$1.5B ByteDance Tokopedia Investment with GoTo For TikTok Shop, Indonesia E-Commerce War & Winners. vs. Losers - E356

quickly. (02:08) Shiyan Koh: Do you play chess, Jeremy? (02:10) Jeremy Au: Not myself, but my brother … becomes really hard to change those.” - Shiyan Koh Sure? EDIT “It takes time because you’ll wonder … can't count on another round of fundraising.” - Shiyan Koh Sure? EDIT In this episode, Shiyan Koh, Managing … Shiyan. (01:44) Shiyan Koh: Good morning, Jeremy. (01:46) Jeremy Au: Good to see you. Excited to … in law plays a lot of chess. He's good at chess, apparently. (02:14) Shiyan Koh: I just signed my …

51% Asia Tenggara Mendukung Tiongkok (vs. Amerika Serikat), Teori Permainan Pemisahan VC Sequoia & GGV & Mobilitas Pesaing - E410

hebat dan berkelanjutan. Dan Anda tidak minum terlalu banyak Kool Aid Anda sendiri." - Shiyan Koh "Sangat … saya tidak membangunkan Anda di pagi hari. (01:45) Shiyan Koh: Kopi. Selalu kopi. (01:46) Jeremy Au … terbang larut malam tadi malam dan Anda masih terus maju. (01:39) Shiyan Koh: Ini adalah pertunangan … ." - Shiyan Koh Shiyan Koh, Managing Partner Hustle Fund, dan Jeremy Au membahas tiga tema utama: 1. 51% Asia … , Shiyan. (01:34) Shiyan Koh: Selamat pagi, Jeremy. (01:36) Jeremy Au: Saya masih tidak percaya Anda …

Tech in Asia: Podcast – SEA’s shifting marketplace ecosystem

BRAVE Southeast Asia Tech was recently featured on Tech in Asia for Jeremy Au and Shiyan Koh's review … platforms with low margins. Hosts Jeremy Au and Shiyan Koh also explored changes in Southeast Asia’s …

Super Apps Dive (Grab, GoTo & WeChat), Vietnam’s World-Class Education System & Founder Leadership Transitions (Spenmo) - E292

themselves as well. Shiyan Koh: (02:04) I know, we spent a week on a dude ranch, which is kind of like a … compelling.” - Shiyan Koh “It's important for Southeast Asia’s education system to be well-managed. You … ) Morning, Shiyan. Where in the world are you these days? Shiyan Koh: (01:27) I am in Bozeman … -provoking conversation between Jeremy Au and Shiyan Koh, several key insights emerge. The discussion covers … , Montana. Jeremy Au: (01:29) Ooh, how's that? Shiyan Koh: (01:30) It's awesome. If you guys haven't been …

vs Long Tail & Pusaran Bakat Kota & Konsentrasi Industri dengan Shiyan Koh - E395

lain." - Shiyan Koh "Di Singapura, saya rasa kita bisa membina bakat-bakat muda, namun mereka … seanbrave7 hari ini. (01:35) Jeremy Au: Hei, Shiyan bagaimana kabarmu? (01:37) Shiyan Koh: Hidupku cukup … menyenangkan. Jadi belajar banyak tentang diri saya sendiri. (01:46) Shiyan Koh: Saya tahu, setiap … Au Shiyan Koh, Managing Partner Hustle Fund, dan Jeremy Au membahas tiga tema utama: 1. Peningkatan … vs Long Tail & Pusaran Bakat Kota & Konsentrasi Industri dengan Shiyan Koh - E395 … Anda tidak mengirimkan saya foto. Mereka pasti akan menyiksa saya. (Shiyan Koh: Ya, setiap kali saya …

Taylor Swift $500M Singapore Economy Boost, Barbell Entertainment Blockbusters vs. Long Tail & City Talent Vortex & Industry Concentrations with Shiyan Koh - E395

torturous for sure. (02:15) Shiyan Koh: Well, yeah, every time I eat something delicious, I'm like, I don't … .” - Shiyan Koh “In Singapore, I think we can foster early talent, but they tend to go to other cities … today. (01:35) Jeremy Au: Hey, Shiyan how's life? (01:37) Shiyan Koh: Life is pretty good, Jeremy. How … Taylor Swift $500M Singapore Economy Boost, Barbell Entertainment Blockbusters vs. Long Tail & City Talent Vortex & Industry Concentrations with Shiyan Koh - E395 … .” - Jeremy Au Shiyan Koh, Managing Partner of Hustle Fund, and Jeremy Au talked about three main themes … I did in the past. (02:35) Jeremy Au: Yeah. (02:35) Shiyan Koh: But if I had to just eat nothing for …

Trump’s Trade War Acceleration, $100M DeepSeek Ban Proposal & Grab-GoTo Merger Talks - E537

