"Right now, the biggest agenda is economic reform and growing the country's economy with double-digit GDP growth. Everyone is getting back to the grind and back to the economy. Big projects are still taking time to get approval, but progress is expected after the general meeting in January 2026. It is more stable compared to neighboring countries with fewer headlines or dramas. Over the last two to three quarters, the focus has been on new economic reforms and becoming a technology-driven country." - Valerie Vu, General Partner at Ansible Ventures
"Everyone is focusing on new economic reform. We have to be a technology-driven country. There will be a new law on AI this year. A new sandbox on P2P lending is in place. A sandbox on digital assets and cryptocurrency exchanges recognizes crypto as a legal asset with a framework for at least five years. A national data center has been launched, with two more coming by the end of this year and early next year. We have been busy executing the new government’s agenda to transform and adjust our economic model to be more technology-driven with an internal, domestic focus." - Valerie Vu, General Partner at Ansible Ventures
"The most important thing is how to avoid being labeled as a transshipment. You need to hire local and show your supply chain through and through to prove that you are not a Chinese company. Some components might be from China, but this is not a Chinese transshipment or reassembling hub. If they find out that you are a transshipment hub, you are added 40%." - Valerie Vu, General Partner at Ansible Ventures
Jeremy Au and Valerie Vu sit down in Singapore to examine how Southeast Asia’s private capital markets, Vietnam’s reforms, and regional politics are shaping investor sentiment and startup opportunities. They explore slower fundraising cycles, Vietnam’s push toward technology-driven growth, and how energy shortages and tariff shocks impact manufacturing. Their discussion also covers foreign investor trust, nuclear energy debates, and the rise of cybersecurity and AI as national priorities.
03:52 Vietnam steadies after political consolidation: New leadership pursues double-digit GDP growth, economic reforms, and technology-driven policies.
06:42 Electricity price hikes trigger crisis: EVN’s subsidy rollbacks risk $13 billion in renewable projects and damage foreign investor trust.
12:53 Nuclear energy returns to the agenda: Vietnam revives talks with Russia and Japan to build its first reactor by 2030.
20:47 Tariffs negotiated down to 20 percent: Vietnam avoided harsher 46 percent rates, keeping FDI inflows stable and competitive against India and China.
25:49 Supply chain transparency becomes critical: Firms must prove independence from China to avoid 40 percent penalties, creating opportunities for verification startups.
28:36 Startups align with government priorities: AI, cybersecurity, and data infrastructure ventures gain support through partnerships and favorable policy.
Jeremy Au (00:21)
Hey Valerie, welcome back! Thank you for coming by to Singapore for your super returns week.
Valerie Vu (01:15)
Yeah. Hi, Jeremy, i'm so thrilled to be back here!
Jeremy Au (01:18)
Yeah, so as always, what? Off drinking?
Valerie Vu (01:21)
Quite a lot of drinking, yeah.
Jeremy Au (01:23)
Yeah.
It's just meetings, drinking, wake up, drink a lot of coffee, conference, meetings, and so forth.
Valerie Vu (01:29)
I didn't go to the conference itself, but I did the side thing like coffee and drinks.
Jeremy Au (01:35)
I
mean, that's the meat and potatoes of it is actually all the meetings for me. On the opposite, I was moderating a panel on kind of like private capital markets and the price and revaluation. So it was interesting to host kind of have Quad Capital, August Capital, and Multiplicity partners, right? So it's just interesting to talk and debate that in the morning.
Valerie Vu (01:55)
How was the audience? How was their atmosphere?
Jeremy Au (01:58)
I would say that, obviously, there's a panel and there's after-panel conversations. I think the panel conversation was really a lot of questions about whether the asset prices, secondaries, and whether that revaluation has really happened. And I think there's some acknowledgement that, in the private markets in Southeast Asia, asset prices have started to reprice. I would say it's either flat rounds or down rounds, secondaries are happening.
Previously, people didn't want to update the book value in a portfolio, so I think there was that part. And after the conversation and panel, there's another set of conversations very much about Southeast Asia and the broader market. How about you? What are you thinking?
Valerie Vu (02:34)
Yeah, I would say a lot of entry price has been adjusted significantly. So the price that we are investing now, as we entering as much discount compared to just two years, three years ago. Yeah.
