I'd like to ask you how do you see
the (tech) climate you were talking about earlier
are you seeing any kind of new trends?
Things people invest in or...
So the trends are actually somewhat predictable
If you are a student in a Whatsapp group chat in the past few years
You can actually see the patterns
And they are actually happening in Southeast Asia in almost the same sequence.
So for an investor,
That's like a dream, like you can actually see the future
So we're very excited about it.
Because...
Having spent five years as a VC I actually have a sense of what's going to happen.
Financial services, etc.
All the bigger ones you saw those are sort of
too big now for VCs.
But the new ones are exciting
I think Southeast Asia will have its own risks
Around lending, for example.
But in the end, it's the entrepreneurs.
That's the toughest thing: trying to find
the human being that's going to drive a company
from zero revenue to a $100 million-revenue and more.
There are very few humans on Earth that can do that.
And then trying to find them in Southeast Asia, that's hard
Okay. Thank you. So, next...
Vu Van is the co-founder and CEO of ELSA which is..
an English language pronunciation automated assistant.
And Vu, you used to be a consultant.
How did you get into this sector
Being an entrepreneur with ELSA?
So hello everybody my name is Vu
I was born and raised in Vietnam
I was here in Stanford Business School,
Once I finished school here I joined a consultant firm.
The biggest reason why I joined a consultant was
as an international student it is kind of required.
To pass faster, that fast so that you can pursue your dream as a free person in this country.
That's the reason. You have to choose... Peng: You can try now.
ELSA was more of a personal passion for me
I moved here from Vietnam...
And when I was at Stanford in my first quarter..
When I spoke English, people had a really hard time understanding me.
As an MBA student...
Classes are relying on you to share your opinions
I was raising my hand and saying a lot of things
So many times the professor would just acknowledge what I said and kind of skipped over.
Five minutes later, your classmate raised their hands
And said something and then the professor would say "That's a genius idea"
Jumped right in, analyze it more.
I sat there and thought, I was saying exactly the same thing
I realized people couldn't understand me well and didn't want to embarass me
They didn't want to ask to clarify over and over.
I was trying hard how can I improve my pronunciation.
And so when I quit my consultant...
I found out there are many people that can benefit from this solution.
That hadn't exist back then. That's how I founded ELSA.
Let me ask you, how does Southeast Asia work to ELSA?
Which are the market segments that you think are working for ELSA?
If you think English in America, it's not really the market.
It's pretty international here. So the market is small.
So I think, the people that need my product the most have to be outside the US.
So I decided to go back to Southeast Asia first when we launched the first product in Vietnam.
I know the product really well, there's a 100 million people in Vietnam.
I'm pretty sure probably 90% of them would need certain help to learn English well.
The good thing is you don't have to go convince people in Southeast Asia...
that you need to speak better English.
if you speak better English you get better job, the income would be double or triple.
When you have a market as such, you don't have to convince them hard.
You just have to convince you have a solution for them.
That's why I went back to Southeast Asia.
Vietnam, Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia...
All of this are big countries.
Are you looking at adult market or children market?
We look at the entire market.
Alright, thanks.
I'm sure we'll come back to talk about this area.
Next to you is Casper Sermsuksan
who is the co-founder & CEO of Kulina
Kulina is a food technology platform that...
works with chefs and restaurants to deliver curated meals
and it's got a last-mile delivery output.
So how did you get into this?
Yeah, this is a very interesting story.
so I was actually in here, not in this room particularly.
In SEA Connect before I moved back to San Francisco.
..to my home. I was born in Thailand.
Flashback a little bit, I was born in Thailand.
And moved to Singapore when I was younger.
And moved to US. I went to USC.
Not as good as Stanford. We call ourselves the Stanford of the South.
I also worked in San Francisco for a little while.
I was working in a product management team for a casino game
that makes about 200 million dollars a year.
In that industry, everything is really good. I learned quickly and got promoted pretty fast.
And then I was like.. Why was...
Then my friend asked me why do you scam these app people?
And I have no better answer so I questioned my mind.
So, I have to move on.
So I reached out to Michele (Principal at Monk's Hill Ventures)
Because of our connections.
And I came here, meet Peng, actually met Helen too.
So talking to them, talking to Michele, because I wanted to move to Hong Kong.
Michele was like, "we would like to introduce you to, a co-founder", who is my co-founder now.
Both of them are Andys.
Both of their names are Andy, so I call them Andys.
Meet them, "you've never been to Indonesia, would you like to move there?"
I was like, "what's in Indonesia?"
As a Thai person, no one has ever been there before.
"What do you mean, move to Indonesia?"
I realized that there are two Thai people working in tech.
Running a company in Indonesia. Two.
Small community there
Hopefully more will come
When I look at the market in Thailand, there's nothing much.
You can see in the slides
I didn't have that information before
In Indonesia there are more VC, business
People are saying this is where you want to be.
I was like, "yeah it was easy for me to go back home"
When I'm out it was a lot harder to move back to Thailand and move to Indonesia
That's what I decided to do.
Coming to Indonesia, there's a lot more stuff going on.
That's how I got there
So one of the common challenges in rapidly growing Asian cities is traffic.
With the deliveries, this must be a pain in the head.
So this is a...
That's why Go-jek get where they are.
Because they started with motorbike on-demand.
For most people here in San Francisco,
We have a unicorn in Indonesia that do motorbike delivery
Uber driver here are like, "wow how can you do that? Seems fun!"
I was like, "it's not fun"
The only way you can get you can travel is through traffic
You have to start to adapt to things
The reason we still survive is also because traffic
So that's the market we're in
Where we have to find ways, solutions getting food.
Because you can't go out get food like here you walk around.
In Jakarta, you have no sidewalk
As it is in many, many countries. And that's how we do that
That's the reason we have motorbike deliveries. And we start to develop more...
Those are things that we're looking at.
Basically those are the problems that exist in Southeast Asian cities.
That's where I see the opportunities.
You cannot bring anything that works in San Francisco
You cannot just bring something that works in China and put it in Southeast Asia
That's why I think there's a big opportunity.
Our final panelist is Ms. Helen Foo
Helen is the...
Vice president of product management for Alation and Alation is a collaborative
enterprise data catalogue that combines machine learning with a human insight
and she's also an Operating Advisor for Monk's Hill Ventures
How did you get into this and how did you divide your time?
So I also spent a couple of years in China building a startup using AI for data analytics.
And had the opportunity to move to Singapore
I was introduced to Peng.
Peng was like, "What's your purpose? What do you wanna do?"
So we got into discussions, and next thing I know I joined Monk's Hill Ventures.
To help entrepreneurs, and find opportunities that would work in different markets.
Southeast Asia I see similar patterns data is
Everyone is digitizing, leveraging inefficiencies in the emerging markets.
and creating businesses to empower.
And really improving lives as well.
It was really fun working with the team
enterprise people are using data to do clinical studies and precision medicine
understanding creating new models for insurance a lot of
so two years five years ten years and no in Asia South Asia for example earlier
you so much of uniforms we actually have companies coming in to us two of those
are customers and asking us um can you help us solve our problems so it is
Wireless and the challenge is when you step up and wave and you go to those
market and how do you sisters there's a lot of localization you have to go to
market yeah okay sounds good
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