Franco Varona on the Philippines' Energy Emergency, and Investing in Solutions for Middle Class Filipinos - E683
episode
BRAVE Southeast Asia Tech: Singapore, Indonesia, Vietnam, Philippines, Thailand & Malaysia Startups, Founders & Venture Capital VC (English)
39 min
2 speakers
8 chapters
transcribed 19 days ago
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Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Why did the Philippines declare a national energy emergency?
Okay, listen, this is how much oil we have. This is how much we know we have. I get it, there's a lot of distractions right now. There's a little bit of a corruption scandal, a big corruption scandal. There's a lot of other issues in our country right now. But I'm gonna declare this emergency and we're gonna hyper focus everybody to make sure that we never get to the point where we're all screwed. Our gas prices are by the way are already amongst the most expensive in the world to the consumer. Right now. In the last 20 years, lines of communication have broken down. This is why the US is so politically divided. This is probably why places like the Philippines is also very politically divided. Innovation can be trendy.
Like it's like, oh yeah, blockchain. NFTs. NFTs, let's digital land. Yeah, digital land. Metaverse, right? Sixty billion into the metaverse. So that was an innovation and it was in my mind very trendy. And now the trend is gone and so is all that money. And I like to say we invest in solutions because we want to invest in things that Filipinos need, no matter what the cycle is.
Yeah.
Welcome to Brave. Learn from Southeast Asia's best tech needers. Build the future, learn from our past, and stay human in between. No BS on Success. I'm Jeremy Al, Venture Capitalist, Sierra Founder, Harvard MBA, Science Fiction Nerd, and Dad of Two Daughters. Every week, we debate startup news, interview change makers, answer listener questions, and share personal insights. Join our movement of over 40,000 members and get transcripts, resources and community at www.bravesdea.com Stay well and stay brave. Hey
Franco, welcome back to the show in person. Thank you very much, man. I'm so glad to be able to see you in person. The last time we did this was actually online. So it's great. Welcome to Manila.
Yeah, thank you so much. Always good to be having fun and chit-chatting and shooting the breeze with you as well. It's interesting because your last show it went viral. I know. You were comparing, I think, the speed of incorporation in Singapore versus the Philippines.
Yes.
And it turns out that a lot of Filipinos were very unhappy as small medium enterprise owners about this state of affairs. Yes.
Well I am happy to tell you it's exactly the same. It's exactly nothing has changed. I think all the feedback that you got in that one very viral clip was true. I think it became viral because what I said resonated with the Filipino population. This is the problem. I saw some of the comments and some of the comments were saying, Yeah, it's actually quite fast if you go online. But the reality is it's yes, it's fast, but then there's like four or five different other requirements that you need.
Yeah.
And that's the same case by the way. It still takes forever to close a business in this country.
Yeah. And I think it was interesting because at that time we were discussing it as something that came up, as uh anecdote uh that you felt something could improve on. But I think looking at the comments, I think hearing about how many people's experiences were they had to run from department to department, you know, people were duplicate, cancellations. And also some l commenters were talking about how they actually had to bribe in order to get the paperwork process uh eventually closed. That was quite an eye opening set of insights for me because I'm not a Filipino small media enterprise owner who is incorporate. So I thought it was a interesting learning moment for me as well.
Yeah. There's opportunity in digitization in that case. I think there's a lot of grey areas and I think that's where the paperwork exists and that's why things like bribes happen in this country. But I also see it as opportunity. If we can start getting the government and the government's trying to digitize a lot of the processes, then of course a lot of that eruption goes away.
Yeah, because there's no uh way to gum up the process.
There's no way to go about the process. You can't slow it down. Yeah. This is literally algorithms doing everything for you.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
Why did the Philippines declare a national energy emergency?
0:00–5:06
2
How can digitizing government processes reduce corruption in the Philippines?
5:06–13:48
3
What impact does offshore oil geopolitics have on the Philippines?
13:48–18:15
4
How is Vietnam’s move to nuclear power reshaping Southeast Asia’s energy landscape?
18:15–22:11
5
Why is solar energy especially suitable for the Philippine archipelago?
22:11–27:06
6
What is Foxmont’s investment thesis focusing on affordability and accessibility?
27:06–31:30
7
How are high‑value low‑price gyms and female‑focused fertility clinics addressing middle‑class needs?
31:30–35:32
8
What are the key takeaways for investors from this energy‑security discussion?
35:32–39:07
Speakers
2 identifiedMore from BRAVE Southeast Asia Tech: Singapore, Indonesia, Vietnam, Philippines, Thailand & Malaysia Startups, Founders & Venture Capital VC (English)
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