Jeremy Au (02:48)
And I think that's something that founders are seeing. They're seeing obviously longer processes for evaluation, longer due diligence processes, lower prices, less competition for their fundraising rounds. How is it showing up in Vietnam from your perspective?
Valerie Vu (03:01)
That's correct.
In Vietnam, the process our process for entering a new deal has been a bit longer. Yeah, so it took us about five months to close our latest investment, which is much longer than a years ago. Yeah. Yeah, so I can attest like all of the comments from the founders that share to you. Yeah, correct
Jeremy Au (03:23)
And what's interesting is, obviously, I think there's a conversation the founders are having and trying to understand within themselves what it's adding Super Returns, because it's a meeting between the limited partners and the general partners, It's a very different set of conversations. It's much more, I would say high level, it's much more finance-oriented, it's much more macro-oriented. I think one big theme that I had was like,
the big difference between last year's Super Returns and this year's Super Returns, was last year, a very high interest rates, very bearish winter in Southeast Asia, waiting for the new Trump administration to take over. And then this year, we see the Trump tariff policy has been a big macro shock to Southeast Asia. I think also now, we're starting to see that the interest rates have been, I'm going to get cut for the first time. So I think there's a beginning of the end of this
interest rate era. Those are some of the differences between last year's Super Return and this year's Super Return.
Valerie Vu (04:13)
I hope so, especially if you talk about like macro, country-wise. Vietnam has been really aggressive in cost cutting. They have pumped a lot of liquidity into the market, so stock market and real estate have been all-time high in Vietnam. I'm not sure how much is that is fundamental, but that's how Vietnam is a bit different from other countries. We are actually ahead of the U.S. in terms of
lowering interest rates, giving more dovish kind of policy to the monetary market.
Jeremy Au (04:42)
talk about that, because one, two years ago, Vietnam was in a, I think the burning furnace anti-corruption campaign. There's a winter internally from the market. And now, of course, it's like I said, an all time high. That's the problem with news topic, it changes all the time, right? So what's going on on Vietnam from your perspective?
Valerie Vu (04:58)
Yeah, so if you're aware, the new general secretary, Mr. Tô Lâm, I think he's in the last phase of consolidating his power. Right now, the biggest agenda is to economic reform and growing the country's economy and double-digit GDP growth again. So everyone is just like kind of getting back to the grind, back to business and back to the economy. A lot of big
projects are still taking time to get approval, but it's coming soon, especially after the big general meeting in January 2026. So it's a bit more stable comparing like we don't have big headlines, big dramas like other neighboring countries. I don't want to point out to like every single any single country but
Jeremy Au (05:42)
⁓ Singapore!
Valerie Vu (05:51)
yeah, we are relatively more stable and just peaceful during I would say, the last two, three quarters. Everyone is just so focusing on like new economic reform. We have to be like technology-driven country. There will be a new law on AI this year. There's already like new sandbox on P2P lending.
There's a new sandbox on digital asset, cryptocurrency platform exchange. So now crypto is recognized as a legal asset, and there's legalized framework for crypto exchange for at least five years. There's a lot of talk about law on AI, and we just launched a new national data center as well. And there will be two more launching,
end of this year and early next year. So we've just been busy like executing the agenda of the new government, that is we have to transform ourselves and adjust our economic model to more like technology-driven and internal focus, domestic focus.
Jeremy Au (06:50)
I think
it's interesting, so I'll just name the countries that you don't want to name. Obviously, at this time, I think Thailand and Indonesia, the countries that are currently facing political and social turbulence. In Thailand, we saw the election of a new prime minister, they've gone to multiple prime ministers over the past six years. So I think there's a lot of political instability, I think perceived, hopefully, you know.
We'll see what the outcome is, but I think there's some newspaper articles saying that people are concerned. We saw that there were street protests after the death of a Gojek delivery there are outflows of Indonesia capital out of Indonesia into other countries as well. I think it's interesting to see Singapore and Vietnam are relatively calmer at this current time.
