"So the same dynamic we see in Southeast Asia, you have a collective of local investors of various tribes, your corporates, your sovereigns, your funds and a global investment ecosystem from seed funds all the way to late-stage crossovers. It's the same setup everywhere, LATAM and Africa included. There is interplay between these two everywhere. And it looks like if you completely remove global ecosystem and just leave local players, changes year to year are not extreme. As the ecosystem tells you that this new business model is available, seed guys go in, Series A guys go in, series B guys go in. Disruption comes when this thing interacts with the global ecosystem, when a massive incentive emerges for example, to drive GMV without any monetization, because late stage investors care about that. So when you remove that global disruption, then local ecosystem is pretty stable." - Dmitry Levit
"I often ask founders what they’d do if investors didn't exist? Is the business totally impossible without investors? You need to build a rocket.You probably can't bootstrap your way to launching a rocket. That's one category of things, but that's not what a lot of people are building in Southeast Asia. So what’s the minimum amount of capital you could do to validate your next hypothesis, and what is your plan to get there? Founders should think about how much capital that would take. Don't think about what VCs want necessarily. You are the opportunity cost. You're the one whose life and hours are being spent to this, not the VC. So for you, is it worth it? Have you validated enough things that you should spend your life and time on this? Then answer the question about the capital required to do it. Iif you've decided it's worth your time and there is a market, you can find the capital to do it." - Shiyan Koh
"The confusion is the one that there’s no clarity of what the consensus is. Is our consensus that Singapore is a technology hub that gives amazing cutting edge tech to the world? Is our narrative that Vietnam is going to take over China as the manufacturing hub of the world? Is our narrative that Indonesia is a vast consumer market somehow? It's unclear. It's all questioned. There isn’t going to be 80% of capital concntration in one theme that everybody happens to agree on. Although commodity traders, fish buyers, and coffee sellers seem to be getting close to that, but that, too, shall pass." - Dmitry Levit
In this episode, Jeremy Au speaks on overreaction, dislocation and confusion, the 2023 versus 2024 investment landscape, and $9B annual capital intake and realistic exit expectations with Shiyan Koh and Dmitry Levit.
Keywords: Overreaction Dislocation Confusion, 2023 vs 2024 Investment Landscape, $9B Annual Capital Intake, Realistic Exit Expectations, Shiyan Koh, Dmitry Levit, Southeast Asia, VC, Thought Leadership
