Analyse Asia With Bernard Leong

"The one thing that has become quite clear in Asia, at least it's direct to retail - the government is not ready. The market is not ready. And there still needs to be a very high level of consumer protection. A lot more of a B2B-to-C approach. Where, let's say today's Web3 companies will need to partner up with existing licensed entities, whether they be licensed startups or even licensed institutions to provide their offerings to the retail. That's actually really good. Because it provides safeguards. We saw what happened last time when we didn't have those safeguards. So many retail investors lost money in FTX's spectacular blow-up, right? And that really hurt the space, that really hurt the trust, it really hurt the reputation of the space. So directionally it is inconvenient but necessary. For governments to I would say slow down or make access to retail a lot harder. Like in Singapore, we don't see any upcoming movements that crypto is going to be available to retail or easily available to retail anytime

"The key thing that I realize every time I look at the data is that the media is telling us a lot of nonsense. I think that the one thing I know is that the data tells a very different story to the media headlines. So I suppose my advice there is, never to accept clickbait at face value. If you're building a marketing plan, do your due diligence, and check the data because the data always surprises me. The one thing I know is that I'm always surprised. There's your key takeaway.” - Simon Kemp Fresh out of the studio, Simon Kemp, co-founder and CEO of Kepios joined us for the 7th year to discuss the Digital Report 2024 and its pivotal insights. The dialogue kicked off with Simon pondering AI's potential impact on his job, then swiftly moved to the report's core findings. Simon also explored how digital marketing and content strategies are evolving due to generational differences, underscoring the necessity for content creators to adapt across diverse social media channels. Last but not least, Simon addressed t

"If we assume that happens, I'm sure TikTok, let alone ByteDance as a company as a whole, will survive - and maybe even continue to thrive after this. Because, let's put things into perspective, right? TikTok has more than 1 billion users globally and then the US represents just a little over a 10th of that, 170 million. So I'm not saying that it's not going to impact TikTok and ByteDance. But does it pose an existential threat? Probably not. I believe given we already talked about how ByteDance has been super profitable. I think that, even if they get banned in the US, this is by no means the end of TikTok or ByteDance." - Jing Yang Fresh out of the studio, Jing Yang, the Asia Bureau Chief for The Information, provided an insightful analysis of the potential implications of the recent U.S. House of Representatives bill to force Bytedance to divest TikTok or face a ban in the US. Detailing a timeline of events, she illuminated how Bytedance and TikTok executives may have misinterpreted U.S. political signals.

"When I wrote about it, in addition to assuming that all Asia tech companies, particularly in China, were copycats of Western companies, I think there are also a lot of misperceptions about how easy it is to enter a market, especially when they're an Asian market, especially when there are incumbent players already. For example, Uber failed. Basically, they failed. That's a harsh word, but they failed in both China and Southeast Asia, where they were acquired by Didi in China and Grab in Southeast Asia. And then Facebook really fell flat on its face with a lot of markets with free basics, it undermined Net Neutrality and also assumed that consumers just because maybe they had to be price conscious, were willing to access only a handful of sites as opposed to having access to a free Internet. I think people also underestimate the influence that Asia has had in other parts of the world." - Catherine Shu Fresh out of the studio, Catherine Shu reflects on her 12 years at TechCrunch, chronicling the evolution of A

“Let's remember if the leadership wants to do something, they have all the tools at their disposal and I don't think that they will want to underwrite massive unemployment. I think the Chinese leadership wants stability above all. So I will not rule out any kind of stimulus and perhaps it would look different than in the past. It will not go through the popular market, but it could well happen that you will see greater lending, perhaps in a select industries like autos or semiconductors, whatever it might be. But I've seen so many cycles at this point. I started investing in China in 2008. And 2007 was a boom, 2010, another boom, 2013 was a low in the Asian market. It felt very much like today. I would go to these conferences and meet local investors and they were just so despondent. I feel very much the same kind of sentiment today. People say there's nothing, they can't see anything positive and that's fine, but we can't predict the future.” - Michael Fritzell Fresh out of the studio, Michael Fritzell, Foun