Valerie Vu (07:31)
Yeah, it's calmer, but we still have our own challenges as well. I think our biggest drama in Vietnam recently is EVN, the state-owned electricity company that has like monopoly market share in Vietnam. They recently announced that they're going to increase the price for electricity for entire business and consumer in Vietnam because their cumulative loss is about
1.8 billion USD. So they're like, yeah, as a government entity, we have been subsidizing all of your electricity in COVID time. And now, economy has stabilized, and we wish to return and adjust the pricing to normal. But we were all kind of frustrated, because I think they should
Jeremy Au (07:59)
That's a lot.
Valerie Vu (08:18)
take ownership and all the mistakes. I think it's mostly like through ineffective management, that's why the loss was so big. And instead of blaming that all, because of before, like they subsidized and now we have to pay for our past use electricity. Yeah. And also it's a lot of kind of bad move that they
promised to a few foreign investors who were about to invest a lot in renewable energy projects in Vietnam. And EVN has promised to pay some subsidies, credit, and even give them tax incentive and tax credit to this investor, but they recently rolled back all of those as well. What?
Jeremy Au (09:01)
So wait, so did the projects move forward? Are these being constructed or?
Valerie Vu (09:04)
Already
in construction, they just take back the promise, take back the credit, take back the subsidies, and all of those developers together they file a complaint form to the government. So there are about like 13 of them, all foreign investors, like some of the names including like Adani Energy,
a few more big energy companies from Thailand, Netherlands, Portugal, and so on. Yeah. So we went back on our promise, and the letter is saying that the investors are very frustrated with the way EVN is running operations, because they are risking losing 13 billion investment into this renewable energy project. Which is when you miss
one credit, this investor also missed like payment to the bank, so the project are at risk of being bankrupt.
Jeremy Au (10:02)
And it's interesting, because I think the last year when we talked about it, the electricity problem has been happening every year, right? Every year, I think two years ago, there was an energy crisis, and then this past year they've been burning a lot coal in order to not have a total shortage of electricity. But it's just weird that it hasn't been solved yet. I mean, it feels like crisis to crisis every year.
Valerie Vu (10:22)
It hasn't
been solved because it's a chicken-and-egg problem. Our government is aggressively pushing for double digit growth, and to have this growth you need to have foreign direct investmen. If you want more foreign direct investment, you have to show double-digit growth. So a lot of this investment and growth comes from manufacturing moving down to Vietnam, changing operations to Vietnam because,
at the end of the day, we still enjoy a lower tariff and lower labor costs, comparing to some of the neighboring countries. As well as some data centers, some of them are moving to Vietnam as well. Not a lot of those are moving in yet, but there's a promise by Abu Dhabi government
that they will invest a huge data center in Vietnam. And to run all of the manufacturing and data centers, you need a lot of energy. The crisis is being built on top of existing consumer electricity crisis already. And now we have a lot more business coming in.
Jeremy Au (11:25)
Is this confusing? Because when you say that, obviously it's good that the government is pro-business, pro-employment, therefore you need more electricity. So that's good. And I think it makes sense to raise prices, although, of course, I'm not a Vietnamese consumer, so it's easy for me to say this from an economist's perspective, which is you raise price, then people will cut their wasteful spending.
Valerie Vu (11:34)
Yep.
Jeremy Au (11:45)
Yeah, you know, and then you can better match your grid. But then why would you renege and break your promise to foreign investors that's building capacity for your grid that helps software? It doesn't really make sense.
Valerie Vu (11:56)
So because EVN is poorly run, they're under 1.8 billion loss, so they cannot afford to give more subsidies to this investor. And the budget is actually state capital, so they cannot risk running for the loss of state capital. And this is also another theory that they promised to buy more LNG gas
from the US because of the charm so they need to reduce their share of renewable energy project to increase LNG. But that's a theory that I don't have confirmation.
Jeremy Au (12:34)
I think it's viable. I think a lot people are promising to buy gas from America as part of the Trump administration's kind tariff negotiation. I think the problem is that when you break a promise to foreign investors, everybody remembers, right?
Valerie Vu (12:47)
Yeah, that's the tone in the letter. Yeah.
Jeremy Au (12:49)
I
mean, if you just think about it, it's like everybody feels, hey, we can do business with the Vietnamese government. And sure, a state-run utility is equivalent to the government. And so you're looking at it like, if I make this deal, obviously infrastructure deals are not a five-year deal, right? It's a 20, it's a 50-year deal. And if you feel like the government's going to change so quickly, why would you build infrastructure again in five years time when
you're going out looking for energy investors? When the proposal goes up to the investment committee of the energy conglomerate, everyone's going to be like, well, don't you remember when that Thai conglomerate got totally suckered and they lost money on that project?
