"Many people use ChatGPT for marketing because instead of hiring someone for 60,000 dollars a year, they can pay 600 dollars a year for AI that delivers equivalent quality, creating a 100x cost difference as companies choose AI SaaS over hiring a fresh graduate for marketing." - Jeremy Au, Host of BRAVE Southeast Asia Tech Podcast


"Starlink customers grew sharply from 2020 to 2024 because many regions still lack good internet, making Starlink a 10x better product with stronger speed, reliability, and access, and this improvement in coverage and quality raises the possibility that users may eventually choose Starlink over local telcos like SingTel or M1 since paying the same subscription price could provide global roaming anywhere once enough satellites are deployed, which is why traditional telcos are increasingly concerned about this shift in how people may choose their future phone access." - Jeremy Au, Host of BRAVE Southeast Asia Tech Podcast


"Airbnb created more value than Uber and Lyft for every dollar raised because as a sharing economy platform the more people who use Airbnb the more apartments become available and the more people continue to use it, which makes the company far more capital efficient by generating roughly a 10x return relative to the funding it raised compared to Uber and Lyft which produced only about 2 to 3x, and although Uber is larger with more funding and Lyft is smaller with lower market share and valuation, Airbnb stands out for creating significantly more value for each dollar invested." - Jeremy Au, Host of BRAVE Southeast Asia Tech Podcast

Jeremy Au outlines why founders must choose a single 10x advantage and commit to it. He explains how products win by being better or faster or cheaper than the status quo and why unfair advantages are required to defend that lead. He also highlights the Southeast Asian invention of the USB thumb drive as a case where a first mover delivered a better experience but still lost when fast followers and scale overtook them.

01:00 Spotify provides 10x better quality: Unlimited access to any song in any order is a better experience than CDs or using Napster or Kazaa.

04:45 Uber creates a 10x faster experience: Seeing when a car will arrive removes waiting uncertainty and feels much faster than waving for taxis or calling for bookings.

06:00 SpaceX wins by being 10x cheaper: The cost of sending one kilogram to space dropped from about 30,000 dollars to about 500 dollars and continues to fall.

09:00 Six unfair advantages that protect a 10x lead: Startups defend their position through first mover advantage, network effects, economies of scale, intellectual property, regulatory protection, and scarce expert teams. These moats determine whether a company can keep its 10x advantage as competitors enter.

14:00 Thumb drive first mover but lost advantage: Henn Tan, founder of Trek 2000 and creator of the USB thumb drive, built a better file transfer experience but lost his lead because patents were not enforced globally, fast followers copied cheaply, and competitors gained scale and network effects.

A lot of us are using ChatGPT for marketing purposes. Instead of hiring somebody for 60,000 a year, they can just pay 600 a year to get marketing done by AI. There is a 100X difference in cost for an equivalent amount of quality, because a fresh graduate would be about 60,000 per year, but AI SaaS is about 600 per year—a 100X difference. The company adopts AI rather than hiring a fresh graduate to do marketing, for example. The 10X is something that is part of the technology piece of why these Davids versus Goliaths are always going for that 10X kill shot against Goliath.

In terms of being 10X better, there are only three ways to do it: better, faster, or cheaper.

1. A product can be better. It can be a product that does the job better than what it is. For example, when you look at ChatGPT, in America, when ChatGPT is being used, it is not a 10X better product because in America, everybody understands English and everybody's able to write English. So ChatGPT does not really generate a much better product. However, the way that AI is being sold, in Southeast Asia, in Vietnam, for example, is being sold as 10X better because it's able to write English much better than the average person in Vietnam. The AI SaaS is positioning itself to deliver better quality than the status norm. So the same product, which is AI, is being sold differently.
2. Your product can be faster. Instead of waiting 10 days for a marketing person to get it done, you can get it done in 10 minutes using AI, right? Speed is important, right?
3. Or it can be cheaper. A product can be exactly the same, but it's cheaper. Imagine if somebody sold bubble tea, and it normally costs 10, but now you're selling this bubble tea for 5. A lot of people will buy, even though the taste is similar. Quality is about the same, and the turnaround time for when you order is about the same. But if it's half the price, people will buy the cheaper bubble tea, right?