Shiyan Koh, Managing Partner of Hustle Fund, and Jeremy Au discussed: 1. Trump’s Economic Policies, Tariffs & Crypto Initiatives: They examined the economic impact of Trump’s 2025 return, including a 10% tariff hike on Chinese imports and new tariffs on Canada and Mexico. The administration also ended the de minimis exemption for low-cost e-commerce imports, affecting platforms like Temu and Shein, which had relied on duty-free shipping to US consumers. These changes disproportionately impacted lower-income Americans, despite cost-of-living concerns being a key election issue. Canada and Mexico secured a 30-day tariff delay, while Trump also launched Trump Coin and proposed a US Bitcoin reserve, signaling a pro-crypto stance that could draw US crypto firms back onshore. 2. DeepSeek & US-China AI Dynamics: They discussed the launch of DeepSeek-V3, a Chinese AI model matching GPT-4 but with lower training costs, which Jeremy called a “Sputnik moment”. The model’s success exposed the limits of US chip export bans, as Chinese engineers developed efficient AI training methods despite NVIDIA H100 restrictions. DeepSeek’s open-source availability via Hugging Face complicated regulatory enforcement, leading US Senator Josh Hawley to propose severe penalties, including 20-year prison terms for users and $100M fines for corporations. Meta’s AI lead, Yann LeCun, framed the issue as a debate between open-source and closed-source AI rather than a purely U.S.-China rivalry. 3. Grab-GoTo Potential Merger: They revisited ongoing Grab-GoTo (Gojek) merger talks, noting that Grab’s stronger financial position made it the likely acquirer. While Singapore’s regulators were expected to approve the deal, Indonesian authorities might impose conditions such as fare caps or job guarantees to prevent monopolistic practices. Reduced competition could push ride-hailing fares higher, with some Singaporeans already shifting back to public transport as Grab’s peak-hour prices reached $40. SoftBank, a major investor in both companies, had long pushed for consolidation, and with Gojek’s founding team no longer involved, negotiations had become more financially driven. Jeremy and Shiyan also discussed Waymo’s self-driving taxis and their potential impact in Southeast Asia, Singapore’s emphasis on “future-proofing” careers versus the US culture of embracing disruption, and how US trade and AI restrictions are accelerating Chinese firms’ shift towards Southeast Asia and the EU. Jeremy Au: Hey Shiyan, how's [00:01:00] life? Happy New Year, Jeremy. Oh, the Lunar New Year. I don't think Chinese New Year is no longer in vogue, I think, for 2025. Shiyan Koh: None of your PC stuff, okay? We're Chinese people, we can't say Chinese New Year. Jeremy Au: Thank you for the red packets for my kids. It was fun to receive them. And now I have to get into the process where I'm like, got to figure out to open it up, see how much, for equivalent amounts. I don't know. That's the classic parents stuff. So we want to talk about this year for 2025 has been a huge start, right? When we did our last recording a month ago, it was pretty much like the December timeline and I hope that was just for the year. And we talked about the eFishery as well. Yeah. And now it seems, "Whoa" Shiyan Koh: I guess Trump came into office and then things just happened really fast. Jeremy Au: So I think when we predicted that there was this acceleration, I frankly found that it accelerated faster than I thought, right? Because I felt like when I thought acceleration, I don't know. You wouldn't have been a week one, right? But it hit it all in day one, actually. Shiyan Koh: I mean, they, I feel like they came in [00:02:00] with a set of things they wanted to get done and they just went boom. I have to say taking over the, what is it? Office of Personal Management and then the Treasury Payment System, it makes sense, right? Jeremy Au: Yeah. Are you thinking over the HR and the finance of any company you're effectively lifeblood, right? Because HR, you handle all people and finance, you handle all my payments. So everything runs on those two things, right? Yeah. So I think the velocity is much higher because during this timeframe, I would say on the economic front, like he proposed tariffs on Canada and Mexico, which obviously is huge impact on the manufacturing base. And obviously, He also increased tariffs on China by effectively 50 percent because of 10 percent tariff on top of an existing 20 percent tariff. Yeah. That went up even further. Yep. He closed the e commerce loophole or exemption, depending on how you look at it, for e commerce goods of China going to low income and middle class Americans. Yeah. So a lot of things have happened really fast. Shiyan Koh: Yeah. It is a little bit odd, right? Because one of the big reasons for people voting for Trump was, [00:03:00] cost of living and prices. And I read an analysis that said, Temu and Shein. The postcodes that they send to are actually disproportionately low and middle income, which makes sense, right? Because they're cheap. And I think he's actually turning the screws on people who are suffering most from cost increases. Yeah. But he came out and was like, some pain is going to happen, but I'm not really sure that the pain of that is actually going to lead to more manufacturing in the US Jeremy Au: Yeah, I think it's going to be an interesting debate that happens. For sure. I think we all know the impact, like you said about the goods and so forth. If you're going to Costco and you buy maple syrup, a 20% tariff will increase. Although they have a Shiyan Koh: 30 day reprieve. Yeah, they did. So they were supposed to go into effect last Thursday. Yeah. And both Canada and Mexico were able to. Get him to hold off for 30 days by essentially promising to do things that they were already doing. Jeremy Au: Yeah, and I think that's where [00:04:00] the markets are trying to figure out, right? Is this part of a negotiating ploy? Or is this actually a systematic increase of tariff and tax structures, right? And I think the market is like swinging between those two points of view right now. Because if it's a structural tax increase by tariffs, obviously it does have a very strong impact on the value flows between importers the American economy, right? Versus if it's a negotiating ploy, then, fine. Then it doesn't structurally change the economics. Shiyan Koh: Yeah. But, I think if you look at the difference between the first Trump administration and today, right? The trade surplus with China has gone down, but the trade deficit with Mexico and Canada has actually gone up, right? So it's going to be an even bigger impact on the U S economy. Jeremy Au: Yeah. I think it's going to be interesting to see how it plays out. And I think just today they announced that Donald Trump was saying, perhaps there can be terrorists on Japan, as well. So I think basically the entire world is basically going, line by line. And I think EU is waiting for the shooter to drop as well. Shiyan Koh: Yeah. Jeremy Au: Yeah. So what does that mean about technology? Shiyan Koh: I think the question on whether some of these [00:05:00] restrictions have worked or not has been blown up by the deep sea canoes, right? So the idea was like, Hey, we're gonna stop China from getting access to the best Nvidia chips and halt their progress. And then, the news basically of DeepSeek's V3 reasoning model coming out, and matching state of the art at reportedly a much lower training cost, collective trillion dollar freak out on the markets, right? I don't know, what does it mean for technology? I feel like the trade war tension is only going to get ratcheted up, right? Separate from tariffs, what other restrictions are going to be put in place? And, yeah, the climate is just not, I don't know, man. The whole thing feels very insane. Jeremy Au: It's definitely not an easy set because there's so many moving pieces that's happening, right? So if I was to go through that list, like for example, I felt like DeepSeek felt like a Sputnik moment in that sense. Like there used to be like the space race between America and Russia, Soviet Union, and then the Russians launched Sputnik, the satellite. Everybody in America panicked. And then after that, there's a [00:06:00] big push to put a lot of money and then put a man on the moon. Shiyan Koh: But I don't think the money is an issue, right? And I think there's an open question about how big a deal it is, right? Because the one thing is that the DeepSeek team actually published. It's an open source model, like you can go download it today on Hugging Face, right? Perplexity has already included it as an option in their search engine. And the techniques that they describe, I think everyone will use from now on to reduce the cost of pre-training. Is it so surprising that a bunch of smart Chinese engineers and scientists could come up with ways to work around the constraints of lower powered NVIDIA chips. That's not actually that crazy an idea, right? You have a billion people. Amongst those billion people of whom many are very highly trained in STEM, would they not solve around that? And actually the fact that they didn't have access to H100s actually force them to innovate around CUDA in order to get the kind of processing that they needed to do the calculations. And the fact that Americans have no problem getting the [00:07:00] highest rated chips means that they weren't forced to do that, right? They didn't have to go and find that extra few turns of performance from somewhere. I mean, I don't know if it's a Sputnik moment because also those techniques will be copied by everyone, right? It's open source. And you can't just imagine that everyone else is dumb. Jeremy Au: Yeah. Shiyan Koh: No, No, but it's a little bit like, did we talk about this last time? About the Americans getting on Xiaohongshu and then seeing Chinese people and being like, Oh, wow, like your city looks pretty modern. Did you think we lived in a cave? What do you think's going on over here? I don't think the valley has a monopoly on innovation or brains or ambition. And of course, things are going to happen all over the world. And it's the constraints perhaps led to this. Jeremy Au: No, I love what you said, which is, from an American, if you look at it as an arms race in AI, which is the framing in the media today, they felt like having those export controls AI chips would prevent them from catching up, but like you said, actually the evolutionary Darwinian approach is that if you created that constraint, people will design around that [00:08:00] constraint. Shiyan Koh: Yeah. Jeremy Au: Which is that, if America had let China use the most power hungry chips, then probably, we will probably see the latest iteration be a more powerful model, but probably be much more power intensive. Shiyan Koh: So yeah. But it's if you, who is it? It's like the Indian Space Agency, right? The Indian Space Agency actually is very well known for being very capital efficient, right? And building rockets that are cheaper and all this, it's like, well, why? It's like, well, they just don't have as much money, so they need to, right? So I do think that there is some aspect of that, but it's like a mad thing. But you were telling me about legislation banning DeepSeek today. And at first, I thought you were just talking about the federal one, where it's oh, we're gonna ban it on federal devices. You're like, yeah, okay, fine. Sure, right? Anyone who uses any sort of corporate device half the things you're not allowed to use anyway, right? Great. Somebody has some sort of posturing bill to go, ban it on federal devices. Why not? But, I think there's actually a second piece of legislation which I hadn't read about yet. Jeremy Au: Yeah, let me go get the numbers for you. Shiyan Koh: Cause [00:09:00] that one sounded much more aggressive. Jeremy Au: Yeah. I think that Senator Josh Hawley proposed that if you use DeepSeek as an individual, you can have a penalty of up to 20 years in prison. And if a corporation uses DeepSeek, then the fine will be up to $100 million for a corporation. And I think the big problem, as you can tell, is that we don't know whether it'll become legislation or not, but definitely it's within the Republican Party, it's a good shot at passing. It could potentially become bipartisan. And the potential nature of that does have a chilling effect, that if I was an American company, I would be like, do I really want to build my technical roadmap on top of DeepSeek, right? Because if I use it, the technical infrastructure for it, I might have to re-engineer in one year's time when it does get passed. Shiyan Koh: Yeah, sure. But I feel like talking to people in their portfolio like most people are actually building in a way that allows them to swap out the underlying models pretty easily. And they do that anyway, right? They start with the frontier models, whether from Claude, from Anthropic [00:10:00] or OpenAI. And then as they learn more about how the application performs, they start to swap out with cheaper open source models, right? And they divide up the workload so that they're not spending so much on the frontier models and they slowly swap smaller models or cheaper models through. I don't know, that feels just, I agree. On the margin, probably, it makes you be like, do I really need this hassle in my life? But it's just like more posturing, just so irritating. Jeremy Au: Yeah. If you are a startup, you would be pushed to make it even more likely to be able to swappable, right? Because you just need that optionality. Which is, probably one of the intended effects of even having the legislation come up is this. It's not a side effect, it is the one of the main early effects of it. So I think the direction of travel is clear, although I think I also like what you said was true, which is that even though it can be seen as Chinese, but it's also open source, and that open source, it was hosted on American open source platform and community. Shiyan Koh: When Perplexity rolled [00:11:00] it out, the marketing message was, this is the DeepSeek model hosted on American servers with censorship controls removed. Jeremy Au: Yeah. Shiyan Koh: So what are we even talking about? Jeremy Au: Yeah, because it's open source, right? It's like really also a victory of the American netizen, internet principles of open source, right? Linux and, other folks. Shiyan Koh: Meta's AI leader, Yann LeCun was like, this isn't about China versus India, versus the US. It's actually about open source versus closed source. So he, of course, because, Meta has been pushing open source with their Lambda models and things like that. He's like, yeah look, we can see everything and everyone's going to take this stuff and they're all going to improve and innovate with their models that way too. Jeremy Au: I love what you say, which is the idea of open source versus closed source, right? And I think the virtue of closed source is that somebody gets to control it. Therefore, the country can control it, right? It exists. If you have open source, then no country can control it by nature, which is the whole ethos of open source as well. It's just that, open source used to be, I think it still is obviously American led, American [00:12:00] values, libertarian American, like push, right? No? It's like me using Microsoft and then sometimes I was using like OpenOffice. Shiyan Koh: I'm trying to think whether it is an American idea. Maybe I feel like we have to do some research on what is the origins, I feel like. Jeremy Au: Internet originated in America the early folks had a very yeah. Shiyan Koh: But it was a DoD. The internet was a DoD project, right? Jeremy Au: Upper net, but within that space it was an open playground. The open internet net neutrality a lot of that stuff is were we really debating this in Southeast Asia? No, definitely not. Has China been a big advocate of open source? No, historically, no. EU, I think it's definitely following America's footsteps on this stuff. I think if I define America as a country, American as a governance and regulatory agency, America in terms of communities and, like scientific community, and then also there's American values, right? Which is the culture and ethos, right? Four very distinct layers, I would say, where we say something is American. Shiyan Koh: And America is a big country, right? There's a fair amount of heterogeneity. All right. I'll [00:13:00] consider it. I'll allow it. Jeremy Au: But, I think what's interesting is that, yeah, like you said, DeepSeek is, open source. And so it's on open source servers. Everybody in America has access to it. A lot of startups are using it, DeepSeek canal. And then the economic market went to a downward turn because they digested the news, right? Which was like, one is we need potentially less GPUs than we thought. That's one. Shiyan Koh: Two is we need less energy than we thought because it's more energy efficient. And both of those things is NVIDIA and obviously American energy companies. Yeah, NVIDIA and the Magnificent Seven in general are like price to perfection, right? They're trading at like historically high multiples and a bunch of that was around like AI. And in general though, when the cost of something goes down, there's a name for this. Jevons paradox or whatever. Yeah, that's right. It's actually it grows demand for the thing rather than saying, so like, you could debate about whether NVIDIA is fairly valued or not. But in terms of like the demand for the chips, I don't think that actually goes away. So it's like item one. Shiyan Koh: I actually think if the cost of intelligence goes down, [00:14:00] it just means that you can apply to way more things. Yeah. Economically. And the demand for that thing goes up. Jeremy Au: Yeah. Shiyan Koh: And then I think the second thing is I've read a few, more technical papers about the cost, right? Because there's a big debate about can we believe this cost estimate? Is it true? And, they say this is the pre-training number. It doesn't include, like, all the R&D that was done before, or whatever. And so if you think about pre-training as a percent of the total overall cost, it is not the 100 percent cost. So there's still like the cost of inference and all these other things. And that still is gonna require GPUs. And that next phase of development I think is gonna become more important as models advance. So I just think on a demand side, from the demand side, I'm not actually that worried about demand for GPUs. I do think it begs the question of, okay, because I think all the tech companies reported in the last 10 days or so, did they need to be spending that much on CapEx? Could they use more effective ways to do it? Probably, right? If they probably start to move some of these techniques through to the stuff that they're [00:15:00] building, maybe they'll save money that way. But they're all kind of in an arms race with each other, right? So it's also just that we've just pushed the frontier of what you can do here. We're going to implement that, but that doesn't mean that there isn't other stuff for us to keep trying to push the boundaries on and spending on. Jeremy Au: Yeah. And I think this is actually a good parallel to the US broadband push, right? I think there was also a similar kind of like push where everybody was bidding broadband and they were pushing really aggressively, huge overinvestment, but it was an arms race. Shiyan Koh: Yeah. Jeremy Au: And the winners were the ones who did overinvest. And didn't die. So the tricky part is if you overinvested the most and you didn't die, Shiyan Koh: you can last long enough for the demand to catch up. Jeremy Au: Those who overinvested and died got killed, and those who underinvested and survived end up dying and eaten anyway. So it was like the sweet spot Goldilocks of like, how do you overinvest but also raise enough capital so that we don't die? And then we eat everybody else and consolidate that. Shiyan Koh: And maybe overinvest is not the right word but you're basically investing ahead of demand. Jeremy Au: Yeah. So I don't think, overinvest implies a negative thing, but you are investing way ahead. Shiyan Koh: It's a time [00:16:00] problem. Jeremy Au: It's like railroads, right? Like once upon a time, all the railroad barons were like, let's over invest in railroads, right? They were investing ahead of demand and then they built all that track. And if you look at today, everybody's like, America, there could be more railways, but it just happens to over invest at that point of time versus what they had. It was interesting that dynamic for infrastructure. And I think it's key, which is like what you said about it. It's AI is a commodity, right? And the more and cheaper we get it, the more people are going to use it. So maybe you're economical to use like, we talked about AI teddy bears, right? In the past, the compute wouldn't have made it because you'd be like, oh, the subscription cost of this AI teddy bear will be $10 per month. It's too expensive. So just AI teddy bear. But now you're like, oh, with DeepSeek and the way it is done, you can imagine a scenario where you're like, it's preloaded with enough whatever and it's a one time cost. It's $10 one time cost, right? Into the teddy bear. Shiyan Koh: Yeah, I think you'll just end up applying it to like lots of stuff, right? You have a talking tree, you can have a talking chair. I'm just saying you have a talking hat. I think when you talk about cheap, that's what we're getting to it. Yeah. I have a very silly example. When you go to Sushiro, [00:17:00] the conveyor belt sushi, and every plate is chipped. Shiyan Koh: But do you remember when RFID chips first came out? They were very expensive. And then they're like how would you ever use this thing? It's so expensive. Jeremy Au: Yeah. I remember all those crazy founders are talking about RFID chips at the future. And then everyone's like, why would we use RFID? Shiyan Koh: But now it's they're in every plate at Sushiro. And at the end of your meal, the person just comes in scan your stack of plates and gives you your bill. Jeremy Au: Crazy, right? So they were right. Shiyan Koh: But it's a trivial example. Jeremy Au: No, but the thing is like the founders that were doing RFID, I remember now from those days, they were right. It's just that, of course, the question is what kind of, that was too early, but too is what's the business model, right? Can you imagine their business model was like every sushi plate will have RFID. Then everyone would just laugh at them and say like, why are you talking about? It's too cheap, such a low value, blah, blah, blah. But if