BRAVE Southeast Asia Tech: Singapore, Indonesia, Vietnam, Philippines, Thailand & Malaysia Startups, Founders & Venture Capital VC (English)

Xi Liu is the founder and CEO of Ferne Health, a women-focused healthcare insights platform that delivers at-home screenings and consultations for sexual health. Xi started Ferne Health to challenge the stigma around women's private health concerns in Asia. Xi was a product manager at the Alexa Voice Service team of Amazon prior to starting Ferne. Working closely with the industry giants such as Lenovo and Facebook, her team was to design and deliver Alexa voice assistant's integration experience in third-party electronic products. They successfully launched the Lenovo Smart tab and Facebook Portal, both showcased in CES. Before Amazon, she worked in the Photoshop team at Adobe, building Photoshop Mobile experience and exploring integration with new hardware input modalities such as Apple touch bar or Microsoft dial. Xi graduated with a Master's degree in Integrated Innovative Products and Services (Miips) from Carnegie Mellon University, an interdisciplinary program hosted by the business, engineering, and design school to train the next generation of innovators and disruptors. She had her bachelor's degree in Game Design and Engineering from the Communication University of China. Show notes at: https://www.jeremyau.com/blog/xi-liu You can find the community discussion for this episode at: https://club.jeremyau.com/c/podcasts/xi-liu This episode is produced by Kyle Ong.

Mao Ching Foo is the Co-Founder at RealVantage, a property co-investment platform bringing access and enables users to easily own investment grade properties without the traditional hassles of being a landlord. Previously Mao was the CTO & Chief Data Scientist of Funding Societies | Modalku, leading and growing the technology and data teams while working closely with the business teams to scale the platform for users. Prior to Funding Societies, Mao founded QVantage, a startup empowering equity traders to make smarter decisions using professional quantitative insights. He has also served as Chief Data Scientist of Paktor, a technology startup with presence in 8 countries in the region, and over 5 million users. In this role, he set up the full data science infrastructure and pipelines, built up a team of data analysts, scientists and conducted various studies / models to advance Product & Marketing metrics lift. Before the world of startups, Mao was a quantitative equities trader / portfolio manager in Barclays Global Investors in San Francisco, and subsequently at Ronin Capital, a proprietary trading firm in Chicago. In these roles, he managed all aspects of a market neutral quantitative equities long-short global portfolio. This included researching alpha signals, constructing country specific Barra-type daily risk models, automatic sub-hourly portfolio optimizations, automatic trade execution algos & T-Cost analysis. Trade execution was through a Java OMS on FIX connectivity to DMA destinations. Market exposure was 100 x 100 mio long short with consistent after cost IR performance of 2+ on the overall global portfolio. Mao graduated from Stanford with a MSc. and a MComp, BComp Hons in Computer Science from National University of Singapore. He has publications in top ranked journals, refereed conferences and book chapters. He is a strong believer of building technology startup ecosystems and is an angel investor and mentor to several startups in the region. Show notes at: https://www.jeremyau.com/blog/mao-ching-foo You can find the community discussion for this episode at: https://club.jeremyau.com/c/podcasts/mao-ching-foo This episode is produced by Kyle Ong.

Zishuang is currently spending time writing about tech startups in South-East Asia at https://zishuang.substack.com/ . More than the act of putting out his thoughts, he appreciates the feedback he gets from it. He's also spending time as a Venture Scout with Saison Capital which is an early stage venture fund with a focus on SouthEast Asia and India. In this capacity, he works with the fund to fund the best startups and understanding what verticals we should bet on. Prior to this, he was the Country Launcher at Circles.life, a startup backed by Sequoia and Founder's Fund. He also founded a few startups which was a journey of many lows that made the highs extremely fulfilling. Show notes at: https://www.jeremyau.com/blog/cheng-zishuang You can find the community discussion for this episode at: https://club.jeremyau.com/c/podcasts/cheng-zishuang This episode is produced by Kyle Ong.

Jes Min is Co-Founder and CEO of The Recommend Group, South East Asia's #1 Home and Property Platform operating in Indonesia (Sejasa.com) and Malaysia (Recommend.my). The company connects customers and businesses to tens of thousands of the top-rated service professionals in categories like renovations, interior design, cleaning, aircon servicing, electrical repairs and pest control. Recommend Group is unique in its vision of building technology that turns services into products, by standardising prices and quality, creating a layer of trust so that services can be transacted safely online. It has served 1,000,000 homes to date in services that range from $10 to $50,000. Across both countries, Recommend empowers service professionals who connect to the platform to grow their business, collect payments and manage their team in a seamless manner. Throughout the pandemic, the company actively supported their service professionals in obtain permits to operate and advocating vaccination throughout the service worker force. Jes Min is an ex-Consultant with Bain & Company and Accenture, where she has helped multi-national companies scale their business and operations throughout Tier 1, 2 and 3 cities in Indonesia, Thailand and Malaysia. She has also helped national sovereign funds and banks transform their technical infrastructure, as well as program managed some of the largest financial services mergers and acquisition activities globally. Her personal mission is to build technology as a method to grow incomes and alleviate communities out of poverty. Her experience in SEA and also in Africa drives her belief that small businesses play a huge role in improving livelihoods, and this underpins the mission behind Recommend Group as well. Jes Min is also a mother of 2 little children. By the ease at which they twist her around their little fingers, she strongly believes they will one day take over the world. Show notes at: https://www.jeremyau.com/blog/jes-min-lua You can find the community discussion for this episode at: https://club.jeremyau.com/c/podcasts/jes-min-lua This episode is produced by Kyle Ong.

Reuben Noronha has spent the last few years building and scaling businesses in Asia. He founded his first company, Nivaasa, a co-living startup in India, in 2016 and ran it for a few years before selling it. He then had the opportunity to move to Southeast Asia to build and scale new business verticals at Zilingo. He enjoys the 0 to 1 phase the most and love building teams up. When not working, he spends his time podcasting, DJing, and trying to understand the cryptocurrency world. Show notes at: https://www.jeremyau.com/blog/reuben-noronha You can find the community discussion for this episode at: https://club.jeremyau.com/c/podcasts/reuben-noronha This episode is produced by Kyle Ong.

Crystal Widjaja is the Chief Product Officer of Kumu, a social live streaming superapp platform that amplifies Filipino creativity, community, and commerce. She is currently the cofounder of Generation Girl, a non-profit for young women in STEM fifelds, an Entrepreneur-In-Residence at Reforge, an educational program for product and growth practitioners, and an angel investor through the Sequoia Scout and Monk's Hill funds, where she works with startups across South East Asia and the Bay Area. Previously, Crystal was Chief of Staff and SVP of Growth and Data at Gojek. She has been recognized by Forbes 30 Under 30 and HerWorld's Woman of the Year. Show notes at: https://www.jeremyau.com/blog/crystal-widjaja You can find the community discussion for this episode at: https://club.jeremyau.com/c/podcasts/crystal-widjaja This episode is produced by Kyle Ong.

