Analyse Asia With Bernard Leong

"I'm actually not a believer of the web 2.0 turning into web 3. So these days a lot of companies are basically turning non-profitable web 2.0 companies and adding token elements into that and turning it into a web 3 company - and think issuing a token can flip the whole picture differently. I'm not a believer in that, the reason is that the user is coming on board with a different purpose. These people from the web 2.0, they don't care about whether they have tokens, they don't care about whether they're owning the assets." - Jessica Liu   Fresh out of the studio, Jessica Liu, the partner from AppWorks Ventures joined us in a discussion to probe deep into what it is like to invest in the Web3 space. We began with her backstory of how she transitioned from fintech into crypto as a venture capitalist. From there, she offered her perspectives on how the web3 space is evolving and why the web2 paradigm cannot be translated into the new mission of web3 in onboarding the next billion. Last but not least, Jessica re

"I think one of the things that TSMC does is that they tend to hit their targets. When they say they're gonna build something, they're gonna do something, they do it. I think that when you contrast that with other companies in the industry like for example, a particular company in America that says and sets a certain deadline and misses it repeatedly, that affects your credibility. TSMC has always said that they're gonna hit a certain number. It's like a pretty good chance that they'll hit it." - Jon Y   Fresh out of the studio, Jon Y, the founder of Asianometry joined us to discuss TSMC and the global chip shortage happening across the world. Jon Y began the conversation with an overview of the semiconductors industry with the different key players in the space from SMIC in China to Samsung in Korea. Then he dived deep into TSMC and explained why it is hard to replicate the semiconductor foundry to other parts of the world and their competitive advantage in the market. Last but not least, he examined the end

"China's vision is basically to use the big data that it's harvested to enable its government to be just more nimble and more reactive to the demands of its citizens. So China's idea is, you know, if we collect enough data, we can spot problems and nip them in the bud even before they occur. Or we can spot, for example, a national security threat and nip that in the bud even before a terrorist is able to do anything." - Liza Lin   Fresh out of the studio, Liza Lin, senior correspondent at the Wall Street Journal, discuss the key themes of her new book, Surveillance State, co-authored with Josh Chin. We began the conversation on the motivation and inspiration behind the book and dived deep into the key stories of how AI and digital tools are adopted to maintain social control in China. Last but not least, Liza shares how these technologies developed by China are now exported across the world, foreshadowing the war between different political ideologies. Podcast Information: The show is hosted and produced by

"More generally, this air of crisis is just going to force companies to look again at the wisdom of supply chains, which crisscross Asia in a way that didn't take account of geopolitical boundaries. You already see a move by many companies to try and create more robust and resilient supply chains to geopolitical shocks,  and so that might mean companies like TSMC or Global Foundries building semiconductor plants in Arizona or in Singapore, it might mean companies that have previously sourced from China to create products that will ultimately be sold in the US will now source from Vietnam or from India instead." - James Crabtree   Fresh out of the studio, James Crabtree, executive director from International Institute of Strategic Studies Asia, joined us in a conversation on the current flashpoints in Asia Pacific from the China and Taiwan issue to India and what these tensions will mean for businesses and the global supply chain. James dived into the current dynamics of the region specifically the semiconduct

"Strategy wise. This is the path that we went through. We started looking at options because we wanted to possibly buy options to hedge our balance sheet. But when we looked at it, we were like: this kind of volatility, very difficult to buy. If it's very difficult to buy means selling is good. So in this case, I think low control leverage volume selling tends to be a very good strategy because of the high carry." - Darius Sit   Fresh out of the studio, Darius Sit, founder of QCP Capital, joined us in a discussion on the crypto hedge fund and an overview of the crypto derivatives space in the Asia Pacific. Starting with his background in derivatives training, Darius shared how he entered into the crypto space and explained the key concepts behind crypto derivatives trading. He dived deep into the digital assets segment specifically in the DeFi space. Last but not least, he offered his perspectives on how he approached venture investing into web3 & crypto startups.   Podcast Information:The show is hosted