you think about it, somebody made money selling RFID sushi plates. Shiyan Koh: Yeah, it's just but it's all labor savings, right? That's what it is. But I think every book in the National Library is RFID tagged. Jeremy Au: Most trees [00:18:00] in Singapore are also tagged as well. Shiyan Koh: Yeah, because you know when you return the library books, right? It's just boop, and it just knows what you have. I don't know why I suddenly thought about Sushiro. It's the weekend, I have to deal with my kids, but Jeremy Au: No, we're just talking about the fact that, the cost of compute is dropping, and it's getting to the point now that it's going to be a big thing cause and, it reminds me all of a sudden, of that, Beauty and the Beastbeast where the teacups, every teacup has a voice and personality. They all dance at the candlestick. The clock, you're like, wait a moment. We can totally do that now. I'm just saying is this cheap enough where you're like, Shiyan Koh: Just because you can do something doesn't mean you should. Jeremy Au: Wouldn't you want to like, have a tea set and coffee set and all them all talking to each other and having a very dramatic korean drama style debate with one another about who's, getting the coffee and who's pouring the tea. If you think about it, we now, because of DeepSeek and the AI boom, you're like, wait a moment, it probably cost you like, maybe like a hundred bucks to do it, right? Because this is like a small speaker for each one of them. And then you put a wifi signal and then you run it through DeepSeek and you'd be like, Oh, I recreated Beauty and [00:19:00] Beast, Shiyan Koh: My house is noisy enough. I don't need my teacups and my pot to talk to me or to each other. Jeremy Au: You're going to be disrupted by the future. You're like bifocals. And you're like looking at some print newspaper. Shiyan Koh: Hey, don't make fun of me, okay. I'm probably about at that level, I need to get bifocals. I was like, oh man. Presbyopia is setting in, like, why can't I read this small text anymore? Jeremy Au: Now imagine at your breakfast table, you have your seven teacups and every place talking to each other and while they're talking to each other, they also read the news to you. See, there you go. And you know what? This is gonna become a product, actually. Like a Beauty and the Beast talking tea set. Shiyan Koh: I'm sure disney's already working on it. Jeremy Au: And it's doing, you know what? It's totally doable, right? Anyway, such a novelty gift, can you imagine? But yeah, it's possible now. It's just that, the AI model will be proudly made in America. That's the difference for the Disney one, right? You know what I mean? It'll keep the censorship and the fantasy modules installed, sorry. Shiyan Koh: You are really into this teapot thing. Jeremy Au: I know, I'm just like, [00:20:00] okay, I think somebody's going to make it, so why not? Shiyan Koh: For sure. And I think somebody is working on the AI stuffed animal stuff. Yeah, there's a lot of them just working on stuffed animals. It's totally a thing. Jeremy Au: So now we're just brainstorming so that when it does happen, we'll be like, Oh, we already thought about that. We're like, just too lazy to do it ourselves and make bank on it. We just speculated for fun, right? I guess another question that I was thinking about is Okay, so what does that mean, right? Because we saw the acceleration of geopolitics, I think, in January, since the January 6th inauguration. So I'm just saying like the piece that I'm thinking about is I think one piece is that I think the anti China or the decoupling will accelerate even faster than I had thought even one month ago, right? And I think the writing of the law is quite clear for every Chinese national founder out there. Shiyan Koh: Yeah, I don't know whether it's going to be faster than I thought. I think the writing on the wall was pretty clear, right? Because, it started in the first Trump administration and then continued. Biden's policies continued there. I do think that that is something that Chinese founders have to continue [00:21:00] to think about. Because I guess the other side to take on this Trump stuff is like, all of this stuff he's doing by executive order rather than through legislation. He doesn't want to make things more permanent or pass legislation. He doesn't want to deal with Congress. He just wants to be like, do this. And he's like a mercurial person. I think there's a little bit of let's wait and see what happens. Like it hasn't actually written into law yet. Yeah. I don't know. Jeremy Au: I just feel like, whatever impact it has, four years is a long time. It's forever in startup years. There's nothing you can do. Actually, one interesting thing that I've talked to some Chinese founders about this is that for the smaller Chinese founders, they're actually okay with some of these changes because the large Chinese players like Temu and Shein, like all those companies were doing well under the old regime or if you want to call it by the old set of policies. And so to some extent, Trump's changes rewards, for example, Chinese founders are willing to move to Mexico or smaller outfits are willing to be more nimble because a lot of the pain, for [00:22:00] example, on closing the minimis bracket for e commerce goods impacts Temu input Shein, for smaller e commerce, somebody else's problems at the top is at least a way to change the game for my current dynamics. Shiyan Koh: Yeah. Oh, that's an interesting point of view, which is it's all aimed at incumbents. And so if you're a small startup, you benefit because your big Goliath is occupied. Jeremy Au: I think another thing that happened that I didn't expect as much as personally was that I think Crypto made a big comeback. Shiyan Koh: Heading into the next bull market. You ready? Jeremy Au: I think we saw that Trump actually went towards pro crypto perhaps in about Q3 last year. Because individuals, but people felt like it was primarily we're pushing back against Biden and Kamala for being anti crypto rather than Trump being pro crypto. And I think in January, we saw Trump launched the Trump coin. And then, he promised to be the most pro crypto administration. Shiyan Koh: There's also this like strategic Bitcoin reserve proposal. Did you see that one? Jeremy Au: Yeah. If the government is [00:23:00] buying, then obviously, it's like an oil market, the prices will rise, it's, there's a lot of support, supposedly right for the lift. Shiyan Koh: Yeah. I mean, I think it's part of the general like deregulation move, right? Which is we want to be the center of financial markets, right? So we're going to like, and there's people in the administration who are pro crypto. He has a crypto czar, right? David Sachs. And, but even before, right? You can already see some of this stuff opening up with the ETFs being approved and things like that. I think, yeah, like I think the mood is good. But I think partially also the crypto market has matured a little bit, right? With the many more sort of the stablecoin use cases and things like that. But yeah, the Trump coin actually seems quite ridiculous to me. Can you imagine any other political leader, like on the eve of like, basically coming into power? Jeremy Au: Yeah. Lawrence Wong coin. There you go. Shiyan Koh: But he's the beneficiary of it, right? Anybody who buys that thing, and the company that did it, is based out of Singapore. Jeremy Au: Oh, really? Shiyan Koh: And but I think that is actually quite you don't want to talk about conflicts of interest, like launching a coin for [00:24:00] your own. And Melania has a coin. The whole thing is just insane. Jeremy Au: Yeah. And I think it's interesting because I think it does have an impact on Southeast Asia crypto from my perspective. So I think that when the Biden administration was more anti crypto from the perspective of the crypto community, and obviously China banned crypto as well, then Singapore was seen as a neutral place as well as Dubai. Shiyan Koh: Yeah. Jeremy Au: And I think what's interesting is that I think now that Trump is pro crypto, I think there's going to be a move. From my perspective of the more American affiliated crypto companies, I think back to America, perhaps, because, they might domicile, for example, in Texas or Nevada rather than Delaware I think there's a certain stack where you see them and they still have some optionality, obviously, between, different geographies, just in case the next administration is a democratic administration that's anti crypto again, but I just think that there's going to be that move of crypto talent there. And I think, the Chinese talent will still continue to be in Singapore and Dubai because I don't think they feel too welcome in the US But you can also imagine regional crypto folks [00:25:00] might just move to the US as well rather than move to Singapore. So I think Singapore's crypto hub that really existed as a regulatory alternative, alongside Dubai. I think both of these alternatives have decreased in terms of. Value to a crypto business. Shiyan Koh: Yeah, but it takes time, right? I think part of it was that there wasn't a lot like it was like regulatory confusion, right? It was like, is this legal? Is this not legal? What's going on? So it'll take time to actually put in, I think, like clear regulatory guidance. Yeah. But yeah, you're right. Like probably on margin, right? Jeremy Au: Yeah, definitely. I think what's going to be interesting as well in the coming year is I think that a lot of the Chinese companies are going to start really aggressively pushing Southeast Asia, EU as growth markets rather than the US I think a lot of the Chinese folks were like, they think that Trump is, obviously not friendly to China, but they've had a wait and see approach. And then Trump really came out strong and raised tariffs by 50%. So from their perspective. So I think everyone's just okay, got it. The message is we better make it work in EU or [00:26:00] Southeast Asia. Shiyan Koh: Yeah, it's I go back to the US end of next month and so I'll want to see what the temperature is. Jeremy Au: Wrapping up things here from your perspective is what's the one thing that you hope happens in Southeast Asia Tech in the next month? Obviously we're looking at the whole region, and I think the big piece of news as well for the Southeast Asia tech ecosystem is that the Grab and Gojek slash GoTo merger acquisitions talks apparently have been leaked to be said they're ongoing. We have a target for the deal to be done this year. Shiyan Koh: Yeah. Jeremy Au: What do you think? Shiyan Koh: This isn't a new rumor, right? There've been talks about this a number of times in the past. And so I think there is some commercial logic to it, right? Is to consolidate these players remove a fair amount of the cost structure because they compete in the same markets, but they are strong in different markets, right? And so to be able to eliminate one layer of competition, I guess my question is is it anti competitive? Jeremy Au: Yeah. And I think that's going to be the question I'm sure that the regulator is going to have between the two companies, Grab is a stronger position, enterprise [00:27:00] value in terms of its core profitability, whereas Gojek is still losing money. So frankly, this is more of an acquisition than a true merger of equals. It's acquisition of Grab of Gojek. But so the Singapore regulator is going to be okay from my perspective and from my experience doing M&A. And I think the Indonesian regulator is going to be the question mark about that. But I think that's where I think some of the optics gonna be very key. Like saying there's a merger rather than acquisition. I think the optics around maybe some of the commitments to preserve jobs in Indonesia would be an important part to allay the Indonesia regulator. Maybe as we're talking about service levels or even price levels it's gonna be quite important, right? Because, if you look at where Grab and Gojek are competing, they're primarily competing in the Indonesia market. And both of them therefore are keeping prices relatively low. But if Grab and Gojek kind of merge as a service, then as a primary player, the prices can rise. And then I think from a regulator perspective, that would be quite problematic from their perspective, right? So there may be, I [00:28:00] can imagine some level of commitment to be like, we're not going to change prices maybe for the next, five years. Shiyan Koh: I mean, it's not like they're the only people, right? There's still taxis, Bluebird is a big player. There's a bunch of other yeah, they're just the big like ride hailing. Jeremy Au: Yeah. Shiyan Koh: And I think there's a couple of Vietnamese players that enter that market as well, right? They're trying to go regional Jeremy Au: Yeah, so you can imagine a scenario where you know, and I've no access to any of this private information, but I can imagine that Gojek will also be fielding opportunities talking to Bluebird and these Vietnamese companies just be like, does that level of integration make sense as alternative because you never want to be an M&A composition of only one party, but of course, who's going to have the money to pay, and streamline? But like you said, the economic part of it is you have two major ride hailing companies that are highly duplicative in terms of their marketing and their infrastructure stack. They can save a lot of money just by consolidating, so Shiyan Koh: But if they have to make concessions on the Indonesian jobs and all that sort of stuff, then, does the math still pencil out? Jeremy Au: I think it pencils out from the Grab perspective, right? Because, it's just a 10 year horizon, [00:29:00] and then you continue being a super app, you make money on other things as well. Because I think the transportation side is the most sensitive bit but if you raise prices on food delivery, or some other adjacent parcel delivery, I think people are not going to be as, politically sensitive about that point. And of course I think driver salaries is going to be a big part of it as well. So I think it's going to be interesting because these rumors have been happening for a long time, right? The truth is SoftBank has been pushing both of them for a long time to do SoftBank had investments in Uber, Gojek, in Grab. And they were the ones who told Grab and Uber has said, Hey, Uber in Singapore because both of you are going to a price war to show a lot of value as a VC in both of them. So Uber should exit so that Grab can go up. Obviously, what Uber's management thought about this is a different thing. But from SoftBank's perspective, it's less competition makes it easier to rise. At that time, they said no to SoftBank because the two CEOs could not agree. Who wants to be CEO? But now I think it's totally different, Shiyan Koh: Cause the founders are out. Jeremy Au: For Gojek is out. So right now it's a Patrick from [00:30:00] North Star who's committed to be leading Gojek to 2029, but of course, when you say it's only there till 2029, then obviously the question is like what happens in 2030? And so I think some of this timeline is less emotional. Is this going to be more like there's synergy, there's cost savings, there's revenue opportunity. This is the value. How do we slice the pie? And I think the issue that we have is that Gojek doesn't have as many alternatives because Greg can keep going. Shiyan Koh: Yeah. Jeremy Au: But Gojek is going to find it more difficult. So I think to me, I think that's where the struggle is from the Gojek perspective is how do I get the best transaction price out of this relatively like single buyer auction, which is not. Shiyan Koh: Yeah. And they have the same color. So it should be easy. Brand assets perspective. Jeremy Au: Your cost saving, is this going to put white tape for your back? We're not even going to change the color. That's how cheap you're going to be. Elon Musk style is like, we're not going to buy new swag with this. We're just going to use a crayon and just draw on the back. Yeah, no, I think it's going to be a big piece. So what would the impact be? I think Grab is the bigger player of the high enterprise value is acquirer. So [00:31:00] the question is, will they overpay? I think that's a sub market perspective. So we don't know that, is less competition in the Indonesia side. So we should expect that over the medium to long term, prices will rise for indonesian consumers or you can also make an argument that driver salaries will stay stagnant in the Indonesia market. Gojek already exited from Vietnam. The sort of Vietnamese consumer has already been yeah, no more impact from this piece So it's really I think the indonesia consumer does be impacted maybe Shiyan Koh: Singapore, they don't have much here. Jeremy Au: Singapore is not much. It's very small piece as well. So it's primarily, I see some Singaporean people, they check between Gojek and Grab and Comfort Delgro. But I think now that Gojek's out, this is going to be back to Comfort Delgro and Grab. And Grab also pulls taxis from Comfort Delgro. So they're both like same fleet, different apps with different margin structures. Anyway, I don't, so I think you can expect maybe some small rise maybe in Singapore prices. Shiyan Koh: They've already gone up, right? Yeah, they've already gone up a lot. I don't take Grab that much anymore. Jeremy Au: Yeah. I definitely been a few times where I was like I'd rather [00:32:00] drive and listen to something or sometimes I'm just like, you know what? I'd rather take the bus. Shiyan Koh: Especially peak period. Like yesterday I was, going from one meeting to dinner and it was both downtown, right? I was like, you know what? I'm just going to take the MRT and walk because it's going to be super expensive and very crowded. Jeremy Au: Yeah. You're going to save a 40 minute trip to 20 minute trip. And then your price difference is going to be effectively 40 bucks versus a dollar on the train. Shiyan Koh: And I'm going to get in 2000 steps or whatever. End of the day. Get a bit of walking in. Not so bad. Jeremy Au: Peak of hours. Like it's basically $2 per minute. Saved from my perspective, which is a crazy, that's $120 per hour salary equivalent. So you better be doing something massively more productive. Shiyan Koh: But it is, it's like, it was like gotten really expensive for a peak period. So I was like, all right. Jeremy Au: But when I was in SF in January as well, Uber is also more expensive now as well. So I think this is a function of labor, right? It's if a lot of cheap labor, way cheaper. Yeah, so exactly. Shiyan Koh: But Waymo is not that much cheaper. It's a little bit cheaper. No, But you get novelty [00:33:00] value. Jeremy Au: Waymo strategy is price skimming, right? Similar to like the lab or cultured diamond market, right? If you have natural diamonds that are very expensive, and you have a lab diamond, would you price it as very cheap? No. You're going to price it as 5 to 10 percent cheaper than a normal diamond. And then people start switching because there's enough for price difference to get a better stone. And then the next step is after that you drop it by another 10%. And so the price drop happens, a price war happens. People are trying to skim that curve. So it takes 10 years to really see that full price drop. So that, during this time period, the lab diamonds can extract as much value as they can. Does it make sense? Skimming off the natural diamonds. So the natural diamonds nests never move. Only lab diamonds are moving, but at least you have the price premium. So I think same thing for Waymo is they have no need to set the prices massively cheaper. As long as it's slightly 10 percent cheaper than Uber, then people switch. That's what we saw in Grab and Gojek. It's just if you're 10 percent cheaper, people just switch anyway. So you don't need to go like a massively cheaper. But yes, eventually, I think [00:34:00] self driving cars would be a way to get it really cheap. Shiyan Koh: Don't want it because once again, then it leads to overconsumption. Jeremy Au: Yeah. And also if you make it too cheap, then governments will be very angry because a lot of these drivers are low income folks. So you're disrupting the taxi fleet, right? Which is still a relatively protected class in many countries. So you know, and then, I think that's what happened in Chinatown and SF, right? Like they burned a way more robo taxi. Instead of if I had hit it, it was a bunch of rods. Shiyan Koh: But if you think that's the future, then maybe you shouldn't give out new taxi licenses. Jeremy Au: As a government? Shiyan Koh: Yeah. Cause it's like older people, basically. So it's like employment of last resort. And so maybe it's okay, like you just let that population nationally a trip out, but don't enable new people. And then you slowly implement the self driving cars. Jeremy Au: Yeah. And I see that argument internally. I'm sure people are arguing about that internally. Of course, from my perspective is, we also don't know how long the robo taxi curve is going to take. Shiyan Koh: They work there and they're licensing it, right? Waymo's licensing it to [00:35:00] Uber in Austin. You can start doing it today, basically. And I would make the argument, I don't know though, but there's like young people who are Grab drivers. And I guess there's a question which is, is that the best most productive job they could be having. Jeremy Au: This is where Singapore government for skills future to be future proof your career. I always love the phrase "future proof". It's such a Singaporean phrase like, like making yourself invulnerable against the future. I always found it such an interesting phrase that only exists in Shiyan Koh: Singapore. Is it only Singaporeans use it? Jeremy Au: Ever heard a SF person say, I'm going to future proof my career? No. No, right? Because they're like, my job is to be tech. My job is to disrupt people. Why would I want to future proof myself, right? Isn't such a Singaporean phrase? Shiyan Koh: I guess so. Jeremy Au: I never heard anybody say that they want to future proof themselves. Say, if I was in America, I say I want to bulletproof myself. It makes total sense because bullets in America, but nobody in Singapore says bulletproof. It'd be crazy. I want a bulletproof car. I was like, what, why? It's just crazy, right? Anyway, I just find it interesting that in America, I don't think you're going to hear anybody say they're going to future proof themselves, [00:36:00] but anyway. Shiyan Koh: Thank you for my fun fact of the day, Jeremy. Jeremy Au: On that note, let's wrap things up and I'll see you next month. Sounds good. …

