Shan Han: Crypto Lessons, Boom Bust Belief and Funding Students the Web3 Way – E648
episode
BRAVE Southeast Asia Tech: Singapore, Indonesia, Vietnam, Philippines, Thailand & Malaysia Startups, Founders & Venture Capital VC (English)
33 min
1 speaker
6 chapters
transcribed 18 days ago
Transcript
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Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Things like tokenomics and incentive structures have become much clearer. There are much more stable institutions that have survived the test of times, whether it's your centralized exchanges or big organizations like Anamoka Brand, who are clearly here to stay and are able to make long term investments. I think all of that leads to more maturity in the market. And we're also finally starting to see real world use case. And that is something that we're really passionate about because ultimately, if the money just stays on chain, it's not going to change people's lives. It must interact with the real world. And that's what we're pushing.
Welcome to Brave. Learn from Southeast Asia's best tech leaders. Build the future, learn from our past, and stay human in between. No BS on Success. I'm Jeremy O, Venture Capitalist, Sarah 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.bravesea.com. Stay well and stay brave. Hey Sean, I'm so excited to have you on the show. You're innovating at the intersection of DeFi, crypto, as well as education tech. And I think there's such an interesting story there about the future.
But also you've been both a serial founder and so entrepreneurial, so much to dig into. Could you please introduce yourself?
Sure. First, thanks for having me here. Really honored to be here speaking with you. I think a bit about my background, we can go into a lot more depth later, but I'm a portfolio manager at Mocha Brands, where big investor in the Web3 space. But my personal background is working a lot in finance and later entrepreneurship. Actually starting and running my own companies, mostly in the fintech sector. And actually now today at America Brands, what we're doing is we are building what we like to think is the future of education financing. So really merging the intersection of finance, technology and web three.
Yeah, amazing. So let's get all the way to the beginning, right? Which is that I'm just curious, what was it like growing up in Hong Kong? And you took your first job in trading in two thousand eight. So I'm just really curious about why you decided to go into trading as your first job.
It was actually completely by accident. Yeah. So uh when I was in university, I actually ran some bars and restaurants. Wow. Yeah. So I started in entrepreneurship, but more brick and mortar F and B. Ran, how was it, five bars, three restaurants at the peak? That was what I was doing. But one day a regular comes in. He just moved to Hong Kong from London and we started hanging out socially afterwards as well. One day he says, Oh, a friend of mine's moving up from London, set up an office in Hong Kong. No. He's looking for someone young and hungry to join. You should go chat to him. At that point, I had no idea what trading even meant. But I decided, hey, it seems like a lot of people around me are in this finance thing.
They seem to be doing well. Let's go have a chat and find out. So went, had a chat. There's a longer story there, which maybe we can get into later, but ended up actually joining. So completely by accident.
So what was it like being a trader in Hong Kong in two thousand eight to twenty thirteen? It was the heyday.
Yeah, no, it was a fun time. So I was lucky enough to join just before the GFC. Yeah. So I remember the market falling out and everything collapsing. Exchanges were limit down every day. And I spoke to my boss, so I've just got my license then. Hey, is this normal? He goes, Hell no, this is absolutely not normal. But thanks to the massive stimulus that happened in China, things really took off. So the IPO pipeline went crazy. has a massive V-shaped recovery in Hong Kong. Okay. So the trading market was really hot. This was a lot of kind of the old school trading mentality that was still there, which was yeah, work hard, party hard. And we were expected to
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Chapters
6 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–6:03
2
How did Shan Han’s early trading career in Hong Kong shape his view of finance?
6:03–11:47
3
What lessons did Shan learn from his first fintech startup’s over‑building mistake?
11:47–18:29
4
How did the 2014‑2017 ICO wave create both opportunity and chaos for early crypto investors?
18:29–25:13
5
Why did SME borrowers call Shan for loans before his product existed, and what does that reveal about market pain points?
25:13–30:53
6
How does tokenizing student loans unlock financing for students in the Philippines and Indonesia?
30:53–33:11
Speakers
1 identifiedMore from BRAVE Southeast Asia Tech: Singapore, Indonesia, Vietnam, Philippines, Thailand & Malaysia Startups, Founders & Venture Capital VC (English)
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