Valerie Vu (13:30)
That's the tone in the the investors are all very frustrated. But at the same time, there's kind of discussion with Russia and Japan to reinstate the nuclear energy project. So there was a discussion about a new nuclear energy project, but it was stopped. It was halted in 2016. But recently, the conversation is picked up again because the new government
is pushing for energy independence and economic growth again. So they've recently talked to Russia and Japan again, but I'm not sure. Their goal is very aggressive, their goal is to have the first energy nuclear reactor by 2030 in operation. So it's only five more years.
Jeremy Au (14:14)
I mean,
I think lots of countries in Southeast Asia are talking about nuclear energy, right? Singapore has announced they signed a civilian nuclear research agreement with the Biden administration. They kept it going. They're now announcing that they're hiring for
nuclear safety engineers and the Institute. So all the signals are being waived that I think Singapore is going to go nuclear. Indonesia is saying, if Singapore has nuclear energy, we should also have nuclear energy. I think the Indonesians feel like they're not so much on board because, first of all, Indonesia has so much coal. So if you have so much coal at home, do you really need nuclear energy, other than if you think about it from a national security perspective? Yeah, that maybe makes sense. But so there's so much coal.
And then, two, is actually Indonesia, I think the engineering culture, I think people worry about people trust Singapore engineers to do that work. And then, thirdly, you probably want your nuclear reactor to be a place that is not geographically, seismically active. And Indonesia has a lot of volcanoes, earthquakes, and tectonic benefits from
not being impacted by any earthquakes or tsunamis, right, which is important for nuclear safety.
Valerie Vu (15:22)
Yeah, yeah, I think because EVN is state-owned, state-run, it's very hard for them to balance all of the objectives. They have to also work with Mr. Trump, they have to work with Japan, Russia, and now they have to work with this renewable energy group that have Thailand and Philippines, Netherlands, and India.
Jeremy Au (15:43)
It's gonna be tricky, because if you are like an external foreign energy player, even if you're nuclear or LNG, you're also gonna look at what they did to the renewables and you're like, what if the Vietnamese government changes his mind again and drops nuclear or drops gas as an energy source?
Valerie Vu (16:01)
So I think maybe they have to just give some market share to private companies. Why is there utility? I don't know why they haven't done it. It's also talk in one of the agendas in economic reform, that we will rebalance the economy to have more private companies. Yeah. Because right now, a lot of state-owned companies are running the economy. Yeah. But yeah, this is one of the first few
issue and problem they have to actually solve.
Jeremy Au (16:27)
Yeah, I think Singapore's energy solutions are quite interesting, because Singapore has so much oil and gas as it's the oil and gas hub for Southeast Asia. But at the same time, even Singapore had to do a moratorium on data center construction because they were using so much electricity. Yeah. And so, in fact, what's interesting now is that data centers are not really being built in Singapore now, right? They're being built in Malaysia or Vietnam.
Sorry, your Instagram is not working because you have electricity brown out.
Valerie Vu (16:55)
Yeah, we want
to, but yeah, we have to solve our electricity energy crisis first. Yeah.
Jeremy Au (17:01)
So yeah, I think privatization, obviously every country in the world debates this, which is public-run blah blah blah versus privatization. Nobody has really solved it as well. You know, in my head I was thinking about it, I have to do my research. I wish I had, you know, suddenly the editor's gonna put this flashing facts on the screen. Okay, what I know for sure is that I think there's definitely a lot of government
Valerie Vu (17:11)
How is Singapore running it?
Okay.
Jeremy Au (17:25)
dynamic. So right now, Hyflux used to be the Singapore champion in water purification. So it was doing a lot of the, know, reverse osmosis, desalination, kind of like water purification plants. And they're currently went bankrupt because they basically built a plant
in Singapore. And basically, they had a power generation piece combined with the plant. And from HyFlux's perspective, they felt there were guarantees by the state about the price that they could sell at. And what happened, long story short, was the market liberalized, or they let the price
fluctuate. But long story short, Hyflux was basically underwater because their electricity plant can only produce at a certain price that was too expensive versus the market price, which doesn't let them make money on the overall plant. And then Hyflux went bankrupt. Right now, there's a big court case happening between the various parties, which was was this sufficiently disclosed. So there's a big court case, and
different parties are having lawsuits for each other. Not easy to build infrastructure as well. But Singapore doesn't have any energy brownouts, and so far, nobody really complains about electricity price.