Request for Startups: LLM for Bahasa Indonesia, Community Unbundling, Wealth Advisors and More - E298

“A lot of social science research reinforces the idea that changing your context helps you change your behavior. Imagine if there was a bot that makes everyone more active. It can egg you on and make the passive dynamic a little bit more active to remind you where your goals are. These are not technically complex and you could see them becoming ubiquitous. These little voices are trying to nudge you in a specific direction.” - Shiyan Koh “Generative AI is really helpful because there's a trust component. If you have multiple accounts, you traditionally need an agent or representative to support you. There's also a privacy component. To some extent, you could trust an AI a little bit more because it's not talking to a human who could potentially talk about the topic over dinner, despite the NDA. That's a good idea especially because you can do everything and it can be like a real wealth advisor.” - Jeremy Au “What’s interesting about the things people wish existed is that they weren't that crazy. There were a bunch of requests for things that are not that far off but the challenge is not the technical execution. We’ve seen various versions of these but they've never really taken off because of distribution or monetization challenges.” - Shiyan Koh In this conversation between Jeremy Au and Shiyan Koh, they share their insights on entrepreneurship and forward-thinking perspectives on innovative ventures. The discussion highlights three pivotal areas: 1. Exploring Language Learning Models: Shiyan and Jeremy delve into the potential for developing language learning models (LLMs) for underrepresented languages such as Bahasa Indonesia, Vietnamese, and Tagalog, and the unique challenges and opportunities that come with it. 2. Community Unbundling: They discuss the concept of "unbundling the community," where niche communities can be broken off from large platforms like Facebook and Reddit, giving way to unique, focused platforms. 3. AI Applications in Wealth and Health: The conversation moves to how AI can revolutionize wealth management, functioning as a personal financial advisor, and its potential applications in health, functioning as a personal health assistant that keeps track of our health-related behaviors and nudges us in the right direction. The discussion also covers other startup ideas they brainstorm. They touched on recent Thailand and Cambodia political news and responded to a listener's question on how to gain access as a diverse founder. Sure? Supported by Esevel Do you manage your own IT for distributed teams in Asia? You know how painful it is. Esevel helps your in-house team by taking tough tasks off their hands and giving them the tools to manage IT effectively. Get help across eight countries in Asia Pacific, which includes onboarding, procurement, device management, real-time IT support, offboarding, and more. Gain full control of all your IT infrastructure in one place with our state-of-the-art platform. Check out esevel.com and get a demo today. Use our referral code, "BRAVE" for three months, free. Terms and conditions apply. Sure? Jeremy Au: (01:07) Hey, Shiyan. Party time! Shiyan Koh: (01:09) Yeah, we're partying. Jeremy Au: (01:12) It's just like, it's just like, it's like Shiyan Koh: (01:14) No. Jeremy Au: (01:14) That's a random conversation. If you're watching on YouTube, she just pulled out a glass of wine and a can of La Croix. There go. That combo, I guess, is a sub form of hydration, right? Shiyan Koh: (01:27) Yeah, it's always important to stay hydrated and so I recommend if you're drinking wine, you should also be drinking water. In my case, sparkling water. Jeremy Au: (01:37) Sparkling water. Wow. There we go. So, well, you wanted to do a few shout outs? I think a few folks who said hi, they enjoyed the recent episodes. So, Shiyan, I think you want to say something to Lina. Shiyan Koh: (01:47) What's up, Lina? Lina from NonPublic. They're working on something cool over there and so wanted to give her a shout out for reaching out. It was funny because I pinged her and I'm like, we should catch up, and she was like, I feel like I just spoke to you recently. And then she realized, no, she had just been listening to the podcast. Jeremy Au: (02:06) I know. Okay, there we Shiyan Koh: (02:07) So we hadn't actually spoken. She had just heard our voices. Jeremy Au: (02:11) So this, it's like my wife receives a podcast episode from me at the end of the day. There we go. Shiyan Koh: (02:18) We don't need to talk to each other. Jeremy Au: (02:19) Marital communication complete, right? Shiyan Koh: (02:21) Here are my thoughts from the day. Please listen to this at 2x speed. So actually it's more efficient than actually talking to me. Jeremy Au: (02:28) Oh boy. I don't think it, it'll go down like the power bricks. There we go. David He at Gunderson, thank you for enjoying your run with us and hearing our family office episode. So, we are looking forward to your upcoming webinar on startup down rounds. I'm all ears. I think there'll be a really fascinating training that you're holding for the Singapore Venture Capital Association, S looking forward to that. I think we got one more shoutout from Sheryn Ascott who was asking questions about diverse founders. And I think, let me just read out exactly what she said. She said, "Hey, I loved the episode. I felt that there was a lot to learn about the reality of the business." And she felt like there was a part about blind spots that she really appreciated and yet she was also very thoughtful in asking questions about saying, Hey, I would love to hear more about how diverse founders can improve their chances of success in raising. She had said her friend had all the advantages and she found it so tough. It's even harder when you don't have those advantages. So, yeah. Shiyan, I guess that's addressed to you. What's your quick response to that before we get into the rest of the episode. Shiyan Koh: (03:31) Yeah, I think to refer back to that episode, we talked about like. what is it like when the person you're pitching may not necessarily have an intuitive understanding of the problem that you're trying to solve and how that might lead it to be sort of an easier pass because they're kind of like, uh, I don't really know about this problem. It can't be that big of a problem. And I think this applies to all founders, not just diverse founders. And I think part of it is really trying to put your listener into the shoes of your target customer. Walk through that customer journey to give people that virtual sense of what is that pain? When do you feel it? What are your current not so great alternatives? Why is the thing that you are building so much better and so much more compelling to this person? And I think the example that we had given previously was someone who was doing diagnostics through the use of menstrual blood, and there was like both the ick factor and the like, Hey, this isn't something I'm like super familiar with. But I think everyone has had an experience with, maybe not feeling super well and going to the doctor and maybe someone not being able to understand how to figure out what's wrong with you, right? So trying to find analogies to help people connect with the problem is important, just to make it simpler. It isn't just sort of an ick factor thing. I think it also happens in enterprise software where you might not understand the buyer. Why would a compliance person have this problem? Or why would an HR leader have this problem? So I think contextualizing the problem is a really important part of connecting with your audience and helping them see like, Hey, I am solving a big problem, and here's some information from customer development that I've done that helps give even more color around what that problem and the size of that problem is, or better yet, why my solution is so compelling. Jeremy Au: (05:11) Yeah, I think it's even more important in the sense that every founder is an outsider, fundamentally, because if you're a founder and you're trying to build something that's going to only happen in 10 years of hard work to become a true reality, the truth is you're always an outsider because everybody who's an insider doesn't want it to happen. That's some degree, right? 'cause change is scary. The futures had to build. There's a bunch of embedded economic interests that are part of the current reality in terms of incumbency. And so, whenever you're trying to build that future, you're always going to be an outsider, and you're always going to be like that prophet or that Cassandra in the sense that nobody really wants to believe you. I mean, for my past two companies, when I started out, it was like I got rejected lots of times as well, but I also acknowledged that I worked very hard to create those bridges. In my first company, I didn't have some of these logos that I now have. And so I would just be like, okay, these are the other ways I relate to you and these are the ways that I would just very explicitly spell it out for you. Whereas I think, I have to admit that a second time was a little bit easier because with those badges, I was able to open up the doors relatively easy. That's my personal experience, was like the door would open and then after that, you still face a pretty tough crowd, honestly, once you're in the conference room, but at least, the first door got opened, right? I think my reflection is that where it shows up a lot, I think if you are a diverse founder, is that it's really that first gate. You even get that conversation going, right? And so I think my perspective is you have to leverage your network as much as possible. A warm introduction, because I think diversity is always like a certain plane, so the better is agenda or a single plane, but what are the other ways you connect? You connect based on school. Do you connect based on prior industry of expertise? Do you connect based on hobby? Do you connect based on a warm connection? So really, being very super specific to be like, okay, I am different from this person in one or two different planes, which is most people, right? I mean, we all differ. I differ from you Shiyan, in a sense that I'm male, you're female. You're cool. I am super cool, you know, so so forth. Shiyan Koh: (06:56) I've never been cool in my life. Jeremy Au: (06:58) Okay. All right. Right. We're both equally fine. This is similarity. We're both nerds who are trying to be cool. I'm just going to say we're both cool. Okay, great. Shiyan Koh: (07:04) I'm not trying to be cool, man. Jeremy Au: (07:06) Okay. You’re not trying to be cool. Shiyan Koh: (07:07) I’m embracing my life. Jeremy Au: (07:08) No, never cool. And I'm a nerd who's trying to be cool. There we go. But I think finding those planes is going to be those key moments. And I think that helps you get the door open. And I think the reality is that door, wherever you are, you could be a Southeast Asian founder trying to open up doors in the US. That's always hard. You're an American founder trying to build doors in Southeast Asia, that's also tough as well. Anyway, so that's my quick response to that listening question. Shiyan Koh: (07:29) This reminds me of trying to get through US immigration. Trying to keep the door closed. Jeremy Au: (07:34) Yeah. Shiyan Koh: (07:34) So whenever I land in the US, I try to wear something that has a local sports team logo on it. I'm trying to communicate to the border control official that I am just like him. I, too, am a Warriors fan. You know, I like basketball. I try to blend in. And so, they will quickly stamp my passport and waive me instead of putting me into secondary inspection and asking, making my life very difficult. So, I think this applies in a lot of different places, right? Which is like, what is the commonality you can connect with someone on and how do you signal to them that we're on the same team, man, we love Stephen Curry, who doesn't? Jeremy Au: (08:10) So there's a bunch of news that was happening in Southeast Asia that we felt had to be mentioned. Obviously, for those who are curious about Southeast Asia. I think the first piece of news was that Cambodia's Prime Minister Hun Sen is going to step down and is handing over power to his son Hun Manet. So that's a big one that happened this past week, and the second one, of course, is that Thaksin, the Thai billionaire former leader is going to return in August after 15 years of exile. And so those are two very big pieces of news. I think this is pretty important because these are obviously important countries in Southeast Asia. And I think that I think folks are really thinking true about how these political transitions are really important because they are part of the political stability, right? And you have can only build an economy based on political stability and then you can only build technology and startups and venture capital that have a tenure horizon based on that overall economic stability. So I think there's a little bit of a step ladder here that you got to have political stability at some level in order for the future to be built on those stacks. So yeah, those are my thoughts. And now we go to our next stage. I think we want to talk a little bit about requests for startups. I think you and I had a bunch of ideas that we wanted to brainstorm and think of. So, I put together a little note list of ideas. Shiyan Koh: (09:19) Oh good. What do you got? I can't wait. Jeremy Au: (09:21) Well, you got you got some, right? I'm sure. Shiyan Koh: (09:23) I got a list, but you go first. Jeremy Au: (09:24) I go first. I'll go first. Okay. Okay. Idea one. Shiyan Koh: (09:28) And just to clear, are these ideas you feel have business merit or just things you wish existed because those are not necessarily the same thing? Jeremy Au: (09:35) I mean, if you wish something exists, it implies that a consumer like me wants it. And the question that you have to believe is, how much of a weirdo do you think I am? Is this a generalizable problem to a large enough segment that has some business merit? It may not be a VC-backable merit, but it's some kind of business merit. And unless you going to say like, this is a very idio-Socratic request that Jeremy has. Shiyan Koh: (09:54) Well, no, there could be other things. Even if it's something a consumer wants, it's like too expensive to acquire these consumers. There's just not enough margin to do the thing. You know what I mean? Like there's a lot of other reasons other than you're a weirdo, which we can debate separately. Jeremy Au: (10:07) Yeah. separately, extensively for the entire hour. There we go. Okay. So why don't we say, let's just throw them out. Nobody wants to hear about this theoretical framework about this. I'll try out one. So I think what's interesting is that we have lots of generative AI models that are all tackling different languages, right? And LLM models are not AI models, they're just probabilistic language models. And so they're required to be trained based on language. And so the first wave, were all about English, right? So OpenAI. And obviously, that's gone viral, everybody's using it at least amongst my friends and colleagues. Then if you take a side step out, then you know, in China, which is I think part of that global decoupling, there are four different AI models that raise lots of money to basically build the Mandarin version because of two reasons. One of course is that Mandarin is a totally separate language that requires very different set of training materials from English because a lot of their stuff, the Chinese internet is actually in order magnitude smaller than the whole english universe in terms of time, length, depth, as well as variety because of different countries and so, so forth. So I think they have to figure out different types of training as well and different kind of parameters and reinforcement training, but also because they're worried adding think rightfully so that they're not going to have access to the English model in a sense, because of that geopolitical tension. Then, now actually we're starting to see the European. You know, we have two of them, right? We have one for the French, has a European focus obviously, but as a French team. And our one is a German team, and it's kind of building for the whole of Europe. So I think there's two of them. They both raise, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars as part of the seed rounds. And that kind of got me thinking a little bit, which is like, okay, what does it look like for Southeast Asia because we do have Bahasa, which is about 300 million folks. And then, obviously there's some commonalities with Malaysian Bahasa there. And then of course there's also Vietnamese, there's also Tagalog. So these are all Southeast Asian languages that frankly, nobody's going after yet, from a model basis. So I think there's an interesting dynamic where at least there's a metaphorical piece you can imagine that somebody could say like, Hey, the OpenAI for Southeast Asian languages like Indonesia, Vietnamese, Tagalog, which is I think, a bundle, some synergies based on the end users in terms of what they're going to be using for. So there's some customers' bundling that can happen together there. Shiyan Koh: (12:14) But is that just like a language translation middleware or like, if conceptually, if GPT is trained on everything that's on the English internet right now, is it that we think there are things that exist in other languages that are not in English internet? Or is it just that we think that there are certain idiosyncrasies about how those languages describe certain problems, that there needs to be some sort of like translation middleware, essentially to the GPT model. Jeremy Au: (12:39) Yeah, I think some approaches, I mean, people in China were complaining, that basically, they could tell that some of the models were, if they couldn't figure it out, they would basically translate the requests from Chinese and push it through the English models. And then after that, translate it back to Chinese and the results were a subpar because imagine it's just like, you're going through two versions of that filter as well. So I think people feel like the performance isn't there and of course, there's also an expense to it. And also you're not building the fundamental model reliability at a bottom of it. So that's an interesting dynamic that's there. I mean, you can so I think it's interesting, right? I mean, poetry would be a good example, right? There are different forms of poetry in different cultures. It's very idiosocratic. It's not going to be, you know, you translate a poem and all that stuff, it's just not going to work out. So I think that's one of the further age cases that's there. But also, I think in Bahasa for Indonesia, a lot of people are using short forms, so they're using brief abbreviations to represent the whole thing, especially in WhatsApp. And also, I think for a lot of emerging countries, a lot of that language is not on public internet because it's not on websites or MySpace or Reddit. A lot of it is actually messaging apps, which are all private communication. So again, it's even more invisible for a robot as scraping the web. So I think there's an interesting dynamic. There could be a party round. Again, I think it would be something that is obviously in terms of race might be an order of magnitude smaller to some extent. Because again, you know, GDP per capita is different from the Europe and us, so the economic use case is going to be one order magnitude smaller. But you can imagine that population size does actually make it a compelling side to be like, Hey, what does that look like? So like the Grab or Gojek localization of OpenAI. So that's what I'm thinking. That's one idea I have. So yeah. Shiyan Koh: (14:14) So are you asking someone to build that or you think someone should? Jeremy Au: (14:17) Why not? Yeah, I've been asking everybody to build it. Because I think a lot of AI folks are basically building applications and you know, they are finding some success obviously via are English user, but you can't generalize down to SMEs for example, because they're going to be communicating consumers who are speaking Bahasa, for example, or Vietnamese, or Tagalog, right? And so that's something to be aware of. Okay, Shiyan, you have another idea? Let's kind go. Otherwise, it's going to be like one idea show, right? What's your idea? Shiyan Koh: (14:46) You are the idea guy, man. I'm just here to drink sparkling water and poke holes. Well, I mean, we put out, I pinged a couple sort of groups just to hear what people wish existed, and I guess what was kind of interesting was that they weren't that crazy. There were like a bunch of requests for things that probably are not that far off but the challenge is not actually, at least in my mind, the technical execution. The challenge is more like how do you make money and distribution? And that I've seen various versions of that, but it's very, they've never really taken off because of these distribution or monetization challenges. So if you just think about what would make people's lives easier and better, there were a bunch of people who were like, I actually just wished I had a personal assistant that worked like a virtual personal assistant that worked. And then, I asked for examples of what those things might be. It's like, I want them to read my email and send responses to things that are like really common requests that I get. Jeremy Au: (15:41) Right. Shiyan Koh: (15:41) And you're like, that's actually not out of the realm of possibility. If you think about that, that shouldn't be actually that far away, but then you always run into this problem where it's just like, would you really trust your email program to write all of your email? How much control do you want? If it's a really standard thing, it's like, Hey, I want to submit a pitch deck, then yeah, you can have an automated response like, Hey, please submit our form or like, Hey, I'm busy right now, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Most things don't necessarily fall into those standard buckets, and so it's like how much judgment, how much leeway you think you can give. It'd be kind of interesting, but you could see something. You could imagine something that trained on your responses, right? There was sort of like a generic model and then you plugged it in and then it looked at what you did over a period of time and it started trying to train on you and basically, initially, it would just queue things up. And you would approve them or amend them and it would learn again and you'd kind of keep going through it. But it seems like those things are like possible. But the problem with this is just initially it would be shitty so people wouldn't pay for it. You need it to become better, but this is like the whole sort of distribution monetization problem. And so, it seems like one of those things where like an existing email provider will do it because they already have distribution, so it's like not a great startup kind of thing, right? But yeah a lot of these ideas were things where you're just like, that's actually not that far off. It probably will exist. I'm not sure a startup is going to do it. It actually seems like an incumbent is better positioned to do some of these things. Jeremy Au: (16:57) Riffing off that, I think there's a version of that that has a lot of economic value and that you just reminded me of is basically like an AI version of Hubspot or Pipedrive or some kind of sales dynamic, which is I think the same level, but I think it's much more tinly, which is at the end of the funnel, a sales meet in terms of a contract is signed and then, of course, customer service takes on from there. But you know, all that work is such like all bashed up, right? I mean, you have lead generation then there's lead qualification. Then you got to do the onboarding call, and then you got to do a bunch of emails to schedule stuff, and then you got to go and do the call, and then you got to close and you go to the contract. And I'm like, of course HubSpot is like looking from a marketing and all in one perspective, but I think this is HubSpot's design philosophy, rightly so, is called there's a human driving this entire process because guess what? We already generated a lot of these communication tools and so I'm kind of waiting for HubSpot to maybe either implement it, that's one, but it could just be someone else, right? We're just basically saying like, look, you don't need to buy HubSpot or PipeDrive or whatever it is, or Streak CRM, you know, look, you just want close sales. We have this digital agent that basically is your secretary in terms of user shared or personal assistant, but it was going to help you drive sales, lead generation, typing your parameters with scrape LinkedIn for you do everything, just make is KISS, right? You know what I mean? And I think so many folks that are not company level, you're like a one man, five men, 10 men sales team. Just be like, okay, this is a great way for us to basically double, triple, quadruple productivity rather than more CRMs are about trying to avoid losing productivity because you're busy filling out notes on everything. So you could even have like meeting bots, every salesperson hates writing sales notes. Good. I understand cause you could be selling instead or you could be doing something else in your life. Shiyan Koh: (18:30) But that should already exist, right? You already have the like news, the recorder, it already summarizes and you can just insert it straight into the CRM. Jeremy Au: (18:38) Yeah, but