So a product can either be better, faster, or cheaper. I always tell people that when you're thinking about it, especially with startups, most products really try to focus: Are you focusing on better quality? Are you focused on speed? Or are you focused on cost? Obviously, when you are Goliaths fighting other Goliaths, your job would be to create 10 different products. This product is slightly better as a shampoo. This product is slightly more convenient and faster to use as a shampoo bottle. This product bottle of shampoo is slightly cheaper, right? So you create SKUs or products for all of the different types of attributes, but they're not very different from each other. When we think about startups, most products will try to go for the kill shot. They'll say, "This is 10X better. Is it 10X faster? Is it 10X cheaper?". It's very important for us to think about, because most startups don't have the ability to be better, faster, and cheaper, 10X on every dimension. It's difficult to do that.

Of course, there are exceptions to the norm, but let's just talk about it piece by piece.

• 10X Better (Quality): Spotify is 10X better. Historically, when I was growing up, it was very difficult to buy music. I had to buy CD-ROMs for the music that I had, and some of you may remember those CD-ROMs. If I wanted to listen to music, I would also go to Napster or KaZaA or BitTorrent to be able to listen to songs individually that we wanted. What Spotify has done is that you can listen to any music in any combination, in any order, in any language, which is fantastic. Spotify is much better compared to that, because last time you had to listen to a CD. But now if I want to listen to The Weeknd, I can generate a personalized radio station effectively based on the inspiration of The Weeknd, and then I can generate my own playlist effectively, and I don't have to pay more than my subscription. It's a much better experience. Tesla, obviously from a self-driving car perspective, is a 10X better experience, because previously you had to drive and pay attention, and now you don't have to pay attention. And a lot of people may remember the pictures or videos: people are driving California on their Tesla and they're fast asleep. Now they're not supposed to do that. But it's a much better experience because now this guy can use his phone and do something else while the Tesla Autopilot is working.
• 10X Faster (Speed/Certainty): A product can also be 10X faster, right? We use Uber or Grab as an example. Historically, some of you may remember you had to wait for a taxi to wave a hand, or you had to call for a taxi booking, which is very difficult. But with Uber and Grab, basically you can not only know that the car is coming, but you also know when the car is coming, so you don't feel the uncertainty of it, right? A lot of us may be at a bus stop and we don't know when the bus is coming, and that uncertainty creates a sense of anxiety about when it's coming. Uber, by being able to tell you the time, which is shorter, but also giving you certainty about the time, actually makes it a much faster experience from your perspective.
• 10X Cheaper (Cost): Lastly, of course, is 10X cheaper. Is this something much cheaper than the alternative? A lot of you would think about SpaceX as a company that's taking people to space. SpaceX doesn't have a better rocket. The Russian rockets and American rockets are also able to bring a payload, like a satellite or a human, to outer space. So it's not a better product. SpaceX is not competing based on quality. It's not faster because the rockets go at the same speed and deployment velocity. But what SpaceX has been able to do is lower the cost of bringing it up.

SpaceX is interesting because it is building two companies in one. The first is SpaceX, and on the left-hand side, what it shows is a chart of the rockets from the first Russian rocket to the Space Shuttle all the way to, on the right-hand side, the Starship, the biggest rocket that SpaceX is trying to build. What's above that on that chart? It shows on the X-axis the time series from 1960 to 2030. On the Y-axis, it shows the cost per kilogram of bringing one kilogram into space. Back in the early days, it cost about 30,000 to bring one kilogram to space. If you and your space suit and your gear weigh 100 kilograms, it would have cost you 3 million to bring you to outer space, right?

What SpaceX has done between 2000 to 2025 is bring that cost down from 30,000 to 15,000 to 3,000 to 500, and targeting about 200. They are able to do the exact same thing as what the Russians did in the 1960s. They've been able to drive the cost lower and lower. When they started in the 2000s, they brought it down from 20,000 to about 2,000, and they're driving it down to 200. So it's already a 10X difference compared to the peers, and they're trying to push for another 10X more improvement over time. So SpaceX is a company that's competing based on price.