Valerie Vu (18:26)
I see.
Have they increased at any time recently?
Jeremy Au (18:41)
You know, I think that electricity hasn't really go up as huge, because I think there was obviously a big crisis after the Ukraine-Russia conflict. Russian oil went off the market, and everybody reconfigured their approach. And I think Singapore officially joined some of the sanctions and so forth. But from an energy perspective,
Valerie Vu (18:58)
Yeah.
Jeremy Au (19:01)
oil is a commodity, right? So in the sense that as long as it flows here and there, the net price didn't really fluctuate for Singapore, because all the oil is flowing in and out. So not a huge dynamic. But think Singapore is a bit constrained because it's promised to go net zero, so net carbon neutral.
Valerie Vu (19:19)
Well,
we promise to do the same and we are now cutting short all the renewable energy projects. ⁓
Jeremy Au (19:24)
I don't think the promise
is a promise. But I mean, for Singapore, they really made a promise because Singapore's argument is like, you know, it's an island. So if we allow global warming to happen out of the way, then Singapore will be underwater. So there's a little bit more... and more incentive to do so. Singapore is busy building sand barriers all across the edges of Singapore, making Singapore higher with sand. But that's why it's more serious about the
Valerie Vu (19:35)
Urgent. ⁓
Yeah.
Jeremy Au (19:50)
net carbon Singapore doesn't have space for wind farms because there's no Solar cell is quite sunny in Singapore, but it's very cloudy and rains all the time, so it can be doable but not perfect. And then, you might have much coal in Singapore, so you're back to oil and gas, which, of course, plays well to Singapore's hub.
Valerie Vu (19:56)
⁓
Jeremy Au (20:11)
So the only other path is nuclear, right? I think that's what everybody keeps talking over and over again. So I think that's the debate. Of course, the problem is that Singapore is so small, right? So a lot of the population is kind of like, where would you put the nuclear reactor? I think it'll be the civilian point of view.
Valerie Vu (20:28)
Or just follow the model like the small nuclear reactor one.
Jeremy Au (20:32)
Yeah, but then even so,
like, you know, where would you put it still? I mean, I think people watch HBO, watch Chernobyl. So even if it's a small modular nuclear reactor, the public perception is not.
Valerie Vu (20:42)
I see. Yeah, Vietnam, have the same promise, but obviously we didn't honor it.
Yeah, we have other things in the negotiation tables. Yeah
Jeremy Au (20:53)
buying planes as well, boeing. So let's talk about the tariffs, right? Because I think Vietnam is at 20% and it's not as bad as what we thought it was going to be, which was 46%. So I guess if you have 46% tariff, then now you're back to 20%. It doesn't feel so bad, I guess.
Valerie Vu (21:06)
46%
Yeah,
it's not the best outcome that we were hoping for, but it's still good enough that everyone can go back to business as usual. At least FDI is back to the flow. Yeah. I think so.
Jeremy Au (21:22)
Yeah, it's like survivable, right?
More
think
Vietnam did a good job. Moving very aggressively, they were one of the first to cut the I thought it was quite impressive, the Vietnamese government kind of like working very hard. I think Singapore basically we got 10% and then we never got anything else. And Singapore actually buys more from America than America buys from Singapore, right? So actually it's a trade surplus. Singapore and America actually by law, has a free trade agreement.
Valerie Vu (21:54)
and
Jeremy Au (21:54)
It's still got a 10% tariff.
Valerie Vu (21:56)
Yeah,
it's a bit irrational, because we were discussing for like 10%, and outside our government already thought that we reached that 10% agreement already and then suddenly President Trump just announced on his social media that we reached 20% so we were actually dumbfounded. But hey, 20% is better than 46%. And
It's still lower than India and China. I think India was, I don't remember exact number, but it's way more than 30%.
