEA tech M&A takes off: Grab announces a $1.5B deal for Atome Financial while Circle acquires B2B payments firm Tazapay for $400M.

03:14 Grab and Atome synergies: Combining offline BNPL retail networks with food delivery to build an orthogonal vector against Sea Group.

04:38 Unique deal structures in regional tech: How staged buyouts and performance-linked mechanisms de-risk acquirers and align management teams.

06:36 Underwriting as a competitive moat: Grab taps into Atome's multi-country credit track record, institutional debt lines, and portfolio scale.

11:08 Strategic cash deployment: Grab utilizes balance sheet cash for high-growth strategic acquisitions rather than traditional public market buybacks.

12:51 Circle acquires Tazapay: Cross-border regulatory licenses and global payment infrastructure unlock a 6x payout for early VC backers.

18:02 Singapore's $200M+ fintech initiative: Public funding steps in during a VC deployment winter to support proven regional exit pathways.

19:50 E-commerce surge across SEA: Double-digit growth in app installs in Vietnam, Indonesia, and Malaysia creates secondary startup opportunities.

26:02 Frontier AI labs expand to APAC: OpenAI and neolabs establish Singapore headquarters and launch accelerator programs in Thailand.

27:18 The Thailand and Malaysia data center boom: Abundant power, cheap land, and a "bring-your-own-chip" model drive Chinese hyperscaler investments.

Watch on Youtube

Watch/Listen on Spotify

Keywords: Southeast Asia Tech, M&A, Grab, Atome, Circle, Tazapay, Fintech Acquisitions, Singapore Fintech, Thailand Data Centers, BNPL, Cross-Border Payments, Super App Strategy, Venture Capital Southeast Asia

Introduction

Jeremy Au: Hey, Wing. Good to see you.

Jeremy Au: How is life for you?

Wing Vasiksiri: Same. Yeah, moved to Singapore for almost a year now, so feel pretty settled in to everything happening here, and excited to hop back on again.

Wing Vasiksiri: I think this is the second time we're talking since I moved out here, so excited to hop back on and catch up.

Jeremy Au: Yeah, last one was in person, so now we're doing one remotely because you are traveling for work, but it's good to see you. So I think one thing we wanna talk about is what's the latest news, and I thought it was quite exciting recently that we saw a couple of M&A transactions happen.

Two Fintech Exits in One Week

Jeremy Au: I thought we saw that Grab just bought 60% of Atome, which is a buy now, pay later group under the Advance Intelligence Group. And I think you were the one who mentioned to me and brought to my attention that Circle Internet Group, the USDC stablecoin, recently acquired Tazapay, which is a B2B transaction, payments company, which was about a $400 million deal as well, so quite an interesting time right now.

Wing Vasiksiri: Yeah, I think super exciting. I think with the Atome news that literally broke last night, right? So Grab announced that they're buying 60% of Atome Financial for 1.5 billion. So that's pretty, pretty sizable, like very sizable acquisition for the region, and I think the deal was that the remaining 40% will be bought in the next two years after the first tranche closes.

Wing Vasiksiri: But super exciting. I think this, along with the Circle and Tazapay news last week, a lot of the questions that investors have been asking around liquidity, exits — we're finally seeing these large-scale M&As happen out of the region. I don't know if it's a coincidence that they're announced a week pretty much after each other, but really hope that this is the start of more good news to come and more liquidity exits that we're seeing in Singapore, across Southeast Asia.

Wing Vasiksiri: I think the interesting thing here is that both these companies have similar characteristics, right? Fintech companies and also primarily serving Southeast Asia. So it does seem like we're getting to that point where companies building in the financial services have a large enough market, served enough customers such that they've become interesting exit and acquisition targets for some of the larger companies, and yeah, hopefully this just continues to snowball.

Grab and Atome Synergies Against Sea Group

Jeremy Au: Awesome. And I think I wanna talk about it as well, like what the paper synergies are, right, in terms of how and why the deal makes sense as well. I think that from Grab's perspective, it makes sense. They have a huge, obviously, consumer base, right? Everybody's taking rides. They also have the drivers, and they have a lot of small businesses that they have. Whereas Atome, they obviously have buy now, pay later, which is a form of lending, and I think they have a lot of merchants as well. So I think on paper there's a lot of cross-selling synergy. What I found quite interesting was that, beyond doubling the size of the loan book based on the LinkedIn post that they had, I thought it was interesting that they were buying 60% of the company, which I thought was a bit interesting because normally you see them buy 100% of the company, right?

Jeremy Au: That's the classic technology M&A. So choosing to buy 60% upfront and having and tying the remaining 40% to be some kind of performance-oriented framework, I think it's quite an interesting mechanism because you don't see that in Silicon Valley. I can't think of many transactions where they've done that.

Jeremy Au: I think it's because in my head it prevents you from overpaying, right? You're buying 60% now, then you see if Atome shrinks — then it's a natural lever on the transaction price for the remaining 40%. But if Atome grows more, then you pay more, right?

Jeremy Au: So it works out for both sides. I thought it was an interesting transaction structure, actually.

Wing Vasiksiri: Yeah, you're right. We don't see this very often actually, and maybe it goes to show that acquirers still have market leverage, right? You probably wouldn't see something like this if there were more, many acquirers competing to buy up the same asset.

The Super App Strategy and Underserved Verticals

Wing Vasiksiri: But yeah, I think the question you asked in terms of where the synergies are is a great one as well and something we should talk about a little bit, right? I think if we zoom out, Southeast Asia for the most part has been… the tech story here has been about the super app strategy, right?

Wing Vasiksiri: In emerging markets, users typically only care about two things, which is price and convenience. And so a super app strategy helps offer more services in one place, resulting in a better customer experience. And I think you can generalize the Grab/Gojek approach as something like this where, number one, you start with a very high pain point, right?

Wing Vasiksiri: Which is transportation in some of the most congested cities in the world. You expand to other vertical pain points, groceries, pharmacy, food. You offer a better way to pay, 10x way to pay, GrabPay, GoPay, and then you finally expand and dominate across all of consumer financial transactions, right? And I think this is where we see the lending, the BNPL approach come into play.

Wing Vasiksiri: And I think the super app strategy works because when these apps started, there was a lack of basic infrastructure that allowed for a lot of verticalized solutions to develop, right? I think there was a time, and probably still, where things like payments, fraud prevention — Grab and Gojek probably had the best in-class technology for a lot of this, right?

Wing Vasiksiri: So they built that infrastructure and then scaled horizontally. And now if you zoom out and look, it's like where is there growth and demand that is still underserved? I think it's basic industries like healthcare, education, logistics, and credit specifically, which makes this acquisition of Atome super interesting.

