"As a financial investor, you need to be very careful because when you're investing alongside people who are mission-driven and not necessarily there to make money, you can get caught up investing alongside them. These companies have a positive mission, but none of the other investors are really looking for the positive economic outcome, or they are prioritizing other dynamics that they wouldn't necessarily care about the financial returns quite as much. So you want to be aligned with not just the company, but with the investors as well." - Jeff Lonsdale
"Another dynamic that's interesting is the extent to which there are Vietnamese managers and engineers who develop the necessary skills to potentially go on and build competing businesses, which is also a pattern that happened in China two decades ago. So that's another pattern here to look out for as you upscale a workforce and give them more experience to get to the cutting edge, then there is more that they can do in the future on a go forward basis." - Jeff Lonsdale
"I do believe that there’s a much interesting dynamic where you have someone who is at a strong company who understands how there's a big problem that they face and that everyone else in their industry is facing as well. And they go out and they want to fix that for everyone. There are opportunities in that type of space. It's not just the developer tools, but maybe more the operation tools." - Jeff Lonsdale
In this episode, Jeremy Au speaks on the YC Request For Startups, Southeast Asia viability, hidden comparative advantages, and geographical business model traps.
Keywords: Jeff Lonsdale, YC Request For Startups, Southeast Asia Viability, Hidden Comparative Advantages, Geographical Business Model Traps, Vietnam, Southeast Asia, USA, VC, Thought Leadership