"So in our view, great would be when everyone can find the best place to put their money to work. To whatever cause they want. It could be investing. It could be protecting their family. It could be long-term. It could be a nonprofit. It could be helping a local business. Today in the world, there is Google to find information, right? There's Amazon to find products. But what about financial opportunities? There is no one place to find financial opportunities. We wanna be able to create that for the world where anyone who's looking to put their money to work has a place to put their money to work. And anybody who's looking for help in building whatever business or, growing whatever they want to grow, can meet, these people who are looking to put their money to work." - Caesar Sengupta Fresh out of the studio, Caesar Sengupta, the CEO and co-founder of Arta Finance, shares the story of how the startup democratizes family office wealth management to accredited professionals in the digital era. Caesar shares the

“One thing I can add is the awakening, the shaking up, the shaping up of the rest of the global auto industry from the Chinese is in full swing. The Chinese are coming. And if the Western automakers are prepared, they're going to have a much tougher moment than when they confronted the Japanese or the Koreans. The Japanese [and] Koreans, they're very successful. Let's say in the U.S., but this is a whole different issue - the geopolitical aspect. But you know, they're coming.” - Lei Xing Fresh out of the studio, Lei Xing, founder of AutoXing & co-host of China EVs & More, shared his insights into the Chinese electric vehicle (EV) market and its implications for the global EV market. Lei discussed his career journey and the inspiration behind covering the China EVs market through his podcast. He broke down the competitive dynamics between Tesla and BYD based on their current strategies for global market expansion and technological challenges. He shared his perspectives on whether Chinese EV makers can

"Indonesia is not of the scale of China and India. And some people argue that India and China are so vast that you can almost consider: North China, South China, East China and different parts of the world. But because Indonesia normally gets lumped into ASEAN, right? People think about, well, I don't want single country risk with a country of this size. And so that's where the differentiation came out. Nonetheless, this is our thesis. And we believe that the last 10 years have proven that thesis. So we continue to double down on that thesis. Again, we've invested in companies that are regional that come into Indonesia." - Adrian Li Fresh out of the studio, Adrian Li, founder and managing partner of AC Ventures joined us in a conversation to delve into the dynamics of the venture capital scene in Indonesia. He commenced by tracing his entrepreneurial journey, which spanned from the United States to China, and ultimately to Southeast Asia, culminating in his transition to venture capitalist. From there, he she

"The whole of Southeast Asia has to come up as a group. Hence, my secret about what I know about the VC industry that people don't know. The secret is that you've got to be very sane when you come to investing, right? So, if you invest so high, we can't get exits. When we can't get exits, we can't return money to LPs, and then the investors will say, ‘Oh, Southeast Asia cannot find exits one.’ It cannot be, right? So to me, we must be able to show exits. That's the proof of the pudding.” - Carmen Yuen Fresh out of the studio, Carmen Yuen, general partner from Vertex Ventures SE Asia & India, joined us to discuss the current state of venture capital in Southeast Asia & India after the difficult fundraising climate in the past year. Carmen began the story of her career, moving from the government sector to venture capital. She shares the evolution of Vertex Ventures from their investment thesis to the portfolio of startups and evaluates the startup class of 2023 vs 2021. Last but not least, Carmen descr

"There are so many voices here that people can create their own unique things. And yet there is still this culture, that's still lingering from the past, that somehow the answers are in the West. And trust me, they are not. So the West is also confused and looking for their way to figure out things. And so the main inspiration for Yana TV was to create this particular platform where we can showcase the voices of Asian movers and shakers, which means people who are doing interesting things, who are standing up, who want to speak up, challenging the status quo, and the norms. People who are regional, who are thought leaders, and I also feel it is time there has to be a bigger platform where we can all go and see who are the people who are doing amazing things here." - Yana Fry Fresh out of the studio, Yana Fry, producer & host of Yana TV joined us in a conversation about the behind-the-scenes of her show and her perspectives on interviewing Asian change makers across the region. Our conversation kicked off