Underwriting as the Real Moat

Jeremy Au: I think what's core, if you think about it, is not just the reach as well, but also it's Atome's underwriting. That's not an easy skill set to have in Southeast Asia. I've looked at many financial tech companies in Southeast Asia, and I think the number of teams that just say that underwriting is important and then not deliver on good underwriting because of maybe it's the market, maybe it's how they choose to underwrite it, maybe it's even the structure of how and what they're lending, and the resulting implosions that have happened over the past five years has really been quite an interesting learning experience. And I think that's what Grab is buying Atome for — is having that capability.

Jeremy Au: But also, I think to some extent maybe even the debt lines from the banks that trust Atome to do the underwriting to this date as well. It's not just about underwriting, right, but it's also the track record of underwriting that lets you have a big loan book.

Wing Vasiksiri: Yeah, they're definitely operating at scale, right? Exactly what you said. I'm pulling up some of the numbers here. 2025 annualized net revenue over $500 million on $6 billion annualized GMV portfolio across Singapore, Malaysia, Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand. 25 million cumulative transacted users.

Wing Vasiksiri: So they're at scale, and honestly, it seems like a great fit for Grab and what they're trying to do with their expansion, right? I think Grab obviously had some challenges in the public markets, and I think an acquisition like this is very synergistic to them, perfect for their scale.

Atome's Unusual Fundraising Path

Wing Vasiksiri: I think maybe the other interesting thing to talk about a little bit is that Atome wasn't the typical startup that you see in the region, right? It's not like the typical seed, Series A, Series B story. They were actually a business line that got spun up inside a larger group. So it wasn't a standalone company, right?

Wing Vasiksiri: I think the founder, Jeff Chen, founded this group Advance Intelligence Group in 2016. And then he started a bunch of different solutions within that group, Atome being one of them. And if you look at their fundraising history, they didn't have to raise the typical seed Series A, Series B.

Wing Vasiksiri: I see here they raised a large Series C in 2019 and then a large $400 million Series D from SoftBank, Warburg Pincus, Vision Plus Capital, EDBI is in there, Northstar. So it does look more like the PE-backed type of growth company as opposed to the high-growth tech startup raising capital from the typical VCs that you and I maybe hear and talk about.

Wing Vasiksiri: Still super interesting, but yeah, it is very interesting to see a different shape of business get to this scale and do really well.

Jeremy Au: Yeah, it must have been one heck of a negotiation between these two conglomerates that both had the ability to keep growing across. Grab already had its own fintech solution as well as a digital bank partnership with GXS.

Jeremy Au: Whereas, like you said, Advance Intelligence Group has its own conglomerate as well. So it must have been an interesting negotiation there. I think some other parts about the transaction that I wanna think about is a good outcome for the shareholders. And I would say yes, because from my recollection was that Advance Intelligence Group was valued about 2 billion, right? I think in 2021. So if you're selling basically 60% of one business unit for effectively $2 billion as well, then you're having that decision point actually — what is the remaining 40% gonna look like, right? Is it gonna be another $2 billion?

Jeremy Au: Is it going to go all the way up to $4 billion if they perform well? So those are all opportunities to grow the business. And I'm sure that Advance Intelligence Group is making some decision there to say, "Hey, this is the best price rather than going alone with Atome."

Jeremy Au: That's an interesting choice for Advance Intelligence Group, and I'm also wondering how it flows. Does it flow into reinvesting into more parts of the business of Advance Intelligence Group, or would it be used to pay back early shareholders in their own business? So that's actually quite an interesting experience.

Grab as an Active Acquirer

Wing Vasiksiri: Yeah, for sure. They made the decision, right? They got the liquidity, and it's very meaningful for the parent company as well, right? It's a massive acquisition. So it seems like it's a huge win, I'm sure, for early shareholders, management, employees. I think the other sub-story here is Grab has been on a roll recently with these acquisitions, right?

Wing Vasiksiri: I think this is their third acquisition this year. They bought Stash earlier for $425 million. And then Foodpanda Taiwan at 600 million. So Grab seems to really be investing and trying to grow, probably get to profitability, and maybe it's like the competition that they're seeing from GoTo and GoPay in Indonesia that's fueling some of this.

Wing Vasiksiri: But yeah, either way, I think it's a great time to be a founder in the region, be an investor in the region, and see some of these super exciting developments.

Jeremy Au: Yeah, I think it's interesting for Grab because some of the things that we talked about in our past conversation was that Southeast Asia needed more of an M&A exit approach, right, for startups that don't need to go all the way to IPO.

Jeremy Au: But now Grab is acting as an active acquirer. I think if you look at Grab from a US retail investor perspective where they're publicly listed, it was quite interesting to see that. They're still, I think from my perspective, a little bit underweighted, because from a US retail investor perspective, they don't really use Grab or feel Grab.

Jeremy Au: And so if you look at what Grab is from a public company, they have… spitting out quite a bunch of cash. And I think these transactions are quite smart because basically you're taking the cash that you have that's not being fully valued by retail investors and using that to do acquisitions for new business lines that are a new growth story for retail investors.

Jeremy Au: I think it's probably the best use of the cash. Versus, I'm just giving you an example, would be oil and gas giving dividends back to shareholders to get the stock price up would be another approach, right, if you had all that cash. So I thought it was just a really interesting approach as well.

Circle Acquires Tazapay for $400M

Jeremy Au: Another one that was interesting as well was the Tazapay from my perspective. I thought that was a much cleaner M&A story as well. They were founded in 2020. I think they raised about $60 million across seed and their Series A so far from Peak XV and Saison Capital, and PayPal, and then they got acquired for $400 million.

Jeremy Au: So yeah, that's about a 6X markup, which is a good outcome. And I think I would say it's a great outcome if you think about it because in six years, you got a 6X markup, and a transaction closed. Yeah, it was pretty good.

Wing Vasiksiri: Yeah, no, 100%. I think that was the exciting news last week, and it's great that we have a succession of exciting exits and acquisitions here.

Wing Vasiksiri: But yeah, they're a relatively young company. I remember seeing their seed round during COVID times where I think Peak XV led it, right? I think the founder, Rahul, was a known founder, right? He was at PayPal for 10 years. Led Stripe's revenue growth in APAC, so really deep payments background.

Wing Vasiksiri: Obviously identified a problem, knew how to execute in order to solve that problem, and did that really, really well. I think the interesting thing here is that they started in Singapore, right? I believe that they started serving local regional markets, but they grew pretty large.

Wing Vasiksiri: I read that they had payout rails in over 100 markets. They were licensed by the MAS, but also FINTRAC in Canada, AUSTRAC in Australia, FinCEN in the United States. So it really was a global business that was built out of this region, and Circle was actually the one who led their Series B, I wanna say.

Wing Vasiksiri: And then ended up coming in and buying the company. I'm sure it's a great exit for founders and early investors. They raised 60 million, so we don't know what the valuation in the later rounds is, but this is very meaningful. We don't see acquisitions of this size out of this region within this time span very often, and so I think it's great for everyone involved.