Cathy Liu is an analyst, designer, and aspiring entrepreneur. Her most recent projects included building the open-source platform, Help With Covid, with Sam Altman, Radu Spineanu, and a team of core volunteers. Over three months, Help With Covid attracted the work of 800+ projects and 17,000 volunteers who aimed to quickly solve some of the most hard-pressed problems during the pandemic. She was born and raised in California in the United States where she currently calls San Francisco Bay Area home. Currently, she is pursuing building her own startup. She most recently joined On Deck’s Founder Fellowship (ODF10) where she will spend 10-weeks shaping her vision into reality. Prior to ODF10, she spent her time at Intel, Didi, and CBS Interactive where she drove operations for global supply chains and designed experiences for car rentals in international markets. She takes particular interest in industries such as travel, mental health, and e-commerce. During her free time, Cathy likes to try new computer/board games, watch Asian dramas, and go to pilates classes. Cathy is a graduate of the University of California, San Diego where she holds a B.S. in Management Science and a minor in Cognitive Science. You can find Cathy on LinkedIn to follow her journey. Show notes at: https://www.jeremyau.com/blog/qna-ondeck You can find the community discussion for this episode at: https://club.jeremyau.com/c/podcasts/qna-ondeck This episode is produced by Kyle Ong.

In this special Q&A episode, Jeremy unbundles his experiences from Harvard's MBA program. Show notes at: https://www.jeremyau.com/blog/harvard-mba-qna You can find the community discussion for this episode at: https://club.jeremyau.com/c/podcasts/harvard-mba-qna This episode is produced by Kyle Ong.

Valerie is Vietnam Country Head of Venturra Capital, a Southeast Asia focused venture capital firm investing in early-stage technology-based businesses headquartered in Jakarta. Venturra’s primary investment focus is on internet companies, in sectors such as e-commerce, financial technology, marketplaces, healthcare and education amongst others. Valerie began her career at Deloitte U.S. where she provided clients in the asset management industry with the tax and deal advisory services. Raised by an entrepreneurial family, Valerie is fascinated by breakthrough technology and product innovation. She then joins the digital transformation of Southeast Asia by joining Venturra to empower and support entrepreneurs throughout their journey. On the side, Valerie is managing Launch Vietnam Startup, the largest Vietnam online start-up community with more than 50k members. Launch started out as a playground for startup founders, investors, and like-minded talents who are contributing to Vietnam tech ecosystem. Launch’s main mission today is to foster entrepreneurship and innovation through sharing startups journey together, growing together, and succeeding together. She hosts weekly session of “Founder Stories” on Launch Vietnam Startup to deliver knowledge and insights to the Vietnamese tech community. Valerie was born and raised in Vietnam and was a first-generation college graduate of Temple University with a Bachelor’s in Business Administration. She loves traveling, volunteering for educational initiatives, and learning new languages. She is currently learning Mandarin Chinese, her 5th language, after Vietnamese, French, English, and Spanish. Show notes at: www.jeremyau.com/blog/valerie-vu You can find the community discussion for this episode at: https://club.jeremyau.com/c/podcasts/valerie-vu This episode is produced by Kyle Ong.

Anna Haotanto is the Partner & COO of ABZD Capital and the CMO of Gourmet Food Holdings, an investment firm focusing on opportunities in the global F&B industry. She is also the founder (former CEO) of The New Savvy – Asia’s leading financial, investments and career platform for women. Anna is part of the founding committee of the Singapore FinTech Association and was in charge of the Women In FinTech and Partnership Committee. Anna is the President of the Singapore Management University Women Alumni. Anna is also part of the Singapore Chinese Chamber of Commerce & Industry Career Women’s Group executive committee. Anna invests and sits on the board of a few startups. Anna’s story is featured on Millionaire Minds on Channel NewsAsia. She hosts TV shows and events, namely for Channel NewsAsia’s “The Millennial Investor” and “Challenge Tomorrow”, a FinTech documentary. Anna was awarded “Her Times Youth Award” at the Rising50 Women Empowerment Gala, organised by the Indonesian Embassy of Singapore. The award was presented by His Excellency Ngurah Swajaya. She was also awarded Founder of the Year for ASEAN Rice Bowl Startup Awards. She was also awarded the Women Empowerment Award by the Asian Business & Social Forum. Anna has been awarded LinkedIn Power Profiles for founders (2018, 2017), Tatler Gen T, The Peak’s Trailblazers under 40 and a nominee for the Women of The Future award by Aviva. She was nominated and selected for FORTUNE Most Powerful Women conference in 2016 (Asia) and 2015 (San Francisco, Next Gen). Anna is on the panel for Singapore Computer Society for Best Tech Company to work for and Digital Proficiency Program. Anna was awarded Top Student (Salutatorian) for UOB-SMU Private Banking course. She completed the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) FinTech course. Anna spearheaded and founded the Women Alumni group at Singapore Management University. She graduated from Singapore Management University (Finance and Quantitative Finance), Hwa Chong Junior College. She held leadership roles – she was the founding member and Vice-President of the Quantitive Finance club, the Soccer Captain and the Vice-President of the Dance Society. Show notes at: https://www.jeremyau.com/blog/anna-haotanto You can find the community discussion for this episode at: https://club.jeremyau.com/c/podcasts/anna-haotanto This episode is produced by Kyle Ong.

In this bonus episode, Jeremy answers Q&A from his four interns, Adriel Yong, Tan Yong Quan, Lyndon Lee & Pooja Sinha on Clubhouse and the future of Audio storytelling. Show notes at: https://www.jeremyau.com/blog/clubhousevspodcasts You can find the community discussion for this episode at: https://club.jeremyau.com/c/podcasts/clubhousevspodcasts This episode is produced by Kyle Ong.

Jenna Hua is the founder and CEO of Million Marker, a health-tech company that empowers people to detox their lives through mail-in test kits, lifestyle audits, and counseling. Harmful chemicals are present in food and drinks, plastics, and everyday products. These chemicals have been linked to infertility, IVF failure, child development, obesity, diabetes, and cancer. Million Marker is the first and only company that makes it easy for everyday consumers to learn about their toxic chemical exposure, and provides scientific and actionable solutions to minimize future exposure. A registered dietitian and environmental health scientist by training, Jenna completed her Bachelor's of Science in Nutrition, Master of Public Health and PhD in Environmental Health Sciences at UC Berkeley, and postdoctoral fellowship in chronic disease prevention at Stanford Medicine. Jenna's past research has focused on how our surrounding environment impacts our behaviros and health. An ardent believer in disease prevention, Jenna wants to provide personalized preventive strategies to everyone to lead a healthier life. Show notes at: https://club.jeremyau.com/c/podcasts/dalia-katan You can find the community discussion for this episode at: https://club.jeremyau.com/c/podcasts/dalia-katan This episode is produced by Kyle Ong.

Dalia Katan is the CEO and Founder of Presently, a leading group celebration startup that helps groups collaborate around special occasions. At Presently, Dalia is working to create meaningful and sustainable opportunities for communities to connect regardless of proximity, leveraging over 15 years of experience in design, business strategy, and inclusion. Before Presently, Dalia worked as a management consultant at Deloitte and as an independent consultant. She worked closely with leadership at over 30 companies, ranging from early-stage startups to Fortune-10 corporations, to design consumer-led growth strategies, go-to-market approaches, and new product innovation. She also spearheaded Doblin Innovation's expansion to the West Coast in 2018 and was a fellow at the renowned Center for the Edge with John Hagel in 2016. Prior to Deloitte, Dalia led marketing and user experience at two early-stage startups and built and scaled her first product to over 4M users. Her passion projects center on bridging divides and nurturing inclusion, influenced by her family's refugee journey and her thesis at Princeton. Dalia co-founded Deloitte's Refugee Community of Interest and launched an offering on refugee integration in the workplace, backed by a $450K grant from Deloitte leadership. She also authored publications on the future of work, inclusion in the workplace, and diversity. Dalia received her BA from Princeton University, where she studied international affairs, entrepreneurship, and human-centered design. She was an OnDeck Fellow and Afore Capital Fellow in 2020. Show notes at: https://www.jeremyau.com/blog/dalia-katan You can find the community discussion for this episode at: https://club.jeremyau.com/c/podcasts/dalia-katan This episode is produced by Kyle Ong.