Jeremy Au (22:24)
And what's India and China from your perspective?
Yeah,
and Switzerland is also above 30% as well. And Switzerland is like, question mark, question mark, mark. I mean, I think that watches obviously they have the gold. I think the issue for Switzerland is they're doing watches, which is doing pharmaceuticals, which is high they're actually doing gold. And so the problem is gold flows are huge
Valerie Vu (22:36)
They don't even do anything, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Jeremy Au (22:54)
component, but then it's not really a transaction-transaction in terms of like that, right? It's like American investors are buying the gold as being, you know, refined. So it's actually kind of like an unfair. I mean, if you zoom out on a number, it looks like a big trade deficit, but then actually we strip out gold from it, there's actually, you know?
Valerie Vu (23:01)
I see.
Yeah. I would say we only care mostly about India. That is our biggest competitor in terms of getting FDI and manufacturing relocation, reshoring. And India ended up with a higher tariff. Yeah, we can be a little bit peaceful here.
Jeremy Au (23:30)
Yeah, exactly. So you're like, yeah, the negotiator's got 10%. Yeah. He's full, he's all 20%. Yeah. I guess all of them must have gone drinking that night after.
Valerie Vu (23:39)
Yeah, I think like Thailand and Indonesia, we don't really compete head-to-head because we have different kind of manufacturing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So we really care about like, are we lower than India, at least?
Jeremy Au (23:52)
Yeah, I think recently was Vietnam at the recent Xi Jinping military parade. You were there? I mean, Modi was there from India. Yeah. Although he worked hard to be there he was officially at the main thing. He came a day before he left the debut.
Valerie Vu (24:01)
Yeah, yeah, we were there.
And on top of the tariff, India and China have additional tariff from being a BRICS member.
Jeremy Au (24:17)
Yeah, exactly.
For taking Russian oil and gas.
Valerie Vu (24:21)
So we dodged that because we are only a partner of BRICS, not a member. We selectively choose not to be a member, even though we were invited to join as a member. But we know like, you know, that's too bold, and that's like, we literally take inside by being a member. So we only choose to be a partner. So we did not get hit by double tariffs. ⁓
Jeremy Au (24:41)
Yeah, some diplomats are like, thank
goodness we didn't make that decision five years ago, ten years ago. Partner only. Yeah, partner only. I think it's quite interesting, because there's that huge debate happening right now. So when you say that there's more certainty now for the manufacturers who are moving or expanding in Vietnam, what are we talking about? We're talking about Apple, obviously. We're talking about the Koreans, for the electronics. Are we talking about the airports
that being manufactured? So how do you see?
Valerie Vu (25:08)
I think Samsung has calmed down, Nike has calmed down. A lot of furniture that you see in the U.S. and Europe are actually made in Vietnam. All the big furniture companies stay put, stay where they are. There might be even more flow of manufacturing from China moving into Vietnam. It's clear. mean, nothing is ever clear under Trump,
Jeremy Au (25:25)
Because now it's kind of codified enough.
And when you think about the next few months, what are the things that people are looking out for from your perspective? If you are like a Vietnamese businessperson, what are things that you're looking out for? One is maybe how to resolve the energy debate. Anything else that's really kind of like people are keeping an eye on?
Valerie Vu (25:45)
Yeah, I think the most important thing is to avoid being labeled as a transshipment. Yeah. So you need to hire local, your local, and you have to show your supply chain through and through that prove that you're not a Chinese company. You sure like some of your components might be from China, but this is not a Chinese transshipment or Chinese reassembling hub. Right.
Yeah, because if they find out that you are a transshipment hub, you are added like 40% tariff. So that's the biggest question all the manufacturing business owners have right now.
Jeremy Au (26:16)
Yeah.
Do you have a startup that's going to do that labeling or something? I don't know. I mean, there must be some sort of credential way to mark off or verify.
Valerie Vu (26:26)
Data labeling? ⁓
Actually, I know someone
solving that. I didn't invest, but I think that can be one of the areas that they can tackle pretty well.
Jeremy Au (26:40)
Yeah, I think so because it's so hard to do all the counting. I mean, like this part, that part. And then also there's different rules. I guess now every country has their own certain thing, like a certain percentage has to be built here, a certain percentage must be built there, but you can't have any components from there.
