The 3 Phases of Startup Success: From the Jungle, through the Dirt Road & to the Highway - E691
episode
BRAVE Southeast Asia Tech: Singapore, Indonesia, Vietnam, Philippines, Thailand & Malaysia Startups, Founders & Venture Capital VC (English)
10 min
1 speaker
6 chapters
transcribed 19 days ago
Transcript
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Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
What are the odds of building a unicorn startup in Southeast Asia?
Your children, grandchildren, they will have a very different life from yours. They will explore the stars, live in VR, and do all kinds of crazy things that you think are hilarious and crazy right now. But they are crazy right now from our point of view because the things that we do today are crazy to the generations in our grandparents' time. We talked about how the top startups have the same odds of becoming unicorn as Roulette, which is about one in 40. Now you get to work. your ass off for the next ten years on this startup. And you're gonna be fighting against other founders but also working their ass off. So the question for many of you is are you gonna choose the play?
Are you gonna choose the play to be a founder? Are you gonna choose to join someone else's vision to be their employee? Are you going to bet on them as an investor? Are you gonna bet on them?
Why is Southeast Asia entering a Golden Age for tech startups?
Are you gonna bet against them? There's a thesis for a golden age for Southeast Asia, which is that Southeast Asia is in a place where people are trying to build those companies, that the people are becoming rich enough to go on the internet, and that there is a structural approach to make things happen and that we can learn from other countries. You must remember. Remember that the innovator, the founder, fights against the status quo. They fight against the norms and the intellectual laziness of the things that seem to have stayed the same. And things did stay the same for arguably maybe 4,995 generations of people. You are evolutionarily and biologically primed. We have to be understanding that our
Culture, our biological norms, our intrinsic nature, take things as it is. Which is why you are Gen Z. The things that you believe today that you think you take for normal are the things that my generation thought was cool and that my parents' generations, the boomers, thought was impossible. Within three generations, it became nothing. When I was your age, HIV was the scariest disease on Panet. To have HIV or AIDS meant that your life Was over. And today, people with HIV and AIDS treated as a chronic manageable condition. Within a single generation, AIDS and HIV has become something that was a death sentence to today, something to be managed. We have to understand that you, as every generation, would take for granted the changes that seem incredible from my perspective.
How does the generational mindset shift affect startup innovation?
I just want you to make sure that you have that mental reset around what technology revolutions are. Who are these prophets? Who are these angels of Technological revolution, of destruction, and of creation. It'll be the stories of David and Goliath. The Goliath are the companies that we think of today, the large winners. Today we look at the companies that seem so fantastic: TSMC, we look at JP Morgan, we look at Citibank as the titans, the captains of their industry. And yet there are Davids, there are people who say that they want to go out and kill Goliath. You have the crypto startups, you have All of these companies and founders who are pushing hard to fight. And what we said about it was that the story of David and Goliath is normally seen through this prism of underdog versus the person who should win against all odds.
But again, we talked about the real historical analogy, which is that David used a slingshot, and a slingshot in today's modern warfare is equivalent to using a pistol to shoot someone in the head. Back then, armies and whole formations of people were using slingshots. As a weapon of war to fight. David chose to fight without armor, chose to fight without a helmet, he chose to play to his strengths and use the slingshot against a very strongly armored enemy. This is relevant for startups because startups must fight. Using that mechanism and thought mechanism, they must play to their strengths and play against their opponents' weaknesses. And by doing those two things, these startups can improve. These startups will go through three different phases.
One is that they'll go through the jungle, then they'll go through the dirt road, and then they'll go through the highway.
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Chapters
6 chapters
1
What are the odds of building a unicorn startup in Southeast Asia?
0:00–0:49
2
Why is Southeast Asia entering a Golden Age for tech startups?
0:49–2:13
3
How does the generational mindset shift affect startup innovation?
2:13–5:14
4
What is the David‑vs‑Goliath slingshot strategy for early‑stage founders?
5:14–7:13
5
How do startups progress through the Jungle, Dirt Road, and Highway phases?
7:13–9:26
6
Why should startups focus on being 10× better, faster, or cheaper?
9:26–10:24
Speakers
1 identifiedMore from BRAVE Southeast Asia Tech: Singapore, Indonesia, Vietnam, Philippines, Thailand & Malaysia Startups, Founders & Venture Capital VC (English)
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