Joseph Ling is the Founder and CEO of Vouch, an award-winning technology start-up that creates engaging digital concierges to help hotels streamline operations and enhance guest experience. Since launching, Vouch has steadily garnered recognition for its work in catalysing digital transformation in the hospitality industry, receiving the Singapore Tourism Awards’ Best Business Innovation award in 2019, as well as being named one of PhocusWire’s “Hot 25 startups for 2021”. The company has also been shortlisted to participate in Facebook’s prestigious Startup Station Accelerator and the Amadeus Next Startup programme. Joseph is a government scholar who graduated with a double degree in Electrical Engineering and Economics from National University of Singapore. Show notes at: https://www.jeremyau.com/blog/joseph-ling You can find the community discussion for this episode at: https://club.jeremyau.com/c/podcasts/joseph-ling This episode is produced by Kyle Ong.

Chris Shen (沈偉士) is the co-founder of Revere, where he jointly oversees all investments, asset management, strategic initiatives and operational activities. Chris is also a managing partner of all Revere-managed fund products. Chris is also a Founding Partner (non-executive) of West 22nd Capital Advisers, a Hong Kong-based single family office and investment firm that is licensed by the Securities & Futures Commission of Hong Kong (SFC). Among other roles, Chris established the firm’s operations, served on the investment committee, and led venture capital and external asset manager investments. Chris also currently serves on the advisory boards of tech companies FiscalNote, Booqed and Zectr, and is a venture partner with BridgeWood Alternatives and GPO Fund. Previously, he was a special counsel with the global law firm Baker McKenzie, focusing on corporate finance and fund formation matters in the Asia-Pacific region. Chris serves on the board of directors of the Museum of Chinese in America (MOCA) NYC and is active with the Association of Asian American Investment Managers (AAAIM) and Asian Americans Advancing Justice - Los Angeles. He is also a Type 1/4/9 responsible officer under the SFC, is admitted to practice law in the State of Texas, and speaks fluent Mandarin Chinese. A native Texan who grew up in Houston, Chris lived and worked in Greater China (Beijing, Taipei and Hong Kong) from 2006 to 2019, and now splits his time between Silicon Valley and Hong Kong. Show notes at: https://www.jeremyau.com/blog/chris-shen You can find the community discussion for this episode at: https://club.jeremyau.com/c/podcasts/chris-shen This episode is produced by Kyle Ong.

In this special episode, Jeremy takes on questions from listeners on Compatibility, Role Negotiations & Minimum Viable Relationship. Jeremy Au (区汉辉) is a VC at Monk's Hill Ventures who invests in fellow founders who will transform millions of lives. He also spearheads MHV's key initiatives from venture scouts to thought leadership. Jeremy hosts the BRAVE podcast and interviews trailblazing founders, investors and rising stars in Southeast Asia tech. His mission is to inspire thousands to build the future, learn from our past and stay human in between. He is also an angel investor in multiple startups across USA and Southeast Asia. Jeremy cofounded CozyKin, an early education marketplace. He led the startup as CEO from 0 to Series A to acquisition by Higher Ground Education. Won Harvard Business School's New Venture Competition and the MassChallenge grand prize. Incubated by Harvard Innovation Lab's VIP Program and MIT Sandbox. Jeremy cofounded Conjunct Consulting, an impact consulting platform, and bootstrapped the social enterprise to profitability, over a hundred clients and thousands of trained impact leaders. He consulted across multiple Southeast Asia markets and China as a Bain management consultant. He also served as an infantry sergeant in Singapore. Jeremy is a public speaker and panelist on entrepreneurship, leadership and community engagement. He has spoken for thousands across Harvard, Deutsche Bank, Singapore Global Tech Network, Boston SPARK Council, Institute of Policy Studies, Civil Service College and many others. Recognized by Forbes 30 Under 30 and Prestige 40 Under 40. MBA from Harvard Business School and double honor degrees in Economics & Business Administration from UC Berkeley. Jeremy enjoys science fiction, improv, hiking, tea and being a dad with his family. He enjoys hearing from authentic founders, receiving podcast guest recommendations and new speaking opportunities. Follow Jeremy on LinkedIn, Instagram and Twitter. Show notes at: https://www.jeremyau.com/blog/listener-questions-1 You can find the community discussion for this episode at: https://club.jeremyau.com/c/podcasts/listener-questions-1 This episode is produced by Kyle Ong.

Chia is a Principal at Saison Capital, a leading FinTech-focused venture capital fund, who has done especially well in emerging markets like Southeast Asia and India. Their direct investments include Grab, Southeast Asia's largest startup and super-app, as well as ShopBack, Southeast Asia's largest shopping and cashback rewards platform. Their limited partner investments include some of the top- performing funds in Southeast Asia, like East Ventures and Beenext, as well as global funds like Quona Capital and Antler. Previously he was the fifth employee for Antler, the leading global pre-team venture builder. He also both invested and launched markets for them in Europe. He was also at Rocket Internet where he helped build out an eCommerce company in Pakistan and Sri Lanka that was bought by Alibaba. On the side, he is cofounder of Shaper Impact Capital, a 60-person platform that helps early stage startups with an impact connect with resources they need for the next stage of growth. He runs good-admissions, a Harvard Business School admissions advice platform where all proceeds go to charity. He also angel invests in marketplace and consumer startups in emerging markets like Indonesia, Bangladesh, and Egypt. His educational background includes a law undergraduate degree from Cambridge and will be doing his Harvard MBA in the future. He likes indie music, hiking and writes about venture capital at his website, which can be found at www.chiajy.com. Show notes at: https://www.jeremyau.com/blog/local-foreign-vc You can find the community discussion for this episode at: https://club.jeremyau.com/c/podcasts/local-foreign-vc This episode is produced by Kyle Ong.

Co-Founder & CEO Of Galileo - The Innovative Online Global School Where Students Can Choose What To Learn & What Skills They Need To Thrive in the 21st Century 👩‍🚀 Show notes at: https://www.jeremyau.com/blog/vlad-stan You can find the community discussion for this episode at: https://club.jeremyau.com/c/podcasts/vlad-stan This episode is produced by Kyle Ong.

Jeremy answers listener Q&A from Robert Jomar Malate on Harvard Turtle, Southeast Asia Talent Crunch and Immigrant’s Dilemma. Robert Jomar Malate is a 4th-year undergraduate at Harvard University concentrating in Mechanical Engineering. During school, he is active in the engineering community, having worked and managed projects with the robotics team and aeronautics club. His engineering skills go beyond mechanical engineering, having done software engineering at Google and research at the Wyss Institute. Ultimately, his goal is to work on cutting-edge robotics and aeronautics systems. Outside of engineering, he also enjoys learning about world history, economics, and Mandarin Chinese. Outside of classes, he can be seen conversing with people, exercising and breakdancing. Show notes at: https://www.jeremyau.com/blog/harvard-turtle You can find the community discussion for this episode at: https://club.jeremyau.com/c/podcasts/harvard-turtle This episode is produced by Kyle Ong.