Valerie Vu (26:55)
Yeah,
you have a show like supply chain, transparency.
Jeremy Au (26:59)
Yeah, and then you know, you're
buying a widget from your supplier, but then what steel is he using? I don't know, to manufacture the widget, you also don't know, right?
Valerie Vu (27:07)
Yeah, I think it's a good space, opportunity for a startup to join, like logistic, originality, transparency.
Jeremy Au (27:15)
And I
guess my last question I have for you is, when you're looking at all the startups, now it's obviously winter in Southeast thoughts about how startups are reacting or technology is reacting within Southeast Asia, especially for Vietnam?
Valerie Vu (27:29)
I think for Vietnam, I think we got the worst behind us, so it can only up from here. Yeah, that's the worst. And I just closed a new investment. Like a share, it took a bit longer than we hoped, It took five months to close which is kind of long for a deal. But as long as they like working on the same problem that the government is
Jeremy Au (27:34)
That's what.
Valerie Vu (27:54)
like diving to solve for. This should be the right time, and like best time, to solve and build a startup, actually, because government is like supporting them left and right. Like, the government, the national data center, and Ministry of Public Security invite them to be their like advisor, because obviously they are Ministry of Public Security don't know about
data analytics, machine learning, as well as this startup does. So yeah, they got a lot of favorable treatment from the government actually.
Jeremy Au (28:25)
So this is the company invested in. Yeah. Is it public yet?
Valerie Vu (28:28)
It's not public,
but I can just say that they are helping the government with the national data legal framework.
Jeremy Au (28:37)
All ears. You should share about it in the next time once the news comes out. Yeah, I think one question I think that the Singapore government has is this, you know, with this Southeast Asia winter, how position is Singapore from as an economy, right? And I think there's an interesting piece, because Southeast Asia and Singapore,
the government has three parts of it, right? Which one is from a funding perspective and legal incorporation perspective, that's one. Two is from a jobs perspective. And the third is maybe from an innovation and growth perspective, right? And so I think the first thing is I think Singapore's strategy of becoming the "Delaware" or the legal incorporation framework for Southeast Asia companies has paid off well, right? So your funds are still located in Singapore, your VCC structure, your family offices.
So I think people feel comfortable with Singapore as an ecosystem to shut up financial fund for returns, F1, so on and forth. Okay. So I think that's done well. I think the tricky part is there is a jobs component and there's an economic growth component. Jobs component, unfortunately, is this like right now Singapore is facing both obviously headwinds on economy slowing down. And also, for the first time, there's actually more youth unemployment, is very rare.
So normally, Singapore has struggled with unemployment with obviously the elderly, the people who have to reskill, people who are in industries that are shrinking, or low education. But this is for the first time youth unemployment is higher, because multinational corporations are shrinking. A lot of these U.S. MNCs are downsizing because they're using AI, they become more efficient. They hire less engineers in Singapore. So the MNCs are shrinking and
They normally absorb a lot of youth jobs, so that's big problem for them. And that third piece, of cause, is more from an economy perspective, is industrial policies. You want to see startups. And I think for Singapore, there's a of a barbell in the sense that you have your governing corporations, which are vertically integrated conglomerate champions that are good at what they're doing. But they tend to be more in the conventional industries, like shipping or
oil and gas, they're doing okay. And then there's a lot of small medium enterprises like, coffee shops, cleaning services, domestic businesses, first-gen, second-gen, third-gen. But I think there's almost like a missing middle of like the high-growth, national-priority kind of startups.
Valerie Vu (30:54)
Yeah, I think in this sense, Vietnam is actually following US playbook, investing in energy and defense. Yeah. Yeah. And then on top of that AI, I guess application, yeah. With the newly launched national data center, there will be like new AI law, new like data security guidance. Yeah. So
the startup that is working on in those areas are going to do well, in my opinion. Recently, I also forgot to share the credit bureau of Vietnam for consumer also recently got hacked. So a lot of people got leaked information, like confidential information got leaked. Like how much they owe, like what kind of debt they have.
Yeah.
Jeremy Au (31:39)
So do I, if
I check for battery vue, would I find some data?