then you had to go and if you put it in and after you had to go there, Ctrl + C, Ctrl + V, and then you got to edit a little bit and you go to press the submit button because even the transcription stuff, they don't summarize it so they just transcribe it. So what I'm trying to say is I think you just, everyone's just speaking on these like foundational things. Shiyan Koh: (18:53) They're doing it Jeremy Au: (18:54) They's starting. Shiyan Koh: (18:56) Have you seen Rewind? Jeremy Au: (18:56) Yes. I have seen Rewind. I thought it was pretty cool. Shiyan Koh: (18:58) It summarizes meetings and it's pretty good. Jeremy Au: (19:01) I mean, I wish I should've told somebody , almost like I want to say seven years ago, I said, I literally told, someone's asking me about something like transcription, et cetera. I said, can you just record meeting minutes and just tell me what the to-do is? Because we are always assigned this to either the most junior person who normally does a terrible job at it, or someone like who's kind of like middle to senior who's good enough to do it, but we need the engagement and the conversation and not taking meeting minutes. So I was, literally told him, I said, I'll literally pay you like $50 an hour meeting just to get this done because we're having important meetings. Anyway, you have to take my word for it, but I literally told the person that I should have recorded it in a request for status episode. Now it does. It's amazing. It's amazing. Shiyan Koh: (19:39) I actually had the first person who actually told me to turn off the recorder, the first person in three years, told me to turn off the recorder today. Jeremy Au: (19:46) Well. Shiyan Koh: (19:48) Citibank does not allow their employees to be on any recorded calls and also does not allow them to use ChatGPT. This is what I learned, Jeremy Au: (19:56) Interesting. I mean, I generally say no to being recorded, actually. I mean, you know. Shiyan Koh: (20:01) We're being recorded right now. Jeremy Au: (20:03) Cause I know we're going to be recorded, but then they're asking me stuff like, okay, we'd like to do a conversation about your financials. Are you okay being recorded? I'm like, No. Yeah. I'm just saying if you can't say no to, why would you say that? Shiyan Koh: (20:15) Yeah. Totally. But like a standard business meeting. Jeremy Au: (20:17) Yeah, like an internal business meeting, we're talking about stuff. But then of course, you know what, if you're like business humor. You're joking about A and B and C, I don't know. Shiyan Koh: (20:25) I don't know what kind of jokes you're making, man. Better watch out. Jeremy Au: (20:27) Okay. I mean, I love comedy, right? I think the big thing I realized about comedy is that it's always context and audience specific, right? So everything's funny within that time for the audience. But comedy kind of breaks down the moment you get outside that audience, or, yeah, outside the context. The problem of recordings is that it's not that, it's not that you don't have a good conversation with like your three people and you're joking about something. Let's say I'm in the army, right? And then I'm like, yeah I used to have lots of army comedy, right? But I wouldn't really want my bosses, I'm just saying, cause like they say like, oh, this is what kind of dark humor is this about life and you know, blah, blah, blah, wanting get out and all this other stuff. I'm just an example, right? That wouldn't play out well. And you zoom that out, outside Singapore, then it is a different form of joke. So I think that's why everything is getting like canceled, right? It's because comedy is about some level of understanding, shared understanding of the audience and context, but also some noticing or some absurdity of the outside environment and that ends outside environment. Yeah. It's the audience changes, right? And so I think from my perspective, that it's not about, I don't have the issue being recorded if, as long as that recording stayed for the three of us, for example. But once it scaled out to like 1 billion people on TikTok, nothing you say can really pan out. Shiyan Koh: (21:33) Aren't we on TikTok? Jeremy, Jeremy Au: (21:35) We are on tikTok. Shiyan Koh: (21:36) This podcast? Jeremy Au: (21:37) No, we're not going to get a cancel on TikTok because we know what we're talking about and people can opt into a conversation or people can opt out of that conversation. They can choose to listen to this on, swipe away from us, right? So this is a different context, but I think comedy is always context dependent, right? Yeah, there's a circle of trust. So yeah. So, I think there's lots of things that as all these meetings become transparent, and then of course, maybe you're discussing, I'm giving an example, performance reviews, I'm using an example, right? So yeah, you can imagine lawsuits happening for that. So what I mean by that is that protected categories, so there's obviously in the US there's age, gender so, so forth, all these other things, but one of the big issues that we saw was that the reason why nobody gives feedback after interview rejection is that, people get sued, because they say, Hey, you said that you're looking for a high energy person based on their feedback. And I am older and so therefore, you're saying that you're discriminating on me based on my energy level. It's code for, and so so forth and I think as a result, I think we basically saw the collapse of post interview feedback effectively, because, people just say like, Hey, we have lawsuits. So you imagine like meeting meetings about performance reviews, those would never be recorded because how do you have a frank conversation where you know that's, I don't know. I think there's that dynamic of transparency, which is a perfect virtue, but then also there's a trust circle, and that's at some level not the same thing. Shiyan Koh: (22:51) Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. People say crazy stuff. I had a friend get feedback was like, you seem great, but your lifestyle requirements are not, are too much for us. And like the lifestyle requirement was basically like I have to pick up my kids from school twice a week. Jeremy Au: (23:06) Yeah. I mean, Shiyan Koh: (23:07) You know, it's not like, not like she didn't want to do work. It's just like, Hey, like I have to do this thing and I'm happy to log back in after. Jeremy Au: (23:14) Yeah. Shiyan Koh: (23:14) Thought we were kind of like past that stage where it's basically you can't have a working parent. I mean, that seems like an insane selection criteria. Jeremy Au: (23:21) I think it's true. And I think that's the thing, right? It's just like, there's fair feedback and there's unfair feedback and I think transparency makes it super clear, but it's not in everybody's interest to make it super clear or it could even be misunderstood, right? So I think there's a crux of it. Okay. I think another tool I have would be figuring out if something is human or bot-made. I think I'm starting to see all these images, these texts, and I know it's so hard, but. Shiyan Koh: (23:46) You want know if it was artisanal. Jeremy Au: (23:48) Was it organically grown by a human? Did somebody sweat and then told to himself like, I handcrafted this horrible dad joke pun, and I laughed at myself. Hee Ha a at my laptop before hitting my submit button, instead of like, someone who just automatically generated, it was just a total bot. No one even, nobody even, you know, nobody even auto automatically generated. Is this a bot farming commcomma right? Shiyan Koh: (24:09) But why does that matter? Why does it matter if it's funny? Who? Why do you care who made it? Jeremy Au: (24:13) I'm an old person. I'm a geriatric millennial who likes my stuff human generated. I don't know. I mean, if you look at your social media feeds as a way just to be entertained, and it doesn't matter whether it's bot generated human generated, but if you're looking at it as a way to be part of the community, you wouldn't want this to be ghostwritten by somebody else. So, you, you know, if your secretary wrote that email, saying, oh, I really appreciated your new line of clothing, and it was really amazing. It'll be come across as so much better if it was written by you rather than written by a n AI personal assistant. Shiyan Koh: (24:45) Yeah, but you as the recipient, like you got already the good vibes from the message, right? Jeremy Au: (24:50) But that's why people want the signature, right? Somebody wrote handwritten cards. I mean, handwritten cards are luxury these days, otherwise it's just emails and texts. Happy Birthday is very different on WhatsApp than you wrote it down. You wrote whole birthday card. (25:01) Shiyan Koh: Jeremy Au: Yeah, level of effort. (25:03) Yeah, and it means more like the more busy you are. If you're the president and you wrote a written card, it means a lot more than, for example, Jeremy at the age of 12. Well, actually Jeremy, at the age of 12 was pretty cute, so I think it was worth a lot as well. But I'm just saying like, to some level, you know that when someone's really busy and it took the time to do that extra human touch, it's meaningful, right? Shiyan Koh: (25:23) Yeah. How much would you pay for that service though? Jeremy Au: (25:25) To find out if stuff is real or not. I think. Okay. To me, it would be a Chrome extension. Would just be a Chrome extension. I'll pay like 10 bucks. Oh yeah. I'll pay 10 bucks a month. Why not? Shiyan Koh: (25:33) All right. You heard it here, guys, $120. Jeremy Au: (25:37) Right? Okay. There's a great Instagram account of follow. It's like real, or not some equivalent of it. But basically, It shows what celebrities post on the Instagram of themselves, et cetera. And then it shows the getty images. But you know, like public photographers, public domain photographs of just them at the same event. And then you can just see the difference. And I just use that to remind myself, there's really so much like photoshopping, removing of blemishes, distortions, and all these filters to me. And you know, it, it, you know, like there's a lot really attractive people, both male and female on the internet all the time. And that Instagram kind of like always fact-checks me a little bit, which is like, yeah, guess what? You know, like, I don't need to look like that because it's totally impossible to look like that. But I mean, the truth is, if you are on the internet all a time, it's like, you know, your standards get whopped, right? Like 80, 90% of the images are like that, you know, then you're just like, oh, okay. It's totally normal to have like perfect skid, you know? And then you're like, oh. You know, people have pimples, people have whatever, and he is just like, you know, I mean, I think that's fine. I mean, there's like mouth blemishes and mouth freckles. Like I can imagine that, like, I can't believe I'm saying this, but it's like, okay, that's not even the worst thing I've seen, right? I think the worst thing I've seen is you know, those waists are like super skinny, I don't know. Shiyan Koh: (26:44) That's why I like Zoom. It makes me look better than Google Meet. Jeremy Au: (26:47) How does Google Meet do anything? What are you talking about? Shiyan Koh: (26:50) No, Zoom. Zoom has a correction feature. It makes you look better. Jeremy Au: (26:53) What? Shiyan Koh: (26:54) Yeah, you didn't turn it on? Jeremy Au: (26:56) This is a correction filter. Wait, what? Okay, wait, I need to check this out. Is it like a good correction filter? Shiyan Koh: (27:02) Yeah. It's good. This is like, so you know, you're on Zoom all day long and you like look at yourself and then you get up and go to the bathroom and you're like, wait, I look terrible. I don't understand. And you're like, oh, it's the Zoom correction filter. It makes me look better when I'm in meetings. Jeremy Au: (27:17) What? Okay. Tomorrow, I will try it. Shiyan Koh: (27:20) But you know what? Right now here, whoever's watching this, there's no correction filter. This is how we look. Jeremy Au: (27:26) I know we need to complain to the Riverside platform. It's like we need correction filters all the time. We need it. Shiyan Koh: (27:30) Yeah. We need to be approved. The wrinkles, you know, everything, smooth out our skin. Jeremy Au: (27:34) Oh boy. Yeah. Shiyan Koh: (27:36) Yeah. So another thing that people sort of asked for, which was just like they wanted a comprehensive view of their finances and they wanted to be able to like. Jeremy Au: (27:43) Yeah. What happened to them? Shiyan Koh: (27:44) They wanted me to interrogate it, like ask questions of your data. Jeremy Au: (27:51) Yeah. Shiyan Koh: (27:51) Without having to do the analysis yourself or having to do a ton of manipulation of the data. So like mint.com was just like, Hey, I'm going to log in and put everything in the same place, which was, you know, step one, but, first of all, it's hard to get aggregation across geographies. So let's say you had accounts in different places, that's pretty hard. It's easier to do in a single geography, but then, the data itself is not particularly insightful, right? It doesn't really tell you anything. So if you had to take it to the next level, you'd want to be able to talk to it the way you talk to a financial advisor. Jeremy Au: (28:22) Yeah. Exactly. Shiyan Koh: (28:23) You'd want to be like, Hey, given my current spending patterns, how does this set me up for retirement? Jeremy Au: (28:28) Right. Shiyan Koh: (28:28) Or like, it seems like we've been spending more on X, Y, Z thing, like what's going on there? And it would just tell you, right? It would basically analyze what was going on, like give you answers to it like a personal financial advisor you could interact with. But basically, it's just a ChatGPT’s bot sitting on top of your own personal data that was aggregated across like a bunch of different institutions and geographies and like, the difficulty is also being able to track the cache between everything. Jeremy Au: (28:55) Right. Yeah, that's super fair. And I think that's where some of this generative AI is really helpful as well, because there's a trust component if you have multiple accounts, et cetera, you traditionally probably need an agent to support you, right? So some sort of like representative to walk you through so, so forth. But there's a privacy component. I can tell them everything. These people tend to be, I wouldn't say fresh graduates, but they're relatively young. These are wealth advisors, and so I think to some extent you could trust an AI a little bit more to some extent, because it's not least talking to a human who could potentially talk about it over dinner no matter their NDA, et cetera. So yeah, that's a really interesting idea. I think that's a good idea especially because you can do all the things right? You can look at your property, you can look at your tax rates and how to apply for tax credit, et cetera. So this, that whole encompassing dynamic, right? Yeah, that's a great idea. Like a real wealth advisor, right? Shiyan Koh: (29:42) Yeah, but on your own data, which is basically saying like, Hey, I'm going to give you all my data and I just want to be able to ask you questions like, Hey, am I overspending my budget? If you set your own budget, you say, Hey, you know, I only want to spend $500 a month eating out. Could like halfway through the month be like, Hey, how am I doing right for the rest of the month? How am I doing against my budget? I think that would be like a sort of on-demand kind of useful intelligence. Jeremy Au: (30:06) Yeah, like basically giving you, he kind of scrapes your credit card statements as well, so you connect it in automatically, your bank balance, et cetera. So he just, he knows your, oh man, this is this. I've signed up for so many of these personal finance apps in the US and they've Yeah. Shiyan Koh: (30:20) Shitty. Jeremy Au: (30:21) Why? Yeah. Shiyan Koh: (30:22) Well, it's a variant. It's a variant of a bunch of startups that I've seen, which is like trying to replace the SQL query, right? So it's like the constant challenge of like business analytics teams, right? Is like they're getting questions from all over the business that are like, how's this cohort performing? What was the process marketing campaign like? Did it actually lead to an increase in conversion, blah, blah, blah. And then, some poor analyst is sitting there like querying the database and it's like, well, do you need that? Is there a way people use natural language to like query the data, set themselves, and self-serve, rather than having to rely on your, on a giant data analytics team to answer some of those questions? And I think that's like the sort of personal finance analog, right? Can I query my own data? Jeremy Au: (31:01) I think you also do like an idea that came out to me a long time ago was like a self-tribal reinforcement, brainwashing, I don't know what you call it, goal. Okay. Sounds scary. I don't know what rephrase is. It's okay. So for me, when I was like losing weight, I think a big part I had to do was I had change my tribe, right? And what I mean by that is I had to like, it was a pain in the ass, but basically I subscribed to all these health newsletters, health podcasters, and YouTubers. I'm just saying, right? I was like change my algorithm. Shiyan Koh: (31:27) Listening? You're listening to Huberman? Jeremy Au: (31:28) A little bit, but only when he's a guest. I don't listen to his, like regular stuff. Yeah. So I mean, I think these are all content, so I'm training YouTube, it's like, Hey, I'm trying to get healthy, right? I'm I don't want to click on those things, but I click on them anyway, just so that, I hope that the signal kind of like I'm putting like this bad signal on the sky saying like, help, I need Batman to come. And I mean, Instagram is why I follow these things. I also had unsubscribe from other things, right? And so I think there's a bit of a cultural, tribal dynamic, identity dynamic, and I think to some extent, some diet nutrition apps do that. They used to do that. I used to sign up for these, these health apps with these nutritionists humans who would, you would talk to them about, take photos of your food and then they'll positively reinforce you and say like, great, Jeremy, you did a great choice about that food. I'm just an example, right? But obviously, the problem is that, it falls apart the moment you get a big, giant piece of pizza and you don't take a photo of it because if you're guilty about telling someone about it and then they don't respond to it because they don't know about it and blah, blah, blah, all that stuff, right? Shiyan Koh: (32:20) So how about you just wear a camera and it like constantly tracks everything you're doing, so you can't even cheat yourself. Jeremy Au: (32:25) Yeah, but it's kind of like similar to personal finance assistant, but personal health assistant, right? It's like looking at your spend and all these other data sources that would never have been there. And there's the AI that basically just says like, Hey, we just noticed that you ate a lot this week at these restaurants. You, you ordered a giant Hawaii pizza. An example, right? I mean, you know, it is my kids, I swear it was like 2:00 AM my kids were asleep. Swear to God, you know? So, I'm just saying like, you know, there's some sort of the AI that could send me on WhatsApp to be like, you don't need to log into an app or over WhatsApp is if basically sends you a message that, Hey, we just know this, blah, blah, blah. Here's some nice positive message for yourself the day. Shiyan Koh: (32:58) I take photos of my food and I send them to my nutritionist and my nutritionist's constant comment is fish balls are not real protein. Please eat real protein. Jeremy Au: (33:08) Okay, so when I did those health apps in the US, it always broke down because they couldn't handle Asian food because you're like, you're taking a plate of taco. It looks the same as healthy noodles, honestly. But there's a big honking difference. And so from the following perspective, it's just totally different. They couldn't handle Asian foods, right? So it's just like, you need to go carb-less. And I'm like, you need to stop eating potatoes. And I'm like, I don't eat potatoes. I want rice, I want noodles. And they're like, eh, sorry. You know, our training SOP for our army of human therapists in terms of nutritionists. Yeah. Shiyan Koh: (33:37) A shoutout though, Novi Health which is a Singaporean startup, their database has Asian food. Jeremy Au: (33:43) Yeah. Shiyan Koh: (33:44) So you can put chocolate there., You can put Ramen. And it also has Western food. You can also put like a tuna sandwich or whatever, a bagel. I could do it, but it has a Asian food. So shoutout to Sue Anne and Novi Health. Jeremy Au: (33:55) Awesome. Well, that's a plus one to our Monk's Hill Ventures part for the company, so thank you for the very kind words. Yay. Check out Novi Health. So yeah, it takes the tricky part, right? But it could be other things like, I'm trying to, I want to really get more into I think the Google and entire internet algorithms are based on who we were, but I think, who do we want to be? Shiyan Koh: (34:14) Oh, I think, if you could put a bot into the group chat. Jeremy Au: (34:18) Ooh, like on WhatsApp. Shiyan Koh: (34:19) So I mean, I actually like this and there's a lot of social science research that reinforces this, changing your context helps you change your behavior. So like my college friends, we all have this WhatsApp channel called fit workout or whatever, and people post their workouts. And so, we all live in different geographies. Basically, you wake up and you're like, oh, I don't want it. But then you can see all your friends already worked out that day and you're like, oh fine, I'm going to do something. But imagine if there was a bot in that chat. So it was like even more active. It was like, Shiyan, don't be lazy. You know, Sarah already did this. And it can even go back and be and it could be like, why don't you try to beat Sarah's distance or time? Jeremy Au: (34:56) Yeah. Shiyan Koh: (34:57) And it can egg you on, but it just makes like the, it makes the passive dynamic a little bit more active to kind of say hey, and remind you where your goals are and things like that. And I think these are very, these are not technically complex and you could sort of see them becoming ubiquitous, right? Like these little sort of voices that are just like trying to nudge you in a specific direction. Jeremy Au: (35:17) I mean, that's what FitBit was trying to do, right? They're trying to create these communities, right? So that you could, cause at the end of the day, if you're a user of FitBit, you either could and it circles back to your point earlier, right? Is the newsfeed, is that feed of images of people being healthy? For example, is it something to be consumed? Is this a utilitarian perspective or is it for a sense of belonging? And the truth is that if you're just looking for that information, both. I can imagine that, I mean, I think that's the issue, right? It's like historically, every community allows you to consume in that sense, but also to allow you to belong. And so Reddit, for example, when you have bots, is that, they're breaking the social contract in the sense that something that you consume was produced by somebody else who also belongs, right? In this case, now the production is done by bot and the, belonging is still another looker or whatever. So I think there's that breaking of the social compact, but I think that's for the social clubs. But obviously, if you're talking about trying to get fit and you can't find a community right. Then this is a great, I don't know, intermediate way to get there or accelerate. Shiyan Koh: (36:11) Yeah. Jeremy Au: (36:11) On that note, any parting ideas, any you want to shoot out there before we wrap things up? Shiyan Koh: (36:16) No, I think these are just always fun exercises to kind of get people's juices flowing on. Like when you look around the world, like what do you feel is like pretty broken and you know, what would it be interesting to go solve. I'm actually curious to hear from the listeners. I would invite them to submit like requests for startups and we can do an episode with listener ideas and just bat them around a little bit and talk about what would be hard or what would be easy or how would we test it. I think that could just be like a really fun way to exercise our sort of investor brains. But yeah, I think one thing is wanted to kind of share an event that's happening this week. It's Founders' Friends.. It's a series that we've run in the US in San Francisco and New York, and always had pretty good reception on it. It's the first time we're doing it in Asia. It is Wednesday, August 2nd, and we'll be interviewing a founder, Max from Pantas, which is a Malaysian carbon accounting software. He started out as an e-invoicing software and then pivoted to this and has seen really interesting traction. And so would love to invite folks to join us to hear a little bit about Max's story and then meet other founders. And I guess Jeremy, we can include the Luma link in the show notes for folks. And if it's successful then, we would love to be able to do more and I think the goal of this is to have really authentic conversations and not just talk about the raw stuff, but all this other really hard stuff. Jeremy Au: (37:35) Yeah. Shiyan Koh: (37:36) I think that's kind of a conversation. Would invite you guys to come join. Jeremy Au: (37:40) Awesome. On that note, see you next week. Shiyan Koh: (37:43) See you next week. Please register for Founder Friends in Singapore here. …