Rovik Robert is a public servant, content creator and community advocate. He has founded a social enterprise, The Hidden Good, as well as The Singapore Club on Clubhouse. He also hosts the SGExplained podcast which explores institutions, histories and events in Singapore such as secret societies, hawker culture and SARS in Singapore. He currently leads the content team at better.sg, a tech for good collective, and is currently building a facilitation platform that codifies conversation principles and encourages diversity. Rovik obtained his BS Computer Science from Northwestern University and his MSc in Management of Information Systems and Digital Innovation from the London School of Economics and Political Science. In his free time, Rovik blogs at magicinthespacebetween.wordpress.com Shownotes at https://www.jeremyau.com/blog/rovik-robert You can find the community discussion for this episode at https://www.club.jeremyau.com/c/podcasts/rovik-robert This episode is produced by Adriel Yong

Ryan Galloway has been building companies in Southeast Asia for more than 10 years, with a focus on corporate development and enterprise sales. As of March 2021, his teams have raised more than 250 million USD, and have created more than 1x year-on-year revenue jumps on several occasions. In the technology space specifically, his most notable venture was iCare Benefits, Vietnam's first BNPL where he was business model co-founder. In charge of corporate development and enterprise sales, Ryan's teams between 2014 and 2016 raised more than 150 million USD across equity and debt, and acquired more than 1,400 corporate clients across 7 different countries. He also saw revenue increase from 0 to 65 million USD annual in 2016. After iCare Benefits, Ryan served concurrently as EIR to 500 Startups Vietnam Saola Batch 2 and Batch 3 accelerators, and as Chief Growth Officer for Nafoods Group (HoSE: NAF). For Saola, Ryan oversaw 13 different companies of which 75% either went on for subsequent funding or broke-even. For Nafoods Group, he raised 15 million USD from IFC and Finnfund, and his enterprise sales teams saw an increase of revenue from 24 million USD in 2018 to 64 million USD in 2020. NAF's share price increased 2.5x during the same time period. Ryan currently serves as corporate development director at Homebase Vietnam, a Y-Combinator company, and is advising some of the region's larger Fintech players. He earned his MBA in Global Finance from Thunderbird School of Global Management, and Juris Doctor from Case Western Reserve University School of Law. He is fluent in Vietnamese, and speaks conversational Japanese. He also started distance running during the first wave of Covid, recently clocking a 1:42 for the 2021 Salonpas Half-Marathon in Ho Chi Minh City. Show notes at: https://www.jeremyau.com/blog/ryan-galloway You can find the community discussion for this episode at: https://club.jeremyau.com/c/podcasts/ryan-galloway This episode is produced by Kyle Ong.

Sarayu is a venture capital investor and executive with a special focus on sector-agnostic technology and technology-enabled companies in the US and emerging markets. Sarayu has had a long career in technology as an investor, operator and founder helping young companies grow and innovate. Prior to serving as a Fellow, Sarayu was the Founder & CEO of KAARGO, a mission driven consumer-to-consumer transport and shipping marketplace. She also held a Visiting Scholar appointment at the University of Edinburgh, a visiting EIR/VIR at Arizona State University, and is a guest lecturer at universities worldwide. Earlier, Sarayu was with Intel Capital investing in high-growth companies across technology sectors and stages in the U.S. and the emerging markets. Sarayu deployed Intel’s first $250M emerging markets fund in India, making seminal investments across the region and internationally. Exits include Comat (acquired by Glodyne) and the second largest B2B marketplace in the world, IndiaMART (NSE:Indiamart). Prior to Intel, Sarayu was a venture partner and headed a growth accelerator. Prior to her investment career, Sarayu held senior operating roles at several successful early-stage software and services pioneers and was also a brand manager at Pepsi where she ran two $300M brands. Sarayu also held a research fellowship at Harvard Business School and was invited to join the PhD program based on her work. Sarayu has authored a range of academic and practitioner’s literature including in Forbes, WIRED, Fast Company, National Academy of Inventors Tech & Innovation Journal, and various Harvard Business School publications. She is a frequent speaker on VC, technology, international business, and entrepreneurship. Sarayu holds a BA in Architecture from Barnard College/Columbia University, an MBA from École Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées, Certificates in Medieval European Studies and Shakespeare from Cambridge University, and held a pre-PhD fellowship at the Harvard Business School. Shownotes at: https://www.jeremyau.com/blog/sarayu-srinivasan

Poesy Liang is an interdisciplinary artist with a background in architecture, luxury design & media. She is an innovator on the social front, founding 2 Facebook movements – Helping Angels & Bald Empathy Movement, and has won numerous media awards in South East Asia for her humanitarian projects. An early adopter of technology since 1999, long before the terms ‘blogs’ and ‘cloud storage’ even existed. Poesy recently implemented a blockchain system with her collection of physical works for authentication & provenance, and receiving bitcoins as a mode of payment since late 2015. Her famous cat Harry Putter appears on Telegram as emoji stickers. Poesy is occasionally invited to speak on leadership platforms to share her remarkable energy that defeated paralysis twice caused by spinal tumours, and her survivor story is often retold in the media. While Poesy continues to produce paintings, sculptures, objects, museum installations, gemstone jewelry, lifestyle spaces, fashion, etc – she also create music and movements, and actively experiment with technology to widen her portfolio around her signature works – she finds it important to bridge the gap between the realms in order to achieve her calling to affect media reform and engage her skills for social good. Poesy started out in the world when she was aged 14 as the Levi’s 501 girl for South East Asia and became a familiar face in Asian television commercials before she reinvented herself into this current form.

John is the founder of Saturday Kids - a curiosity school for children - and Doyobi - an edtech startup setting out to become the 21st century skills framework adopted by every school. He is also an investor in tech startups, in particular startups reimagining the future of work and learning such as Padlet, Galileo, Contra and Beanstalk. Saturday Kids runs Code In The Community, a Google and government supported initiative that is the largest free coding programme in Singapore. John is an Obama Foundation Asia-Pacific Leader, Transcend Fellow and Ashoka Changemaker. He sits on the board of Ninja Van and ErudiFi. He is a father of five whose music playlist alternates between jazz, old-school hip-hop and Japanese city pop. In a different life he’ll probably be a music writer. Or winemaker. Possibly ski instructor. One day when he's tired of tech he wants to open a natural wine and vinyl bar in a ski resort somewhere in Japan. Show notes at: https://www.jeremyau.com/blog/john-tan You can find the community discussion for this episode at: https://club.jeremyau.com/c/podcasts/john-tan This episode is produced by Kyle Ong.

