"I'm not particularly athletic as a person but I have spent a fair bit of time in endurance sports. When I decided to take on the Ironman triathlon, I asked myself if I really wanted to challenge myself to do it. There was a certain amount of fear in being able to commit fully and to be able to do it without knowing whether you finish it because it's such a long event, but it really gave me a sense of reinforcement that if put my mind to something, and you set aside the time and put in the hard work, you can control that outcome. In the toughest situations, whether it's professional, personal, whether it's family, or whatever else, that gives me hope. If you put everything in, then you should have a really good shot of getting what you want out of it." - Adrian Li
"Even though the product was good, people were willing to pay money, and we were able to make money, it was still tough to convert a broader audience. We had a great product, but it was early to market, so timing is an incredibly important thing. In product innovation, while there are certain markets that are like the core of tech, especially in Silicon Valley and these days in China, in emerging markets, I learned that you could create immense value from building businesses, that weren't on the cutting edge of innovation, but rather where you could take proven business models, proven products, and bring them into the market." - Adrian Li
"The number one thing that I'm always told about when it comes to Indonesian tech is that Indonesia is so expensive. Naturally, some of the valuations of the businesses out here, set aside 2021 when everything was overvalued. We're talking relatively compared to the rest of Southeast Asia. Yes, the valuations have been relatively higher, but it's simply reflective of the fact that the market opportunity here is so much larger. The other thing was that when we looked at the opportunity set of investments in this particular era where a lot of the Chinese early companies were copied to China, though these are proven business models that went into China, the same thing happened in India, and I believe the same thing would happen to Indonesia. If you look at these types of business models, they tend to be the ones that are not so product-driven, but more execution-driven, which requires offline operations. To be able to expand such companies, multi-country is very expensive and very difficult to do. And so I did not believe so much in the regional nature of building businesses in Southeast Asia, but more just in the Indonesia market opportunity in of itself." - Adrian Li
In this episode, Jeremy Au speaks on Cambridge and Stanford MBA childhood inspiration, Indonesia VC outlook (pure play versus small-cap private equity), and China edtech and Rocket Internet founder journey.
Keywords: Adrian Li, Cambridge Stanford MBA Childhood Inspiration, Indonesia VC Outlook, Pure Play vs Small-Cap Private Equity, China Edtech, Rocket Internet Founder Journey, Indonesia, China, VC, Founder Story