"Without nodes, there's no blockchain. Without blockchain, there's no cryptocurrencies. Without cryptocurrencies, there's no web3. So nodes are the key core fundamental architecture and infrastructure for this ecosystem. Whether you are a persona just trading around the tokens, you need nodes to be performing. So that when you do a trade, read-write transactions happen, you verify how many tokens are in your wallet." -Andrew Vranjes   Fresh out of the studio, Andrew Vranjes, VP of sales & general manager of Blockdaemon Asia Pacific, joined us in a conversation to discuss the business footprint of the company and break down everything on proof of stake. Andrew started from his background and discuss how he invests into web3 companies as an angel. Next, he discuss the importance of nodes and how Blockdaemon is able to ensure an institutional grade infrastructure for blockchain protocols and provide staking for different stakeholders within the web3 ecosystem. Last but not least, he discuss his thoughts on t

"So these three things, continue the digital transformation, the business networks and the supply chain resilience, both of those underpinning solving for scope three [carbon emissions], circular process and a more sustainable future for Asia. The opportunity we have ahead of us, to solve for what I think, are really profound problems that the planet needs to obviously solve." - Paul Marriott   Fresh out of the studio, Paul Marriott, the President, SAP in the Asia Pacific and Japan, joined us to discuss the footprint of the business in the region, sustainability and the future of work. Paul explained how the SAP platform is incorporating sustainability, specifically in tackling scope three carbon emissions with the network applications. Last but not least, he offered fresh perspectives on the future of work and the key things to watch out for as we transition into a hybrid work environment. Our podcast is sponsored by Esevel, which helps your in-house team by taking cumbersome tasks off their hands and giving

"China is doing exactly what you said, it is trying to basically have backups for choke point technologies, so that in the case of sanctions, it is not left not being able to do anything. Because that's a very real risk for China right now. Whether or not, it needs to have a complete supply chain. Well, it actually has a lot of the more lower value add components than in the really more advanced pieces. As you pointed out that it does not have a solution and it's actually pretty far behind, I think, anywhere from ten, or some people even think it's 20 years behind because there are so many pieces that go into these more sophisticated machines or processes." - Rui Ma   Fresh out of the studio, Rui Ma, creator & tech analyst from Techbuzz China joined us to discuss one of the most important questions at present: can we invest into tech startups in China? We dived deep into different aspects of the China tech ecosystem from the decrease in VC funding to the stringent regulation placed by the Chinese governme

"Look, I think this is a long game. A lot of times you don't see the results until you're a few years out. At the same time, the fundraising game is a very short game, which means you won the short results very quickly. So the LP sees that you are ahead of the pack and fundamentally what is a very long game. So there's a huge disconnect there. and I think the pressure has always been there to show short term results in the long term game." - Lim Kuo-Yi   Fresh out of the studio, Lim Kuo-Yi, co-founder & managing partner of Monk's Hill Ventures, discuss the next evolution of the venture firm and dived into his perspectives on investing into an uncertain time across Southeast Asia. We dived deep into Kuo-Yi's background as a venture capitalist from public sector to the private sector and hear his mental model in how he indexes founders and startup teams and valuation of companies. Last but not least, Kuo-Yi reflects on how the startup ecosystem in Southeast Asia is changing after the key exits in the last d

"I think from an investor perspective, the biggest misconception would be to buy into a high score and think the company is truly sustainable because the reality with ESG is the data is self-reported. The data often is limited in terms of the range of disclosures. It's very selective. It's very manipulative because large companies with big CSR or sustainability departments, Can often manage the narrative around ESG better than smaller companies. There are a lot of geographic biases: developing countries tend to get poorer ratings and are usually penalized with a corruption or transparency type discount." - Ravi Chidambaram   Fresh out of the studio, Ravi Chidambaram, CEO and founder of RIMM, joined us in a conversation to discuss ESG and climate adaptation investing across Asia Pacific. Ravi explained the current paradigms in the ESG space and dived deep into different topics such as climate change, water scarcity and carbon credits and where technology is leading. Last but not least, he provided the value pr