Wing Vasiksiri is a Co-Founder and Managing Partner of iSeed SEA, a venture capital firm that invests in founders building software and technology-enabled companies across Southeast Asia. The firm is sector agnostic and focuses on seed stage investments in Indonesia, Singapore, Vietnam and Thailand. Limited partners in the fund include global founders like Naval Ravikant (Founder & Chairman of AngelList), Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal (Founders of Snapdeal), and Jonathan Swanson (Founder & Chairman of Thumbtack) among others. He was previously on the operations team at AngelList Venture where he worked with angel investors and fund managers to invest over $80M into 357 startups. During his time at AngelList, he launched and deploy investments for 25 venture funds, working directly with emerging fund managers across the fund life cycle. Before that, he helped raised institutional funds for 500 Startups and The House Fund and has personally angel invested in 18 startups and 3 venture funds. He is now based in Thailand where he invests across Southeast Asia and helps companies scale and break into the Thai market. Wing graduated with a degree in Economics from the University of California, Berkeley. His hobbies include freediving, scuba-diving, surfing, and jiu jitsu. You can find him on Twitter at @wingvasiksiri. Shownotes at: https://www.jeremyau.com/blog/wing-vasiksiri

A serial entrepreneur and CEO operator with a track record of 0 to 1 growth and a strong focus on building healthy unit economics early on in a venture's life-cycle. He founded Postr, a leading lock screen advertising SDK in 2014 (exited to Play2Pay in 2021). He currently works with MonksHill Ventures and Kickstart Ventures, building out ivs.tv, SEA's largest B2B video player and advertising delivery platform, serving over 120 million unique users, across over 1.2bn pages per month. Show notes at: https://www.jeremyau.com/blog/milan-reinartz You can find the community discussion for this episode at: https://club.jeremyau.com/c/podcasts/milan-reinartz This episode is produced by Kyle Ong.

Aldi is the Partner at Arise, an early stage fund initiative by MDI Ventures and Finch Capital with a mission to empower the 3rd Generation of Entrepreneurs in the post-pandemic era who's building a R.A.B.B.I.T. (Real Actual Business Building Interesting Tech) through his Backward Investment Thesis which is powered by multi corporations and venture funds backers. He is also the VP of Investments at MDI Ventures, an $830 Million AUM Global Multi-Fund VC Firm investing in local founders, mainly backed by Telkom Indonesia. Aldi is leading the overall global investment activities with focus on seed-to-growth equity stage startups across 5 Funds and 3 Offices (ID, SG, USA) with portfolios that represent 12+ Countries including PayFazz, Waresix, Kredivo, MPL, aCommerce, SiCepat, ObserveIT (Exited to Proofpoint), Wavecell (Exited to 8x8), Red Dot Payment (Exited to PayU Naspers), Whispir (IPO at ASX), and Geniee (IPO at TSE). Prior to MDI Ventures, he was in charge of setting up, leading, executing, and managing investments of a Silicon Valley based Venture Capital firm in the SEA region and #1 Fintech focused VC arm of Indonesia largest Corporate Lender with top SEA portfolio which includes Alodokter, Investree, Koinworks, Amartha, Bridestory (Exited to Tokopedia), Moka (Exited to Gojek), Urbanindo (Exited to 99.co) Jurnal (Exited to Mekari), Talenta (Exited to Mekari), and Cashlez (IPO at IDX). Recently, Aldi was awarded as the only GCV Powerlist Top 100 from SEA region among other top global CVCs such as Softbank, Intel Capital, GV, M12, Naspers, Tencent Investment, and Alibaba Innovation Ventures. If you are an aspiring 3rd Generation of founders who is interested to build R.A.B.B.I.T and looking for a highly strategic and agile partner in Indonesia to crack its US$ multi-billions Digital Market opportunities, don't hesitate to reach him out - [email protected] Show notes at: https://www.jeremyau.com/blog/aldi-hartanto You can find the community discussion for this episode at: https://club.jeremyau.com/c/podcasts/aldi-hartanto This episode is produced by Kyle Ong.

Robbie Crabtree started his career working inside of the courtroom where he developed and refined his speaking, strategy, and storytelling as a trial lawyer. In 102 jury trials he tested and validated his system in murders and child abuse cases. As these skills grew, he was asked to coach the national mock trial team at SMU Law School in Dallas, TX which he has done for the past 4 years. Robbie called his system Performative Speaking and began working with founders, entreprenuers, and executives when they reached out to him after seeing him in the courtroom. Over the past 2 years he has worked with founders to successfully fundraise at the pre-seed through series B levels and advised others around leadership development, strategic communication, and best sales techniques. Robbie's role as a consultant and coach to startups and founders has put him in front of large audiences around pitching and pitch decks in both On Deck and with Jason Yeh's Fundraising for Founders. He has also taught his own Performative Speaking online program where he has worked with over 150 people in the last 9 months to turn speaking into a superpower. Robbie's big question is how can he help people with world changing ideas to effectively communicate those ideas to actually change the world.

Gregory Van is CEO of Endowus.com, Asia’s leading fee-only wealth management platform. Headquartered in Singapore and backed by Lightspeed Venture Partners and Softbank Ventures Asia, Endowus is the first digital advisor to span both private wealth and public pension savings (CPF & SRS). Endowus focuses on providing expert advice, institutional access to financial solutions, at low & fair fees to everyone, in a delightful digital-first experience. Greg started his career in investment banking at UBS, advising and fundraising for private equity and venture capital firms in the Asia Pacific region. Greg then joined Grab in its early days and was the business development and partnerships lead for payments and technology. ‍ As a young father of two, Greg realised the importance of personal financial planning but found that managing the finances of his young family was challenging as it was costly, frustrating, and limited in high-quality options. “Investing should be accessible, and advice should be scientific in helping people realise their goals. Coming from an investments background, I was shocked by what someone has to go through in order to plan for their family’s financial future with confidence. There is a huge gap between people’s investment activities and the portfolio that would suit their individual situation. I believe technology and access to the right products will close this gap and achieve measurable client results through structured, progressive, and personalised financial planning.” Greg therefore saw an opportunity to combine his expertise in tech and finance to empower people to realise their financial goals. As part of Endowus Investment Committee, Greg is passionate about building holistic portfolios for every investor. Greg’s passion for investments and helping others stems from his personal experiences and failures. At 17, Greg made his first investment in Amazon and profited 7% in 3 days. Emboldened, he began speculating which resulted in his portfolio fluctuating from a 30% profit to 95% loss. Through this journey, Greg fine-tuned his investment approach to be holistic, evidence-based with the lowest fees possible. Today, Greg and his family have invested all of their savings in Endowus’ 80% stocks, 20% bonds portfolio. Greg graduated magna cum laude with a BA in Politics, Philosophy, and Economics from the University of Pennsylvania. He also did a one-year exchange program directly enrolled in the School of International Studies at Peking University. Show notes at: https://www.jeremyau.com/blog/gregory-van You can find the community discussion for this episode at: https://club.jeremyau.com/c/podcasts/gregory-van This episode is produced by Kyle Ong.

