"When I came to the Philippines in 2011, there was a small market. We did the analysis for our presentations and there was about $40 million in annual deal flow. The pandemic was terrible for a lot of people, but it made the Philippines leap from analog to digital. E-wallets went from 30 million accounts to now 86 million, and that's just G-Cash. That's a huge percentage of the Philippine population, which is around 117 million. You see that in a lot of other sectors in the Philippine economy as well. It leapfrogged over those couple of years, and as a result, a lot of business opportunities and startup opportunities arose from that massive change. In the last two years, we've seen each year more than a billion dollars invested in terms of deal flow and that's 25X over those 10 years." - Jelmer Ikink
"It's interesting to see how much what we set up was needed or demanded from entrepreneurs. The other week, we had our Foxmont Summit, which is an annual event that we have with the founders that we invested in. We invite experts in particular fields like a motivational coach, a professional athlete, a finance or HR expert, and they try to share their expertise with our founders. We also try to have our founders mingle with each other and find synergies within the Foxmont community and it’s really exciting to see how that “Foxmont Mafia” grows every year. I had never expected that it would take off so much over such a short time. It's a testament to our founders because, at the end of the day, we invest in them. We help and support them as much as we can, but they are the ones with the idea and the ones who execute together with their team. So to me, one learning is that the entrepreneurial spirit and quality are here in the Philippines. It just needs to be activated by stakeholders like us and other VC firms in the region and the country." - Jelmer Ikink
"As in any country, there are a lot of problems, but there's also a lot of growth through digitization. Philippine labor used to be very cheap and it is still relatively cheap, so if you look at the B2B site, historically, if there was a problem, enterprises threw more warm bodies at it, and more employees to fix the problem. And that has resulted in the productivity of the Philippine workforce being relatively steady. It hasn't increased so much over the years. And so, what we're seeing now is digital adoption, B2B SaaS platforms are being increasingly integrated into these enterprises so the Filipino workforce can become more productive. They don't have to do these repetitive tasks anymore and can start doing more complex work that adds a lot of value to the businesses. So that's one area, one problem that has been addressed over time." - Jelmer Ikink
In this episode, Jeremy Au speaks on 10 year life projections, the Foxmont VC founding vision, and childhood curiosity (Lehman Brothers and McKinsey).
Keywords: Jelmer Ikink, 10 Year Life Projections, Foxmont VC Founding Vision, Childhood Curiosity Lehman Brothers McKinsey, Philippines, VC, Founder Story