However, what they have also been doing is building Starlink, which is satellites. What these satellites do is allow you to have global internet. Anywhere in the world that you go, whether you are in Singapore or in the Amazonian jungle, you are now able to get internet access through Starlink, and they are offering it for less than 10 or 20, a very cheap price that they're offering. And they're getting cheaper and cheaper. They have used the low-cost side of their launch capability and are bringing it into more coverage.

If you look at the number of Starlink customers between 2020 to 2024, it is effectively a J-curve, because people don't have access to good internet in many places of the world. For them, it is a 10X better product, right? It's not cheaper, it's an equivalent price to whatever it is, but it's much better speed, it's much better reliability, it's much better access. This is 10X better in terms of coverage, right? 10X better in quality. You could just use Starlink and pay the same subscription price on your phone soon, maybe in the next five or 10 years, and you have global roaming no matter where you go.

SpaceX low-cost launch capability is creating this 10X better product. The reason why all the telcos are getting worried is because their approach can mean that some of you may choose to buy it for your phone access one day in the future. It may not be the best quality in an urban environment, but it may be the best quality if from your perspective, you're a person who travels a lot and goes to many different places. You have to be thoughtful about these two different businesses. One is focusing on price and the other one is focusing on coverage.

You want to think about it from an unfair advantage from you as a startup. There are six major unfair advantages for you to be thinking about. What allows you to maintain that advantage?

1. First Mover: First mover means that you're the first to think of it or the first to create it. But there are also fast followers. People who will follow quickly as well. Uber was the first mover, but Grab and Gojek were fast followers. They learned and localized what they learned from the first mover. Fast followers can win as well.
2. Network Effects: As products get better and better, they are able to beget better quality as they have more users, and it is very rare. If you think about it using WhatsApp, if one person is using WhatsApp in the whole world, it's a useless product. If two people use WhatsApp in the world, they can talk to each other. If you have 10 people using WhatsApp, they're much happier. When the more people who use WhatsApp and the more people are using WhatsApp with each other, the better the product is. Some of you are using Apple products. There is something called the Find My tag, right? Find My device, and they can find your device because every device has a chip that's looking at it. What they've done is they also use everybody else's iPhone and Apple device to ping your phone. As long as somebody else's Apple user walks by your lost device, then the Find My network is able to ping and echolocate it. So the more people who use Apple, the better the experience is at finding your lost device. Physical goods often have scarcity. If a gym has 10 people, that's right. If it has a thousand people, it's too crowded. But when we talk about TikTok, if there are 10 people using it versus 100 billion people using it, it is way more fun for lots more people to be using.
3. Economies of Scale: The more you produce, the cheaper it gets. Obviously, if you're selling cigarettes, it's better to make billions of cigarettes rather than make millions.
4. IP and Patents: Taylor Swift is able to have IP or royalties over music. Anybody who plays the music has to pay for Taylor Swift. Her intellectual property is important for her, right? Patents are important for inventions that you make because in pharmaceuticals, if you invent a drug like Viagra, governments allow a legal enforcement to say, "You are allowed to make money for 10 or 20 years from this drug as a reward for you inventing this product."
5. Regulatory Advantage: Some countries don't allow other competitors to come in. For example, China did not allow Facebook or Google or WhatsApp to enter. So WeChat was able to build its own messaging system within China. Regulatory is an advantage.
6. Team: Sometimes in fast-moving fields, there is so little talent who understand the field that having a rockstar team can really matter. For example, Meta, which is the company that owns Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, is paying hundreds of millions of dollars per person to poach people away from ChatGPT or OpenAI to build their AI lab because the number of people who truly know how to build AI is probably like a thousand people globally who know how to scale it and understand the frontier of it. So having a rockstar team of a scarce talent pool can be a huge advantage for fast-moving fields.