"The reality is you've got the same person using multiple platforms. Now you can either then look at that and say, I can show the same ad to the same person, multiple times across different platforms. Or you can say to yourself, I now have the opportunity to reach the same person with different things in different context, at different moments of their lives on different platforms. Ideally you go with a second one, but admittedly, that's a lot more work." - Simon Kemp   Fresh out of the studio, Simon Kemp, CEO and founder of Kepios shared his perspectives on the Digital 2022 report and broke down the key takeaways from the report specific to Asia Pacific. Simon provided the context and explained how trust in news across different channels is measured and understood and at the same time, debunked the key assertion that Facebook is dying. He also dived deep on Tik Tok's global influence and discuss how the digital report will include web3 from now to the next decade. Podcast Information:The show is hosted and

"I think imperative that as an ecosystem, blockchain Web3 ecosystem, we're all growing together. I would love to see , more bridges with BNB chain and other blockchains as an example, so that you have a much more seamless tech base. And then more importantly, when crypto mass adoption really takes off again, underlying tech people will not need to know what's underlying tech. For us, I think that's important if we can be part of the core infrastructure supporting this new web3 paradigm, that would be amazing for us. If we have more and more use cases and more depths and more web 2 organizations building on BNB chain, that will be really amazing."

"Once you reach scalability in blockchain, it should be portable over to decentralized rails.  Just like the vast majority of business models that could be built over the internet ,have transitioned to the internet because it's a more effective means of deployment. I think at scale, you'll see the vast majority of financial use cases, which is, a completely digital domain move over to these new rails. But some of the early applications that we've seen emerge are in the basic building blocks of financial services" - Rawson Harvety   Fresh out of the studio, Rawson Harvety, co-founder of Reflection Digital & co-host of Soulbound Asia podcast, joined us in a conversation on the past, present and future of decentralized finance (or DeFi). The conversation began with how DeFi has emerged unscathed after the crypto contagion unleashed by the UST-Terra-Luna collapse. Rawson dived deep into why there is a macro case for DeFi, the current evolution of DeFi protocols from Aave to Frax and what we should look out fo

"The reason for that is that all the businesses in crypto are tied primarily to trading and speculation of crypto rather than any productive use cases. So there are some businesses that generate real cash flow, and those are the ones that I focus on at my hedge fund in my portfolio. But even those largely generate revenue from other crypto businesses. So until crypto has more ties to real world productive use cases and has more dollar generation tied to real world activity, it will continue to have this highly internally reflexive nature. As crypto trading goes up, there's more revenue in the system. As crypto trading goes down, there's less revenue in the system and that's not sustainable. It's very circular." - Cosmo Jiang Fresh out of the studio, Cosmo Jiang from Nova River & host of the Global Coin Research Liquid podcast joined us to discuss the crypto contagion which originated from the recent collapse of the algorithmic stablecoin: Terra-Luna-UST. We dived deep how the ongoing contagion cascaded to

"The core purpose of exchanges must be to create jobs. If it's not creating jobs, if it is really just trading derivatives,  where is the value creation? If it's not encouraging the next generation of investors, allowing them to put money behind companies that they relate to and are supporting because these companies are solving problems that will impact us in the next 10 & 20 years." - Kelvin Lee Fresh out of the studio, Kelvin Lee, CEO and co-founder of Fundnel, joined us in a conversation to discuss how the company is helping to bring liquidity into the private markets and transforming the funding landscape across Southeast Asia. Kelvin shared his insights and the mental models behind valuations and liquidity events for the startups in the private markets. Last but not least, he offered his perspectives on the recent economic downturn with the funding drying up for both startup and crypto markets and what it would mean in the near term. Podcast Information:The show is hosted and produced by Bernard