Wing Vasiksiri: It's clearly beneficial to Circle and their plans, right? I'm sure Circle, it's a public listed company in the US, maybe feeling a bit of pressure from Stripe and what they're doing with the open USC with Visa, MasterCard, a bunch of other payment companies. But USDC is still, I believe, only second to USDT.

Wing Vasiksiri: Buying Tazapay, they get a plug directly into the financial plumbing and rails that the team has built. And so, yeah, congrats to everyone involved here. I think this is awesome.

Aligning Incentives With All-Stock and Earnouts

Jeremy Au: Yeah, I think there's a lot of actually interesting synergies, and this is something I'm less familiar with. Between Wing and myself, I think Wing is much more competent with Bitcoin and crypto than I am. I'm much more on the real-world businesses perspective. But I think one interesting thing is that, like I said, for Circle, it makes sense — this is a geographic expansion, right?

Jeremy Au: It's covering a lot of countries they don't already cover. It's a good, interesting story. I think what's interesting to me as well is that it was, I believe, an all-stock deal as well. So to some extent, that's also a bit different of a flavor, I would say, in Southeast Asia versus in the US.

Jeremy Au: In the US, you have acquisitions in cash, right? Maybe half cash, half equity, or a good chunk in cash as well. So I think this is another unique Southeast Asia flavor where it was an all-stock deal. I think what's in common, and is underappreciated I would say between this Tazapay acquisition and the Atome acquisition, is that I get a sense that their transactions were structured for performance of the management team.

Jeremy Au: So when you have an all-equity transaction in Circle, you're still incentivized to keep growing the business. You don't want the Circle stock to go down, et cetera. Obviously, how much impact you're gonna have in Circle as Tazapay is another question altogether.

Jeremy Au: But equity is a way to align incentives for long-term growth, and vice versa for the Atome acquisition by Grab as well. That's also — the fact that you buy 60% and saying we'll buy 40% in the next few years based on how the performance goes is also a performance alignment push, right?

Jeremy Au: So I think my key takeaway is that for future M&A transactions, the shape of those transactions is that a global or regional acquirer that's worried about the inherent risk of the management teams and maybe even the regulatory risk or market risk of a Southeast Asian company will structure their mechanisms accordingly to align those incentives and de-risk the tail risk, right? Or cliff risk of the management team thus peacing out and not really helping them push the new geography.

Wing Vasiksiri: Yeah. Yeah, for sure. I think what that shows is that both these acquirers think highly of the existing management team. They want them to continue working, growing out.

Wing Vasiksiri: And it's not uncommon in the US where it's like four-year vesting golden handcuffs that you serve out. I think it's both great acquisitions for both these companies, so it's, yeah, super exciting to see.

Singapore's $200M+ Fintech Push

Jeremy Au: Yeah. I think, zooming out a bit, this goes back to Singapore continuing to be a financial tech hub. I think it's interesting as well that, while we continue to have a VC winter in terms of deployments, the Singapore government is actually putting together like a $200 million plus funding into early-stage tech and fintech funds through its various ministries and organizations.

Jeremy Au: So I think it's interesting to see Singapore step in to inject liquidity into the early-stage fintech sector, which I think is a good choice because there's demonstrated exits now. There's demonstrated interest and also a great ecosystem with Singapore being a fintech hub, so there's a lot of synergy with the finance hub strategy for Singapore.

Wing Vasiksiri: So I think it's quite a good move by Singapore to push this while there's a VC fund winter.

Wing Vasiksiri: Yeah, I think the government has been pretty good about thinking through what areas of investment is strategic and is prioritized for the country. Obviously, fintech being one of them, and it's really doubling down on all this time Singapore spent really cementing itself as one of the go-to fintech hubs globally, right?

Wing Vasiksiri: You have the MAS licensing, you have the Fintech Sandbox that allows people to experiment. You have proximity to all these other large markets. And so when a fintech's building out of Singapore, very quickly they're usually expanding to Vietnam, Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia. That requires building out all of these connectivity, bank integrations from scratch in every country you go to.

Wing Vasiksiri: So you actually end up building a lot of the skills and a lot of the infrastructure that's required to do that. I've seen a lot of initiatives around advanced manufacturing, robotics, so I really think that it's an interesting time to be investing out here.

E-Commerce Growth and the Next Consumer Wave

Wing Vasiksiri: The other stat I saw that was quite interesting was around e-commerce growth in Southeast Asia. There's an analytics company called Adjust that released a new report on e-commerce app usage and downloads, and Vietnam, Indonesia, and Malaysia were the top three. So really, really interesting — we think that we're at scale with a lot of these basic services like e-commerce, but you see that there's still a lot of growth.

Wing Vasiksiri: Like Vietnam installs up 42%, sessions up 21%. Indonesia, 36% and 62%. Malaysia, 14%, 38%. And this is all from John Russell's Asia Tech Review newsletter, so shout out to him. But yeah, I think there's a lot of more downstream implications of this, right? The thing I think about is how early-stage startups necessarily can act on this because the obvious benefactor of this growth are the large conglomerates, the Lazada, Shopee, Sea Limiteds of the world, right?

Wing Vasiksiri: These are the guys who are clearly in pole position across the region. But I think having consumers download these apps, shop online, spend more time online, there are probably some second-order consequences for other new consumer breakouts to happen. We haven't seen that in a while, right? We haven't seen a lot of great new consumer companies been built out of this region for a long time.

Wing Vasiksiri: We've seen a lot of B2B enterprise focus, but it'll be cool to see if this tailwind ends up creating a lot of consumer businesses out here as well.

Attacking Incumbents Head-On Rarely Works

Jeremy Au: I think that's actually a good reminder about a couple of things in my head. But I think the first one is that Grab plus Atome is a competitor with Shopee and the Sea Group, right?

Jeremy Au: Because Atome was working a lot with their offline retail, right? For the buy now, pay later shops, and then Grab historically was more obviously on food and delivery. And so when you combine food and delivery plus the retail, obviously all the Grab riders are picking up food from retail shops.

Jeremy Au: So it's actually quite an interesting orthogonal vector against Sea Group, which is primarily all online, right? Of a lot of e-commerce. So I think I'll be interested to see what Sea Group's countermove will be, right? Because Sea Group does also have their own buy now, pay later solution within their app as well, which I've seen. So I think it'll be interesting to see how that friendly, or at least competition, is gonna shape up to be.

Jeremy Au: I think the other part is that it's a good reminder that some verticals get saturated over time, right? And they end up with several market leaders, the first mover, second mover. If you look at ride-hailing in America, it's just Uber and Lyft, right? That's existing. You look at Southeast Asia is Grab and, arguably, Gojek as well. And I think once the market grows and hits a scale leader, it's just hard to build another app.

