" I was in a meeting with other bankers and we were notified that Microsoft Copilot had been switched on to take meeting minutes. All of us senior executives laughed and said it made our lives easier, but it made the lives of junior finance staff harder because that used to be their job. The banker beside me said it’s interesting because now our associates have to work a lot harder since they can’t rely on minutes-taking as a core responsibility. It’s an important dynamic to consider because it automates the work while reducing the man-hours needed for many entry-level jobs. " - Jeremy Au, Host of BRAVE Southeast Asia Tech Podcast
" We always talk about a time machine, right? Can I travel 20 years in time? For someone from the Philippines, the average Filipino traveling to Singapore would feel like jumping 45 years into the future. The difference between 1980 and 2025 is about 45 years of progress in infrastructure, education, and entertainment. It’s a 45-year leap in development. We’re not saying whether it’s good or bad, but we should acknowledge this as the power of technology and economic growth. These time machines exist even between neighboring countries in Southeast Asia or broader Asia, showing 45, 50, 20, or 10-year gaps in development. That’s important for us to think about. " - Jeremy Au, Host of BRAVE Southeast Asia Tech Podcast
" Every generation today experiences massive change, some might even call it acceleration. Over the last three generations, from Gen X to Millennials to Gen Z, we’ve seen how each era had its own defining gadget — from the Walkman that let people listen to music on the go, to Nokia phones that allowed SMS messaging, to today’s Apple and Android devices. The question is what comes next for the next generation. I have a three-year-old and a five-year-old, and in twenty years, they will be reporting to you. What technology wave will they encounter? It’s something worth thinking about. " - Jeremy Au, Host of BRAVE Southeast Asia Tech Podcast
Jeremy Au explores how technology, economics, and startups shape Southeast Asia’s future. He shares why young founders should take early risks, how AI is changing entry-level jobs, why GDP growth reflects centuries of human progress, and how unicorns are built across different customer and revenue models.
02:00 Taking Early Risks: Jeremy encourages young people to take risks early in their careers, explaining that finance will always be an option later.
05:00 AI and Work Automation: He describes how Microsoft Co-Pilot now handles meeting minutes, making senior executives’ lives easier but removing traditional tasks from junior staff.
09:30 Economic Lessons from Asia: He compares GDP per capita across countries, noting that Singapore’s 90,000 USD income level makes a Filipino visitor feel as if they are jumping 45 years into the future.
13:20 Startups and Unicorns: Jeremy defines startups as newly established businesses, from cafés to tech firms, and explains that only one in forty funded startups become unicorns.
16:40 Paths to a Billion-Dollar Company: He outlines the “flies to whales” framework, showing how companies grow through different mixes of customer numbers and annual revenue per user.
Jeremy Au (00:42) We're talking about startup marketing and why startups and marketing have such an interlink with one another. I think what's interesting is that just last night, I was at a conversation at the launch of Bain, JP Morgan, and A*Star. Everybody was there talking about biotech, the ecosystem, and very much about how Singapore has been able to become a champion in biotech over the past 10 years. We acknowledged it was very painful 20 years ago. My JP Morgan friends were very surprised and disappointed because they felt that the key insight from the report was that there is sufficient finance, there is sufficient government support, but what we're missing are founders who are willing to create value and take the risk. They asked me to pass the message: if you're young, you have a chance to take risks. And when you take a risk, you can get outsized reward, and there's something for you to be thoughtful about, right? So you can always default to a finance career later. We're not against finance here, but you need to know at what point in your life should you take more risk—early in your life, or should you take more risk later in your life? And these are different debates that we'll talk about over time. What it means for startups.
Technology is eating the world. The jobs that we have seen in this generation are very different from the jobs that will exist in the next 10 years. And we all know that because of the record high unemployment that's being generated by ChatGPT that was just released a few years ago. Do you have a choice about what you want to do with life? Do you want to lead change, follow this change? Are you just going to tag along, and that's okay, I'm going to focus on one thing, or are you going to stand on the side? My job is to make sure you are not ignorant about technology changes that are happening.