"I always think about the pandemic - this Thanos -level finger snap, where everyone's brought back to square one. During this difficult past two years, all the norms are thrown out of the window. It makes for a very interesting period to fundraise, with not much to show for it. A lot of people have said that I'm crazy to make this leap, but I say it's the best possible time to be building because everyone's back to square one. At the end of the day,  it's very important to pay due respect to luck and timing. Any entrepreneur tells you that luck is not a function of his or her outcome must be joking." - James Chan   Fresh out of the studio, James Chan, CEO and founder of Ion Mobility to discuss his company and his goal to bring about a sustainable and green future to Southeast Asia with the electric motorbike. James dived into his background as a former civil servant, an investor and now an entrepreneur. He explained the market opportunity for the EV market in the region and how Ion Mobility is building out no

"To me. The role of a board should be a sounding board to founders. It's very hard for us to assume that founders know everything which is why the company's directors should be a voice of reason in everything that happened. The board isn't just made up by a single person, basically various people with different line of thoughts. So why has nobody bring this up at all? I have no idea. In fact, that is what every investor that I've spoken to for this story questioned this." - Ka Kay Lum   Fresh out of the studio, Lum Ka Kay, deputy editor of The Ken joined us in a conversation to discuss the recent debacle for the Southeast Asia company, Zilingo and the fallout between the board and the former CEO, Ankiti Bose. Ka Kay shared the chronology of events that led to the firing of the CEO and the public fallout and examined what the endgame would look like for Zilingo.   Podcast Information:The show is hosted and produced by Bernard Leong (@bernardleong, Linkedin) and Carol Yin (@CarolYujiaYin, LinkedIn). Sound credi

"From an evolution standpoint, I feel strongly about the fact that more participants, more diversity and more evolution is always a good thing. I am looking forward to like what comes next. Because if we are to be the most dynamic Internet ecosystem in the world, we need to now start to create opportunities for younger folks to participate in angel investing for certain communities that have historically been left out of angel investing and to bring them in as well. If we get there, I think we will be one of the healthiest ecosystems in the world." - Alap Bharadwaj   Fresh out of the studio, Belinda Ong, Alap Bharadwaj and Tony Zameczkoski joined us to discuss the XA network and their role in angel investor landscape for Southeast Asia, and how the angel investing scene has evolved over the decade. We dived deep into why angels are crucial to the ecosystem and help startups to reach escape velocity before the entry of venture capital. Last but not least, they share the process in how XA network onboards their

"We teach people about all things crypto,  like we do a lot of stuff like how to do an uniswap, how to get your first NFT, which exchange is the cheapest for you? We're in a business of education and a resource and people do what they will with the information that we provide them. That's the inspiration behind changing people." - Jacky Yap   Fresh out of the studio, Jacky Yap, founder of Chain Debrief, joined us to discuss the inspiration, the mission and vision of the crypto media company. We dived into how Chain Debrief focus on crypto education moving towards a learn to earn model, their NFT products with the first collection of Enlightened Rats and the recent major NFT event in Singapore: Metajam. Last but not least, Jacky offered his perspectives on the crypto crash instigated by the UST/Luna/Terra collapse. Disclosure: BL is currently an investor to Chain Debrief through a syndicate via Sharon Paul. Podcast Information:The show is hosted and produced by Bernard Leong (@bernardleong, Linkedin) and Car

"If you look at the tech universe revolves around the U S and China, I spent a lot time almost 10 years in the [Silicon] valley ecosystem. But I haven't really seen the China technology ecosystem. So I was really curious on how it works, how is it like, how is it different? There was like a great opportunity for me to learn and see how it worked from the inside." - Yaw Yeo Fresh out of the studio, Yaw Yeo, an angel investor joined us to discuss his experiences on working in two high growth technology companies from the US and China covering the Asia Pacific region. He shared the similarities and differences between technology companies from the US and China and how they perceived the Southeast Asia market. Last but not least, Yaw shared his perspectives as an angel investor in Southeast Asia and reflected on the changing landscape of angel investing in the last decade. Podcast Information:The show is hosted and produced by Bernard Leong (@bernardleong, Linkedin) and Carol Yin (@CarolYujiaYin, LinkedIn). S