Jeremy Au: And I just remember somebody was complaining recently about how they were in Malaysia and like 15 ride-hailing companies had launched over the past couple of years as well, and everybody was like, "Why do we even have more ride-hailing apps coming into existence now? Isn't this market already saturated?"

Jeremy Au: So that's something that I think founders have to be thoughtful about — once a vertical has been saturated, you really have to approach it maybe from an orthogonal way. For Uber and Lyft in America, their competitor now that they worry about is really Cybercab, right? Which is Tesla opening up a new vertical into driverless taxis. Another one, of course, is they're worried about Waymo, right? Because both of these are 100% autonomous vehicles, no humans, versus Uber and Lyft have a human workforce, right? So I think early-stage startups really should be quite thoughtful about whether they can attack or push back against Grab-Atome and Shopee from a head-on basis.

Wing Vasiksiri: Yeah, for sure. It's been very challenging, right? These players are at scale, they're moving very fast, so I think going head-on is probably not the strategy. It's almost like you have to find your own niche and build specialization from there and scale out, right? We haven't seen that many verticalized consumer marketplaces.

Wing Vasiksiri: I think a couple years ago a lot of investors had a thesis that this would emerge. There's a few out there, but none of them have really gotten to scale, and so I think there's still some of the foundations that need to be built before we see some of those emerge, right?

Jeremy Au: Are you talking about like a Wayfair? Are you talking about — there was a pet food company in the US that I can't recall right now, which is also a verticalized consumer marketplace.

Wing Vasiksiri: Yes.

Wing Vasiksiri: Yeah, exactly. Stuff like that, and also like the brand.com direct to consumer. People are still buying primarily off of these marketplaces, right? So the consumer brand.com, there's a few that are out there, but they all have to use the offline retail strategy primarily as well to drive growth, and you need a really strong founder to be able to navigate that, so.

Building on Top of the Rails

Jeremy Au: Right. I think one interesting thing that you reminded me of is that founders really have to build on top of these rails. That's the other approach — rather than trying to attack or try to do another consumer play, I really like Asia Partners' technology report, which looks at China's wave by wave of infrastructure growth, right?

Jeremy Au: And they basically said technology progression is a linear thing where, if you don't have digital payments, it's hard to have consumer marketplaces because how else would a consumer buy something remotely, right, if they don't have a way to pay for it?

Jeremy Au: And then based on that consumer paid, eventually they build B2B transactions as well. So I thought it was just an interesting thing — what's something they can build on top, right, of Shopee's platform, on top of Grab's platform as well?

OpenAI and the Neolabs Land in Singapore

Wing Vasiksiri: Yeah, no, I think those are all the right questions. I think the other trend that I'm starting to see, which is quite interesting, is all these not just large labs like the OpenAIs of the world setting up shop in Singapore, but also the smaller neolabs, right? Like the Sierras, Cognition, Runway, Harvey, Legora — all opening up, setting up shop in Singapore as their APAC headquarters and starting to hire more people on the ground.

Wing Vasiksiri: I think it's super exciting because what we're seeing these guys do is, at least OpenAI, they're also getting very involved in supporting local startups, right? They have people on the ground building partnerships with VC startups, giving out credits. And maybe to tie it back to some of the stuff we talked about with Thailand last time — OpenAI announced, this was maybe two weeks ago, that they launched an initiative to support Thailand's next generation of AI startups.

Wing Vasiksiri: So it's a collaboration between OpenAI and Thailand's Ministry of Higher Education, Science, Research and Innovation, and they basically have an eight-week accelerator program where I believe you get OpenAI credits, and there's a couple of companies that are in this first cohort, which I think is really exciting.

Wing Vasiksiri: So yeah, OpenAI is giving each team some API credits, technical guidance, access to the frontier models, and yeah, hopefully we see more of this. I think it's quite exciting to see this come out of Thailand.

The Thailand and Malaysia Data Center Boom

Wing Vasiksiri: Yeah. No, let's talk about Thailand.

Jeremy Au: As well because it's interesting because there's a lot of data centers being built out in Thailand, which was I think initially surprising to me because if you think about data centers, you always read about them being built in America, being built in the Middle East, right? Where there's cheap energy, lots of land. So I was surprised to hear about Thailand's data center boom as well. What are you thinking is the drivers of that?

Wing Vasiksiri: Yeah, power is relatively cheap in Thailand compared to the region. It's also reliable, right? So you're able to get access to steady power.

Wing Vasiksiri: There's a lot of land, a lot of space out there. So a lot of the larger corporates that I've spoken to are now building out the power, land, rack, rental activity in order to build out all these data centers. My understanding is that most of these data centers are still serving Chinese hyperscalers.

Wing Vasiksiri: Thailand doesn't have many NVIDIA cloud partners, right? So I think access to the CPUs and GPUs from NVIDIA is actually the bottleneck here. So most of what's happening is like a bring-your-own-chip model, right? Where a lot of these data center developers, they'll get access to the land, they'll give you access to the power, they'll set up the infrastructure on that, but you have to bring your own chips, and usually that means it's a Chinese hyperscaler that has access to those chips and are the primary customers.

Wing Vasiksiri: I believe there's only one NVIDIA cloud partner, which is Siam.AI right now. I think those guys, as of today, are the only ones who have access to the NVIDIA chips. So yeah, we'll see how it develops, but I think it's really interesting to see a lot of investment go into that area, a lot of this being built out there.

Why Singapore Chose to Sit It Out

Jeremy Au: Yeah. I think it's really interesting because it's like an all-time high for technology export booms, right, in Singapore, in Penang Malaysia, and Thailand. In a lot of technology exports on the Singapore side, it's a semiconductor boom, the data center boom, integrated circuits, and then a lot of factories work across these three countries, right?

Jeremy Au: Singapore, Penang, Thailand, and they ship stuff around, and then they assemble from there as well. But it's interesting because from my perspective, obviously Singapore struggles to build data centers. We're just a small country, doesn't have a lot of space for data centers. I think that's one.

Jeremy Au: And two, of course, even though it's a refining and energy hub, it doesn't have an oil field of its own, right? Unlike Malaysia and Thailand, right? So the cheap energy is not something that we have. I think Singapore is a price taker of global energy markets, which means it always has reliable energy even in this energy crisis that we have globally.

Jeremy Au: But it would never really be cheap, right? Compared to pumping up in your own backyard. So I think that's a really interesting dynamic that the Singapore government has actually chosen to sit out from not participating in the data center building boom. I remember talking to a civil servant as well, and I think from their perspective was they felt like there were jobs that were being built by data centers, but they felt like it was not necessarily the jobs that Singapore felt like they were well-equipped to build because it's a lot of blue-collar jobs like electricians, plumbing, building.

Jeremy Au: And these are jobs that in Singapore, a lot of it is foreign labor, right? Because under employment passes and S passes, which are local visas. And so for their perspective, this is not creating local jobs, right? Which is something they're thinking about the political dimensions as well.