Singapore: Silicon Box Unicorn, TheAsianParent Acquisition and Sovereign Wealth Fund Investment Shifts (GIC, Temasek) with Shiyan Koh - E380

“I always tell some VCs that education as a category is not really education per se, because education is often very much a policy and government thing. If you think about it, if any adult has a kid, that catalyzes the transformation of the entire budget. It changes whether you're going to buy a car or not. You write a will. So many changes happen with becoming a parent, and education is a subset of the category that's focused on the child. So it's an interesting dichotomy that founders who are looking to catalyze or activate that, personal finance transformation or consumer persona have to be thoughtful about.” - Jeremy Au “It’s challenging because when your economy has been so driven by one industry for a long time, workforce is trained in a specific way, so it's hard to diversify. When you tie strings to some things, you end up with a bunch of artificial ones because everyone thinks if they want to get money, they need to open a representative office in Oman or Riyadh. And then, they end up with a little bit of non-economic things happening. But I think this transition was well underway even 10 years ago. Out of the Emirates, Dubai had the least amount of oil, so that's why they've emerged as a financial center faster. So it has been really interesting to see them be more aggressive on these sorts of diversification fronts.” - Shiyan Koh “I think the legalization of egg freezing was a good first small step. Limiting it to married straight couples is pretty narrow. And so, I think they should consider expanding that to single women. This issue is about if you want to do it yourself or you want to wait for a partner, but then for women, there's a biological clock. And so, you get to a point where you don't have a partner, but you still want to have kids. I think that's something that we should consider locally as well if we really want to increase our birth rate. There are all these pockets of people who want to have kids but are limited by some legal reason rather than some actual biological reason.” - Shiyan Koh Shiyan Koh, Managing Partner of Hustle Fund, and Jeremy Au covered three main topics: 1. Sovereign Wealth Fund Investment Shifts: Jeremy and Shiyan talked about how GIC conservatively deployed 46% less capital in 2023, and Temasek 53%. Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) deployed $31.6 billion in 2023, 53% higher than the $20.7 billion it invested the previous year - alongside other Gulf funds. This is due to high oil prices, investment mandates and national strategies to diversify their economies away from energy dependence. 2. Unicorn Silicon Box: Jeremy and Shiyan discussed Silicon Box (Singapore's latest unicorn), their veteran leadership and $2 billion Tampines facility build-out. They highlighted its role in the shifting landscape of semiconductor manufacturing in Southeast Asia and its implications for the region’s economic growth. 3. TheAsianParent Acquisition of Motherswork: Jeremy and Shiyan touched on the parenting platform’s strategy to expand from its digital roots into omnichannel physical retail. They also talked about the challenges brought by declining birth rates in several Asian economies, the dynamics of education, and national fertility & family policies. They also touched on Noah Smith (Noahpinion with 139,000+ subscribers) wanting to work for Jacqueline Poh of Singapore's EDB (at the same managerial level as Patrick Collison of Stripe), and the reasons behind the interest in parenting startups in Southeast Asia, spanning services across childcare, IVF and egg freezing. Please forward this insight or invite friends at https://whatsapp.com/channel/0029VakR55X6BIElUEvkN02e Supported by HDMall HD Mall is a healthcare marketplace in Southeast Asia connecting patients to over 1,800 medical providers. This covers multiple categories such as dental, aesthetics, and elective surgeries. Over 300,000 patients have accessed more affordable healthcare via HD Mall. Get yourself a well-deserved health checkup. If you're in Thailand, go to hdmall.co.th. If you're in Indonesia, go to hdmall.id. (01:26) Jeremy Au: Hey Shiyan, how are you? (01:28) Shiyan Koh: Good morning, good morning. I'm good. Yourself? (01:31) Jeremy Au: Good as well. Just put the kids to sleep. I'm here in New York City, but definitely excited to have this discussion. There's so much news that we were just like sending to each other and it was just like, oh, we've got to cut stuff of the stuff we want to talk about. I guess it's a busy start to January. (01:43) Jeremy Au: And I think the big one that you and I were laughing about a little bit was that we saw the tweet where it said, Noah Smith at Noahpinion, which is, I think, one of the world's largest substacks on geopolitics and a lot of people really respect his writing, and he tweeted, I've only met two people in life who make me think, man, I would like to work for this person. Patrick Collison of Stripe, and Jacqueline Poh of Singapore's Economic Development Board. (02:03) Shiyan Koh: It’s a big compliment. (02:04) Jeremy Au: It's big. (02:06) Shiyan Koh: He probably meets lots of interesting people. (02:07) Jeremy Au: Exactly, exactly. Think about it, right? I mean, Stripe is like, obviously, a giant unicorn, global company. Patrick Collison is the CEO and cofounder. And then, yeah, Singapore's Economic Development Board is on par and Jacqueline Poh is there. So, interesting tier to have. (02:21) Shiyan Koh: Well, is it a comment about Jacqueline or is it a comment about EDBI? (02:25) Jeremy Au: Well, it could be both, right? I mean, you know, Jacqueline Poh is successful because of EDB and EDB is successful because of Jacqueline Poh. So, maybe. (02:31) Shiyan Koh: I don't know. I read it, I read it as a sort of like this person was really amazing. I would like to work with them versus like this organization. I mean, don't get me wrong. I think the organization is pretty interesting and I'm sure a lot of people actually, if you don't know anything about Singapore, you'd be like, what is an economic development board? Who are these people? (02:50) Shiyan Koh: Yeah, I don't know. I thought it was a huge compliment. (02:52) Jeremy Au: What do you think the context of that meeting is? I mean, I was just kind of wondering how they met. (02:56) Shiyan Koh: I don't know. Now we're just in the realm of random speculation. (02:59) Jeremy Au: It's just a rampant speculation. We'll be like, they met at a conference in Abu, a rampant speculation. (03:05) Shiyan Koh: They probably met at Davos, right? (03:07) Jeremy Au: Yeah, maybe in World Economic Forum. Maybe, they met at, like, other speculations. Like, we don't know, maybe we should just ask her next time. You know what, maybe we should ask her, invite her to explain what's going on. (03:16) Shiyan Koh: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We should invite her. (03:18) Jeremy Au: But definitely, I read a tweet, it's like, wow, that's amazing, you know, and a lot of folks read Noah Smith, obviously. I think Noah Smith writes a lot about the US, the Western system, to some extent civilization, society, technology, and Singapore does come up as one of those benchmarks of references that he uses as well. So, interesting time to hit. (03:36) Shiyan Koh: We're the Continental Hotel, Jeremy. Do you ever watch John Wick? (03:39) Jeremy Au: You know what? You revealed something! I have never watched John Wick. That's my secret. (03:44) Shiyan Koh: It's on every airplane flight. It's on every airplane flight. And like, there's four of them. You can't get away from it. Even if you try to not watch it, you keep flipping. You're like, oh, there's another John Wick. Oh, there's another John Wick. Should I watch this? (03:53) Jeremy Au: I've given up. I mean, it's just like action. Obviously, I'm a big fan of, you know, the original Neo but I just can't get into this, like, obviously there's like the Gun Fu, Kung Fu combination. (04:05) Shiyan Koh: Yeah. No, no, no. I mean, I'm not, I'm not really that into the fighting, but like, I feel like, some founder told me this and I really like it is that Singapore is the Continental Hotel, which is like, there are rules, you know, like maybe outside there's chaos and fighting and murder, but inside the Continental Hotel, there are rules. We lay down our arms and we like eat good food. So that is, that is Singapore in the, in the geopolitical, totally flippant comment. (04:27) Jeremy Au: So you're saying Noah Smith and Jacqueline Poh are like global assassins with cool outfits and style. (04:31) Shiyan Koh: And then they met somewhere, you know, in the Continental Hotel, yeah. And then they traded ideas. (04:36) Jeremy Au: There we go. Drinking the Singapore Sling. There we go. (04:38) Shiyan Koh: Ugh, the worst national drink ever. I hate the Singapore sling. (04:41) Jeremy Au: You know, I was so disappointed because the Singapore Sling is so famous, right? I drank it. I was like, what, what is going on here? (04:46) Shiyan Koh: Yeah, yeah. We need a new national drink. Actually, I feel like that should be something. We should start a competition for a new national beverage. (04:54) Jeremy Au: A new national beverage? (04:56) Shiyan Koh: Yeah. A new national cocktail to replace the Singapore sling because it is disgusting. (05:01) Jeremy Au: Well, this is where I can outperform our ChatGPT. I can make some names for it even though I can't make it, so we can make the Malayan Magic. How about that? You know, the tao kuai tiao chiller. (05:11) Shiyan Koh: The Practical potion. (05:11) Jeremy Au: Stand up for Singapore Supreme. (05:14) Shiyan Koh: That sounds like a pizza. No. (05:15) Jeremy Au: Yeah, you think about it, supremes are like pepperoni or something. (05:18) Jeremy Au: Speaking about other Singapore news as well, you know, there's a big interesting number that came out, which is that over the past year, GIC cut the capital deployed by 46% down to $20 billion, and Temasek also cut new investments by 53% to 6.3 billion last year. Well, in comparison, Saudi Arabia's public investment fund emerged as the world's most active sovereign investor last year and grew from $20.7 billion in 2022 to $31.6 billion in 2023. So quite an interesting trend that happened. (05:52) Shiyan Koh: Yeah. I mean, I think there's lots of reasons to pull back, if people feel like valuations are high. They want to preserve capital for supporting existing portfolio companies. They want to reserve dry powder because they think prices will go lower. It's hard to speculate on various things. And then, of course, I think the Saudis and other Middle Eastern sovereign funds had a huge year just given oil prices. And so have a lot of capital to deploy. (06:14) Jeremy Au: Yeah, I think, it's not really a Singapore thing, right? I mean, almost all funds kind of like pull back on deployment because of, like you said, the market uncertainty, the interest rates. So, people are just waiting it out and trying to see what's happening. But the Gulf sovereign wealth funds, not just Saudi Arabia, but also Abu Dhabi, Qatar, all increased their deployment in their sovereign wealth funds as well. So quite interesting to see. I think you and I were discussing about recently the information was talking about how a lot of VC funds are now flying to the Middle East to raise funds again. (06:42) Shiyan Koh: I mean, after the Khashoggi incident, I think people were very appalled and sort of sought to distance themselves from that. But I think as other sources of capital have dried up or slowed down it's like, why do you rob banks? Cause that's where the money is. So you got to go where money is. And so people have continued to raise from like, I mean, it's not just the Saudis, right? There's like a more than a handful, two handfuls of sovereigns in the Middle East that are deploying and trying to diversify, like that's part of it. It's like, they know their economies are very energy-dependent and they need to be able to diversify out of that. And so they're being pretty aggressive there. (07:13) Jeremy Au: Yeah, it reminds me about how people forget that so many stories of like the tech rally for example, there's Uber, Didi, even Grab, a lot of the great companies that are out there, a lot of them were funded by South Bank, which we know, and I think people sometimes forget that South Bank was primarily funded by Middle Eastern Capital, right? (07:32) Shiyan Koh: Mm hmm. (07:33) Jeremy Au: And so that was a unique marriage between a Japanese investment team at that point of time, plus the Middle Eastern capital. And I remember this US VC was telling me that from their perspective, it was as if the Death Star appeared outside Silicon Valley, so, from their perspective, because the total size of the South Bank vehicle that they had, with the Millicent capital they had, was effectively the sum total of all US VCs at that point in time. So it's as if, like this Death Star appears above Alderaan, and everyone's like, what the, why is there so much capital and how are they going to deploy it? Of course, I think Silicon Valley went off to be inspired by this and go off to raise large capitals, pools as well, which kind of kick started a huge late stage growth equity trend and momentum, which again pulled up the early stage. Again, it was also part of the zero interest rate policy era as well. But it's kind of interesting to see that you all kind of like tie together for that. (08:22) Shiyan Koh: Yeah. RIP low interest rate environments. (08:25) Jeremy Au: R. I. P. R. I. P. Z. I. R. P. (08:29) Shiyan Koh: ZIRP RIP ZIRP. (08:30) Jeremy Au: Sorry, that'd be a funny t-shirt. This is like one of those joke shirts. It's like, it's like nobody understands what it means except those were the good times, I guess. (08:36) Shiyan Koh: Yeah. Things can only stay free or cheap for so long, right? to be a corrective force. (08:41) Jeremy Au: I mean Japan still happens to have lower interest rates on average compared to the rest. I mean, they're still looking to finally have more of that inflation they're looking for, stimulate the economy further. (08:51) Jeremy Au: You know, I think at the end of the day, what I've heard from someone else who was fundraising capital from the Middle East is that these investment authorities are very much focused, not just obviously on returns, because they have so much cash from the petroleum and so forth, and like you said, record high energy prices but they also really focus on investments that they think will help them with the transition towards a new post oil economy, which has been quite interesting. So they're out busy looking for renewables, manufacturing, robots, and basically saying, if we invest in you, we would like you to also invest a portion of that investment into something that works for our home economies, which is quite interesting, actually. (09:24) Shiyan Koh: Yeah, I think it's it is it is a challenging thing though because when your economy has been so driven by one industry for a long time, it isn't just like your workforce is trained in a specific way, right? People are used to doing things in a specific way. So it's hard to diversify out. And so when you tie strings to some of the stuff, then you end up with a bunch of artificial stuff because you know, everyone's like, oh, if I want to get this money, I need to open a representative office in Oman or Riyadh or wherever. And then, you end up with sort of a little bit non-economic things happening. But I think this transition was well underway even 10 years ago. I was in Dubai and Abu Dhabi and, and Dubai, you know, of the Emirates, Dubai had the least amount of oil, so that's why they've emerged as a financial center faster because they were like, Oh man, we're going to run out of oil sooner than everybody else. We need to get on it. So it has been really interesting to see them be more aggressive on these sorts of diversification fronts. (10:18) Jeremy Au: Yeah. And I think that's a big part of the Singapore story, right? Lee Kuan Yew always likes to say that we have no natural resources. So we had to go about building a financial sector, the education for our own people and then also start moving up the manufacturing and assembly kind of production value chain. And I think recently we saw one of the fruits of that labor. We've been talking about silicon and chips for a while. And so we welcomed our newest Singapore unicorn, Silicon Box, that raised 200 million in a series B. So they hit over a billion dollar valuation, less than three years after its founding. Investors were Maverick Capital, H Fund, Growth Investor, BRV Capital, Presidium Capital as well. And then they also had prior participation from Tata Electronics, Taiwanese Semiconductor Group, UMC, Japanese Electronics Group, TTK, and US semiconductor Company, LAM Research. (11:03) Shiyan Koh: Yeah, and they're building a big facility, I think, Tampines? (11:05) Jeremy Au: Yeah, gotta do those chips. It's exciting times. And I think this team is a team that has previously been founders in the industry in the semiconductor space as well. So, it's not exactly like a fresh out of university startup doing a giant round band of good old days. But, it is a startup. I think they are building something new. But, it's just interesting that you know, I think people are doubling down on that set of investments for Singapore. (11:26) Shiyan Koh: Kind of diversify out of Taiwan, right? (11:27) Jeremy Au: Yeah, I mean, you know, and I think it's not, it's an expensive facility, right? This one, like I said, in Tampines is a $2 billion facility, 750,000 square feet. And you can imagine it's not just, it's just a build out, right? Let alone the running, the renovation, the maintenance, and then all the continued investments in that facility to continue upgrade it. It's a bonkers I don't know, set of engineering requirements. I would love to visit it one day, now that I think about it. It would be, it must be fun. (11:52) Shiyan Koh: I've been to a FAB before. (11:53) Jeremy Au: Ooh, what is it like? Describe it. (11:55) Shiyan Koh: I mean, you're in a clean room, right? Like, they have to put on the, it's incredibly mechanized. If you're ever in the Bay Area, there's the Computer History Museum in San Jose. And they show the early semiconductor manufacturing machines. And it's pretty cool. So, I highly recommend that but yeah, I mean, it's a marvel of engineering, is I guess what I would say about that. (12:13) Jeremy Au: Aha, when you say marvel, it's also, the founders were previously founded chip maker, Marvell as well, there you go. I saw your pun there, there you go. (12:22) Shiyan Koh: Dad jokes, not just for dads. (12:24) Jeremy Au: There we go. So, kudos to the husband wife duo, Sehat Sutardja, Weili Dai, and Han Byung Joon. So, it'll be interesting to see how that continues to play out. But I think we'll continue to see not just this investment, but think more, it's an interesting career ladder for a lot of folks out there to do kind of like these microchips as a skill set in Southeast Asia. Speaking about entrepreneurship, we also saw recently theAsianparent as well did the acquisition. Can you share a little bit more, Shiyan? (12:47) Shiyan Koh: Yeah, I think anyone who has kids has probably seen theAsianparent or used their groups or content. And they bought Motherwork, which is a retail chain pretty prevalent if you're ever in the market for a stroller or car seat or cute clothes, you've probably seen them. And so, they recently acquired that. And so I guess doubling down on the kind of an omni-channel approach and so I hadn't known this, but Roshni, theAsianparent founder, actually was mentioning that they'd actually done a bunch of e-commerce in Indonesia and they actually have their own line of halal pre, post-pregnancy items. So whether it's like, creams, moisturizer when you're pregnant and post pregnancy, you're always trying to look for non-toxic things and you're like reading the labels and all that sort of stuff. And it has sort of the added layer of being halal and compliant and those have really been popular in the online channel. So it's interesting to go into the omni channel approach, right? Obviously, it's like a pretty different skill set. But Motherswork, I think, they're a long-time Singapore brand that team has experienced operating stores and can bring that to the combined entity. And so, it's an interesting move and I think you saw it with Love Bonito, right? It originally started out as a blog shop and then eventually wound up having physical stores and even for some of the earlier kind of US e-commerce ones, whether it's Warby Parker, Bonobos, they all wound up eventually having physical presence. And I think the twist here is like theAsianparent community that's wrapped around it for the motherhood journey. I got put into one of these P1 telegram groups. My daughter was like entering P1 and it was like first of all, amazing. There's like all of these moms with the same singular focus: get my child to RGPS, whatever it is and the amount of energy information advice getting on it. That was like, really my boy, so I think it's interesting. We're seeing more growth through acquisition consolidation in the space. I think we're going to continue to see that. And so congratulations to Roshni and theAsianparent team. I'm kind of excited to see what happens from here. (14:39) Jeremy Au: Yeah, I think shout out to Dershing for writing another great blog post on it. And I think he mentioned several interesting facts, right? It's that she has previously taken money from Vertex. They actually founded over 10 years ago, back in 2011. And then, Dershing helped involve her in a founder peer group where she met her now husband who is leading 99.co as well. So another founder husband as well. Small world indeed. And I think it's interesting because he mentions a few facts, saying that theAsianparent expended to 12 million USD revenue 2021 but was to loss making at 6.9 million. That was during the pandemic time. And since then they've been right sizing for profit and their point of view in their statement is that they're currently a better positive now in 2024. So I thought it was an interesting story, familiar one. I think a lot of people were very focused on growth during the pandemic period. And then now everyone's just kind of like figuring out how to right size and be cashflow positive. (15:32) Shiyan Koh: It is funny though, right? Cause like the market is parents and in Singapore. Unlike some of our neighbors, we have a very declining birth rate and this is a constant source of stress for like policymakers. So I was actually at the announcement of the acquisition. Roshni had invited me and a couple other folks to be on a panel and the topic was actually declining birth rates in Singapore and what we should do to fix it. And yeah, it's like, okay, what is the macro demand for my product? Babies. Why are people not having more babies? How do I solve this? But fortunately, I mean, I think theAsianparent, Motherswork ,they're multi multi-country, regional businesses. And so I think we don't have that problem with our neighbors, just here in Singapore that I think we're well below replacement rate. (16:13) Shiyan Koh: Do you have a point of view? (16:14) Jeremy Au: Yeah. I was part of that newspaper article in 2020. They were like, record low birth rate in 2020. Who are these parents who are still having kids? And then I'm like featured with my wife and our kid, you know, frankly, I told the reporter- (16:25) Shiyan Koh: So, what would, what would cause you to have a third kid? Because now you're at two, right? So replacement is 2.1, and then there's all these people not having children. So you, if you needed to raise number, you actually need to do more. Okay, Jeremy? It's not enough. So, what would cause you to have one more kid? (16:39) Jeremy Au: Well, The Straits Times is always writing more articles about that. I think my point of view is that two things: it's at the end of the day, I think that parents want to have kids when they feel like they have enough space and financial resources. And so I think there's some interesting statistics out there, which is that, when You know, your car size limits and the requirement for car seat, this is a fourth has impacted the optimal family size down to effectively two kids or 2.5 kids in the US because it's hard to fit a family of four kids, for example, in a five seat car, right? So there's some interesting econometric studies about those natural experiments to see how that affects fertility. But yeah, I think if parents feel like they're financially secure and they have lots of space. I think they will have more kids naturally. And I think it was interesting because the only countries that we're really seeing is that the Norwegian and the French countries are starting to see that they have a J-curve where they have got kind of popped out the other end and now it's no longer declining. It's kind of like going up a bit because they have enough social support. There's not much opportunity cost in terms of career to have kids as well. And people feel safe and secure. I think the only other country that's having lots of kids in the OECD actually is Israel as well. And I was talking to somebody and he was basically saying like, Oh, if you have three kids, people think you're poor. And I was like, wow, that's an interesting phrase. I've never heard that before. Obviously it's just one remark, but I think it just goes to that, you know, there's also a cultural aspect of it as well. (17:53) Shiyan Koh: Yeah. I mean, I do think that the zero to six phase, pre-primary school is very expensive because of private childcare and things like that. And so, if you have a two-parent family, then someone has to watch the kid. You have to pay someone to watch the kid. You can't necessarily assume that they have grandparents or other family members who are available to help out. And so that does seem like an area where perhaps public policy can play a role in helping to alleviate some of those costs, but I put out the thought that I think it's also a mindset thing, which is like, everyone feels competitive, like, oh, it's very competitive for my kid to get a job and make it, you know, cost of living, all this sort of stuff, kind of compounds onto that feeling. And so they're like, I need to husband my resources and pour them into this one child versus, oh, I'm gonna have three kids and they'll be fine. I don't need to hothouse them, to be what is it, baby Mozart, or whatever the case be. And I think that's a much harder thing to change. (18:45) Jeremy Au: I have a lot of thoughts about that because I actually studied economic demography back in undergrad, and so very interested in this topic. And you know that I also worked on an early childcare education company as well, and those trends that you mentioned are totally true because from an objectively and historical perspective, this is the easiest time to have kids, right? And what I mean by that is, you go back a thousand years ago, there's bad sanitation, and there was random wars, civil wars, famine, hunger. And if you go back to like 200 years ago, 300 years ago, life was really, really hard, and people had lots of kids, right? I was, was reading. (19:13) Shiyan Koh: Well, they had no birth control, Jeremy. (19:15) Jeremy Au: As well, that's true. But I'm just saying, like, today is objectively easier in many ways, because I was reading What to Expect When You're Expecting, and, there's like