Literally several hours ago, I was in a meeting with other bankers, and we had a conversation and we were notified that we had switched on Microsoft Co-Pilot to do minutes taking or transcription for meeting notes. When we said that, all of us senior executives laughed. We said, you know, what's interesting is that it's really made our life much easier for all of us. But we said that it has actually made the lives of finance junior folks harder because they used to do that as their job. Long ago, when I was a consultant at Bain, my first role as an intern, as a first-year consultant, was often to be the person writing minutes of all those meetings. And if I wrote a decent set of minutes, my job was done, and everyone was happy. People said, "Jeremy, you did your job. You're on track for a promotion". All of us laughed, and the guy on the banking side said, "It's interesting because now our associates have to work a lot harder. They can't do minutes taking as one of their core responsibilities". And so it's an interesting dynamic that we have to think about, because it is both automating the work, but it's also reducing the amount of man-hours needed in certain jobs, entry-level jobs.
I share this example not because I'm against technology. I'm not saying this because... you should be aware that this is how technology is going to increasingly change. It's not going to just change minutes taking, it's going to change teaching, my role. It's going to change data analysis, marketing. My job is to remove the veil of ignorance, let you see as it is, and you make a choice from there. Whether you want to lead, follow, or stand aside and do something else.
I recently shared the conversation about Luckin Coffee and their ambition. It was interesting. Again, this is a startup; you can say you had venture fraud, it imploded, but somehow it survived. And now it is back to being a billion-dollar company. They want to be Starbucks, Amazon, and Costco. That's the ambition they have. They're selling to the public markets, the finance team. The marketing team is building them. These are the conversations they have. The course schedule is about startup marketing, advanced components, the landscape, and teaching what you don't know. Everything else you can find out using ChatGPT to get into a more advanced level of mastery.
Jeremy Au (03:06) A quick recap is that for thousands of years, GDP per capita grew about 0.05% per year. In other words, your life was unchanged for generations. Since the 1900s, the world economy has been growing at about 3% per year per person. So you see a hockey stick shape, a huge acceleration of the rate of economic growth that we see here today. And that's important because something has changed. And that is why all of us have multiple devices. I'm wearing four or five cameras, a phone, my laptop, watch, there are several TVs, projectors. These are incredible luxuries and technological marvels that would have never been possible before.
For most of human history, your great-great-grandfather, your primordial humans, their lives were always the same. It was the same land, the same tools, the same family structures, the same jobs, the same occupations. They never had to worry about unemployment because everybody was employed looking for food, defending their tribe, saving themselves from a natural disaster. Today, every generation has a humongous change. Some may even say acceleration. For the last three generations, from Gen X to Millennials to Gen Z, we have seen the advancement of what is the coolest gadget : from a Walkman that you can listen to music on the go (no screen, no communication) ; from my side, having a Nokia phone and being able to send SMS messages to friends and family ; to Apple or Android devices. The question I challenge is, what's going to happen for the next generation? I share that I have a trio of five-year-old girls. They're going to be reporting to you in 20 years, 20 years time. You'll be their managers. What will be that technology wave that they will be seeing? And there's something for you to be thinking about that will be challenging you.
The fact that driving change, technology, trade resources, and ideas, allowing countries and people to specialize. People good at agriculture can do agriculture. And people who are good at electronics can do electronics. We talk about state capacity for governments to protect so that if you want to build a pie, your pie will not be stolen by somebody else in your country or from another country. We also talk about education, literacy, and healthcare, where you live to 80 at minimum , because my parents' generation, Gen X, are living to about 80 years old on average. My generation, I'm probably going to live to, if I'm lucky, 90 or 100. And maybe your generation, you could live to 110, 120. Maybe it becomes digitally immortal. Those are the things that we have, because that means that instead of me—for example, my great-great-grandparents died around my age, early 30s, because of war, disease, conflict, accidents —so I get to be here to teach you, and you get the time and pressure and space to learn now without having to fight for your survival. And lastly, of course, we talk about profit sharing, which is that for the people who want to build the pie, we're able to slice the pie in many ways. So everybody is incentivized to work together to build a pie rather than saying, "Hey, I can't divide this farm, so I'm just going to take your farm". These are the factors driving change.