Janine Teo is the CEO of Solve Education!, an education technology not-for-profit with the mission of delivering quality education to everyone, focusing on the bottom of the pyramid demographic. She is the first Asian to receive the International Intellectual Benefits to Society Award by Mensa International. Janine is also an advisor to ADB’s Digital Technology for Development Unit, and a fellow of the University of Pennsylvania—Global Social Impact House. She believes that education is the key to solving the many challenges we face in the world today. She is an avid speaker on topics like education, EdTech, gender equality, and poverty alleviation. Janine began her career as a software engineer in Paris and concurrently founded and operated various businesses in Singapore. She eventually joined Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide Inc, and served various postings in Thailand, Maldives, US and Indonesia over eight years. Janine obtained her Bachelor in Computer Engineering from Nanyang Technology University. In her free time, she enjoys mentoring, upcycling furniture, cooking and training her newly adopted cat. Show notes at https://www.jeremyau.com/blog/janine-teo You can find the community discussion for this episode at https://club.jeremyau.com/c/podcasts/68-janine-teo-on-edtech-founder-pathing-insatiable-curiosity-gamifying-education-from-indonesia-to-beyond

Melvin Sumapung is the Co-Founder & CEO of Justika (www.justika.com). Justika is a legal services marketplace, aiming to make justice more accessible to Indonesians. They helped tens-of-thousands of Indonesians seeking help on divorce, inheritance, criminal, land and property, and also businesses. The platform also partners with the public sector such as the Ministry of Cooperatives and SMEs and also The Asia Foundation, to provide free consultations to covid impacted SMEs and domestic violence victims. Before joining Justika, Melvin worked at an AI/data analytics startup where he improved the functionality of the most widely used regulations database in Indonesia, and had also spent his career in the corporate strategist and business transformation field of corporates. Melvin graduated from Bandung Institute of Technology, majoring in Industrial Engineering. In his spare time he enjoys doing sports, and is always open to connect and casually chat with fellow and aspiring entrepreneurs. You can connect to him at https://www.linkedin.com/in/melvinsumapung/.

Mark is a software entrepreneur, business development expert, startup advisor, community builder, and author of Community-in-a-Box. He currently works at AWS as a Principal Startup Advocate advising founders and technical teams on how startups across Asia-Pacific successfully build and scale their startups on AWS. As a community builder, Mark founded DEVBIZOPS, a long standing newsletter and blog about innovation, technology transformation, and developer culture. Mark also is the founder of the Enterprise Sales Forum, a global community of 25,000 B2B sales professionals that meet in-person and virtually to share ideas, network with peers, and learn new skills. Previously, Mark was with Stack Overflow to help launch their SaaS Q&A platform and then led efforts to expand business in APAC working with C-level executives to help them understand how to build internal tech communities in order to improve software delivery performance. Before that he launched an HR tech startup, invested in numerous B2B tech companies and worked at a diverse group of leading technology companies including Oracle, E.piphany, and Siebel. Mark graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering from Boston University. In his non-working hours, he likes to search cities for the best local foods, and he can be seen rocking out to extreme metal on occasion.

Karthik Gandhi is an engineering leader at Stripe. His current role is to help Stripe expand into SEA and India. Before Stripe, Karthik worked at Grab, where he managed critical economic levers such as Pricing, Surge Engine, Forecasting, Demand Shaping, Supply Shaping, and the ML platform that powered it all. Karthik built his career in Silicon Valley before moving to Singapore. He started his career at pre-IPO VMware as a kernel developer. Later he started an NLP startup (General Sentiment) with his advisor Prof. Steven Skiena. Even though the company didn't succeed, the experience shaped his career. Karthik was inspired to become a leader at Microsoft, where he was part of Azure team. His most significant career breakthrough came when he joined Uber as one of the early employees and spent close to 4 years there. During his time at Uber, Karthik helped Uber build its business in China, built its core infrastructure that helped Uber scale to millions of transactions/second. Later, Karthik transitioned to build autonomous vehicles and trucks. Karthik became part of the Uber Freight team when the automated trucks program was suspended and helped build a marketplace from scratch. Karthik graduated with a Master of Science from Stony Brook University, New York, and later did a distributed systems specialization with the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. He moved to Singapore in June 2019, where he lives with his wife (Software Engineer@Facebook) and his 3-year-old daughter. He is into adventure sports such as ice climbing, diving, canyoning, skiing, and any outdoor activity depending on the season. His indoor activities include reading books about leadership and human evolution - past, present, and the future, tinkering with my Raspberry PI cluster for distributed systems development. Shownotes at www.jeremyau.com/blog/karthik-gandhi You can find our community discussions on the podcast episode at https://club.jeremyau.com/c/podcasts/karthik-gandhi-on-engineering-leadership-styles-feedback-by-travis-kalanick-us-vs-singapore-tech-culture

Nat is an Investment Associate at Monk’s Hill Ventures, a venture capital firm investing in early-stage tech companies, primarily Series A, in Southeast Asia. She is based in Thailand and is responsible for deal sourcing and execution, investment analysis and portfolio management. With a strong passion for financial inclusion, Nat brings in a decade of experience in fintech, capital markets, and macroeconomics from Thailand. Prior to joining Monk's Hill Ventures, she spearheaded fintech and blockchain investments at Beacon Venture Capital, a corporate venture arm of Thailand’s top three largest banks. Prior to that, Nat advised corporate and SME clients on financial management and hedging strategies at Kasikornbank (KBank). She was also an Economist at the Bank of Thailand where she contributed to the set-up of Southeast Asia's US$240 billion reserve fund. She graduated with an MBA from Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University. You can listen to her podcast at https://www.theventurejourney.com Shownotes at: https://www.jeremyau.com/blog/nat-wittayatanaseth

Gorick Ng is author of THE UNSPOKEN RULES: Secrets to Starting Your Career Off Right (Harvard Business Review Press), a guide on how to become a top-performing employee, based on 500+ interviews with professionals across geographies, industries, and job types. Gorick's book is quickly becoming required reading for new grads and new hires across universities, Fortune 500 companies, tech startups, and non-profits around the world. Gorick's book has been endorsed by Arianna Huffington (Founder of Huffington Post), Cal Newport (Author of Deep Work), David Carey (Former Global President of Hearst Magazines), Edith Cooper (Board Director of Slack and Etsy and Former Global Head of Human Capital Management of Goldman Sachs), Ginni Rometty (Executive Chairman of IBM), Julie Zhuo (Former VP of Product Design of Facebook), Rich Lesser (CEO of BCG), and Ratan Tata (Former Chairman of Tata Group). Gorick is a career adviser at Harvard College, specializing in coaching first-generation, low-income students. He has managed new employees at Boston Consulting Group, worked in investment banking at Credit Suisse, and is also a researcher with the Managing the Future of Work project at Harvard Business School. He has been featured in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Financial Times, Fast Company, CNBC, and more. Gorick, a first-generation college student, is a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Business School. Find him at gorick.com. Shownotes: https://www.jeremyau.com/blog/gorick-ng

Kei Shibata co-founded Venture Republic Group in 2001 and has been serving as CEO since the foundation. The company runs a group of online travel websites and apps across Asia including LINE TRAVEL jp , Japan's largest online travel metasearch/media (26 million monthly users on Web + 22 million followers on LINE app), Trip101, a Singapore-based global online travel media for modern travelers, and allstay, a leading mobile accommodation search app in Korea. He led the company to IPO (2177. JASDAQ) in 2008 after 7 years of inception, to buyout by the management in 2012, to sales of “coneco.net,” its online shopping engine business in Japan to Yahoo! Japan in 2013, and to bring in LINE Corporation, Asia’s leading mobile messaging company as an investor in 2018 as a liquidity event. Kei also serves as co-founder/organizer of WIT (Web In Travel) Japan & North Asia, the largest international business conference in North Asia focusing on travel & technology, Chairman of Keio University's alumni association for startup founders/CEOs and Executive Committee Member of Harvard Business School Club of Japan. Kei is also an angel investor in the travel & technology space across APEC and America regions for over 10 years. He received a Bachelor of Arts in Law from Keio University and an MBA from the Harvard Business School. In his free time, Kei is an avid nordic/alpine skier & snowboarder. Shownotes at https://www.jeremyau.com/blog/kei-shibata You can find our community discussions on the podcast episode at https://club.jeremyau.com/c/podcasts/62-kei-shibata-on-founding-with-1-equity-taking-risks-in-risk-free-environments-non-ideal-startup-paths