Jeremy Au: So I think data centers would not be an upcoming approach for the Singapore government because using up lots of land, using up lots of power, and using up lots of foreign worker quota for the blue-collar jobs would be quite difficult to sell politically in Singapore, which is, I think, a natural dynamic.

Wing Vasiksiri: Yeah. I think it's Thailand and Malaysia that have been at the forefront, at least in this region, with a lot of these data center buildouts. So yeah, we'll see how that plays out.

Jeremy Au: Yeah. I think it's also to do with the political stability as well, I would say relatively, if Malaysia and Thailand within Southeast Asia as well.

Jeremy Au: I think it's interesting to see here about the hyperscalers as well. I didn't notice that, but I think once you said it out loud, it became quite true, which is that I think it's a lot of the Chinese building out the hyperscalers. When you say that, yeah, it kind of clicks for them.

Jeremy Au: It's nearby for them, it's easy for them to travel to, and it's politically neutral for them to be able to build those data centers as well, whereas they can't really build in America, obviously because of geopolitical tension. I do know that they're trying to build a little bit in the Middle East as well, but it's also not a straightforward path for them as well.

Wing Vasiksiri: Yeah, so I think we're seeing a lot of boom from the Chinese hyperscalers. Almost all the buildout in Malaysia I think has been to serve them, right? We'll see the US labs end up taking some of these buildouts as well, yeah.

Jeremy Au: On that note, I think it's a good time to wrap up, and I'll see you next time.

Wing Vasiksiri: Awesome. Thanks Jeremy for having me on.

Selling My Company Taught Me More Than Building It | Ajay Bulusu - E731

Thu, 17 Sep 2026 05:26:11 +0800

"Trust me, it is not easy to sell a company. The number of things I have learned selling my company is more than building my company, actually, because there are so many things and 99% it will fail. The odds are heavily stacked against you in M&A. But if you're stuck in that thing that, 'Oh, I've not even made personally 5 million, why should I sell my company?' Then you will never sell your company." - Ajay Bulusu

"The way we explain it... is genetics is hardware. You cannot change it. Epigenetic is software, like where you live, what you breathe, what you eat. Do you exercise or not? That's the changeable factor. Biomarkers are changeable, but you cannot change the fact that you have a predisposition condition to obesity as an example." - Ajay Bulusu

"In India, the quality of supplementation is not like Singapore. Ingredient quality is not really transparent... Anything Singapore is trustworthy. That's the reason why we built all this in Singapore. We have not built any of this outside. It is made in Kaki Bukit here." - Ajay Bulusu

Ajay Bulusu sold NextBillion.ai after a two-year process, and his verdict on cross-border M&A is blunt: 99% of attempts fail, and the founders who never sell are usually stopped by greed rather than by the market. He tells Jeremy Au why 2021 SaaS valuations stopped being fundable the moment ChatGPT arrived, why he picked a number before he started and walked the day he hit it, and why age not coming back mattered more than the last dollar. Then he explains why he started again immediately. After losing his father to a side effect of his cancer treatment, and his mother to a stage four diagnosis a colonoscopy would have caught, he spent eighteen months on his own money building what became 150, a precision health company that reads epigenetics, gut and blood to tell you how each of your organs is ageing.

Ajay Bulusu is a technologist, entrepreneur, and founder building at the intersection of artificial intelligence, data, and human health. He is the Co-founder of 150, a next-generation human health and longevity company building an intelligence layer for health — bringing together diagnostics, biomarkers, wearable data, nutrition, and AI to help people predict, prevent, and optimize their health over a lifetime.

Prior to 150, Ajay was the Founder and CEO of NextBillion.ai, a Singapore-based deep-tech company pioneering AI-powered mapping, spatial data, and routing infrastructure for global enterprises. The company was acquired by Velocitor Solutions in 2025. Earlier, Ajay was a founding leader of the Geo organization at Grab and held leadership roles at Google, Indeed, and American Express. Having built technology and companies across Asia, Europe, and North America, Ajay brings a global perspective to building ambitious, category-defining businesses and applying technology to some of the world's most complex problems.

Ajay’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ajaybulusu

150: https://150.fit

00:00 Introduction

01:13 From Hyderabad to Google, Grab and NextBillion.ai

03:20 Deciding to sell: the SaaS peak and ChatGPT

04:42 Why 99% of M&A fails

06:44 Losing his father, and his mother's diagnosis

09:12 Why the company is called 150

10:45 Doctor 3.0 and the WhatsApp agent

12:39 Precision medicine, not longevity

16:59 Who buys preventive health, and does insurance pay

22:38 The real barrier is the mind, not the money

28:52 Five doctors per patient, and India's specialist gap

32:15 Supplements and the anti-anxiety band

38:48 Men, women, hormones and taboos

40:48 What being brave means

Keywords: Precision Medicine, Startup Acquisition, Southeast Asia Startups, Preventive Healthcare, Hyper-personalized Medicine, AI in Healthcare, Genomics and Epigenetics, Wearable Health Tech

AI Has Changed The Way We Create, Consume And Value Content | Adriel Yong - E730

Mon, 14 Sep 2026 09:43:31 +0800

"Just like how Netflix once said that their biggest competitor is sleep, I think the biggest competitor to content is real life." - Jeremy Au

"AI content will accelerate purchases of things and places, but not people. Search engines effectively did the same thing—made finding places, flights, and websites so much faster—but finding people still relies heavily on social networks and word of mouth." - Jeremy Au

"When you look at the feeds of ChatGPT or Claude, the whole SEO/GEO market is booming now because everyone is trying to figure out how to make their brand and name come up in AI engine searches and capture a large share of voice." - Adriel Yong

Adriel Yong is the Co-Founder and COO of Clouted, the AI-native clipping and distribution company that turns long-form content into short video and routes it to the right platform and audience. Clouted has raised a $7M seed led by Slow Ventures, following a $4.45M round backed by a16z SPEEDRUN and AppWorks under its former name, Clout Kitchen. The team also produces &FRIENDS, one of the largest dance and pop-culture festivals in the Philippines.

Adriel joined Jeremy Au to work through what AI has done to media. Five or six years ago, making this podcast meant cutting every "um" by hand and building cover art from scratch, and Adriel's estimate is that roughly 80% of that work no longer exists. What moved into the space are faceless pages and fully synthetic creators, plus a third feed inside the AI apps competing for the ten hours a day. Social was meant to be the escape from bought media and is now entirely paid, and the answer engines are going the same way: people used to shape human perception, now they shape the model's. Which leaves the question of what still competes, and Jeremy's answer is not sleep, the way Netflix once put it, but real life. They work through the evidence and the strategy underneath it, from the K-shaped cinema rebound to Costco's private-label discipline mapped onto AI marketplaces, and close on the framework that AI shortens the route to purchase for things and places, but not for people.

