Find Your Unfair Advantage in Business and Use It - E695
episode
BRAVE Southeast Asia Tech: Singapore, Indonesia, Vietnam, Philippines, Thailand & Malaysia Startups, Founders & Venture Capital VC (English)
8 min
1 speaker
8 chapters
transcribed 16 days ago
Transcript
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Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
How does the yin‑and‑yang of marketing improve product success?
Communicating is about persuading someone to do something, especially to buy something. I want to contrast that with the market. And this is very important because the market is really about listening. And that's very difficult for some folks to process and feel comfortable with. It's very difficult for us to say something. So listening is difficult. The best marketers, the best people in marketing are people who are equally good at listening to the market and speaking and articulating. that market truth back into the market to make it real.
And when you can do both sides of it, the yin and yang of the market and the marketing, you'll be truly effective. This is a skill not just for marketers, this is a great skill, regardless of whatever skill you are, whether you're in finance, investing companies, whether you're a founder, whether you're a business owner, being able to do both sides of it is so important. My COO often used to tell me, he said, Jeremy, you may believe this, I may believe that, but we're just gonna do it, and then the market will tell us who's right. Wrong. Being able to listen to the market about whether they want the product or not is so important. Being able to do both is such a rare skill to have.
Why is founder‑problem fit more critical than problem‑market fit for startups?
That startup plan is very much about problem market fit, which is, does this problem that you're solving match with the product of what you want? That question very much goes back to say: does this product make sense versus the problem in the market? Do people want it? Yes or no? I think that's how most of us will evaluate. That from a startup perspective and from a theoretical basis. What I also want to really challenge you in your career is to really think about something what we in startup plan call the founder problem fit. Which is, does the founder care about a problem? If you see somebody who's done finance for 20 years suddenly go on to do and work on biotech, does it mean that they are a good fit for the problem?
Well, it's hard to tell because you dig deeper. You have to understand if it's something deeper for the reason why they care. Maybe they had Somebody who passed away from cancer or whatever it is. Being able to understand that match is really important because when you are assessing a founding team, you need to understand whether they're willing to go through all the pain and the struggles of actually building this company.
What personal tragedy drove Jeremy to focus on cancer diagnostics?
Because building a startup is not easy. The reality is I'm working in a cancer diagnosis company and the reason why I care about it is because in J W JC1, my girlfriend passed away from blood cancer. Lymphoma. So at the age of 16 in J1, she passed away and it was a tragedy. Because nobody ever thought about screening for cancer in somebody who's 16 years old. The cost is too high from a structural system perspective to screen every teenager for cancer. It's crazy. We're all gonna wait for symptoms to arrive, is the classic system waiting response because they don't want to take on the cost because the cost is too expensive using the current technology to screen people 16 years. The system can barely screen for colon cancer for 10 to 20% of the population, even though it's covered by insurance and the government.
So the current technology doesn't let young teenagers get screened for cancer. So for me, I joined a company because I felt like the way the technology, the artificial intelligence, the economies of scale, the network effects are improving, that this test will have cost a billion dollars 15 years ago, because that's how much it costs to sequence one human genome. Back then. And today we can get that test today for 4,000 Singapore dollars. And I want to be able to tell my kids when they grow up that cancer is not a scary disease. It is like diabetes to me today. Something that just happens and is managed away. The way HIV and AIDS today is not a death sentence.
How does acknowledging that the world isn’t fair change entrepreneurial strategy?
We have this view of cancer as this scary disease that will take somebody's life away within two weeks. So the gift I'm gonna give my children, my two young daughters, is that they're gonna live in a world.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
How does the yin‑and‑yang of marketing improve product success?
0:00–1:09
2
Why is founder‑problem fit more critical than problem‑market fit for startups?
1:09–2:06
3
What personal tragedy drove Jeremy to focus on cancer diagnostics?
2:06–3:24
4
How does acknowledging that the world isn’t fair change entrepreneurial strategy?
3:24–4:28
5
What steps can founders take to discover their own unfair advantage?
4:28–5:20
6
Why should entrepreneurs play to their strengths instead of chasing equal footing?
5:20–6:31
7
How can you turn an unpopular skill or niche into a competitive edge?
6:31–7:24
8
What final takeaways does Jeremy share for building resilience in tech?
7:24–8:11
Speakers
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