Jeremy Au (06:01)
Singapore and the USA are currently at about 90,000 GDP per capita. And the UK, which used to be our colonial masters, as our history books say—we used to be a crown colony of the British —they used to be richer than us in the 1960s, the 1980s. But since then, they're currently at 52,000 per year. We have a higher GDP per capita than the British. And Japan, one of our Asian leaders, is about 33,000 GDP per capita. You can see that this Japanese miracle in 1989 slowed down tremendously. It's a good reminder to everybody that just because Singapore and America's high per capita now doesn't mean that we can't screw it up. It doesn't mean America can't screw it up. And it doesn't mean that the UK and Japan can't figure out what they need to do to restart and accelerate again. But I think this is where we stand today.
For all the news about China and India, in 1991, both had the same GDP per capita, about 300 per year. What China has done is through reform, by entering the global trade economy, exports, selling cars like BYD, pocket fans, devices, and manufacturing laptops and phones , is that they've been able to grow to today 13,000 of GDP per capita. In contrast, India is at about 3,000 , four times smaller than that of China. So I think this is a good reminder about what it means for economies to accelerate versus economies that are struggling to accelerate.
Talking about the GDP per capita across Southeast Asia, but also using China and India as part of that. On this Y axis, it is up to 14,000. Singapore and America are 90,000 GDP per capita. It's way off the scale, five times higher than everything else. But what we can see here is that China and Malaysia are at about 11,000 to 13,000 GDP per capita. Malaysia was richer than China, but China has surpassed Malaysia today. Thailand has been growing and now it's at 7,000. Indonesia is at 5,000. Philippines is at 4,000 GDP per capita. Vietnam is also at about 5,000 , and India is about 3,000. So I think this gives a good sense of it, which is again, Singapore's GDP per capita is 90,000. India is 3,000. So there's a 30X difference. Versus Vietnam, 5,000 versus 90,000. There's a 14X difference.
I think there is this acknowledgement of the distance between Singapore and Malaysia is the difference between Boston and New York. Boston and New York are very similar in GDP per capita. Boston's on higher education, biotech, life sciences, and New York's on finance and entertainment. But then again, we just have to be aware about the geographic differences versus the economic differences.
What's also interesting, if you look at it from a time perspective, Singapore, which is today at 90,000 GDP per capita in 2024, basically achieved the current income levels of Malaysia and China in 1991; Indonesia, Vietnam, and Philippines in 1980 ; and India in 1976. The average Filipino traveling to Singapore would feel like he's jumping 45 years in the future. The difference between 1980 to 2025 is about 45 years difference in infrastructure, in education, water, entertainment—a 45-year time jump in development. These time machines, even geographically neighbors, are 45, 50, 20, 10-year time machine jumps between economies in Southeast Asia or broader Asia.
Jeremy Au (07:38) The way I think about GDP per capita is the numerator is about your economic growth rate. And of course, the denominator is your population size. So there's something to be thoughtful about. Some of you may know about this economic philosopher called Malthus. This guy basically believed, and he was advocating in the world, said in the 1800s, what he believed was that GDP per capita will stay the same. He said people will stay poor forever because any economic growth will be eaten alive by the growth of people. He was arguing at a time—he wrote this very argumentative economics paper—advocating in that world that the world should be a lot more paternalistic. So he was arguing against female rights. He said, "Women need to be in the home. They need to be prevented from having more kids". And there needs to be a patriarchal view of society to prevent people from having too many kids so that the fruits of technology and economic progress will grow and allow individual people to be richer without all of those gains being eaten by the growth of humans. He was doing it because from his perspective, at this time in England, there was a very large number of poor people and a small group of very rich people. So all these technological gains and benefits were going to the richest of people, the nobility, but not really accruing to a middle class.
Since then, the world has changed a lot. We have seen the invention of the modern family unit, smaller population sizes. This class is 50% women. In America, there are universities now that actually have more women than men today. Obviously, the world is very different today. It's a function of education, it's a function of birth control, it's a function of family planning, it's a function of government policy. So I think there's one aspect—the denominator component—that's important. The piece is productivity improvements. A simple example would be: Singapore versus Asian neighbors, can we drink tap water? Simple water infrastructure is a big investment we have to make. You have to make sure you have water desalination, reservoirs, pipes, building code. Having clean drinking water is important. If you don't have clean drinking water and you are sick from cholera or diseases, it's very hard to be productive. It's very hard for you to go to work. Public health, for example, is an infrastructure investment that Singapore has done well, but also most developed economies have done well. You can drink the water from the tap in most places in America, in the developed world, in Europe. So I'm just giving an example that I think is both the numerator and denominator that are something to be thinking about from the GDP per capita.