Valerie Vu (31:42)
You might, you might. That's government-owned credit bureau. They tried to hide it. So the government tried to hide the news for a couple days and then everyone was just like talking about it and they finally like came to the TV, national TV that like the credit bureau that got hacked but safe like stay safe that
your credit card information is not leaked so people who are afraid that their credit card information also got hacked but actually that's not true they only got hacked like your personal information and the amount of debt that you have right now yeah so only those information only that information your credit card information is not leaked yeah so that's what the government was
Jeremy Au (32:22)
Only that information.
So at least you won't get more purchases or more like that but still...
Valerie Vu (32:35)
Yeah. So yeah, like they really have to ramp up on like defense, energy and AI, like especially cyber security.
Jeremy Au (32:42)
Yeah, think Singapore is also facing that issue. The Singapore government is going all out against like, because a lot of people are targeting Singaporeans for scams. Because Singaporeans are very, very soft. It's like, the biggest net outflow of cash is like Singapore as a scam target because, because Singapore is a very high trust society. Yeah. So everybody trusts each other. They leave their wallets on the table.
Valerie Vu (33:07)
Especially
like love scam, right?
Jeremy Au (33:09)
Yeah,
love scam or Yeah, you know always you know, I always remember that my mom actually she got a scam call, you know, and basically she picked up the phone and she basically heard somebody say hey, you know, we kidnap your son and give us your money Otherwise we're going to kill him everything. My mom was like sweating and
getting really anxious, obviously she's hearing this and in the background she's hearing somebody shouting and screaming and saying help, help in Chinese and everything. And then, and then she was just very worried and everything. And after that she was like, didn't she pause and she's like, wait a moment. Like the guy in the background is shouting and screaming for help. He's too fluent in Chinese.
Valerie Vu (33:49)
That cannot be generated.
Jeremy Au (33:52)
That bad. So then my mom just switched it off and then she told me about that.
When I heard the story I was of her, because was like, god you didn't get scared. But also I felt quite ashamed because...
Valerie Vu (34:03)
Go
back to your Chinese school.
Jeremy Au (34:06)
I was like, is my Chinese that bad? I can't help but help in Chinese. So I was just like, oh my god. But yeah, mean, it's kind of crazy that, you know, like, so yeah, so I'm working on my Chinese. I did a semester at Tsinghua University and all this other stuff. But the point of it was just like, even my mom's getting these attack calls. And even for me, I actually,
Valerie Vu (34:09)
I think.
Go back to your Chinese school, Jeremy.
Jeremy Au (34:29)
I use the accept people LinkedIn. But now I just like, I give up. I just said, if I don't know you for sure, I just put no, I'm so sorry. Because the problem is like, they started generating all this AI bots profiles to scrape the staff and everything. And I remember I saw this LinkedIn profile and I was like, this lady who was obviously a bot and obviously is a beautiful woman. And then...
And if I just look at the, you just click in and then you see the, like the, the work is like they did this and somehow they jumped to like director of a bank. And he was just like, no way, like you can't jump like this from a Chinese, you know, university to a Singapore bank. Like is this, and you can't do it in one go and be this young. Doesn't make sense. Like it didn't make sense. And I was like, obviously it's a scam.
But I remember I saw like, like four mutual connections and I was like, who am I? Who am I? And I click a date and I was like, I was like, I was just scolding that man today in my head because, because when I had almost accepted it because it was like, you know, it says four mutual connections. So he's like, like, oh, whatever. Cause it used to be like a high signal trust. And now I'm like, oh, you suckers. Like you just click that her because you know, she's a pretty face.
Valerie Vu (35:41)
They just didn't care either.
Jeremy Au (35:43)
Yeah, I mean it's quite an
accident but the point is that the image is way too beautiful and then I saw 4mm connections and after I saw that I was like, I'm not gonna be that guy, I'm just gonna put no to everybody because all these bots
So sad. So sad. I remember I used to like, you know, used to, you people could just add each other. Nobody.
Valerie Vu (36:00)
Yeah. ⁓
now. Lincoln
has got has gotten a bit weird this day.
Jeremy Au (36:09)
Yeah, and also a lot of bot generated messages and stuff like that. well. Well, on that note, thank you so much for coming by,
Valerie Vu (36:12)
Yeah, definitely.
Yeah, thank you, Jeremy!