The thumb drive is a really good example. Today is known as Trek 2000, but it was built by a Singaporean. He basically realized that he could simplify and only have the hard drive and connect it with a USB port and combine that into what we call the thumb drive today. This product was very convenient because you didn't have to use a floppy. You could use a thumb drive and move files very quickly. He invented that. He was able to create a 10X better product because at that time, using a drive, it was not faster. A CD would be equally fast transfer data. A big floppy would be equally fast, but it was just fundamentally 10 times better experience because instead of having to figure out all the different proprietary formats, you could just insert it into the USB, and everybody had a USB port.

But he did not have sufficient unfair advantages, and he lost that. Today, most people don't know who he is because of several reasons.

1. First Mover (Lost): He was the first mover, so he created it. Some Chinese employees of his moved back to China, and a Chinese competitor started pushing very aggressively and filed for a patent in China.
2. IP/Regulatory (Failed): The Singapore founder was able to file that patent in America, but he did not file patents globally. China was not enforcing these patents. All these Chinese manufacturers basically rushed to copy and clone the design.
3. Cost (Competitor Win): Even though a Singaporean had the first mover advantage, all the fast followers copycatted and made it very cheap. Those copycats basically competed based on price. So he created a 10X better product as the first mover. But everybody else—the whole ecosystem—built USB thumb drives, and that was a massively cheaper piece.
4. Network Effects (Competitor Win): The fast followers benefited because the fast followers iterated their network effects, because the more people who used drives, the more everybody else put USB ports. And the more USB ports happened, the more people used USB drives. There was a network effect where more people using drives made it better for everybody else to also use drives.
5. Economies of Scale (Competitor Win): The Chinese were able to enjoy economies of scale as well.

Another good example will be Uber for network effects. Uber is competing with Lyft, which was a second mover depending on your perspective. There's a famous napkin that was drawn by Bill Gurley. A lot of VCs didn't believe in Uber because people felt that Uber was a very niche product. They felt like only very few people used the yellow taxis cabs in America. What the VC drew out was a flywheel where the network effects basically makes it better for everybody.

If you look at it from demand, if you make it easy for people to use Uber, there's more demand. Because more people use it—more riders—there are more drivers that want to be on the platform. If there are more drivers on the platform, there's more geographic saturation, right? There's more drivers available, and because there are more drivers available, you're going to have faster pickup because they're closer to you. You wait for less time, and it's faster. They get to you, you're going to use Uber more. Similarly, because there are more drivers, there are less drivers who have downtime because they have lots of jobs, and then the prices are low on average because there's more efficiency, which drives more demand. So there's a flywheel that happens.

The network effects of Uber allows it to fight and slowly strangle Lyft. If you look on the left-hand side in 2017 to 2020, Uber was out-competing that of Lyft. During the pandemic, everybody stopped driving. Lyft never really figured out how to out-compete Uber. Long story short is that even though the CEOs left, Lyft is still struggling to compete against Uber.

However, I think there's an interesting piece where Airbnb created more value than Uber and Lyft for every dollar raised. Airbnb is also another sharing economy company where the more people who use Airbnb, the more apartments there are, the more people use Airbnb. If you look at Airbnb, they are much more capital efficient. They were able to create a 10X return of the funding they raised versus the public market valuation, versus Uber and Lyft that were only able to generate 2-3X Uber is a much larger company. They raise a lot more money, they push for a lot more market share. Lyft raised less money as a second mover, and also has a lower market share, but have a much lower market cap.

But Airbnb is interesting because it's much more of a 10X difference in terms of value; they create more value for every dollar raised. They are more efficient. There is a difference between the sharing economy in terms of hyper-local versus cross-border networks. The issue with Uber is that because we have a lot of drivers in Singapore, doesn't mean that we have the right to win in Kuala Lumpur or Johor Bahru because the drivers are fragmented in each of different neighborhoods or cities. In order to create that sharing economy, the network effects are actually very difficult. But in Airbnb, no matter where you are in the world, as long as there's an apartment in Italy, the sharing economy is much more aggregated as a pool of users. And the network effects are much stronger for Airbnb compared to Uber.