Jeremy Au (08:31) Let's talk about startups versus everyone else. What's so special about a startup? Why do we call certain things startups? And why do we call other things large companies? Some people say you want to be a business owner. Some of you say you want to be startups. So I think for the purposes of definition, we should call all startups a newly established business. A cafe by Nicholas for matcha. Is that a startup? I would say, yeah. He can use the same principles we learned from this class. A startup is just a newly established business. I don't want to gatekeep that. That's for the purposes of this.
Last night, I was reading to my... they're busy learning about unicorns. It's interesting because I keep getting triggered. Every time I talk about a storybook unicorn, I'm thinking about work. What's a unicorn? A high-growth technology company worth over a billion dollars. What does it mean to have an enterprise value over a billion dollars? In general, the way that we like to think about it is that on average, a unicorn makes about 100 million of revenue. When they go on the public markets, they roughly have a 10X multiple between the corporate valuation to the revenues. So 100 million dollars times a 10x multiple equals a billion dollars enterprise value.
The big difference, of course, is if you are a very large company making 100 million dollars of revenue, but you're not growing at all, your corporate valuation would be 100 million dollars. Some companies in the U.S. have several of the latest AI companies. The revenues are less than a million dollars, but the multiple is effectively 100 million or whatever equivalent of it or 10 million or a million ratio because people believe that their growth rate is going to be so incredible. So the corporate valuation of that is a billion dollars. So upon founding, the team goes out, they raise money, and they become a billion dollar valuation immediately, even though they have effectively one dollar of revenue effectively. Again, when we use the word unicorn, we define it as a startup worth over a billion dollars.
If you raise a million dollars of seed capital from a top VC in the US, what are the odds you become a unicorn? The odds are one in 40. One in 40 is about the same odds as playing roulette. Some of you play mahjong or poker; getting a sense of those odds are really important for you. One in 40 is still pretty hard because a roulette wheel has 37 or 38 numbers on the wheel. Startups are hard, right? Because you are going to sink in years and years of your life, blood, sweat, tears, people are going to laugh at you, people are going to not pay attention to you, and you're competing against all these other companies that are there. In this group, I think we have about 20 business founders, and maybe one of you will become a unicorn. Building a unicorn is similar to Olympic level sport.
Jeremy Au (10:19) I'm going to tell you eight paths to build a unicorn. On average, a unicorn needs about 100 million of revenue. This is a beautiful axis that was done. Basically, he said on the X-axis, the number of customers from 10 to 100 million, and the amount of revenue per customer on an annual basis, 1 all the way to 10 million. That's a nice way to think about unicorns.
For example, look at WhatsApp. Facebook is making about 1 per year from you because they give you ads, they're injecting more ads and ads targeting through it. So they make about 1 per WhatsApp user, and they have 100 million users around the world. That's how WhatsApp can become a billion-dollar company, because all of you are contributing 1 worth of time and attention and data to Facebook.
About 10 million users each paying about 10 per year would basically be your path for Instagram. Some are paying for the blue check mark. Some of you may have bought things via Instagram, and those businesses paid 10 for you to buy through there. About 1 million prosumers paying about 100 per year would be your path for Evernote. That's your micro business or micro professionals. All of those who are paying some kind of loot box on your games are probably closer to that level.
Obviously, you have your Rabbits, your small businesses paying about 1,000 per year (100 per month). 100 per month is pretty reasonable for a small business. Your FNB (Food & Beverage), your point-of-sale ordering systems, a lot are paying about 1,000 per year for terminals.
Then you have your Deer, about 10,000 per year, still doable. 10,000 enterprises times 10,000 per year equals a unicorn.
Then your Elephants, your Salesforce, is about 1,000 companies each paying about 100,000 per year.
And you have your Giant companies, 100 paying about a million dollars per year at the enterprise level. They focus on hunting Whales. For example, Palantir sells to the governments, to the U.S. government to track down you and your social network and your family and your friends. They only have about 10 contracts. One is the Pentagon, and the other nine are allied governments, all paying at least 10 million per year.
