Talent Gaps, AI Adoption & Southeast Asia’s Startup Winter, China Subsidies & Sequoia’s Split - E626
episode
BRAVE Southeast Asia Tech: Singapore, Indonesia, Vietnam, Philippines, Thailand & Malaysia Startups, Founders & Venture Capital VC (English)
19 min
1 speaker
4 chapters
transcribed 16 days ago
Transcript
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Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
What does Jeremy Au say about the talent rankings across Southeast Asian countries?
Southeast Asia and India are struggling to build large language models, right? I think there's also one in Europe as well. All I'm just trying to say here is that the Europeans are saying we're doing this because we believe in digital sovereignty, we're never gonna buy a Chinese AI, and we're never gonna buy a American AI. So they're willing to subsidize to support the European AI piece, right? And I think there's a implicit understanding that once all these large language models become fully scaled, you can imagine regulators in Europe may not be favorable to a Chinese American AI working on European applications. 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. The question is why does Asia Partners say that Indonesia and Singapore has high talent? Fewer for Thailand. And somewhere in the middle for Vietnam, Philippines, and Malaysia. First of all, obviously this is an Asia partners methodology and it's a qualitative assessment. Uh, I would say that in general, it makes sense in some pieces.
I would say for example, I would say that Singapore obviously has very high technical talent. I think nobody disagrees that it's very high. And I think that nobody disagrees that Vietnam has actually a pretty good education system. It's training a lot of engineers. So actually you see a lot of uh Chinese companies obviously setting up factories and training talent in Vietnam. You see a lot of Singapore uh companies moving their engineering hubs into Vietnam as well. Because Vietnam is scared of their big brother China. Uh so they have a little brother strategy, right? They're focused on industrialization, they're focusing on economic growth to be able to keep their country going quickly, right? So they're also learning from the Chinese model of, you know, communist focused on sciences and hard engineering.
So I think there's a lot of technical talent in Vietnam. I think obviously English competency is a difficult component for them right now. Everything in between is a little bit contentious, I would say. I think that the Philippines talent, obviously, there's a BPO and virtual assistant and call center talent. But I think everybody would agree that Philippines has a big brain drain problem where the Filipino talent is migrating to Singapore or the US or Europe. So I think the Philippines will acknowledge that's a big problem for them. So I think where they stack up is pretty difficult. Indonesia as well, I think it's large population, uh lots of actually entrepreneurial engineering talent as well. So I think there's a little bit of a debate.
I was just meeting with, you know, kind of like large language model AI side and you know from their perspective, They looking at AI founders from their perspective. would be American and Chinese nationals are the biggest adopters of AI in terms of startup. And they think that Singapore founders are decent as well. They think that AI adoption as a technical infrastructure is lagging in kind of like Thailand, Malaysia, Philippines, Vietnam. So I think it depends on what you want do you define a talent piece. Singapore is only Qatar in terms of GDP per capita, right? So it doesn't have to deal with those next two layers, right? Which is I think roughly corresponding to rural and tier three cities. I mean Singapore is a tier one city by itself, right?
So I think Singapore policy is relatively straightforward in terms of industrial policies focusing on biotech. Shipping, aviation, nuclear engineering soon. A very high-end manufacturing uh pharmaceuticals, right? So I think that Indonesia and India, for example, have some similarities.
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Chapters
4 chapters
1
What does Jeremy Au say about the talent rankings across Southeast Asian countries?
0:00–4:50
2
How did the quick‑commerce boom shape startup strategies in India and Indonesia?
4:50–10:23
3
Why does Taiwan’s TSMC model illustrate the power of industrial policy?
10:23–13:59
4
How does government policy translate into law and then into business outcomes?
13:59–19:01
Speakers
1 identifiedMore from BRAVE Southeast Asia Tech: Singapore, Indonesia, Vietnam, Philippines, Thailand & Malaysia Startups, Founders & Venture Capital VC (English)
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