00:00 Introduction

00:55 How AI collapsed the production workflow

03:28 Faceless creators and AI-generated creators

05:16 The ChatGPT feed vs the Instagram feed

07:12 Social is now paid social, and the GEO scramble

09:25 Content's biggest competitor is real life

10:37 IRL experiences as a go-to-market motion

12:09 The K-shaped cinema economy: IMAX, the Sphere, F1

14:15 Do you need more AI tools than ChatGPT?

15:17 The atom of work AI actually replaces

16:22 Free time, the senses, and omnichannel shopping

18:33 Costco, Kirkland, and AI marketplaces

19:59 A24's barbell versus the blockbuster bet

22:19 Fandom, IP, and imaginary characters

24:27 Know the real estate you are standing on

25:39 How media consumption habits changed

27:31 Why podcasts survive: edutainment and opinion

30:14 What we consumed in the last 24 hours

32:14 The insurance arbitrage AI found

34:08 Toilets, Wirecutter, and shopping with AI

36:02 Things and places, yes. People, no.

38:55 Word of mouth is still the filter for people

40:44 The Comfort Crisis and rethinking the cinema

Keywords: AI Content Creation, Generative AI Media, SEO and GEO Strategies, IRL Experiences, AI E-commerce, Podcast Automation, Future of Cinemas, Southeast Asia Tech

What 500 Harvard Case Studies Actually Do To Your Brain - E729

Thu, 10 Sep 2026 05:00:06 +0800

"A great business leader is somebody who knows where to go, is able to prioritize and prune away the things not to do, and inspires people and capital to make things happen." - Jeremy Au

"You don't need a Harvard MBA to succeed in leadership or business because you can unbundle it and construct it yourself. You can ask your pocket AI, like Gemini or Claude, and get an on-demand, Harvard MBA-level professor teaching you at any time." - Jeremy Au

"There are different levels of trust, and so your style of leadership is totally different. When your GDP per capita is at $100,000 per person, like in Singapore, those norms are very different from emerging economies like the Philippines and Indonesia, where it is around $5,000 to $25,000, and what works is family, tribes, and villages." - Jeremy Au

Jeremy Au takes the hot seat in a reverse interview hosted by Edric Poon to unpack the true value of a Harvard MBA and the fundamental principles of business leadership. Jeremy unbundles the prestigious degree into three core components: practical utility and learning, building a long-term global network, and acquiring a costly social credential. He shares actionable frameworks for effective leadership, emphasizing the necessity of decisive strategy, ruthless prioritization, and the ability to mobilize resources and capital. The conversation also explores the psychology behind the Harvard case study method, how pattern-matching helps leaders spot corporate fraud, and the harsh, irreversible realities of founder burnout. Finally, Jeremy contrasts Western and Asian leadership styles, explaining how regional GDP per capita and Wall Street’s shareholder supremacy dictate corporate culture across the globe.

0:00 500 case studies, and what they're actually for

0:52 Introduction: Jeremy in the hot seat

1:43 What a Harvard MBA is actually for

5:01 The half-million-dollar signal

6:38 How to unbundle all three yourself

9:17 Decide, prune, mobilise

10:43 Atari, Nokia, and BlackBerry's own prototype

14:24 Manager versus leader

16:15 The campfire, and who walks into the dark

21:00 Authenticity is not permission to be your worst self

22:59 The case method and the supercomputer brain

26:21 Enron, and pattern matching fraud

29:59 The mistake Jeremy made twice

35:27 Two bad nights of sleep is two drinks

37:34 So what is Asian leadership?

39:12 GDP per capita, and where trust lives

44:49 Wall Street versus everybody else

50:52 Community over the individual

54:08 The MBA in your pocket

Keywords: Harvard MBA, Business Leadership, Asian Leadership, Corporate Strategy, Founder Burnout, Case Study Method, Southeast Asia Business

Join Now

The Truth About China's Competitive Advantage - E728

Mon, 07 Sep 2026 08:06:59 +0800

"If you bring the whole set of playbooks in from China here, it will not work, because that's gonna frustrate you, that's gonna frustrate your local employees and your local partners, and that's not gonna get anywhere. ... When you come to this country, do not try to change how things are done here. Try to change yourself." - Jianggan Li

"The engineering capabilities of the hardware, dexterous hands and so on, they have far outpaced software. ... So when you are innovating on hardware and the software is not catching up, that gap actually causes a lot of anxiety." - Jianggan Li

"People tend to look at the simplistic view: Chinese brands are coming, Chinese products are coming. But only when you are on the ground, when you talk to people in industries, when you see those facilities, you see the tremendous amount of competition amongst these players. For most industries, they're just competing against each other. You just happen to be brought into that war." - Jianggan Li

Jeremy Au and Jianggan Li returns for a China read: Europe's run on Chinese air conditioners, the humanoid robot games, Shein's discounted Hong Kong listing, and what breaks when Chinese firms go abroad. One thread runs through all four. China's advantage is not invention. Midea did not build a better aircon, it read Europe's building codes and engineered to them. Robot hardware raced ahead because engineers ground at it for a year while the software did not. Temu went from someone suggesting a Super Bowl ad to the ad being made in thirty days. The moat is iteration, and Chinese firms are mostly competing with each other, not with you. Also: why the robots still need a human holding a remote, why humanoids substitute for cheap labour instead of complementing it, and the advice one operator gives about expanding abroad, which is to stop trying to change how things are done there and change yourself instead.

00:00 Introduction

01:45 Europe's aircon panic, and the 12-hour drive

03:08 Designed to the regulation, not to be better

05:07 It's not China vs you. It's China vs China.

05:55 The World Humanoid Robot Games

06:52 Why the robots still need a human with a remote

08:20 Hardware outpaced software, and the data problem

11:19 Unitree's IPO, and a founder who wasn't smiling

11:53 Humanoid robots vs cheap human labour

15:02 Complement or substitute: where humanoids land first

16:43 Shein: $100B to $26B

19:25 Temu, de minimis, and the marketplace squeeze

20:43 The Super Bowl ad built in 30 days

23:12 Nobody writes the story of iterative engineering

25:41 Going global, and the driving seat problem

28:49 What to watch: the Xi-Trump meeting

Keywords: Cross-border E-commerce, Chinese Manufacturing Innovation, Humanoid Robotics AI, Global Supply Chain Strategy, Localizing Business Operations, Shein IPO, Temu Marketing Execution, Midea Air Conditioners, De Minimis Tax Regulations, Iterative Engineering, Tech Expansion

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Itamar Novick: Where AI Replaces People, and Where It Does Not - E727

Thu, 03 Sep 2026 05:00:11 +0800

"Once in your life, you gotta swing for the fences. You gotta go all in. And if it works, you've obviously completely changed your life, and everybody around you. And if it doesn't, you're gonna regret for the rest of your life that you didn't take that big swing." - Itamar Novick, Founder and General Partner of Recursive Ventures

"Your AI is only as good as the underlying data that was used to train it. We built a thesis around moat through data and how application layer AI companies are not gonna be commoditized because they have defensibility built from a data moat." - Itamar Novick, Founder and General Partner of Recursive Ventures

"Instead of competing with them, we decided to focus on being the first and best inception check in AI companies in Silicon Valley. It's best to be one of the best in what you do than try to lag behind the best in something that you're not gonna be able to win in." - Itamar Novick, Founder and General Partner of Recursive Ventures

"How are you going to stay ahead of the competition in a world where two kids can vibe code a clone of your product over a weekend?"