“[Glints] We would like to still be around and building an enduring company. A big part of why many of us at Glints are building what we want is we hope that our children and grandchildren can be using Glints to grow their careers as well. So we want this to be an enduring company. Our mission is to help realize human potential. And we would like to be a company that's here to last. That's one. Two, concretely we see a lot of opportunities in the platform business and in our cross-border business. We want to double down in this market, getting to market leadership in the market we're playing in, Indonesia, and Vietnam, and also expanding out to new markets for cross-border recruiting, helping employers around the world tap into their 300 million labour force in Southeast Asia, helping them to hire the people here." - Oswald Yeo Fresh out of the studio, Oswald Yeo, chief executive officer and co-founder of Glints joined us in a conversation to discuss how the startup has helped companies from all over the regi

"Money is a very interesting kind of numerical way of measuring when you're levelling up. So that's where the distinction needs to be very clear. The way that I've positioned it in the book and what the research tells us is that if we force the games on people, it's very bad. But if we look at the games that they naturally play in their free time when they were younger, it's a very good predictor in terms of the type of work that they naturally would gravitate to. So if somebody is amazing and loves playing hours and hours of strategy games, and if we put that person in front of the machine, turning out widgets is going to be a very bad mismatch, and then we need to pay them a lot of money and continue trying to squeeze them to improve that performance. But if somebody is motivated by strategy games, and we give them the kind of problems that are very similar to the type of things that they naturally gravitate to they will be motivated. So we're not creating a new game for them, but we're looking at parallels

"You will continue to see Western investment continuing to decline. The risk-reward calculations won't change in the next 12 months, as far as I can see. The Chinese economy is not about to take off. What you will see is the beginnings of some people who are willing to take the gamble. They are going to try different ways to exit. You're going to see more people experimenting with domestic IPOs, and onshore IPOs because you can get the money off. For example, if you're investing in LiDAR or approved industries, you can do a joint venture or a WOFE or anything. It'd be a joint venture to be able to try and do some kind of onshore listings. I think by chance will stay in this weird suspended state. I don't think we're going to get a resolution from them. The big question is - how much stimulus will the Chinese government throw at the economy and how far are they willing to go to goose the economy?" - Shai Oster Fresh out of the studio, Shai Oster, independent consultant and former Asia Bureau Chief from The Inf

"Consumer demand will accelerate the need for security, privacy and regulation. Like zero-knowledge (ZK) where you can prove something is true without revealing all information. And of course, security infrastructure, which is very interesting and important at this current moment, even before the next bull market. For example, one of the companies we invested into Ledger, a digital asset hardware wallet. You basically have an app store interface where you can trade, you can stake. We see a lot of adoption of crypto in not just a retail space because of increased awareness, in the media, and new DeFi applications coming up, but also in the adoption of enterprise space. So a lot of these enterprises will be thinking to themselves, okay, in my treasury, not just do I need to hold USD and other currencies, maybe I need to also hold Bitcoins, or something else. DBS Bank, They're now holding some of this Sandbox Land, but where do they hold it? They can't hold it just in a wallet and then they throw it into some ca

We've got a 330 trillion dollar industry here, which arguably a lot of it, we talk about stranded assets, CRREM pathways to stranded assets, et cetera. I talked to a lot of funds. I've talked to a lot of developers. They're getting very worried about this. And it's not just about their existing portfolios. It's about how they are going to exit portfolios. Because many buyers now actually build in the cost of retrofitting a building to bring it up to sustainability when they're looking at acquiring an asset. So, that might bring the price down. So, for us, we look at everything you've just mentioned. We look at materials. We look at hardware. We look at software and anything that gets us to some of these impact targets we want to achieve in the built environment and also is something which is commercially viable and fixes some particular pain point within this ecosystem. - Alexander Bent" Fresh out of the studio, Alexander Bent, founder & managing partner from Undivided Ventures, joined us in a conversatio

