Zombie Unicorns: Southeast Asia's Structural VC Problem | Kristie Neo - E714
episode
BRAVE Southeast Asia Tech: Singapore, Indonesia, Vietnam, Philippines, Thailand & Malaysia Startups, Founders & Venture Capital VC (English)
58 min
1 speaker
8 chapters
transcribed 17 days ago
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Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
What is driving the recent revival of Singapore’s IPO market?
truth is I think Southeast Asia is really at the bottom. I mean I'm afraid we may have a whole generation of zombie companies, right? Where they once upon a time, they were very sexy and very relevant and eventually they may fade into irrelevance. Was this new startup that you're looking at? Like tell me, give me the good news la.
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, 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.bravesda.com. Stay well and stay brave. Hey Christie, good to see you back on the show. Hello. Yeah, I thought that this would be a good time to talk about, you know, kind of like Southeast Asia, lay of the land, because the last time that we talked we talked about, you know, kind of the Middle East crisis and so forth.
But I think now is a good time to take a stock take of like so many developments. I think we see developments in the Middle East, developments in Japan and Korea, developments in Indonesia. I think I see a few series A, Series B investments, but primarily coming from global investors I would say into Singapore companies. And of course I think there's some movement in the late stage, you know, the Singapore Stock Exchange is working to do IPOs, sort of growth stage companies to go IPO. So those seem to be the two trends. Is that fair?
I definitely think the whole IPO story is definitely something that has been a theme since last year into this year. I guess that would continue perhaps for the next at least twelve to eighteen months for sure. Because there are also kind of these groups I believe for the SVCA as well. They tried to rally a couple of these kind of interest groups between the PE VC ecosystem as well as some of the government players. whether it's M E S, SGX and all these like different policymakers, right? Mm. To try and figure out a way that they can kind of spoose up our very lackluster IPO market. Although I think it has picked up this year but primarily around our data centers portion. Not so much the homegrown tech startups where a lot of the VCs have put a lot of their money and the portfolios still remain very exposed to those particular guys.
So yeah, it's like a very particular sector that's kind of lifting the stock market, right? Yeah. Data centers, I think REITs as well. There was a particular announcement by AirTrunk, I don't know if you know Aust originally Australia, and I think backed by Blackstone as well, wanting to do a data center read. Singapore. And you know, Singapore, we love real estate. It will be interesting to see how that one will eventually play in the shake stock market. But with that piece also, you know, in place so that it's a bit of a pipeline. But I think the liquidity as well is kind of like the big question, right? Yeah. If we pump in all this, you know, a few billion dollars through all these like appointed fund managers, will it necessarily kind of lead to more liquidity?
for the short term but also for the long term. That's something I guess it's T B C we don't know. We shall see. But I think if you look at most of the counters, I think D B S like all the big bank stocks have done quite well in Singapore. Like I keep seeing the headlines are keep hitting highs. Maybe because of all this liquidity which has been getting pumped into the ecosystem. I'm not sure but It's interesting that that our you know, some of the the stocks have been doing quite well. This is something that hopefully needs to continue in a longer to run s before we start to see some meaningful ideals from our
market.
I think
there's actually a very good angle because I think we're talking about the macros. And I would say that I think for the Singapore stock exchange I think there's this fundamental uplift and s like I said monetary authority as simple is doing billions of dollars of stimulus into the investing into via the various vehicles.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is driving the recent revival of Singapore’s IPO market?
0:00–8:11
2
Why do allocators rank Southeast Asia at the bottom of the Asian venture‑capital stack?
8:11–17:50
3
What are “zombie unicorns” and why are they a problem for Southeast Asian growth‑stage companies?
17:50–25:23
4
How could strategic mergers, fold‑backs or consolidations rescue stalled startups?
25:23–31:47
5
Who should write the first, hundred‑thousand‑dollar and million‑dollar checks in the funding ladder?
31:47–38:20
6
Why is university IP commercialisation lagging and how can it be fixed?
38:20–46:09
7
What policy tools can governments use to seed VC funds and improve capital deployment?
46:09–53:36
8
How can angel investors, syndicates and family offices be incentivised to fund early‑stage startups?
53:36–58:01
Speakers
1 identifiedMore from BRAVE Southeast Asia Tech: Singapore, Indonesia, Vietnam, Philippines, Thailand & Malaysia Startups, Founders & Venture Capital VC (English)
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