hospital packing bags, like you got to arrange all this stuff beforehand, so forth. And I was like, oh, today in Singapore, there's like one day shipping, one week shipping. You don't have to pack like months in advance for everything. We didn't have diapers and stuff like that. And we just went to the supermarket and we bought diapers, right? I mean, I'm just saying like the convenience of the modern lifestyle is an order of magnitude simpler than what it was our parents', let alone our grandparents' and great grandparents'. So from perspective is I think today, it's as good a time for many societies, for many parents in those societies versus in a historical timeframe. But I think, like you said, the mindset has changed where it's also the hot housing aspect about it is very important. And the truth is, that concentration of resources has also generated a lot of these businesses. I mean, I was like looking at a different kind of car seats, right? If you have a couple hundred dollars out of thousands of dollars, and you're like, you can imagine education as well, there's a certain dynamic where concentrating more resources on fewer children also means that you have more resources to spend, which fuels to some extent the daycare categories and so forth. So one of the big categories growing Southeast Asia is what historically would have been called premium daycares, because now, let's not go to that mainstream or mass daycare. Let's go to a premium one that has all these ABC, better teachers, which I think are important and obviously have some level of outcome as well. It's just that, you wouldn't have that trend if parents didn't have that mindset shift as well. So it's an interesting consumerization as well and disposable income for parents to become parents. (20:42) Shiyan Koh: Yeah. I guess the one question I had was like, why does school stop at 1:30? And someone said, oh, it's because it used to be morning session and afternoon session when we didn't have enough schools. We had to split the school session, but that's not true anymore. And so it presumes that you have someone who's available to pick your kid up in the middle of the day. But we also want like, you know, high female workforce participation, right? Not to assume that the mom is the one who's always picking up the kid, but then it's like, then you have to occupy your kid. And that's more cost and more logistics. And it's like, why don't, actually, schools can run until five? (21:12) Shiyan Koh: But it doesn't have to be academic actually. We're a wealthy nation. We can play sports. We can learn how to play an instrument. We can just run around and have fun, like, I don't know. I was like, why, why is that? I'm so curious. (21:23) Jeremy Au: I mean, like you said, it's more of a historical norm, right? And just the understanding that parents would fill up the rest of the day with other activities and so forth, but like you said, it's a little bit outmoded because the truth is, why not? And I think you see that. Actually, I always look at it in terms of a historical arc of education. It's like, universities used to be optional, right? And then eventually, K-1 to K-12 was also optional for people who can afford it, and it was all kinds of various kind of structures, very loose. Then eventually, the government went on to nationalize the education system by formalizing or encouraging people, eventually mandating people do some kind of graduate education, eventually mandating K-12, 1 to 12, primary 1 to primary 6 to secondary school to high school, junior college. So actually what we see in the world today is we also see that a lot of countries are deciding to fold preschool education into the national ministries of education, exactly because of what you said is that, on a private basis, people kind of want this. But from a government perspective, what you want is high birth rates. Then you want people to have a better way, what experience that you kind of want to subsidize, but also you want to expand the hours. So that, you know, normal life in dues, right? (22:24) Shiyan Koh: Yeah, I mean, one thing I really appreciated during the pandemic was that they didn't shut the schools down. (22:28) Jeremy Au: Oh yeah, big one. (22:29) Shiyan Koh: Because I think, you know, for my friends in the US, that was a major issue, during the pandemic was like schools were closed, which made working extremely challenging, right? Even like the circuit breaker period was brief. It was only 2 months, but it was really hard to work with little kids running around your house. So, it was an interesting. It was like a fun panel to be part of, but it did make me ask a lot of questions about what is the right setup or format of public education? And why should it be left to parents to like, and to feed the sort of hot house industry, which we could debate whether that actually serves a positive social good or not. (23:01) Jeremy Au: Yeah, well, I mean, the inverse of that is crazy if you think about it, right? if you have your birth rate effectively one for every two parents, that means your population halves for every generation effectively. So every 70 years on average, your population goes down in half. It's actually kind of a crazy thing and you see that in Japan and to some extent Korea really, it's like, the aging population has a serious impact on the economy. And China's like off busy building robots. Now does the beast an article because they continue to shrink in terms of population. So it's not just an individual problem, but it's actually kind of like a structural policy problem and also it creates these incentives and economic pools for companies Mothers work and theAsianparent, right? I mean, I think we definitely see a huge category of parenting apps, I would say, in Southeast Asia. So what's been interesting is that you see Indonesia and Vietnam, there's a lot of new parenting apps that are looking to build that authority from a pediatrician, doctor, medical, also from a nutrition, supplement, enrichment perspective and try to bring it together in a full stack so there are multiple competitors in the space now. And from their perspective, it's kind of like going through what Singapore did several decades ago, which is that, the narrowing to have less children, but more focus on economic resources on those fewer children and a rising middle class and that generates that pull off capital I'm looking to buy, right? (24:15) Shiyan Koh: And productivity, right? (24:17) Jeremy Au: That's true. So I think a lot of people are interested in investing in this category. You can call it education, but I think I always tell some VCs while looking at education as a category is like, it's not really education per se because education is often very much a policy and government thing. But then if you think about it for any adult, if you have a kid, that catalyzes the transformation of the entire budget. It changes whether you're going to buy a car or not, what to buy, exactly, start having a joint account, food, diapers, You write a will. It's like so many changes happen with becoming a parent. And education is a subset of the category that's focused on the child. So I think it's an interesting dichotomy that I think founders who are looking to catalyze or activate that, I don't know what's the word, personal finance transformation or consumer persona have to be thoughtful about. (25:01) Shiyan Koh: Yeah, definitely. So you didn't answer the question though. Jeremy, what would incent you to have a third kid? (25:07) Jeremy Au: Yeah, I wouldn't mind having a third kid. But it definitely has some challenges, I would say. I mean, we have two wonderful daughters so far. So yeah, I don't know. I'm not gonna say no. (25:15) Shiyan Koh: Is Candice listening? (25:15) Jeremy Au: She knows so yeah, so I think that's really the crux of it, right? But you know, like you said, it boils down to career. It boils down to security, just some sort of stability. What is very true and I think it's interesting because I've seen this, which is obviously egg freezing became legal in Singapore recently, only for married, straight couples. So that's one side of it. But also I recently saw some startup decks for artificial wombs, right? And the promise of extending the reproductive window. And one thing that's interesting is that actually, there are a lot of people who would love to have more kids when they're older, it's just that they can't have kids. So I have friends who are going through IVF right now, because they are trying to have kids and they started later because they have some reproductive health issue. (25:51) Jeremy Au: So for example, there's a founder, Anna Haotanto, right? She's recently built a platform for parents to look for IVF or egg freezing services, and she's partnering that two sided marketplace of clinics and service providers, along with the other parents across Southeast Asia. So very interesting set of opportunities to explore. (26:09) Shiyan Koh: Yeah, I mean, I think the legalization of egg freezing was a good first small step. I think limiting it to married straight couples is pretty narrow. And so, I think they should consider expanding that to single women. I think this issue is sort of like, do you want to do it yourself? You want to wait for a partner? But then for women, like there's a biological clock, right? And so you get to a point where it's like, well, I don't have a partner, but I still want to have kids. So, what are my options here? And actually, in the US, I have a number of friends who are single moms by choice. They're professional women. They never met the right person, but they're like, I still want to have kids. And I'm going to go do that while I can. And they have the resources to, you know, their parents come help, all that sort of stuff. And now they've got kids and they've got their family, and now there's less pressure to go find someone that might not be a great fit just because you want to have kids and more like, hey, we can take our time and then work it out. So I think that's something that we should consider locally as well if we really want to increase our birth rate. That there are all these pockets of people who want to have kids but are limited by some legal reason rather than some actual biological reason. (27:10) Jeremy Au: I 100% agree. I was reading this book by Lauri Gottlieb. She's a therapist and she was sharing about her own experience and decision to eventually become a single mother and she went to a sperm bank and eventually got her own kid and I thought it was a really fascinating story because the first time obviously reading about this experience, it's a real-life story in a female character point of view. And from my perspective, it's like, yeah, why not? She's totally equipped to be a parent. She's a therapist. She's at the prime of her career. She's thoughtful. Why not, right? And I think there's hopefully an update of I don't know, societal understanding and policy decisions that can happen. (27:41) Shiyan Koh: Yeah. I think the other thing is also, we had some friends who had trouble conceiving and they looked at adoption and adoption is actually really hard. (27:48) Shiyan Koh: As a route to build a family through adoption. Like multiple years, you know, it's sort of like you're making the decision, like, hey, should I do IVF or should I try to pursue adoption? Cause you know, it has some fertility issues or whatever it is. I think the lack of certainty on the adoption side, plus the timeline actually makes a lot of people go like, all right, I'm going to do IVF while I still have a window. And then maybe after that, then you end up considering adoption. (28:09) Jeremy Au: I was reading some interesting articles about economic demography and one of the interesting aspects they had was that historically, rich families, before the birth control pill, would have lots of kids. And so, the way that income inequality would drop or it was because richer families had more kids, they split up across more kids. The grandkids have less of inheritance, and then that kind of generates that equalization, and I thought it was an interesting read and a thought-provoking thought. (28:32) Shiyan Koh: Maybe that was, I don't know whether there was less concentration of wealth. I mean, like, let's say you're Jeff Bezos, you could have a thousand children and it wouldn't matter. (28:39) Jeremy Au: But if he only has one, then the kid would definitely be very, very rich, right? But if it's a thousand, then everyone's just like, has 100 billion only. I mean, it's a big difference, obviously. It totally regenerates. And the story of what they say, the first generation makes the money, the second generation keeps the money, the third generation loses the money, right? So, you know, there's a dynamic of generational wealth. (28:59) Shiyan Koh: Yeah. Yeah. I guess so. But yeah, I think on the sort of education topic, I've been seeing lots of interesting stuff like AI tutors for Math and English and reading, language. My business partner, Elizabeth's like, why bother learning another language? AI is going to let all of us speak our native language and let the other person hear it natively anyway. But I don't know. I still think that language and cultures and history are so deeply intertwined that there's still benefit to learning another language because it kind of gives you insight into that history and culture even if Google translate can like I can tell you what I'm saying. It doesn't communicate the depth of all of that nuance. But maybe one day we'll get there. (29:37) Jeremy Au: Well, on that note, we did launch the BRAVE Indonesia podcast which is basically us, you know, speaking and we're 100% dubbed into Bahasa Indonesia, and it's kind of interesting. (29:47) Shiyan Koh: I want to get feedback on it. (29:50) Shiyan Koh: How is the dubbing? Or do we sound like totally crazy? (29:53) Jeremy Au: We sound like ourselves in terms of tone and so forth. And by the exact accuracy of the words, you know, it's something that I'm kind of like shrug and then just give it a shot, right? You know, so on that note. (30:04) Shiyan Koh: Oh wait, can I do one plug? We just released a free book called Raise Millions. And so, it's basically a collection of everything that we've learned about early stage fundraising in a free book. And so I guess we'll put the link in the show notes, but check it out and go out and raise that money. (30:19) Jeremy Au: Great. Awesome. I On that note, I'd love to summarize the three big takeaways I got from this conversation. First of all, I think it was fun to discuss a little bit about Singapore in terms of the Economic Development Board, the GIC, Temasek, and talk a little bit about their various moves and permutations across 2023 to 2024, and also it was fun to chat a little bit about Noah S mith's opinion on Jacqueline Poh at EDB. love to have you the pod. Yeah, second one is that we got to talk a little bit about various companies like Silicon Box, which is Singapore's newest unicorn, and talk a little bit about the continued trend of semiconductor manufacturing migrating into Southeast Asia. Thirdly, it was good to hear about theAsianparent business and acquisition of Motherswork. And so it was interesting to talk about some of the numbers, but also the rationale about omnichannel and the economics of the deal. And we got to talk a lot about education and our thoughts about parenting and some of the national policy and dynamics and why education and parenting are such hot verticals for startups across Southeast Asia, which ranges all the way from doctors for children care, all the way to premium daycares, all the way to IVF and egg freezing. On that note, thank you so much, Shiyan. (31:24) Shiyan Koh: Thank you, Jeremy. Get some sleep. Related links: • https://x.com/Noahpinion/status/1748398445935882648?s=20 • https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-01-01/saudi-fund-outpaces-singapore-s-gic-with-31-6-billion-splurge • https://www.straitstimes.com/business/singapore-chip-start-up-silicon-box-turns-unicorn-hitting-us1-billion-in-valuation • https://limdershing.blogspot.com/2024/01/positive-win-win-deal-for.html?m=1 (01:26) Jeremy Au: Hai Shiyan, apa kabar? (01:28) Shiyan Koh: Selamat pagi, selamat pagi. Saya baik. Anda sendiri? (01:31) Jeremy Au: Baik juga. Baru saja menidurkan anak-anak. Saya di sini di New York City, tapi tentu saja sangat bersemangat untuk melakukan diskusi ini. Ada begitu banyak berita yang kami kirimkan satu sama lain dan rasanya seperti, oh, kami harus memotong hal-hal yang ingin kami bicarakan. Saya kira ini adalah awal yang sibuk di bulan Januari. (01:43) Jeremy Au: Dan saya rasa hal besar yang membuat Anda dan saya sedikit tertawa adalah kami melihat tweet yang mengatakan, Noah Smith di No Opinion, yang menurut saya adalah salah satu sub-blog terbesar di dunia mengenai geopolitik dan banyak orang sangat menghormati tulisannya, dan dia men-tweet, saya hanya pernah bertemu dengan dua orang dalam hidup saya yang membuat saya berpikir, bung, saya ingin bekerja untuk orang ini. Patrick Collison dari Stripe, dan Jacqueline Poh dari Dewan Pembangunan Ekonomi Singapura. (02:03) Shiyan Koh: Ini adalah pujian yang besar. (02:04) Jeremy Au: Itu sangat besar. (02:06) Shiyan Koh: Dia mungkin bertemu banyak orang yang menarik. (02:07) Jeremy Au: Tepat sekali, tepat sekali. Coba pikirkan tentang hal ini, bukan? Maksud saya, Stripe seperti, jelas, sebuah unicorn raksasa, perusahaan global. Patrick Collison adalah CEO dan salah satu pendirinya. Dan kemudian, ya, Dewan Pengembangan Ekonomi Singapura juga setara dan Jacqueline Poh ada di sana. Jadi, tingkatan yang menarik untuk dimiliki. (02:21) Shiyan Koh: Nah, apakah ini komentar tentang Jacqueline atau komentar tentang EDBI? (02:25) Jeremy Au: Yah, bisa jadi keduanya, bukan? Maksud saya, Anda tahu, Jacqueline Poh sukses karena EDB dan EDB sukses karena Jacqueline Poh. Jadi, mungkin. (02:31) Shiyan Koh: Saya tidak tahu. Saya membacanya, saya membacanya seperti orang ini benar-benar luar biasa. Saya ingin bekerja sama dengan mereka dibandingkan dengan organisasi ini. Maksud saya, jangan salah paham. Saya rasa organisasi ini cukup menarik dan saya yakin banyak orang yang sebenarnya, jika Anda tidak tahu apa-apa tentang Singapura, Anda akan berpikir, apa itu dewan pembangunan ekonomi? Siapa orang-orang ini? (Jeremy Au: Ya. (02:50) Shiyan Koh: Ya, saya tidak tahu. Saya pikir itu adalah pujian yang sangat besar. (02:52) Jeremy Au: Menurut Anda, apa konteks dari pertemuan itu? Maksud saya, saya hanya ingin tahu bagaimana mereka bertemu. (02:56) Shiyan Koh: Saya tidak tahu. Sekarang kita hanya berada di ranah spekulasi acak. (02:59) Jeremy Au: Ini hanya spekulasi yang merajalela. Kita akan menjadi seperti, mereka bertemu di sebuah konferensi di Abu, spekulasi yang merajalela. (03:05) Shiyan Koh: Mereka mungkin bertemu di Davos, kan? (03:07) Jeremy Au: Ya, mungkin di Forum Ekonomi Dunia. Mungkin, mereka bertemu di, seperti, spekulasi-spekulasi lain. Seperti, kita tidak tahu, mungkin kita harus bertanya padanya lain kali. Kau tahu, mungkin kita harus bertanya padanya, mengundangnya untuk menjelaskan apa yang terjadi. (03:16) Shiyan Koh: Ya. Ya, ya, ya. Kita harus mengundangnya. (03:18) Jeremy Au: Tapi yang pasti, saya membaca sebuah tweet, seperti, wow, itu luar biasa, Anda tahu, dan banyak orang yang membaca Noah Smith, tentu saja. Saya rasa Noah Smith banyak menulis tentang AS, sistem Barat, peradaban, masyarakat, teknologi, dan Singapura memang menjadi salah satu tolok ukur referensi yang ia gunakan. Jadi, waktu yang menarik untuk disimak. (03:36) Shiyan Koh: Kami adalah Continental Hotel, Jeremy. Apakah Anda pernah menonton John Wick? (03:39) Jeremy Au: Kau tahu apa? Anda mengungkapkan sesuatu! Aku tidak pernah menonton John Wick. Itu rahasiaku. (03:44) Shiyan Koh: Ada di setiap penerbangan pesawat. Ada di setiap penerbangan pesawat. Dan sepertinya, ada empat dari mereka. Anda tak bisa menghindar darinya. Bahkan jika Anda mencoba untuk tidak menontonnya, Anda akan tetap melihatnya. Anda seperti, oh, ada John Wick yang lain. Oh, ada John Wick yang lain. Haruskah aku menonton ini? (Jeremy Au: Aku sudah menyerah. Maksud saya, ini seperti aksi. Jelas, saya adalah penggemar berat, Anda tahu, Neo yang asli tapi saya tidak bisa masuk ke dalam ini, seperti, jelas ada kombinasi Gun Fu, Kung Fu. (04:05) Shiyan Koh: Ya. Tidak, tidak, tidak. Maksud saya, saya tidak, saya tidak terlalu suka berkelahi, tapi seperti, saya merasa seperti, beberapa pendiri mengatakan kepada saya hal ini dan saya sangat menyukainya bahwa Singapura adalah Hotel Continental, yang seperti, ada peraturan, Anda tahu, seperti mungkin di luar ada kekacauan dan perkelahian dan pembunuhan, tapi di dalam Hotel Continental, ada peraturan. Kami meletakkan tangan kami dan kami suka makan makanan enak. Jadi, itulah Singapura dalam, dalam geopolitik, komentar yang benar-benar sembrono. (04:27) Jeremy Au: Jadi, Anda mengatakan Noah Smith dan Jacqueline Poh seperti pembunuh bayaran global dengan pakaian dan gaya yang keren. (04:31) Shiyan Koh: Dan kemudian mereka bertemu di suatu tempat, Anda tahu, di Hotel Continental, ya. Dan kemudian mereka bertukar ide. (04:36) Jeremy Au: Ini dia. Minum Singapore Sling. Ini dia. (04:38) Shiyan Koh: Ugh, minuman nasional terburuk yang pernah ada. Aku benci Singapore Sling. (04:41) Jeremy Au: Anda tahu, saya sangat kecewa karena Singapore Sling sangat terkenal, bukan? Saya meminumnya. Saya seperti, apa, apa yang terjadi di sini? (04:46) Shiyan Koh: Ya, ya. Kita butuh minuman nasional yang baru. Sebenarnya, saya merasa itu harus menjadi sesuatu. Kita harus memulai kompetisi untuk minuman nasional baru. (04:54) Jeremy Au: Minuman nasional baru? (04:56) Shiyan Koh: Ya. Koktail nasional baru untuk menggantikan sling Singapura karena menjijikkan. (05:01) Jeremy Au: Nah, di sinilah saya bisa mengungguli ChatGPT kita. Saya bisa membuat beberapa nama untuk itu meskipun saya tidak bisa membuatnya, jadi kita bisa membuat Malayan Magic. Bagaimana dengan itu? Kau tahu, tao kuai tiao chiller. (Shiyan Koh: Ramuan Praktis. (05:11) Jeremy Au: Berdirilah untuk Singapore Supreme. (05:14) Shiyan Koh: Kedengarannya seperti pizza. Tidak. (05:15) Jeremy Au: Ya, jika dipikir-pikir, supremes itu seperti pepperoni atau semacamnya. (05:18) Jeremy Au: Berbicara tentang berita Singapura lainnya juga, Anda tahu, ada angka besar yang menarik yang muncul, yaitu bahwa selama tahun lalu, GIC memangkas modal yang digunakan sebesar 46% menjadi $20 miliar, dan Temasek juga memangkas investasi baru sebesar 53% menjadi 6,3 miliar tahun lalu. Sebagai perbandingan, dana investasi publik Arab Saudi muncul sebagai investor berdaulat paling aktif di dunia tahun lalu dan tumbuh dari $20,7 miliar pada tahun 2022 menjadi $31,6 miliar pada tahun 2023. Jadi tren yang cukup menarik yang terjadi. (05:52) Shiyan Koh: Ya, maksud saya, saya pikir ada banyak alasan untuk menarik diri, jika orang merasa valuasi sudah tinggi. Mereka ingin mempertahankan modal untuk mendukung perusahaan-perusahaan portofolio yang ada. Mereka ingin menyimpan bubuk kering karena mereka pikir harga akan turun. Sulit untuk berspekulasi tentang berbagai hal. Dan tentu saja, saya pikir Saudi dan dana pemerintah Timur Tengah lainnya mengalami tahun yang sangat baik karena harga minyak. Dan mereka memiliki banyak modal untuk dikerahkan. (06:14) Jeremy Au: Ya, saya pikir, ini bukan hanya masalah Singapura, bukan? Maksud saya, hampir semua dana seperti menarik diri dari penempatan karena, seperti yang Anda katakan, ketidakpastian pasar, suku bunga. Jadi, orang-orang hanya menunggu dan mencoba melihat apa yang terjadi. Namun, dana kekayaan negara di Teluk, tidak hanya Arab Saudi, tetapi juga Abu Dhabi, Qatar, semuanya juga meningkatkan penempatan dana mereka di dana kekayaan negara. Jadi cukup menarik untuk dilihat. Saya rasa Anda dan saya telah mendiskusikan tentang informasi baru-baru ini tentang bagaimana banyak dana VC sekarang terbang ke Timur Tengah untuk mengumpulkan dana lagi. (06:42) Shiyan Koh: Maksud saya, setelah insiden Khashoggi, saya rasa orang-orang sangat terkejut dan berusaha menjauhkan diri dari hal tersebut. Tapi saya pikir karena sumber-sumber modal lain telah mengering atau melambat, maka seperti, mengapa Anda merampok bank? Karena di situlah uang berada. Jadi, Anda harus pergi ke tempat uang berada. Dan orang-orang terus meningkat dari, maksud saya, bukan hanya orang Saudi, bukan? Ada lebih dari segelintir, dua segelintir negara di Timur Tengah yang mengerahkan dan mencoba melakukan diversifikasi, seperti itulah bagian dari hal tersebut. Sepertinya, mereka tahu bahwa ekonomi mereka sangat bergantung pada energi dan mereka harus bisa melakukan diversifikasi. Jadi mereka cukup agresif di sana. (07:13) Jeremy Au: Ya, ini mengingatkan saya tentang bagaimana orang lupa bahwa begitu banyak cerita seperti reli teknologi misalnya, ada Uber, Didi, bahkan Grab, banyak perusahaan besar yang ada di luar sana, banyak dari mereka didanai oleh South Bank, yang kita tahu, dan saya pikir orang terkadang lupa bahwa South Bank terutama didanai oleh Middle Eastern Capital, bukan? (07:32) Shiyan Koh: Mm hmm. (07:33) Jeremy Au: Jadi itu adalah pernikahan yang unik antara tim investasi Jepang pada saat itu, ditambah dengan modal Timur Tengah. Dan saya ingat VC AS ini mengatakan kepada saya bahwa dari sudut pandang mereka, seolah-olah Death Star muncul di luar Silicon Valley, jadi, dari sudut pandang mereka, karena ukuran total kendaraan South Bank yang mereka miliki, dengan modal Millicent yang mereka miliki, secara efektif merupakan jumlah total semua VC AS pada saat itu. Jadi seolah-olah, seperti Death Star yang muncul di atas Alderaan, dan semua orang seperti, apa ini, mengapa ada begitu banyak modal dan bagaimana mereka akan menggunakannya? Tentu saja, saya pikir Silicon Valley terinspirasi oleh hal ini dan mulai mengumpulkan modal besar, pool juga, yang kemudian memulai tren dan momentum pertumbuhan ekuitas tahap akhir yang sangat besar, yang sekali lagi menarik tahap awal. Sekali lagi, ini juga merupakan bagian dari era kebijakan suku bunga nol. Namun cukup menarik untuk melihat bahwa Anda semua seperti bersatu untuk itu. (08:22) Shiyan Koh: Ya. RIP lingkungan suku bunga rendah. (08:25) Jeremy Au: R. I. P. R. I. P. Z. I. R. P. (08:29) Shiyan Koh: ZIRP RIP ZIRP. (08:30) Jeremy Au: Maaf, itu kaos yang lucu. Ini seperti salah satu kaos lelucon. Sepertinya tidak ada yang mengerti apa artinya kecuali saat itu adalah saat-saat yang menyenangkan, saya kira. (08:36) Shiyan Koh: Ya. Sesuatu hanya bisa tetap gratis atau murah untuk waktu yang lama, bukan? untuk menjadi kekuatan korektif. (08:41) Jeremy Au: Maksud saya, Jepang masih memiliki tingkat suku bunga yang lebih rendah secara rata-rata dibandingkan dengan yang lain. Maksud saya, mereka masih berusaha untuk mendapatkan lebih banyak inflasi yang mereka cari, menstimulasi ekonomi lebih lanjut. (08:50) Shiyan Koh: Ya. (08:51) Jeremy Au: Anda tahu, saya pikir pada akhirnya, apa yang saya dengar dari orang lain yang menggalang modal dari Timur Tengah adalah bahwa otoritas investasi ini sangat fokus, tidak … ) Shiyan Koh: Lelucon ayah, bukan hanya untuk ayah. (12:24) Jeremy Au: Ini dia. Jadi, salut untuk duo … berbagi lebih banyak lagi, Shiyan? (12:47) Shiyan Koh: Ya, saya rasa siapapun yang memiliki anak … ) Shiyan Koh: Maksud saya, Anda berada di ruangan yang bersih, bukan? Seperti, mereka harus memakai … Singapore: Silicon Box Unicorn, TheAsianParent Acquisition and Sovereign Wealth Fund Investment Shifts (GIC, Temasek) with Shiyan Koh - E380 … bagaimana cara menentukan ukuran yang tepat dan arus kas yang positif. (15:32) Shiyan Koh: Lucu juga ya …