John-Simon Purcell (‘JSP’) is Senior Director, Product & Technical Strategy at Prosus Group/Naspers where he advises on new venture investments and provides operating guidance to Prosus’ worldwide portfolio in the areas of product, growth, and technology. Prior to Prosus, JSP was Technical Director at Medialets, where he scaled systems to collect & analyze data for a product that was at one point on 85%+ of all iOS and Android devices. JSP had also guided Nokia’s Ovi Store, a B2C mobile experience with on-device and web based storefronts for billions of customers in every corner of the globe. He also held several technology leadership roles at MTV Networks and Sun Microsystems. JSP started his career at Cambridge, MA startup Vermeer Technologies which was acquired by the Microsoft Corporation. He holds a B.A. from Boston University and a M.S. from Columbia University, in Computer Science respectively. Shownotes at https://www.jeremyau.com/blog/john-simon-purcell

Koh Shiyan is the Managing Partner at Hustle Fund, a venture capital fund that invests in pre-seed software startups in the U.S., Canada and Southeast Asia. Prior to that she was VP Business Operations and Corporate Development at NerdWallet, a Fintech Startup that helps users with a range of financial decisions through content, community and tools. Over the course of six years at NerdWallet, she led product teams, ran business operations and corporate development, and helped grow the company from US$1M to US$150M in revenue. Shiyan’s first exposure to technology was as a summer intern writing technical documentation for a small 30 person startup Telenav, that is now listed on NASDAQ. She has also worked in a series of finance and investing roles at JPMorgan, Institutional Venture Partners and Bridgewater Associates before joining NerdWallet. Shiyan graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Biomechanical Engineering and a Bachelor of Arts in Economics from Stanford University as well as an MBA from Harvard Business School. Shownotes at https://www.jeremyau.com/shiyan-koh You can join community discussions at https://club.jeremyau.com/c/podcasts/60-shiyan-koh-on-choosing-bosses-learning-acceleration-building-investor-founder-trust

Andrew Barry is currently the Program Director for the On Deck Course Creator Fellowship, where On Deck is building the first global community of Superstar Teachers. He is also the founder of Curious Lion, a boutique training agency reimagining the way companies like PagerDuty, Pinterest and KPMG upskill their people. Prior to that, he was Head of Learning at Lobster Ink, a video-based training provider in hospitality, later acquired by Ecolab. He was also in charge of content for KPMG's Executive Education business before entering the world of startups and entrepreneurship. Andrew received his Bachelors in Business Science, Finance and Accounting from the University of Cape Town. He is originally from South Africa, and now lives in New York City with his wife and son. Shownotes at https://www.jeremyau.com/blog/andrew-barry You can find our community discussions on the podcast episode at https://club.jeremyau.com/c/podcasts/andrew-barry-on-disrupting-education-infinite-distribution-designing-catharsis

Youngrok is a partner at Ginza Ventures, cross border early-stage venture capital fund based in Japan and the US. Currently, he is structuring the fund while raising the capital from potential limited partners. With an emphasis on B2B and FinTech, the fund intends to invest in startups in various industries and aims to help its portfolio companies expand in Japan (and Korea). He also launched a media project called VRidge. Along with the current weekly newsletter written in Japanese and Korean, he also plans to start podcasts and Youtube channels for the audiences in Japan and Korea featuring investors, founders, and builders from other countries. With full of curiosity, he has always aspired to challenge new things. Born in raised in Seoul in Korea, he decided to go to Japan to play guitar in a rock band when he was in high school. While he was serving for Korean Army in 2005, he volunteered to go to Iraq for 7 months. Post-college, after spending six years as an engineer at Goldman Sachs in Tokyo, he decided to go to the US for the MBA program at the University of Chicago to try out his venture capital journey. He spent one year at ARCH Venture Partners in Chicago before working at Recruit Strategic Partner, corporate VC arm of Recruit Holdings, the parent company of Indeed and Glassdoor. He currently lives with his beautiful wife in the Bay Area. As for hobbies, in addition to playing guitar, he enjoys all outdoor activities https://www.jeremyau.com/blog/youngrok-kim

Yishi is an entrepreneur and investor.He was born in China and grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area. His first job out of college was as an investment banking analyst at Goldman Sachs in San Francisco. He worked for 3 years at a fundamental-value hedge fund thereafter. After 20 years in the Bay Area, he moved to Boston in 2016 to pursue an MBA at MIT Sloan. While at MIT, he co-founded DeepBench. The company connect customers with experts on any topic in any industry.In 2020, he transitioned away from being the full-time CEO of DeepBench. Hee started a start-up studio called Optionality Partners. He uses his own capital and that of a few close friends to build businesses and invest in companies. He also blogs at the intersection of investing, entrepreneurship, and personal growth: https://yishizuo.com Currently, Yishi lives in Los Angeles. Shownotes at: https://www.jeremyau.com/blog/yishizuo

Ricky Willianto is the Co-Founder and CEO of Ravenry, a knowledge work platform that connects companies with the top 5% freelance researchers and writers in the world. Previously, he was involved in strategy and research, having been Managing Director for Dash, a Senior Consultant at BTS, and an Industry Analyst at IBISWorld. Ricky received a Seth Godin’s altMBA, and his Bachelors in Commerce, Economic and Finance at University of Melbourne. Born in Indonesia, he now lives in Singapore, working to build a network of creators in Southeast Asia. Shownotes and Transcript at https://www.jeremyau.com/blog/ricky-willianto You can find our community discussions on the podcast episode at https://club.jeremyau.com/c/podcasts/56-ricky-willianto-on-bootstrapping-vs-vc-funding-entrepreneurial-childhood-asian-financial-crisis-impact-on-family

Alexandre (Alex) Lazarow has spent his career working at the intersection of investing, innovation, and economic development in the private, public, and social sectors. He is the author of Out-Innovate: How Global Entrepreneurs - from Delhi to Detroit - Are Rewriting the Rules of Silicon Valley (HBR Press). Alex is a venture capitalist with Cathay Innovation, a global firm that invests across Africa, Asia, Europe, and North America. Previously, Alex worked with Omidyar Network, a philanthropic investment firm that has invested over a billion dollars in hundreds of startups around the world. He has served as a strategy consultant with McKinsey & Company, a financial regulator with the Bank of Canada, and an M&A investment banker with the Royal Bank of Canada. Alex is an adjunct professor specializing in impact investment and entrepreneurship at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey. He is a Kauffman Fellow, CFA Charterholder, and a Stephen M. Kellen Term Member at the Council on Foreign Relations. He earned an MBA from Harvard Business School and a B.Comm from the University of Manitoba. Alex is a regular columnist with Forbes, and his writing has been featured in the Financial Times, Harvard Business Review, McKinsey Quarterly, Entrepreneur Magazine, TechCrunch, Fast Company, VentureBeat, Business Insider, and Quartz , among others. He speaks regularly on global innovation trends and has presented at Collision, Endeavor, InsureTech Connect, the Social Innovation Summit, SOCAP, and the Corporate Venture Capital Summit. He is most proud of having once been called a ‘sad, low budget Ryan Reynolds’ on Twitter.