"I think in the past, we've looked more at inclusion and access, but actually we've made so much inroads over the past years. Now again, we're talking about participation because what we're seeing is that 30% of the highest spending customers who we call high-value users (HVUs) - they make up over 70% of the digital economies' transaction value. So 30% Are leading to 70% of the digital economy. We want to make sure that we don't leave users behind and we continue to drive growth and drive their participation. So we need to make sure that we are not ignoring this very important group that presents a 1.9x growth opportunity of that of high-value users. And for this reason, it's really important for us to talk about digital participation." - Sapna Chadha Fresh out of the studio, Sapna Chadha, vice president of Google Southeast Asia, and Florian Hoppe, partner at Bain and Company shared the key takeaways from the Google e-Conomy SEA 2023 report. Sapna and Florian discussed how start-ups are navigating the current

"And so what we do at Dow Jones, very specifically, is look at - What are the regulators demanding? What do they want you to do? What are the specific data points that you require? And which workflows do you want to use them in? And, there are very different workflows, which within, for example, a financial institution. You have the onboarding of your new customers, and in those situations, you may have a little bit more time. Obviously, there's the service level in terms of opening a bank account is faster and faster. But you have a little bit more time in that regard. You want to look at potentially more data. Then once you are a customer of a bank, you're gonna be amongst millions of customers. How do banks can then adapt to check additional data points? And, today the customer may be clean and have no adverse media, may not be sanctions, but that could change." - Joel Lange Fresh out of the studio, Joel Lange, executive vice president & general manager of risk and research from Dow Jones, discussed ho

“It is useful both to internal and external, but it's also a really great litmus test. If you sit down to write your public letter and you can't explain why you're doing something, if it doesn't fit in with your overarching strategy, it goes back to that first thing we said as PMs [product managers], which is sometimes you have to say no to it. You're like, I actually can't explain to anyone why we're spending time on this particular feature. It doesn't fit any of the four themes we said we're doing this year. Does that mean we have a fifth theme or does that mean we shouldn't be doing that? And that clarity and that kind of litmus test. Is really, really useful as a leader when few people say no to you.” - Tom Verrilli Fresh out of the studio in SXSW Sydney, Tom Verrilli, former Chief Product Officer of Twitch joined us in a conversation to discuss the intricacies of product management. Tom shared his perspectives based on his experiences from navigating the delicate balance between feature addition and redu

  Stripe isn't just payments. We actually build economic infrastructure for the global economy. And so we've got a lot more technology beyond payments. Our Stripe Tour is a cool venue where we get a chance to bring customers, partners and thought leaders together and talk about the current state of technology and future technologies - in a local Asian context. So it's been a lot of fun. And by the way, we're really enthusiastic about Asia here at Stripe. Not only because 60 per cent of the world's population is in Asia, but also because the Asian markets are very tech-forward. And you can see that by just looking at global trends, sometimes Asian markets completely leapfrog the trends like what happened to mobile. And so you got this great market that's huge, that's really tech-forward. And there's so much innovation possible.” - Mike Clayville, chief revenue officer of Stripe Fresh out of the studio, Mike Clayville, Chief Revenue Officer of Stripe, joined us in a conversation discussing Stripe's business in

"The global adoption index is something that we put out once a year and it comes strictly within the research domain and it's our attempt to really elucidate just how much activity is happening around the world. Crypto is a global asset with activity in over 150 countries around the world, but people feel like it's a black box because they don't really understand who are these crypto users. Where are they? But in reality, we don't have answers to those questions because we don't have survey data around them. The government does not collect that data. So it feels like a black box, but it's kind of a created black box in its own right. And we're trying to show that that's not the case, that there's a lot of transparency here, and we can see where adoption is happening, and we can see which countries are the leaders in crypto adoption." - Kimberly Grauer   Fresh out of the studio, Kimberly Grauer, the director of research from Chainalysis provided an in-depth analysis of the Global Crypto Adoption Index 2023, hi