Itamar Novick is a solo capitalist and the founder of Recursive Ventures, a pre-seed fund focused on AI and emerging tech startups. He has supported over 50 successful startups, including Deel, Honeybook, Placer, Credible (IPO), MileIQ (acquired by Microsoft), Automatic Labs (acquired by SiriusXM), Tile (acquired by Life360), SafeGraph, and Armory. He's been recognized by Business Insider as a Top 100 global seed investor (#17 in 2021, #29 in 2022). As an operator, he helped take Life360 from Seed to IPO, scaling the business to over $250m in revenue.

Itamar joined Jeremy Au to talk about what still counts as a moat in AI, why proprietary data is only the starting point, and where AI actually replaces people instead of augmenting them. He also looks back on twelve years at Life360, joining as VP of Product and leaving as the CFO who took the company public, and why he now writes the first check at pre-seed.

Itamar’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/itamarnovick/

Recursive Ventures: https://www.recursiveventures.com/

00:00 Introduction

02:01 Coding at 11, and the army cybercrime unit

04:12 Product management before Agile

06:00 Gigya, and meeting Zuckerberg in 2008

07:27 Morgenthaler Ventures and the first inning of SaaS

08:37 Twelve years at Life360, VP Product to CFO

11:36 "Kids are never gonna have smartphones"

13:53 Raising $500M and 11 corporate VCs

16:31 The VC story problem, and which VCs got it

22:26 Going full time into venture, and why pre-seed

27:48 How Itamar picks: team, TAM, and moat

30:06 Data as the moat, and the customer data flywheel

35:48 Where AI can and can't replace humans

40:33 Taking the one big swing

Keywords: Artificial Intelligence, Pre-Seed Venture Capital, Silicon Valley Startups, Data Moats, Generative AI, Startup Fundraising, Product Management, Founder Advice

$70,000 Per Child: What Singapore's New Family Package Actually Changes - E726

Mon, 31 Aug 2026 08:29:47 +0800

"$70,000 for somebody who is of high income is a nice bonus or sweetener. But I think for somebody who earns $$70,000 or maybe less, this is equivalent to one year's compensation, or two years, or even three years' compensation. And I think it's really quite game changing as a source of relief." - Jeremy Au

"I would say that the founder quality is on average at an all-time high because obviously those who are still plugging along are still committed, still pushing. The AI wave has really superpowered our ability to be creative and to also execute, and the problems that are in Southeast Asia... are still there. It's just a great time to attack those problems, but the funding to support them is really at an all-time low." - Jeremy Au

"I'm sort of of the mind that I think Singapore and Southeast Asia would be better off with 50 companies that were worth $50 million each instead of trying to swing and miss to have one unicorn." - Shiyan Koh

Jeremy Au and Shiyan Koh take apart Singapore's new SG Child Support Package: almost $70,000 per Singaporean child paid out over 17 years, more childcare leave, and preschool fees heading towards $150 a month.

Jeremy on why the number only means anything relative to income. Shiyan on why the preschool change matters most. Whether the extra leave actually gets taken, or quietly costs you at work. And the change nobody articulated: every Singapore Citizen child now qualifies regardless of their parents' marital status.

Plus nuclear, transhipment, and their wishlist for the next budget.

00:00 Introduction

01:33 The $70,000 package, explained

03:26 Why preschool is the biggest piece

06:26 Cash today, or shares that compound to 18

09:03 Sweeping unused payouts into a nest egg

12:15 A voucher society, or a shareholder society

13:38 The pushback: SMEs and the colleagues covering

16:49 Reservist, and the cost of stepping away

21:38 Who qualifies: citizen children, foreign parents

25:34 What about single parents?

29:45 Nuclear: island mergers and a China pact

32:41 Vietnam, transhipment, Dockware and Portcast

36:20 Wishlist for the next budget

39:24 Fifty $50M companies beat one unicorn

43:10 Outro

Keywords: Singapore budget, total fertility rate, parental leave, startup ecosystem, NRF 2.0, venture capital, early-stage funding, Southeast Asia tech, AI startups, supply chain logistics, nuclear energy Singapore,

The Next 3 Years Will Deliver 30 Years of Innovation | John Lin

Thu, 27 Aug 2026 04:27:17 +0800

"I read a stat recently that said only 1 in 5 to 1 in 7 companies actually reach that Series A mark from the seed round. The expectation is that instead of reaching $800,000 in revenue, you're now going to be reaching $3 million in revenue within the first year or two. It's quite a hard area to hit. There is a really big bifurcation in venture capital right now." - John Lin, Founder of Linea Ventures

"The toughest thing about AI is the pace at which things are changing; companies are developing so fast that there is not as much defensibility as there once was. You have to be really careful about where you invest and make sure that you are constantly innovating to create some level of customer lock-in or data generation that establishes long-term moats." - John Lin, Founder of Linea Ventures

"In the last four to five years, more money has shifted towards the pre-IPO market, and today, companies worth over $1 billion make up about two-thirds of the funding rounds. However, if you are a normal founder who wants to go and raise $1 billion, it is actually quite difficult. You need to be one of the top AI researchers or AI founders in the space in order to go and raise such a round." - John Lin, Founder of Linea Ventures

The next three years should deliver what the last thirty did. That is John Lin's argument, and it is why he thinks the ground under founders has shifted.

John Lin is the Founding Partner of Linea Ventures. Previously, he helped start F-Prime Capital's west coast tech practice and was also a Principal at Trinity Ventures. He has invested in 50+ companies, including Numeral, Squire, Branch, Side, Weights & Biases, Triumph and You.com. Prior to that he led Product and Engineering at Roomi and worked at McKinsey and Yelp. John graduated with degrees in Business and Computer Science from UC Berkeley.

He joined Jeremy Au on why AI coding has made good engineers five to ten times more effective, why everything in AI is both overhyped and undervalued at once, and where value still accrues now that a model costing billions to train can be built for tens of millions.

Then the part most founders have not priced in. A Series A used to mean $800K in revenue and a $40M round. Today it is closer to $3M and $70M, and by John's reading only 1 in 5 to 1 in 7 companies make the jump. Round to round survival has fallen from about half to somewhere between a third and a sixth.

