"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
In this episode, Jeremy Au speaks on the Silicon Box unicorn, TheAsianParent acquisition, and sovereign wealth fund investment shifts (GIC, Temasek) with Shiyan Koh.
Keywords: Singapore, Silicon Box Unicorn, TheAsianParent Acquisition, Sovereign Wealth Fund Investment Shifts, GIC, Temasek, Shiyan Koh, Singapore, Thought Leadership
