"Startup founders have to always make a decision because they either have to persevere or pivot because they are always going through some level of crisis. Persevere means continuing what they are doing, or pivot means changing what they are doing. Founders have to iterate and find the right problem, then finally arrive at the right solution. I was talking to a startup founder and it took him 15 years to generate product-market fit. He built one company, then built another company to service his first company’s problem, and that company ended up being successful. If you look at Slack, it was built by a game developer. They started building their own messaging system, realized the messaging system was a better idea than the game, and Slack was born because they had a problem communicating effectively." - Jeremy Au, Host of BRAVE Southeast Asia Tech Podcast


"We look at Mark Zuckerberg and other founders today and see how amazing they are, and they seem like no-brainers. He is an MIT dropout, and there are incredible stories attached to that. But these are stories told looking back. The tricky part is looking forward. There are 100 MIT dropouts, and most of them are dropping out to build startups, so which one will succeed? There is a gap between who a founder is today and their ability to build a unicorn in the next 10 years. That gap is shaped by time, grit, perseverance, VC support, luck, and macro timing. All of these play a role. The real challenge is choosing one unicorn founder out of 40 top founders who are all scrambling for a VC check." - Jeremy Au, Host of BRAVE Southeast Asia Tech Podcast



"When a VC meets a startup, the question is whether it will become a unicorn in 10 years. Is there a way for it to double this year, then double again next year, and so on. I recently reviewed a company with a strong founder in the AI space. After consideration, we felt the historical growth rate was not there, and we did not believe it could accelerate fast enough. We decided to say no, even though many friends had already invested or planned to invest. It was a difficult conversation, but we could not see clear differentiation from other AI startups. VCs are ultimately looking for founders who can build a unicorn over the next 10 years." - Jeremy Au, Host of BRAVE Southeast Asia Tech Podcast

Jeremy Au breaks down how venture capitalists actually think about startups, founder selection, and long-term value creation. Drawing from real VC decisions, classroom debates, and emerging technologies, he explains why learning speed beats polish, why most “obvious” winners only look obvious in hindsight, and how founders navigate pivots, problem selection, and 10× breakthroughs. The conversation also explores how strange technologies move from science fiction to commercialization, and how VCs evaluate scale, network effects, and unit economics in practice.

01:19 Founder potential vs. founder today: The gap between who a founder is now and who they must become over ten years, shaped by grit, learning, timing, and luck.

04:38 Learning speed as a competitive advantage: Jeremy explains why the fastest learners outcompete both startups and incumbents.

07:00 From non-problems to startups: How ideas like AI companions turn situational pain into viable businesses.

09:13 Commercializing breakthrough science: How founders think about customer personas, regulation, and product-market fit for radical technologies.

12:21 Product stays, customer changes: How commercialization often means reframing who the technology is really for.

Jeremy Au (00:59) Today, we'll be talking about the deal-making component, failure patterns, and the value addition component—how VCs believe they can actually help these companies achieve those things. Every great VC has to source great companies, attract them, and be compelling. Then they have to select that company, do the deal-making necessary, support them over time, and eventually exit to realize those returns for the LPs.

Jeremy Au (01:27) When a VC meets a startup, the question is: will you become a unicorn in 10 years? Is there a way for you to double this year, double again next year, and so forth? This morning I was looking at another company—strong founder, great background, in the AI space. After some consideration, we felt the growth rate wasn't there historically, and we didn't believe it could accelerate faster, so we eventually decided to say "no". Even though I have many friends who have already invested, we just couldn't see the differentiation against other AI startups.

Jeremy Au (02:05) VCs are looking for founders who will build that unicorn over the next 10 years. We look back at Mark Zuckerberg and various founders today and they seem like no-brainers. But the tricky part is looking forward. There are 100 MIT dropouts; which one will succeed? There's a gap between who they are today and the ability to build that unicorn in 10 years, which is a function of grit, luck, and macro timing.

Jeremy Au (03:00) For example, look at the founder of Canva. At that time, there were very few Australian startups that were unicorns. It was rare for them to move to Silicon Valley to fundraise, and it took contrarian bets for people to eventually invest. Now, because more funds are looking at Australia and New Zealand, some of that information asymmetry has been arbitraged away.

Jeremy Au (03:45) Looking at the business plan competition pitching at SMU this week, many great founders are present. They're all polished and hardworking, but things that are clear today may not be clear tomorrow if the market changes or COVID happens again. VC selection follows two schools of thought: the "hero founder" mindset versus the strategy/fundamentals mindset. I shared an article saying that with AI and marketplaces, the hero founder is a much stronger archetype, but it's a function of yin and yang both working together.

Jeremy Au (04:50) Kaizen is very much a concept for startups—the idea of lean manufacturing and knowing reality as it is by iterating quickly to improve product quality. There is a "just-in-time learning" approach to the lean startup. The key thing is that you have to learn faster. The faster you learn, the faster you hit reality, and the faster you can outcompete your competitors.

Jeremy Au (05:37) If you have two kids and one kid asks lots of questions while the other doesn't, you know the one asking questions will be smarter in 10 years because they are learning actively. We want to nurture that intrinsic motivation for children to learn.

Jeremy Au (06:06) In the story The Three-Body Problem, the alien civilization wants to stop Earth's scientific progress because humans learn quickly. This is a parable of the geopolitics we're seeing today between America and China. For startups, if you can learn faster than incumbents, you can accelerate. That's why building a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) is key. You need a founder mindset—releasing a product that is "good enough" to get market feedback.

Jeremy Au (07:45) VCs always ask: what exactly is the problem you are trying to solve? If the problem is painful enough, people will pay for it. For example, loneliness for Gen Z might be solved by AI companions. If you have a fight with your spouse at 11:00 PM and feel lonely at 3:00 AM, you can solve it now with an AI companion rather than waiting for a therapist or sister next week.

Jeremy Au (09:01) The crazy idea this year is that people would have relationships with AI avatars. Soon, people will say, "Let them do what they want." Another crazy technology: scientists converted a human skin cell into an egg cell. This works for men as well, allowing a male to potentially make his own egg cells. This is an earth-shattering innovation from a commercialization and societal perspective.

Jeremy Au (11:45) Founders must choose to persevere or pivot. Slack was born because a game developer built a messaging system for themselves and realized the system was a better idea than the game. Similarly, Instagram started as Burbn. At MIT, there’s a class called "Commercializing Technologies" where students brainstorm how to license research. One friend had a friction-reducing coating and had to figure out if it belonged in a straw, an oil well, or a train.

Jeremy Au (15:00) Startups seek to be 10x better, faster, or cheaper. SpaceX achieved a 10x improvement in the cost of getting payloads to space and is aiming for 100x. This makes space tourism and global roaming telcos more compelling.

Jeremy Au (16:51) One VC is excited about humanoid robots. He believes there will be a million humanoid robots in 10 years cooking and working on assembly lines. Like Teslas, these robots will learn through the cloud. Every time you buy one, all other robots get smarter in parallel—that’s a network effect. Airbnb and ChatGPT have global network effects, whereas Uber and Grab have them at the city level.

Jeremy Au (19:04) VCs look at Customer Lifetime Value (LTV)—price, margins, and upsell. One Southeast Asian SaaS company generates $100,000 in enterprise value per customer while only spending $7,000 to acquire them (CAC). This 15x LTV/CAC ratio is why VCs want them to scale as quickly as possible; a $10 million investment could eventually generate $150 million in enterprise value.