Plus how he picks: a $1B market, a path to 25x, companies between $1M and $10M in revenue, and the one question every founder has to answer.

John’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-lin-39a18921/

Linea Ventures: https://lineavc.com/

00:00 Introduction
00:43 From Berkeley to Trinity, F-Prime, and Linea Ventures
02:59 Is AI huge, or overhyped?
04:34 AI coding, and 30 years of innovation in 3
07:44 Where the economic value of AI will accrue
11:26 Overhyped, undervalued, and no longer defensible
13:10 How John picks: market, founder, inflection point
15:12 Case study: Numeral and US sales tax filing
18:08 Red flags, and how to validate an AI idea fast
20:26 Are billion dollar seed rounds the new normal?
24:41 A tale of two cities in startup funding
26:50 Only 1 in 5 to 1 in 7 reach Series A
30:04 Personal investing versus investing out of a fund
35:56 What a decade of reps teaches you

Keywords: AI Investing, Venture Capital, Seed Funding, Series A Crunch, AI Infrastructure, Startup Defensibility, Angel Investing, Silicon Valley Tech, Founder Advice, SaaS and Fintech

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rU1-wIvarVk

The Innovation Playbook of 3 Southeast Asian Founders - E724

Mon, 24 Aug 2026 08:24:14 +0800

"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

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

https://youtu.be/MhVfGQ8iI7I

Leadership Lessons From Best-Selling Authors - E723

Fri, 21 Aug 2026 09:10:21 +0800

"The value, the assets that these companies create, are not just dollars and products and customers and employees and contracts. There's also something else. I call it trustworthiness. It's the most underrated asset in the world today."

"Leaders have no choice in whether they impact others, but they have a huge choice in whether the impact is positive or negative. We will either inspire or we will infuriate."

"One thing that comes up a little bit more in Asia is this idea of hypocrisy. This idea that it's really important for someone to act consistently with the words that they espouse. One of the most powerful things that we can do as leaders is present ourselves as actually consistent with our vision."

An offhand compliment from a leader becomes praise. An offhand insult becomes a verdict. Nobody in a leadership role gets to opt out of that.

Three conversations from the BRAVE archive with three best-selling authors, and one thing they share: all three went and checked what everybody already assumes about leadership, and found the data pointing the other way.

Adam Galinsky is a professor at Columbia Business School, currently spending a year at NUS Business School in Singapore, and the author of Inspire. He explains the leader amplification effect, why the people we call great are characterised on two dimensions and excused on the third, and what he found after asking people on every continent to describe an inspiring leader and an infuriating one. The answers were the same everywhere, with one variation: hypocrisy comes up more in Asia.

Eric Ries wrote The Lean Startup. Fifteen years on, he went back to the founders who used it and found many of them miserable, and many of them no longer recognising the company they had built. His argument: we taught people how to build and never how to protect it, trustworthiness is the most underrated asset in business, and since 2008 the companies rated bad on governance have outperformed the ones rated good.

Nir Eyal has written three books on why we do what we do. He starts with the most uncomfortable pattern in his own office hours, which is people waiting months for a call to report that the step they never did didn't work. Then the mechanism: what stands between us and what we want is not information, motivation is a triangle of behaviour, benefit and belief, and we quit because we have never separated pain from suffering.

People, then institutions, then yourself.

Watch the full episodes:

E709 Adam Galinsky, Professor at Columbia Business School

E700 Eric Ries, Author of The Lean Startup

https://youtu.be/8wihh7uYpRo

E706 Nir Eyal, Author of Hooked, Indistractable and Beyond Belief

https://youtu.be/4eM2OOMyruA

00:00 Three findings that contradict what you believe

00:41 Adam Galinsky: you don't get to choose your impact

03:01 The Steve Jobs defence, and Mother Teresa

05:10 The captain of Flight 1380

07:07 Inspiring vs infuriating, and what Asia judges differently

08:57 Eric Ries: they built the companies and ended up miserable

12:09 Since 2008, bad governance has beaten good

16:31 Costco, Sol Price, and the locks that were changed

20:19 Nir Eyal: they read the book, they didn't do the book

23:48 Why visualising success backfires

26:52 Pain is not suffering

30:35 The thing nobody checked

Keywords: Startup leadership myths, Trustworthiness in business, Mental contrasting, Southeast Asia tech founders

The New Architecture Of Tech: Seat Pricing, Orbital Rings & Superstar Employees - E722

Mon, 17 Aug 2026 05:00:00 +0800

"We need to think about what the job is, what outcome we want, and how to achieve that outcome using AI to the maximum. Then, we redesign the job towards that instead of just filling traditional headcount. Ultimately, if you're not efficient, the market is going to punish you." - Ori Sasson - Jeremy Au

"Current SaaS pricing lacks accountability. We are entering an era where software actually produces outcomes. If we're asking people to automate real jobs, we as executives should have the courage to reflect that in our pricing and charge per outcome." - Andres Klaric - Jeremy Au

"When you look at the Philippines and Indonesia, there are 10,000 to 15,000 islands. Today, telcos are building undersea cables to every island, which is very expensive. With our orbital laser network, every single island in Southeast Asia can have internet as fast as Singapore at a fraction of the cost." - Rohit Jha - Jeremy Au

Software has been sold by the seat for twenty years. Nobody has ever had to promise it worked.

Three conversations from the BRAVE archive, on what changes when software starts getting paid for outcomes instead of access, and what has to be rebuilt underneath it.

Andres Klaric spent a decade in private equity watching SaaS scale before co-founding Fuse, an enterprise lending platform. His argument: current pricing has no accountability in it, and the profit pool should sit in the outcome rather than the operating system. Rohit Jha co-founded Transcelestial in Singapore to move data over laser links. When the profitable telco side of the business was going well and his own board told him to drop space, he and his co-founder quietly moved capital into it anyway. Ori Sasson, Founder of S2T.AI, on the barbell splitting the tech workforce, and why employers now have to design jobs around outcomes rather than hours.

Watch the full episodes:

E710 Andres Klaric, Co-Founder & Co-CEO of Fuse

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5aHsI3gj1c0

E698 Rohit Jha, Co-Founder & CEO of Transcelestial

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VoQXHJnLV04

E702 Ori Sasson, Founder of S2T.AI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=axxDAQvqtF0

00:00 The "what" of AI, and the "how"

00:26 Andres Klaric: "We're at peak SaaS"

04:03 What an outcome actually means in lending

09:57 Rohit Jha: the backbone outcomes need

12:09 A ring of satellites to replace undersea cables

16:43 The space pivot the board said no to

18:03 Ori Sasson: redesign the job around the outcome

20:15 The Hollywoodization of the workplace

23:51 The barbell: superstars and everyone else

27:25 The new architecture of tech

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