Sea Group Stock Price 29% Drop, Digital Bank Strategy Synergy & Fintech Underwriting Quality - E305

change over time.” - Jeremy Au Jeremy Au and Shiyan Koh, Managing Partner of Hustle Fund, discuss three … talk about it, the big news that you wanted to mention, Shiyan. Shiyan Koh: (01:47) I think Sea’s … doesn't resonate. They don't engage with it well.” - Shiyan Koh “Neobanks were a huge category that got … to see you. Shiyan Koh: (01:20) Morning, Jeremy. Jeremy was quickly buttoning his shirt so he … slightly more interest.” - Shiyan Koh “People tend to focus a lot on the cost of acquisition because …

Sequoia Capital Spins Off HongShan 红杉 & Peak XV, Apple Vision Pro and Societal Impact of VR & AR - E284

, it would be a lot more interesting and have a more interactive quality." - Shiyan Koh Sure? EDIT … say hi to? Shiyan Koh: (01:57) Oh, the Prefer guys met them today. They're making bean-less coffee … Au: (01:12) Morning, Shiyan. Shiyan Koh: (01:12) Good morning, Jeremy. How's it going? Jeremy Au … things." - Shiyan Koh Sure? EDIT During a discussion between Jeremy Au and Shiyan Koh, several key … caffeine. So, ready to go. Shiyan Koh: (01:23) Let's do it. It's been a busy week on the news side. Jeremy …

Kebangkitan TikTok Trump vs Biden Melarang, Debat "Too Big To Fail" Grab & PHK Terbaik di Kelasnya bersama Shiyan Koh - E401

mereka menjual ke AS, mengakuisisi pusat data AS yang benar. Jadi, itu menarik. (02:49) Shiyan Koh: Ya … memulai perusahaan baru." - Shiyan Koh Shiyan Koh, Managing Partner Hustle Fund, dan Jeremy Au membahas … pemutusan hubungan kerja di berbagai yurisdiksi. (01:43) Jeremy Au: Pagi Shiyan. Shiyan. (01:44) Shiyan Koh: Pagi … Kebangkitan TikTok Trump vs Biden Melarang, Debat "Too Big To Fail" Grab & PHK Terbaik di Kelasnya bersama Shiyan Koh - E401 … populer di TikTok. Dia memiliki jutaan penonton. Dan kau tahu, (02:26) Shiyan Koh: Jadi, saya kira ini … intelektual tercipta dan orang-orang belajar banyak hal." - Shiyan Koh "Bank memiliki kemampuan unik …

Conferences: Bad Event Organizers, Speaker & Moderator Hacks and Democracy vs. Republic Audience Engagement - E347

events, Thanksgiving events. (02:22) Shiyan Koh: Well, I do think it's funny that we celebrate … that insight out.” - Shiyan Koh Sure? EDIT In this discussion, Shiyan Koh, Managing Partner of Hustle … here. (02:09) Shiyan Koh: I know, it's like the F1 Super Return Switch Fintech Festival Q4 Madness … and helpful to them.” - Shiyan Koh Sure? EDIT “You don't necessarily need to have a point of view … @gofluid.io to learn more. Sure? (01:58) Jeremy Au: Hey, Shiyan. (01:59) Shiyan Koh: Hey Jeremy …

TikTok Trump vs. Biden Ban Resurrection, Grab "Too Big To Fail" Debate & ShopBack Best-In-Class Layoffs with Shiyan Koh - E401

things.” - Shiyan Koh “Banks have the unique ability to be too big to fail because of the … ) Shiyan Koh: Well, so, I guess it's not so much a ban as the forced sale, right? (02:31) Jeremy Au: Ooh … centers. So, which is interesting. (02:49) Shiyan Koh: Yeah, I mean, I don't know. I know people are … and get recycled back through the ecosystem, or even start a new company.” - Shiyan Koh Shiyan Koh, Managing … code seanbrave7 today. (01:43) Jeremy Au: Morning Shiyan. Shiyan. (01:44) Shiyan Koh: Morning, Jeremy … TikTok Trump vs. Biden Ban Resurrection, Grab "Too Big To Fail" Debate & ShopBack Best-In-Class Layoffs with Shiyan Koh - E401 …

Tech Collective Southeast Asia: Keep the pulse on the scene: 8 must-listen podcasts for tech startups in Asia in 2024

Monday session covers weekly tech news and debate with Shiyan Koh, Managing Partner of Hustle Fund …

Singapura: Transisi Perdana Menteri Baru, Asimilasi Imigrasi & Sekolah, serta CTO & Kelulusan Teknik - E419

juga! (01:29) Jeremy Au: Pagi, Shiyan. (01:30) Shiyan Koh: Selamat pagi. Saya baru setengah jalan … membahas tiga tema utama: 1. Transisi Perdana Menteri Baru: Jeremy Au dan Shiyan Koh membahas transisi … . (Shiyan Koh: Tapi tidak ada yang harus terjadi. Tidak ada yang harus terjadi sampai setelah pemilu … eksposur kepada orang lain." - Shiyan Koh "Saya akan mengadvokasi teknologi, CTO pass. EntrePass … terintegrasi dan beragam." - Shiyan Koh Shiyan Koh, Managing Partner Hustle Fund, dan Jeremy Au …

Temasek FTX Review, 6% Early Stage Startups AUM Cap, Crypto Regulatory Debate & Retail Investor Democratization - E282

, Jeremy Au and Shiyan Koh touched upon several key insights, with a particular focus on crypto and … distinction between financial education and access. Shiyan Koh expressed skepticism towards … yield significant returns while the rest may result in zero or negative outcomes. Shiyan Koh brought … speculative use case, it's literally just wanting my money to hold value." - Shiyan Koh In their discussion … .” - Shiyan Koh "There’s something you can do with a day-to-day sort of off-market, public markets …

Pencucian Uang $3 Miliar Kantor Keluarga Singapura, Integrasi AI Apple & Labirin Penipuan VC dengan Shiyan Koh - E437

buruk ini sangat buruk bagi ekosistem." - Shiyan Koh, Managing Partner Hustle Fund "Bagian yang sulit … . Bagaimana kehidupan Anda? (02:01) Shiyan Koh: Baik. Saya berada di pinggiran kota Shanghai … Pencucian Uang $3 Miliar Kantor Keluarga Singapura, Integrasi AI Apple & Labirin Penipuan VC dengan Shiyan Koh - E437 … ) Jeremy Au: Hei, pagi, Shiyan. (01:58) Shiyan Koh: Pagi, Jeremy. Apa kabar? (01:59) Jeremy Au: Baik … -anak saya untuk belajar adalah melalui pencelupan bahasa seratus persen, bukan? (02:16) Shiyan Koh: Saya … dana." - Shiyan Koh, Managing Partner Hustle Fund Shiyan Koh, Managing Partner Hustle Fund, dan Jeremy …

Singapore: New Prime Minister Transition, Immigration Assimilation & Schools and CTO & Engineering Pass with Shiyan Koh- E419

all of that. It's really good sign, actually. And so they split the part. (01:54) Shiyan Koh: But … : Jeremy Au and Shiyan Koh delved into the transition of Prime Minister leadership from Lee Hsien Loong … :29) Jeremy Au: Morning, Shiyan. (01:30) Shiyan Koh: Good morning. I'm only like halfway through my … Singapore: New Prime Minister Transition, Immigration Assimilation & Schools and CTO & Engineering Pass with Shiyan Koh- E419 … of having a more integrated and diverse student population.” - Shiyan Koh Shiyan Koh, Managing … exposure to other folks.” - Shiyan Koh "I'm going to advocate for the tech, CTO pass. The EntrePass is for …

Krisis PR Arbitrase Disney+, Ide Sci-Fi Startup yang Baik vs yang Buruk & Kebangkitan Teknologi Pertahanan dengan Shiyan Koh - E464

Hustle Fund Shiyan Koh, Managing Partner Hustle Fund, dan Jeremy Au membahas tiga poin utama: 1 … . Pada dasarnya, apakah ada kecocokan antara pendiri dengan masalah yang dihadapi?" - Shiyan Koh, Managing … tidur delapan setengah jam. Jadi saya akhirnya bisa mengejarnya. (01:56) Shiyan Koh: Ooh, astaga … : Selamat pagi, Shiyan (01:51) Shiyan Koh: Apa kabar, Jeremy? (01:52) Jeremy Au: Baik. Akhirnya bisa … Krisis PR Arbitrase Disney+, Ide Sci-Fi Startup yang Baik vs yang Buruk & Kebangkitan Teknologi Pertahanan dengan Shiyan Koh - E464 … , hal tersebut mempersempit pilihan Anda pada jenis masalah tertentu." - Shiyan Koh, Managing Partner …