Steven is co-founder and CEO of Aman, digital platform for employee benefts in Indonesia, empowering employers to conveniently find and manage health insurance for their employees. Prior to starting Aman, Steven lived in Beijing, building and leading business development team for ByteDance in Southeast Asia. Before that, he was based in Singapore for 4+ years, working on product partnerships for Google, helping to launch new products and features for Google Maps across the region. Shownotes at https://www.jeremyau.com/blog/steven-tannason You can find our community discussions on the podcast episode at https://club.jeremyau.com/c/podcasts/54-steven-tannason-on-google-vs-bytedance-culture-indonesia-zero-to-one-audacity-as-founder

Sudhir Thomas Vadaketh is the author of 'Floating on a Malayan Breeze: Travels in Malaysia and Singapore' and co-author of 'Hard Choices: Challenging the Singapore Consensus'. He is currently working on a book about China and India. From 2006-13 Sudhir worked for the Economist Corporate Network and Economist Insights [units of The Economist Group] in Hong Kong and Singapore. He continues to work freelance for the company. He has moderated and spoken on panels across Asia for the firm, most recently at The Economist’s Open Future Festival in Oct 2019 in Hong Kong. In his personal capacity as an author, Sudhir has spoken at numerous institutions and events around the world, including Columbia University, Harvard University, The World Bank, Yale-NUS, the Georgetown Literary Festival and the Singapore Writers Festival. He is currently a contract-based supervising editor at DBS’s Asian Insights Office, as well as a senior writer at WildType Media. Sudhir has written for a variety of publications, including The Economist, Foreign Affairs, Nikkei Asian Review and The Straits Times. He has appeared on numerous regional and international video shows, including CNN’s Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown. Born and schooled in Singapore, Sudhir has bachelor’s degrees from the University of California at Berkeley and a master’s degree from the Harvard Kennedy School. Shownotes at https://www.jeremyau.com/blog/sudhirtv

Jasmine Wang is the Co-founder & CEO of Copysmith, an AI brainstorming partner for marketers. Previously, Jasmine has been heavily involved in AI research at Partnership on AI, OpenAI and the Montreal Institute of Learning Algorithms (MILA). Jasmine started out in engineering and research for Lyft self-driving, and Microsoft Research’s Tech for Emerging Markets group. She also received engineering, research, and academic fellowships most notably by Interact, Kleiner Perkins, 8VC, Microsoft, and the Fulbright Foundation. Jasmine received her Bachelors in Computer Science and Philosophy at McGill University. In her free time, she plays the piano. Shownotes at https://www.jeremyau.com/blog/jasmine-wang You can find our community discussions for this episode at https://club.jeremyau.com/c/podcasts/52-jasmine-wang-on-ai-copywriting-replacing-vs-augmenting-human-labor-ai-trust-and-safety

Albert Lie is a deep lover of engineering with previous experiences in business development, civic technology, and product. He has experience working in non-profit, government, and start-ups (ideation, early-stage, series-A, and series-B) Albert was the 1st engineering hire for Xendit, an impact-focused FinTech startup and the 7th person in the company with a mission on making customers be able to seamlessly accept payments and disburse funds at scale in Southeast Asia. With side projects in various sectors but not limited to healthcare, legaltech, and deep tech, Albert loves building something that people want. Shownotes at www.jeremyau.com/blog/albert-lie You can find our community discussions on the podcast episode at https://club.jeremyau.com/c/podcasts/51-albert-lie-on-xendit-s-founding-engineer-unsexy-markets-and-indonesia-startup-culture

Jackson Aw is a 2018 Forbes 30 under 30 honouree and Founder & CEO of Singapore-based Mighty Jaxx, a technology-driven integrated future culture platform that designs and manufactures collectibles and lifestyle products in partnership with the greatest talents in the world as well as global brands such as Hasbro, Nickelodeon, Sesame Street, Toei Animation, Cartoon Network, Warner Brothers, DC Comics, Looney Tunes and more. Besides empowering future culture brands with the end-to-end supply chain of collectibles, Mighty Jaxx also manages a large scale, proprietary IP operation that delivers global consumer access via new retail technologies. Jackson has grown Mighty Jaxx from a S$20,000 startup into the multi-million dollar company it is today, and the company now ships millions of products yearly to collectors in over 60 countries with diverse offerings in collectibles, gaming, lifestyle and fashion. Shownotes on https://www.jeremyau.com/blog/jackson-aw You can find our community discussions on the podcast episode at https://club.jeremyau.com/c/podcasts/50-jackson-aw-on-solo-founders-pop-culture-leadership-fatherhood-stories

Paul Veradittakit is a Partner at Pantera Capital and focuses on the firm’s venture capital and hedge fund investments. Pantera Capital is the earliest and largest institutional investor in digital currencies and blockchain technologies, formerly managing over $1B. Since joining in 2014, Paul has helped to launch the firm’s second venture fund and currency funds, executing over 100 investments. Paul also sits on the board of Staked, Blockfolio, and Alchemy, is a mentor at The House Fund, Boost VC, and Alchemist, and is an advisor to Orchid, Origin, and AI Foundation. Prior to joining Pantera, Paul worked at Strive Capital as an Associate focusing on investments in the mobile space, including an early stage investment in App Annie. Previously, Paul was at Hatch Consulting and LECG and performed partnerships and growth for Urban Spoils, an early stage startup in the daily deal space. Paul graduated from the University of California, Berkeley. Shownotes at https://www.jeremyau.com/blog/paulv

Prior to Asia Partners, Mr. Nash was the Group President of Sea, Greater Southeast Asia’s leading internet company with a ~50Bn market cap, from 2014 to 2018. Mr. Nash led Sea’s landmark initial public offering on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE: SE), which raised approximately $1 billion of primary capital and which was the largest ever U.S. IPO of a company from Southeast Asia. Mr. Nash joined Sea after more than a decade with General Atlantic (GA), most recently as the co-founder and head of GA’s Southeast Asia business. Three of Mr. Nash’s successful investments while with General Atlantic are now multi-billion dollar NYSE publicly traded companies. Prior to GA, Mr. Nash was a management consultant with McKinsey & Company in New York. Mr. Nash was a member of the World Economic Forum’s ASEAN Regional Strategy Group from 2017-2018, is a member of the global Kauffman Society for leadership in venture capital, is a member of the Young Presidents Organization, and is a board member of Endeavor Indonesia. He received an MBA from Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business in 2007, where he was an Arjay Miller Scholar. He received his undergraduate degree from Harvard University in Chemistry and Physics, magna cum laude, in 2000. Shownotes at https://www.jeremyau.com/blog/nick-nash-1 You can find our community discussions on the podcast episode at https://club.jeremyau.com/c/podcasts/48-nick-nash-on-generational-lessons-world-s-greatest-injustices-and-curiosity-as-growth-hack